ON RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THE EAST.
The influence exercised by the lives of the solitaries of the East over
religion and morality is beyond a doubt; in truth it is not easy to
appreciate it in all its extent and in all its effects; but it is not
the less true and real on that account. It has not marked the doctrines
of humanity like those thundering events the effects of which are
often inadequate to their promises; but it is like a beneficial rain
which, diffusing itself gently over the thirsty earth, fertilizes the
meadows and the fields. If it were possible for man to comprehend and
distinguish the vast assemblage of causes which have contributed to
raise his mind, to give him a lively consciousness of his immortality,
and to render a return to his ancient degradation almost impossible,
perhaps it would be found that the wonderful phenomenon of the Eastern
solitaries had a considerable share in that immense change. Let us
not forget that from thence did the great men of the East receive
their inspiration; St. Jerome lived in a cave at Bethlehem, and the
conversion of St. Augustine was accompanied by a holy emulation excited
in his mind by reading the life of St. Anthony the Abbot.
The monasteries which were founded in the East and West in imitation
of these early establishments of the solitaries, were a continuation
of them, although with many differences, in consequence of times and
circumstances. Thence came the Basils, the Gregories, the Chrysostoms,
and so many distinguished men, the glory of the Church. If a miserable
spirit of dispute, ambition, and pride, sowing the seeds of discord,
had not prepared the rupture which was to deprive the East of the
vivifying influence of the Roman See, perhaps the ancient monasteries
of the East would have served, like those of the West, to prepare a
social regeneration, by forming one people out of the conquerors and
the conquered.
It is evident that the want of unity was one of the causes of the
weakness of the East; I will not deny that their position was very
different from ours; the enemy opposed to them did not at all resemble
the barbarians of the North; but I am not sure that it was easier to
subdue the latter than it was to rule the nations by whom the East
was conquered. In the East, the victory remained with the aggressors,
as with us; but a conquered nation is not dead; its defeat does not
take from it all the great advantages which are able, by giving it a
moral ascendency over the conquerors, to prepare, in silence, their
transformation, if not their expulsion. The northern barbarians
conquered the South of Europe; but the South, in its turn, triumphed
over them by the Christian religion; the barbarians were not driven
out, but they were transformed. Spain was conquered by the Arabs, and
the Arabs could not be transformed; but they were driven out in the
end. If the East had preserved unity, if Constantinople and the other
episcopal sees had remained subject to Rome like those of the West; in
a word, if all the East had been contented to be a member of a great
body, instead of having the ambitious pretensions of being a great body
itself, I consider it certain that, after the conquest of the Saracens,
a struggle, at once intellectual, moral, and physical, would have been
engaged in; a profound change would have been worked in the conquered
nation, or the struggle would have ended by the conquering barbarians
being driven back to their deserts.
It will be said that the transformation of the Arabs was the work of
ages. But was not that of the barbarians of the North so likewise?
Was this great work finished by their conversion to Christianity? A
considerable part of them were Arians; and besides, they understood
the Christian ideas so ill, they found the practice of Gospel morality
so difficult, that for a long time it was almost as difficult to treat
with them as with nations of a different religion. On the other hand,
let us not forget that the irruption of the barbarians was not a
solitary event; an event which, when once finished, did not recur; it
was continued for ages. But the force of the religious principle in the
West was such, that all the invading nations were compelled to retire,
or were forced to bend to the ideas and manners of the countries
they had recently acquired. The defeat of the hordes of Attila, the
victories of Charlemagne over the Saxons and the other nations beyond
the Rhine, the successive conversion of the various idolatrous nations
of the North by means of the missionaries sent from Rome,--in fine, the
vicissitudes and the final result of the invasions of the Normans, and
the ultimate triumph of the Christians of Spain over the Moors after
a war of eight centuries, are so many decisive proofs of what I have
just laid down--viz. that the West, vivified and fortified by Catholic
unity, had had the secret of assimilating and appropriating to itself
all that it was not able to reject, and the force to reject all that it
could not make its own.
This is what was wanting in the East: the enterprise was not more
difficult there than in the West. If the West alone was able to
liberate the Holy Sepulchre, the West and East together would never
have lost it; or, at least, after having freed it, they would have kept
it for ever. The same cause prevented the monasteries of the East from
attaining to the same vitality and energy which distinguished those of
the West; therefore, they have always been seen to grow weak with time,
without producing any thing great, and capable of preventing social
dissolution, of silently preparing and slowly elaborating regeneration
for posterity, after the calamities with which it pleased Providence
to afflict ancient times. He who has seen in history the brilliant
commencement of the Eastern monasteries, cannot behold without pain the
decline of their strength and splendor in the course of ages, after the
ravages caused by invasion, wars, and finally, the deadly influence
of the schism of Constantinople; the ancient abodes of so many men
illustrious for science and sanctity gradually disappeared from the
page of history like expiring lamps, or the dying fires of an abandoned
camp.
Immense injury was done to all the branches of human knowledge by
this decline, which, after having rendered the East barren, ended by
destroying it. If we pay attention, we shall see that, amid the great
shocks and revolutions which disturbed Europe, Africa, and Asia, the
natural refuge for the remains of ancient knowledge, was not the West,
but the East. It was not in our monasteries that the books, and other
intellectual riches, of which quieter and happier generations were one
day to enjoy the benefit, should naturally have been preserved; this,
it would seem, belonged to the monasteries of the eastern countries;
those lands, where the most different civilizations were brought
together and commingled as on neutral ground; those regions, where the
human mind had displayed the greatest activity, and taken the highest
flights; where the most abundant treasures of tradition and sciences,
and the beauties of art were accumulated; in a word, it was in this
vast mart of all the riches of the civilization and refinement of
all nations,--it was in this sanctuary and museum of antiquity, that
the intellectual patrimony of future generations ought to have been
preserved.
Let it not, however, be supposed that the monasteries of the East were
of no service to the human mind; the science and literature of Europe
are still mindful of the impulse which was communicated to them, by
the arrival of the precious materials thrown upon the coasts of Italy,
after the taking of Constantinople: but even these riches, brought
to Europe by a few men, driven upon our shores by a tempest, came to
us, like the remains of a shipwrecked crew, who, after having with
difficulty saved their lives from the fury of the waves, have only
preserved in their benumbed hands some gold and a few precious stones.
For this reason, precisely, do we lament, because from the example
we have adduced, we are enabled the better to understand the immense
riches of the vessel which was lost; this makes us grieve the more
bitterly that the early times of the illustrious cenobites of the East
have not been brought down to our day by a continued chain. When we
see their works overflow with sacred and profane learning, when their
labors show us proofs of indefatigable activity, we think with sorrow
of the inestimable treasures which their libraries must have contained.
Yet, in spite of the justness of the melancholy reflections we have
here made, it must be allowed that the influence of these monasteries
never ceased to be extremely useful to the preservation of knowledge.
The Arabs, in the times of their success, showed themselves to
be intelligent and cultivated; and Europe, in many respects, is
indebted to them for much advancement. Bagdad and Grenada, during the
middle ages, are two brilliant centres of intellectual movement and
art, which serve not a little to diminish the sombre effect of the
barbarities of Islamism: they are two tranquil and pleasing features
in a frightful picture. If it were possible to follow the history of
intellectual development among the Arabs, through the transformations
and catastrophes of the East, perhaps we should find in the sciences
of the nations which they conquered or destroyed the origin of much
of their progress. It is certain that their own civilization did not
contain any vital principle favorable to the development of the mind;
we have a proof of this in their religious and social organization,
and in the small results which they obtained, after having been for so
many centuries peacefully established in the conquered countries. Their
whole system, with respect to letters and intellectual cultivation,
is founded on that stupid maxim, uttered by one of their chiefs, when
he condemned an immense library to the flames: "If these books are
contrary to the Alcoran, they should be burnt as pernicious; if they
are not contrary to it, they should be burnt as useless."
We read in Palladius, that the monks of Egypt did not content
themselves with working with rude and simple objects, but that they
devoted themselves to labors of all kinds. These thousands of men, who,
belonging to all classes and to all countries, embraced the solitary
life, must have brought to the desert a large treasure of knowledge.
We know how far the human mind can go when left to itself, and applied
to a fixed occupation; there is always some reason for thinking that a
great part of the valuable ideas on the secrets of nature, the utility
and properties of certain ingredients, the principles of some of the
arts and sciences, knowledge which formed the rich patrimony of the
Arabs at the time when they appeared in Europe, were nothing but the
remains of ancient learning, gathered by them in countries which had
formerly been inundated by men from all parts. We must remember that at
the time of the first invasions of the northern barbarians, when Spain,
the south of France, Italy, the north of Africa, and all the islands
adjacent to these countries, were ravaged by these terrible men, the
East became a refuge, an asylum, for all those who could undertake the
voyage. Thus the treasures of Western science accumulated every day
in these countries; this emigration from all the Western regions may
have contributed, in an extraordinary manner, to convey to the East the
remains of ancient knowledge, which afterwards came to us transformed
and disfigured by the hands of the Arabs.
Deeply convinced of the nothingness of the world by so long a
succession of heavy misfortunes, these unfortunate men felt the
religious sentiment strengthened in their hearts; the fugitives
assembled in the East listened with lively emotion to the energetic
words of the solitary of the cave of Bethlehem. A great many of them
retired into the monasteries, where they found relief for their wants,
and consolation for their souls; thus did the Eastern monasteries gain
a great addition of valuable knowledge and information of all sorts.
If European civilization one day become complete mistress of the
countries which now groan under the Mussulman yoke, perhaps it will
be given to the history of science to add a noble page to its labors,
when, through the obscurities of the times, and by means of manuscripts
discovered by curiosity or chance, she shall have found the thread
which shall lead to a knowledge of the connection of Arabian science
with that of antiquity. The succession of transformations will then be
displayed, and we shall understand how the science of the sons of Omar
has appeared to have a different origin in our eyes. The archives of
Spain contain, in documents relating to the dominion of the Saracens,
riches, the examination of which may be said not yet to be commenced;
perhaps they will throw some light on this point. There is no doubt
that they afford matter for careful investigation, extremely curious
for appreciating these two very different civilizations, the Mohammedan
and the Christian.