Nice, the interest in the reign of Constantine ceases, although he lived
twelve years after it. His great work as a Christian emperor was to
unite the Church with the State. He did not elevate the Church above the
State; that was the work of the Mediaeval Popes. But he gave external
dignity to the clergy, of whom he was as great a patron as Charlemagne.
He himself was a sort of imperial Pope, attending to things spiritual as
well as to things temporal. His generosity to the Church made him an
object of universal admiration to prelates and abbots and ecclesiastical
writers. In this munificent patronage he doubtless secularized the
Church, and gave to the clergy privileges they afterwards abused,
especially in the ecclesiastical courts. But when the condition of the
Teutonic races in barbaric times is considered, his policy may have
proved beneficent. Most historians consider that the elevation of the
clergy to an equality with barons promoted order and law, especially in
the absence of central governments. If Constantine made a mistake in
enriching and exalting the clergy, it was endorsed by Charlemagne
and Alfred.
After a prosperous and brilliant reign of thirty-one years, the emperor
died in the year 337, in the suburbs of Nicomedia, which Diocletian had
selected as the capital of the East. In great pomp, and amid expressions
of universal grief, his body was transferred to the city he had built
and called by his name; it was adorned with every symbol of grandeur and
power, deposited on a golden bed, and buried in a consecrated church,
which was made the sepulchre of the Greek emperors until the city was
taken by the Turks. The sacred rite of baptism by which Constantine was
united with the visible Church, strange to say, was not administered
until within a few days before his death.
No emperor has received more praises than Constantine. He was fortunate
in his biographers, who saw nothing to condemn in a prince who made
Christianity the established religion of the Empire. If not the
greatest, he was one of the greatest, of all the absolute monarchs who
controlled the destinies of over one hundred millions of subjects. If
not the best of the emperors, he was one of the best, as sovereigns are
judged. I do not see in his character any extraordinary magnanimity or
elevation of sentiment, or gentleness, or warmth of affection. He had
great faults and great virtues, as strong men are apt to have. If he was
addicted to the pleasures of the table, he was chaste and continent in
his marital relations. He had no mistresses, like Julius Caesar and
Louis XIV. He had a great reverence for the ordinances of the Christian
religion. His life, in the main, was as decorous as it was useful. He
was a very successful man, but he was also a very ambitious man; and an
ambitious man is apt to be unscrupulous and cruel. Though he had to deal
with bigots, he was not himself fanatical. He was tolerant and
enlightened. His most striking characteristic was policy. He was one of
the most politic sovereigns that ever lived,--like Henry IV. of France,
forecasting the future, as well as balancing the present. He could not
have decreed such a massacre as that of Thessalonica, or have revoked
such an edict as that of Nantes. Nor could he have stooped to such a
penance as Ambrose inflicted on Theodosius, or given his conscience to a
Father Le Tellier. He tried to do right, not because it was right, like
Marcus Aurelius, but because it was wise and expedient; he was a
Christian, because he saw that Christianity was a better religion than
Paganism, not because he craved a lofty religious life; he was a
theologian, after the pattern of Queen Elizabeth, because theological
inquiries and disputations were the fashion of the day; but when
theologians became rampant and arrogant he put them down, and dictated
what they should believe. He was comparatively indifferent to slaughter,
else he would not have spent seventeen years of his life in civil war,
in order to be himself supreme. He cared little for the traditions of
the Empire, else he would not have transferred his capital to the banks
of the Bosporus. He was more like Peter the Great than like Napoleon
I.; yet he was a better man than either, and bestowed more benefits on
the world than both together, and is to be classed among the greatest
benefactors that ever sat upon the throne.
AUTHORITIES.
The original authorities of the life of Constantine are Eusebius, Bishop
of Caesarea, his friend and admirer; also Hosius, of Cordova. The
ecclesiastical histories of Socrates, Theodoret, Zosimus, and Sozomen
are dry, but the best we have of that age. The lives of Athanasius and
Arius should be read in connection. Gibbon is very full and exhaustive
on this period. So is Tillemont, who was an authority to Gibbon. Milman
has written, in his interesting history of the Church, a fine notice of
Constantine, and so has Stanley. The German Church histories, especially
that of Neander, should be read; also, Cardinal Newman's History of the
Arians. I need not remind the reader of the innumerable tracts and
treatises on the doctrine of the Trinity. They comprise half the
literature of the Middle Ages as well as of the Fathers. In a lecture I
can only glance at some of the vital points.
PAULA.
* * * * *
A.D. 347-404.
WOMAN AS FRIEND.
The subject of this lecture is Paula, an illustrious Roman lady of rank
and wealth, whose remarkable friendship for Saint Jerome, in the latter
part of the fourth century, has made her historical. If to her we do not
date the first great change in the social relations of man with woman,
yet she is the most memorable example that I can find of that exalted
sentiment which Christianity called out in the intercourse of the sexes,
and which has done more for the elevation of society than any other
sentiment except that of religion itself.
Female friendship, however, must ever have adorned and cheered the
world; it naturally springs from the depths of a woman's soul. However
dark and dismal society may have been under the withering influences of
Paganism, it is probable that glorious instances could be chronicled of
the devotion of woman to man and of man to woman, which was not
intensified by the passion of love. Nevertheless, the condition of
women in the Pagan world, even with all the influences of civilization,
was unfavorable to that sentiment which is such a charm in social life.
The Pagan woman belonged to her husband or her father rather than to
herself. As more fully shown in the discussion of Cleopatra, she was
universally regarded as inferior to man, and made to be his slave. She
was miserably educated; she was secluded from intercourse with
strangers; she was shut up in her home; she was given in marriage
without her consent; she was guarded by female slaves; she was valued
chiefly as a domestic servant, or as an animal to prevent the extinction
of families; she was seldom honored; she was doomed to household
drudgeries as if she were capable of nothing higher; in short, her lot
was hard, because it was unequal, humiliating, and sometimes degrading,
making her to be either timorous, frivolous, or artful. Her amusements
were trivial, her taste vitiated, her education neglected, her rights
violated, her aspirations scorned. The poets represented her as
capricious, fickle, and false. She rose only to fall; she lived only to
die. She was a victim, a toy, or a slave. Bedizened or burdened, she was
either an object of degrading admiration or of cold neglect.
The Jewish women seem to have been more favored and honored than women
were in Greece or Rome, even in the highest periods of their
civilization. But in Jewish history woman was the coy maiden, or the
vigilant housekeeper, or the ambitious mother, or the intriguing wife,
or the obedient daughter, or the patriotic song-stress, rather than the
sympathetic friend. Though we admire the beautiful Rachel, or the heroic
Deborah, or the virtuous Abigail, or the affectionate Ruth, or the
fortunate Esther, or the brave Judith, or the generous Shunamite, we do
not find in the Rachels and Esthers the hallowed ministrations of the
Marys, the Marthas and the Phoebes, until Christianity had developed the
virtues of the heart and kindled the loftier sentiments of the soul.
Then woman became not merely the gentle nurse and the prudent housewife
and the disinterested lover, but a _friend_, an angel of consolation,
the equal of man in character, and his superior in the virtues of the
heart and soul. It was not till then that she was seen to have those
qualities which extort veneration, and call out the deepest sympathy,
whenever life is divested of its demoralizing egotisms. The original
beatitudes of the Garden of Eden returned, and man awoke from the deep
sleep of four thousand years, to discover, with Adam, that woman was a
partner for whom he should resign all the other attachments of life; and
she became his star of worship and his guardian angel amid the
entanglements of sin and cares of toil.
I would not assert that there were not noble exceptions to the
frivolities and slaveries to which women were generally doomed in Pagan
Greece and Rome. Paganism records the fascinations of famous women who
could allure the greatest statesmen and the wisest moralists to their
charmed circle of admirers,--of women who united high intellectual
culture with physical beauty. It tells us of Artemisia, who erected to
her husband a mausoleum which was one of the wonders of the world; of
Telesilla, the poetess, who saved Argos by her courage; of Hipparchia,
who married a deformed and ugly cynic, in order that she might make
attainments in learning and philosophy; of Phantasia, who wrote a poem
on the Trojan war, which Homer himself did not disdain to utilize; of
Sappho, who invented a new measure in lyric poetry, and who was so
highly esteemed that her countrymen stamped their money with her image;
of Volumnia, screening Rome from the vengeance of her angry son; of
Servilia, parting with her jewels to secure her father's liberty; of
Sulpicia, who fled from the luxuries of Rome to be a partner of the
exile of her husband; of Hortensia, pleading for justice before the
triumvirs in the market-place; of Octavia, protecting the children of
her rival Cleopatra; of Lucretia, destroying herself rather than survive
the dishonor of her house; of Cornelia, inciting her sons, the Gracchi,
to deeds of patriotism; and many other illustrious women. We read of
courage, fortitude, patriotism, conjugal and parental love; but how
seldom do we read of those who were capable of an exalted friendship for
men, without provoking scandal or exciting rude suspicion? Who among the
poets paint friendship without love; who among them extol women, unless
they couple with their praises of mental and moral qualities a mention
of the delights of sensual charms and of the joys of wine and banquets?
Poets represent the sentiments of an age or people; and the poets of
Greece and Rome have almost libelled humanity itself by their bitter
sarcasms, showing how degraded the condition of woman was under Pagan
influences.
Now, I select Paula, to show that friendship--the noblest sentiment in
woman--was not common until Christianity had greatly modified the
opinions and habits of society; and to illustrate how indissolubly
connected this noble sentiment is with the highest triumphs of an
emancipating religion. Paula was a highly favored as well as a highly
gifted woman. She was a descendant of the Scipios and the Gracchi, and
was born A.D. 347, at Rome, ten years after the death of the Great
Constantine who enthroned Christianity, but while yet the social forces
of the empire were entangled in the meshes of Paganism. She was married
at seventeen to Toxotius, of the still more illustrious Julian family.
She lived on Mount Aventine, in great magnificence. She owned, it is
said, a whole city in Italy. She was one of the richest women of
antiquity, and belonged to the very highest rank of society in an
aristocratic age. Until her husband died, she was not distinguished from
other Roman ladies of rank, except for the splendor of her palace and
the elegance of her life. It seems that she was first won to
Christianity by the virtues of the celebrated Marcella, and she hastened
to enroll herself, with her five daughters, as pupils of this learned
woman, at the same time giving up those habits of luxury which thus far
had characterized her, together with most ladies of her class. On her
conversion, she distributed to the poor the quarter part of her immense
income,--charity being one of the forms which religion took in the early
ages of Christianity. Nor was she contented to part with the splendor of
her ordinary life. She became a nurse of the miserable and the sick; and
when they died she buried them at her own expense. She sought out and
relieved distress wherever it was to be found.
But her piety could not escape the asceticism of the age; she lived on
bread and a little oil, wasted her body with fastings, dressed like a
servant, slept on a mat of straw, covered herself with haircloth, and
denied herself the pleasures to which she had been accustomed; she
would not even take a bath. The Catholic historians have unduly
magnified these virtues; but it was the type which piety then assumed,
arising in part from a too literal interpretation of the injunctions of
Christ. We are more enlightened in these times, since modern Christian
civilization seeks to solve the problem how far the pleasures of this
world may be reconciled with the pleasures of the world to come. But the
Christians of the fourth century were more austere, like the original
Puritans, and made but little account of pleasures which weaned them
from the contemplation of God and divine truth, and chained them to the
triumphal car of a material and infidel philosophy. As the great and
besetting sin of the Jews before the Captivity was idolatry, which thus
was the principal subject of rebuke from the messengers of
Omnipotence,--the one thing which the Jews were warned to avoid; as
hypocrisy and Pharisaism and a technical and legal piety were the
greatest vices to be avoided when Christ began his teachings,--so
Epicureanism in life and philosophy was the greatest evil with which the
early Christians had to contend, and which the more eminent among them
sought to shun, like Athanasius, Basil, and Chrysostom. The asceticism
of the early Church was simply the protest against that materialism
which was undermining society and preparing the way to ruin; and hence
the loftiest type of piety assumed the form of deadly antagonism to the
luxuries and self-indulgence which pervaded every city of the empire.
This antagonism may have been carried too far, even as the Puritan made
war on many innocent pleasures; but the spectacle of a self-indulgent
and pleasure-seeking Christian was abhorrent to the piety of those
saints who controlled the opinions of the Christian world. The world was
full of misery and poverty, and it was these evils they sought to
relieve. The leaders of Pagan society were abandoned to gains and
pleasures, which the Christians would fain rebuke by a lofty
self-denial,--even as Stoicism, the noblest remonstrance of the Pagan
intellect, had its greatest example in an illustrious Roman emperor, who
vainly sought to stem the vices which he saw were preparing the way for
the conquests of the barbarians. The historian who does not take
cognizance of the great necessities of nations, and of the remedies with
which good men seek to meet these necessities, is neither philosophical
nor just; and instead of railing at the saints,--so justly venerated and
powerful,--because they were austere and ascetic, he should remember
that only an indifference to the pleasures and luxuries which were the
fatal evils of their day could make a powerful impression even on the
masses, and make Christianity stand out in bold contrast with the
fashionable, perverse, and false doctrines which Paganism indorsed. And
I venture to predict, that if the increasing and unblushing materialism
of our times shall at last call for such scathing rebukes as the Jewish
prophets launched against the sin of idolatry, or such as Christ himself
employed when he exposed the hollowness of the piety of the men who took
the lead in religious instruction in his day, then the loftiest
characters--those whose example is most revered--will again disdain and
shun a style of life which seriously conflicts with the triumphs of a
spiritual Christianity.
Paula was an ascetic Roman matron on her conversion, or else her
conversion would then have seemed nominal. But her nature was not
austere. She was a woman of great humanity, and distinguished for those
generous traits which have endeared Augustine to the heart of the world.
Her hospitalities were boundless; her palace was the resort of all who
were famous, when they visited the great capital of the empire. Nor did
her asceticism extinguish the natural affections of her heart. When one
of her daughters died, her grief was as immoderate as that of Bernard on
the loss of his brother. The woman was never lost in the saint. Another
interesting circumstance was her enjoyment of cultivated society, and
even of those literary treasures which imperishable art had bequeathed.
She spoke the Greek language as an English or Russian nobleman speaks
French, as a theological student understands German. Her companions were
gifted and learned women. Intimately associated with her in Christian
labors was Marcella,--a lady who refused the hand of the reigning
Consul, and yet, in spite of her duties as a leader of Christian
benevolence, so learned that she could explain intricate passages of the
Scriptures; versed equally in Greek and Hebrew; and so revered, that,
when Rome was taken by the Goths, her splendid palace on Mount Aventine
was left unmolested by the barbaric spoliators. Paula was also the
friend and companion of Albina and Marcellina, sisters of the great
Ambrose, whose father was governor of Gaul. Felicita, Principia, and
Feliciana also belonged to her circle,--all of noble birth and great
possessions. Her own daughter, Blessella, was married to a descendant of
Camillus; and even the illustrious Fabiola, whose life is so charmingly
portrayed by Cardinal Wiseman, was also a member of this chosen circle.
It was when Rome was the field of her charities and the scene of her
virtues, when she equally blazed as a queen of society and a saint of
the most self-sacrificing duties, that Paula fell under the influence of
Saint Jerome, at that time secretary of Pope Damasus,--the most austere
and the most learned man of Christian antiquity, the great oracle of the
Latin Church, sharing with Augustine the reverence bestowed by
succeeding ages, whose translation of the Scriptures into Latin has made
him an immortal benefactor. Nor was Jerome a plebeian; he was a man of
rank and fortune,--like the more famous of the Fathers,--but gave away
his possessions to the poor, as did so many others of his day. Nothing
had been spared on his education by his wealthy Illyrian parents. At
eighteen he was sent to Rome to complete his studies. He became deeply
imbued with classic literature, and was more interested in the great
authors of Greece and Rome than in the material glories of the empire.
He lived in their ideas so completely, that in after times his
acquaintance with even the writings of Cicero was a matter of
self-reproach. Disgusted, however, with the pomps and vanities around
him, he sought peace in the consolations of Christianity. His ardent
nature impelled him to embrace the ascetic doctrines which were so
highly esteemed and venerated; he buried himself in the catacombs, and
lived like a monk. Then his inquiring nature compelled him to travel for
knowledge, and he visited whatever was interesting in Italy, Greece, and
Asia Minor, and especially Palestine, finally fixing upon Chalcis, on
the confines of Syria, as his abode. There he gave himself up to
contemplation and study, and to the writing of letters to all parts of
Christendom. These letters and his learned treatises, and especially the
fame of his sanctity, excited so much interest that Pope Damasus
summoned him back to Rome to become his counsellor and secretary. More
austere than Bossuet or Fénelon at the court of Louis XIV., he was as
accomplished, and even more learned than they. They were courtiers; he
was a spiritual dictator, ruling, not like Dunstan, by an appeal to
superstitious fears, but by learning and sanctity. In his coarse
garments he maintained his equality with princes and nobles. To the
great he appeared proud and repulsive. To the poor he was affable,
gentle, and sympathetic; they thought him as humble as the rich thought
him arrogant.
Such a man--so learned and pious, so courtly in his manners, so eloquent
in his teachings, so independent and fearless in his spirit, so
brilliant in conversation, although tinged with bitterness and
sarcasm--became a favorite in those high circles where rank was adorned
by piety and culture. The spiritual director became a friend, and his
friendship was especially valued by Paula and her illustrious circle.
Among those brilliant and religious women he was at home, for by birth
and education he was their equal. At the house of Paula he was like
Whitefield at the Countess of Huntingdon's, or Michael Angelo in the
palace of Vittoria Colonna,--a friend, a teacher, and an oracle.