who was to Rome what Augustine had been to Carthage when that capital
also fell into the hands of Vandals, hastened to the barbarian's camp.
The only concession he could get was that the lives of the people should
be spared,--a promise only partially kept. The second pillage lasted
fourteen days and nights. The Vandals transferred to their ships all
that the Goths had left, even to the trophies of the churches and
ancient temples; the statues which ornamented the capital, the holy
vessels of the Jewish temple which Titus had brought from Jerusalem,
imperial sideboards of massive silver, the jewels of senatorial
families, with their wives and daughters,--all were carried away to
Carthage, the seat of the new Empire of the Vandals, A.D. 455, then once
more a flourishing city. The haughty capital met the fate which she had
inflicted on her rival in the days of Cato the censor, but fell still
more ingloriously, and never would have recovered from this second fall
had not her immortal bishop, rising with the greatness of the crisis,
laid the foundation of a new power,--that spiritual domination which
controlled the Gothic nations for more than a thousand years.
With the fall of Rome,--yet too great a city to be wholly despoiled or
ruined, and which has remained even to this day the centre of what is
most interesting in the world,--I should close this Lecture; but I must
glance rapidly over the whole Empire, and show its condition when the
imperial capital was spoiled, humiliated, and deserted.
The Suevi, Alans, and Vandals invaded Spain, and erected their barbaric
monarchies. The Goths were established in the south of Gaul, while the
north was occupied by the Franks and Burgundians. England, abandoned by
the Romans, was invaded by the Saxons, who formed permanent conquests.
In Italy there were Goths and Heruli and Lombards. All these races were
Germanic. They probably made serfs or slaves of the old population, or
were incorporated with them. They became the new rulers of the
devastated provinces; and all became, sooner or later, converts to a
nominal Christianity, the supreme guardian of which was the Pope, whose
authority they all recognized. The languages which sprang up in Europe
were a blending of the Roman, Celtic, and Germanic. In Spain and Italy
the Latin predominated, as the Saxon prevailed in England after the
Norman conquest. Of all the new settlers in the Roman world, the
Normans, who made no great incursions till the time of Charlemagne, were
probably the strongest and most refined. But they all alike had the same
national traits, substantially; and they entered upon the possessions of
the Romans after various contests, more or less successful, for two
hundred and fifty years.
The Empire might have been invaded by these barbarians in the time of
the Antonines, and perhaps earlier; but it would not have succumbed to
them. The Legions were then severely disciplined, the central power was
established, and the seeds of ruin had not then brought forth their
wretched fruits. But in the fifth century nothing could have saved the
Empire. Its decline had been rapid for two hundred years, until at last
it became as weak as the Oriental monarchies which Alexander subdued. It
fell like a decayed and rotten tree. As a political State all vitality
had fled from it. The only remaining conservative forces came from
Christianity; and Christianity was itself corrupted, and had become a
part of the institutions of the State.
It is mournful to think that a brilliant external civilization was so
feeble to arrest both decay and ruin. It is sad to think that neither
art nor literature nor law had conservative strength; that the manners
and habits of the people grew worse and worse, as is universally
admitted, amid all the glories and triumphs and boastings of the
proudest works of man. "A world as fair and as glorious as our own,"
says Sismondi, "was permitted to perish." Rome, Alexandria, Antioch,
Athens, met the old fate of Babylon, of Tyre, of Carthage. Degeneracy
was as marked and rapid in the former, notwithstanding all the
civilizing influences of letters, jurisprudence, arts, and utilitarian
science, as in the latter nations,--a most significant and impressive
commentary on the uniform destinies of nations, when those virtues on
which the strength of man is based have passed away. An observer in the
days of Theodosius would very likely have seen the churches of Rome as
fully attended as are those in New York itself to-day; and he would have
seen a more magnificent city,--and yet it fell. There is no cure for a
corrupt and rotten civilization. As the farms of the old Puritans of
Massachusetts and Connecticut are gradually but surely passing into the
hands of the Irish, because the sons and grandsons of the old
New-England farmer prefer the uncertainties and excitements of a
demoralized city-life to laborious and honest work, so the possessions
of the Romans passed into the hands of German barbarians, who were
strong and healthy and religious. They desolated, but they
reconstructed.
The punishment of the enervated and sensual Roman was by war. We in
America do not fear this calamity, and have no present cause of fear,
because we have not sunk to the weakness and wickedness of the Romans,
and because we have no powerful external enemies. But if amid our
magnificent triumphs of science and art, we should accept the
Epicureanism of the ancients and fall into their ways of life, then
there would be the same decline which marked them,--I mean in virtue and
public morality,--and there would be the same penalty; not perhaps
destruction from external enemies, as in Persia, Syria, Greece, and
Rome, but some grievous and unexpected series of catastrophes which
would be as mournful, as humiliating, as ruinous, as were the incursions
of the Germanic races. The operations of law, natural and moral, are
uniform. No individual and no nation can escape its penalty. The world
will not be destroyed; Christianity will not prove a failure,--but new
forces will arise over the old, and prevail. Great changes will come. He
whose right it is to rule will overturn and overturn: but "creation
shall succeed destruction; melodious birth-songs will come from the
fires of the burning phoenix," assuring us that the progress of the race
is certain, even if nations are doomed to a decline and fall whenever
conservative forces are not strong enough to resist the torrent of
selfishness, vanity, and sin.
AUTHORITIES.
The original authorities are Ammianus Marcellinus, Zosimus, Sozomen,
Socrates, orations of Gregory Nazianzen, Theodoret, the Theodosian Code,
Sulpicius Severus, Life of Martin of Tours, Life of Ambrose by Paulinus,
Augustine's "De Civitate Dei," Epistles of Ambrose; also those of
Jerome; Claudien. The best modern authorities are Tillemont's History of
the Emperors; Gibbon's Decline and Fall; Milmans's History of
Christianity; Neander; Sheppard's Fall of Rome; and Flécier's Life of
Theodosius. There are several popular Lives of Theodosius in French, but
very few in English.
LEO THE GREAT.
* * * * *
A.D. 390-461.
FOUNDATION OF THE PAPACY.
With the great man who forms the subject of this Lecture are identified
those principles which lay at the foundation of the Roman Catholic power
for fifteen hundred years. I do not say that he is the founder of the
Roman Catholic Church, for that is another question. Roman Catholicism,
as a polity, or government, or institution, is one thing; and Roman
Catholicism, as a religion, is quite another, although they have been
often confounded. As a government, or polity, it is peculiar,--the
result of the experience of ages, adapted to society and nations in a
certain state of progress or development, with evils and corruptions, of
course, like all other human institutions. As a religion, although it
superadded many dogmas and rites which Protestants do not accept, and
for which they can see no divine authority,--like auricular confession,
the deification of the Virgin, indulgences for sin, and the
infallibility of the Pope,--still, it has at the same time defended the
cardinal principles of Christian faith and morality; such as the
personality and sovereignty of God, the divinity of Christ, salvation in
consequence of his sufferings and death, immortality, the final
judgment, the necessity of a holy life, temperance, humility, patience,
and the virtues which were taught upon the Mount and enforced by the
original disciples and apostles, whose writings are accepted
as inspired.
In treating so important a subject as that represented by Leo the Great,
we must bear in mind these distinctions. While Leo is conceded to have
been a devout Christian and a noble defender of the faith as we receive
it,--one of the lights of the early Christian Church, numbered even
among the Fathers of the Church, with Augustine and Chrysostom,--his
special claim to greatness is that to him we trace some of the first
great developments of the Roman Catholic power as an institution. More
than any other one man, he laid the foundation-stone of that edifice
which alike sheltered and imprisoned the European nations for more than
a thousand years. He was not a great theologian like Augustine, or
preacher like Chrysostom, but he was a great bishop like Ambrose,--even
far greater, inasmuch as he was the organizer of new forces in the
administration of his important diocese. In fact he was a great
statesman, as the more able of the popes always aspired to be. He was
the associate and equal of princes.
It was the sublime effort of Leo to make the Church the guardian of
spiritual principles and give to it a theocratic character and aim,
which links his name with the mightiest moral movements of the world;
and when I speak of the Church I mean the Church of Rome, as presided
over by men who claimed to be the successors of Saint Peter,--to whom
they assert Christ had given the supreme control over all other churches
as His vicars on the earth. It was the great object of Leo to
substantiate this claim, and root it in the minds of the newly converted
barbarians; and then institute laws and measures which should make his
authority and that of his successors paramount in all spiritual matters,
thus centring in his See the general oversight of the Christian Church
in all the countries of Europe. It was a theocratic aspiration, one of
the grandest that ever entered into the mind of a man of genius, yet, as
Protestants now look at it, a usurpation,--the beginning of a vast
system of spiritual tyranny in order to control the minds and
consciences of men. It took several centuries to develop this system,
after Leo was dead. With him it was not a vulgar greed of power, but an
inspiration of genius,--a grand idea to make the Church which he
controlled a benign and potent influence on society, and to prevent
civilization from being utterly crushed out by the victorious Goths and
Vandals. It is the success of this idea which stamps the Church as the
great leading power of Mediaeval Ages,--a power alike majestic and
venerable, benignant yet despotic, humble yet arrogant and usurping.
But before I can present this subtile contradiction, in all its mighty
consequences both for good and evil, I must allude to the Roman See and
the condition of society when Leo began his memorable pontificate as the
precursor of the Gregories and the Clements of later times. Like all
great powers, it was very gradually developed. It was as long in
reaching its culminating greatness as that temporal empire which
controlled the ancient world. Pagan Rome extended her sway by generals
and armies; Mediaeval Rome, by her prelates and her principles.
However humble the origin of the Church of Rome, in the early part of
the fifth century it was doubtless the greatest See (or _seat_ of
episcopal power) in Christendom. The Bishop of Rome had the largest
number of dependent bishops, and was the first of clerical dignitaries.
As early as A.D. 250,--sixty years before Constantine's conversion, and
during the times of persecution,--such a man as Cyprian, metropolitan
Bishop of Carthage, yielded to him the precedence, and possibly the
presidency, because his See was the world's metropolis. And when the
seat of empire was removed to the banks of the Bosporus, the power of
the Roman Bishop, instead of being diminished, was rather increased,
since he was more independent of the emperors than was the Bishop of
Constantinople. And especially after Rome was taken by the Goths, he
alone possessed the attributes of sovereignty. "He had already towered
as far above ordinary bishops in magnificence and prestige as Caesar had
above Fabricius."
It was the great name of ROME, after all, which was the mysterious
talisman that elevated the Bishop of Rome above other metropolitans. Who
can estimate the moral power of that glorious name which had awed the
world for a thousand years? Even to barbarians that proud capital was
sacred. The whole world believed her to be eternal; she alone had the
prestige of universal dominion. This queen of cities might be desolated
like Babylon or Tyre, but her influence was indestructible. In her very
ruins she was majestic. Her laws, her literature, and her language still
were the pride of nations; they revered her as the mother of
civilization, clung to the remembrance of her glories, and refused to
let her die. She was to the barbarians what Athens had been to the
Romans, what modern Paris is to the world of fashion, what London ever
will be to the people of America and Australia,--the centre of a proud
civilization. So the bishops of such a city were great in spite of
themselves, no matter whether they were remarkable as individuals or
not. They were the occupants of a great office; and while their city
ruled the world, it was not necessary for them to put forth any new
claims to dignity or power. No person and no city disputed their
pre-eminence. They lived in a marble palace; they were clothed in purple
and fine linen; they were surrounded by sycophants; nobles and generals
waited in their ante-chambers; they were the companions of princes; they
controlled enormous revenues; they were the successors of the high
pontiffs of imperial domination.
Yet for three hundred years few of them were eminent. It is not the
order of Providence that great posts, to which men are elected by
inferiors, should be filled with great men. Such are always feared, and
have numerous enemies who defeat their elevation. Moreover, it is only
in crises of imminent danger that signal abilities are demanded. Men are
preferred for exalted stations who will do no harm, who have talent
rather than genius,--men who have business capacities, who have industry
and modesty and agreeable manners; who, if noted for anything, are noted
for their character. Hence we do not read of more than two or three
bishops, for three hundred years, who stood out pre-eminently among
their contemporaries; and these were inferior to Origen, who was a
teacher in a theological school, and to Jerome, who was a monk in an
obscure village. Even Augustine, to whose authority in theology the
Catholic Church still professes to bow down, as the schools of the
Middle Ages did to Aristotle, was the bishop of an unimportant See in
Northern Africa. Only Clement in the first century, and Innocent in the
fourth loomed up above their contemporaries. As for the rest, great as
was their dignity as bishops, it is absurd to attribute to them schemes
for enthralling the world. No such plans arose in the bosom of any of
them. Even Leo I. merely prepared the way for universal domination; he
had no such deep-laid schemes as Gregory VII. or Boniface VIII. The
primacy of the Bishop of Rome was all that was conceded by other bishops
for four hundred years, and this on the ground of the grandeur of his
capital. Even this was disputed by the Bishop of Constantinople, and
continued to be until that capital was taken by the Turks.
But with the waning power, glory, and wealth of Rome,--decimated,
pillaged, trodden under foot by Goths and Vandals, rebuked by
Providence, deserted by emperors, abandoned to decay and ruin,--some
expedient or new claim to precedency was demanded to prevent the Roman
bishops from sinking into mediocrity. It was at this crisis that the
pontificate of Leo began, in the year 440. It was a gloomy period, not
only for Rome, but for civilization. The queen of cities had been
repeatedly sacked, and her treasures destroyed or removed to distant
cities. Her proud citizens had been sold as slaves; her noble matrons
had been violated; her grand palaces had been levelled with the ground;
her august senators were fugitives and exiles. All kinds of calamities
overspread the earth and decimated the race,--war, pestilence, and
famine. Men in despair hid themselves in caves and monasteries.
Literature and art were crushed; no great works of genius appeared. The
paralysis of despair deadened all the energies of civilized man. Even
armies lost their vigor, and citizens refused to enlist. The old
mechanism of the Caesars, which had kept the Empire together for three
hundred years after all vitality had fled, was worn out. The general
demoralization had led to a general destruction. Vice was succeeded by
universal violence; and that, by universal ruin. Old laws and restraints
were no longer of any account. A civilization based on material forces
and Pagan arts had proved a failure. The whole world appeared to be on
the eve of dissolution. To the thoughtful men of the age everything
seemed to be involved in one terrific mass of desolation and horror.
"Even Jerome," says a great historian, "heaped together the awful
passages of the Old Testament on the capture of Jerusalem and other
Eastern cities; and the noble lines of Virgil on the sack of Troy are
but feeble descriptions of the night which covered the western Empire."
Now Leo was the man for such a crisis, and seems to have been raised up
to devise some new principle of conservation around which the stricken
world might rally. "He stood equally alone and superior," says Milman,
"in the Christian world. All that survived of Rome--of her unbounded
ambition, of her inflexible will, and of her belief in her title to
universal dominion--seemed concentrated in him alone."
Leo was born, in the latter part of the fourth century, at Rome, of
noble parents, and was intensely Roman in all his aspirations. He early
gave indications of future greatness, and was consecrated to a service
in which only talent was appreciated. When he was nothing but an
acolyte, whose duty it was to light the lamps and attend on the bishop,
he was sent to Africa and honored with the confidence of the great
Bishop of Hippo. And he was only deacon when he was sent by the Emperor
Valentinian III. to heal the division between Aëtius and Albinus,--rival
generals, whose dissensions compromised the safety of the Empire. He was
absent on important missions when the death of Sixtus, A.D. 440, left
the Papacy without a head. On Leo were all eyes now fixed, and he was
immediately summoned by the clergy and the people of Rome, in whom the
right of election was vested, to take possession of the vacant throne.
He did not affect unworthiness like Gregory in later years, but accepted
at once the immense responsibility.
I need not enumerate his measures and acts. Like all great and patriotic
statesmen he selected the wisest and ablest men he could find as
subordinates, and condescended himself to those details which he
inexorably exacted from others. He even mounted the neglected pulpit of
his metropolitan church to preach to the people, like Chrysostom and
Gregory Nazianzen at Constantinople. His sermons are not models of
eloquence or style, but are practical, powerful, earnest, and orthodox.
Athanasius himself was not more evangelical, or Ambrose more impressive.
He was the especial foe of all the heresies which characterized the age.
He did battle with all who attempted to subvert the Nicene Creed. Those
whom he especially rebuked were the Manicheans,--men who made the
greatest pretension to intellectual culture and advanced knowledge, and
yet whose lives were disgraced not merely by the most offensive
intellectual pride, but the most disgraceful vices; men who confounded
all the principles of moral obligation, and who polluted even the
atmosphere of Rome by downright Pagan licentiousness. He had no patience
with these false philosophers, and he had no mercy. He even complained
of them to the emperor, as Calvin did of Servetus to the civil
authorities of Geneva (which I grant was not to his credit); and the
result was that these dissolute and pretentious heretics were expelled
from the army and from all places of trust and emolument.
Many people in our enlightened times would denounce this treatment as
illiberal and persecuting, and justly. But consider his age and
circumstances. What was Leo to do as the guardian of the faith in those
dreadful times? Was he to suffer those who poisoned all the sources of
renovation which then remained to go unrebuked and unpunished? He may
have said, in his defence, "Shall I, the bishop of this diocese, the
appointed guardian of faith and morals in a period of alarming
degeneracy,--shall I, armed with the sword of Saint Peter, stop to draw
the line between injuries inflicted by the tongue and injuries inflicted
by the hand? Shall we defend our persons, our property, and our lives,
and take no notice of those who impiously and deliberately would destroy
our souls by their envenomed blasphemies? Shall we allow the wells of
water which spring up to everlasting life to be poisoned by the impious
atheists and scoffers, who in every age set themselves up against Christ
and His kingdom, and are only allowed by God Almighty to live, as the
wild beasts of the desert or scorpions and serpents are allowed to live?
Let them live, but let us defend ourselves against their teeth and
fangs. Are the overseers of God's people, in a world of shame, to be
mere philosophical Gallios, indifferent to our higher interests? Is it a
Christian duty to permit an avalanche of evils to overwhelm the Church
on the plea of toleration? Shall we suffer, when we have the power to
prevent it, a pandemonium of scoffers and infidels and sentimental
casuists to run riot in the city which is intrusted to us to guard? Not
thus will we be disloyal to our trusts. Men have souls to save, and we
will come to the rescue with any weapons we can lay our hands upon. The
Church is the only hope of the world, not merely in our unsettled times,
but for all ages. And hence I, as the guardian of those spiritual
principles which lie at the root of all healthy progress in
civilization, and all religious life, will not tamely and ignobly see
those principles subverted by dangerous and infidel speculations, even
if they are attractive to cultivated but irreligious classes."
Such may have been the arguments, it is not unreasonable to
suppose, which influenced the great Leo in his undoubted
persecutions,--persecutions, we should remember, which were then
indorsed by the Catholic Church. They would be condemned in our times by
all enlightened men, but they were the only remedy known in that age
against dangerous opinions. So Leo put down the Manicheans and preserved
the unity of the faith, which was of immeasurable importance in the sea
of anarchies which at that time was submerging all the traditions of
the past.
Leo also distinguished himself by writing a treatise on the
Incarnation,--said to be the ablest which has come down to us from the
primitive Church. He was one of those men who believed in theology as a
series of divine declarations, to be cordially received whether they are
fully grasped by the intellect or not. These declarations pertain to
most momentous interests, and hence transcend in dignity any question
which mere philosophy ever attempted to grasp, or physical science ever
brought forward. In spite of the sneers of the infidels, or the attacks
of _savans_, or the temporary triumph of false opinions, let us remember
they have endured during the mighty conflicts of the last eighteen
hundred years, and will endure through all the conflicts of ages,--the
might, the majesty, and the glory of the kingdom of Christ. Whoever thus
conserves truths so important is a great benefactor, whether neglected
or derided, whether despised or persecuted.