miserable, ignorant, anarchical, superstitious age. In such an age the
concentration of power in the hands of an intelligent man is always a
public benefit. Certainly it was wielded wisely by Leo, and for
beneficent ends. He established the patristic literature. The writings
of the great Fathers were by him scattered over Europe, and were studied
by the clergy, so far as they were able to study anything. All the great
doctrines of Augustine and Jerome and Athanasius were defended. The
whole Church was made to take the side of orthodoxy, and it remained
orthodox to the times of Bernard and Anselm. Order was restored to the
monasteries; and they so rapidly gained the respect of princes and good
men that they were richly endowed, and provision made in them for the
education of priests. Everywhere cathedral schools were established. The
canon law supplanted in a measure the old customs of the German forests
and the rude legislation of feudal chieftains. When bishops quarrelled
with monasteries or with one another, or even with barons, appeals were
sent to Rome, and justice was decreed. In after times these appeals were
settled on venal principles, but not for centuries. The early Mediaeval
popes were the defenders of justice and equity. And they promoted peace
among quarrelsome barons, as well as Christian truth among divines. They
set aside, to some extent, those irascible and controversial councils
where good and great men were persecuted for heresy. These popes had no
small passions to gratify or to stimulate. They were the conservators of
the peace of Europe, as all reliable historians testify. They were
generally very enlightened men,--the ablest of their times. They
established canons and laws which were based on wisdom, which stood the
test of ages, and which became venerable precedents.
The Catholic polity was only gradually established, sustained by
experience and reason. And that is the reason why it has been so
permanent. It was most admirably adapted to rule the ignorant in ages of
cruelty and crime,--and, I am inclined to think, to rule the ignorant
and superstitious everywhere. Great critics are unanimous in their
praises of that wonderful mechanism which ruled the world for one
thousand years.
Nor did the popes, for several centuries after Leo, grasp the temporal
powers of princes. As political monarchs they were at first poor and
insignificant. The Papacy was not politically a great power until the
time of Hildebrand, nor a rich temporal power till nearly the era of the
Reformation. It was a spiritual power chiefly, just such as it is
destined to become again,--the organizer of religious forces; and, so
far as these are animated by the gospel and reason, they are likely to
have a perpetuated influence. Who can predict the end of a spiritual
empire which shows no signs of decay? It is not half so corrupt as it
was in the time of Boniface VIII., nor half so feeble as in the time of
Leo X. It is more majestic and venerable than in the time of Luther. Nor
are Protestants so bitter and one-sided as they were fifty years ago.
They begin to judge this great power by broader principles; to view it
as it really is,--not as "Antichrist" and the "scarlet mother," but as a
venerable institution, with great abuses, having at heart the interests
of those whom it grinds down and deceives.
But, after all, I do not in this Lecture present the Papacy of the
eleventh century or the nineteenth, but the Papacy of the fifth century,
as organized by Leo. True, its fundamental principles as a government
are the same as then. These principles I do not admire, especially for
an enlightened era. I only palliate them in reference to the wants of a
dark and miserable age, and as a critic insist upon their notable
success in the age that gave them birth.
With these remarks on the regimen, the polity, and the government of the
Church of which Leo laid the foundation, and which he adapted to
barbarous ages, when the Church was still a struggling power and
Christianity itself little better than nominal,--long before it had much
modified the laws or changed the morals of society; long before it had
created a new civilization,--with these remarks, acceptable, it may be,
neither to Catholics nor to Protestants, I turn once more to the man
himself. Can you deny his title to the name of Great? Would you take him
out of the galaxy of illustrious men whom we still call Fathers and
Saints? Even Gibbon praises his exalted character. What would the
Church of the Middle Ages have been without such aims and aspirations?
Oh, what a benevolent mission the Papacy performed in its best ages,
mitigating the sorrows of the poor, raising the humble from degradation,
opposing slavery and war, educating the ignorant, scattering the Word of
God, heading off the dreadful tyranny of feudalism, elevating the
learned to offices of trust, shielding the pious from the rapacity of
barons, recognizing man as man, proclaiming Christian equalities,
holding out the hopes of a future life to the penitent believer, and
proclaiming the sovereignty of intelligence over the reign of brute
forces and the rapacity of ungodly men! All this did Leo, and his
immediate successors. And when he superadded to the functions of a great
religious magistrate the virtues of the humblest Christian,--parting
with his magnificent patrimony to feed the poor, and proclaiming (with
an eloquence unusual in his time) the cardinal doctrines of the
Christian faith, and setting himself as an example of the virtues which
he preached,--we concede his claim to be numbered among the great
benefactors of mankind. How much worse Roman Catholicism would have been
but for his august example and authority! How much better to educate the
ignorant people, who have souls to save, by the patristic than by
heathen literature, with all its poison of false philosophies and
corrupting stimulants! Who, more than he and his immediate successors,
taught loyalty to God as the universal Sovereign, and the virtues
generated by a peaceful life,--patriotism, self-denial, and faith? He
was a dictator only as Bernard was, ruling by the power of learning and
sanctity. As an original administrative genius he was scarcely surpassed
by Gregory VII. Above all, he sought to establish faith in the world.
Reason had failed. The old civilization was a dismal mockery of the
aspirations of man. The schools of Athens could make Sophists,
rhetoricians, dialecticians, and sceptics. But the faith of the Fathers
could bring philosophers to the foot of the Cross. What were material
conquests to these conquests of the soul, to this spiritual reign of the
invisible principles of the kingdom of Christ?
So, as the vicegerents of Almighty power, the popes began to reign.
Ridicule not that potent domination. What lessons of human experience,
what great truths of government, what principles of love and wisdom are
interwoven with it! Its growth is more suggestive than the rise of any
temporal empires. It has produced more illustrious men than any European
monarchy. And it aimed to accomplish far grander ends,--even obedience
to the eternal laws which God has decreed for the public and private
lives of men. It is invested with more poetic interest. Its doctors, its
dignitaries, its saints, its heroes, its missions, and its laws rise up
before us in sublime grandeur when seriously contemplated. It failed at
last, when no longer needed. But it was not until its encroachments and
corruptions shocked the reason of the world, and showed a painful
contrast to those virtues which originally sustained it, that earnest
men arose in indignation, and declared that this perverted institution
should no longer be supported by the contributions of more enlightened
ages; that it had become a tyrannical and dangerous government, to be
assailed and broken up. It has not yet passed away. It has survived the
Reformation and the attacks of its countless enemies. How long this
power of blended good and evil will remain we cannot predict. But one
thing we do know,--that the time will come when all governments shall
become the kingdoms of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and Christian
truth alone shall so permeate all human institutions that the forces of
evil shall be driven forever into the immensity of eternal night.
With the Pontificate of Leo the Great that dark period which we call the
"Middle Ages" may be said to begin. The disintegration of society then
was complete, and the reign of ignorance and superstition had set in.
With the collapse of the old civilization a new power had become a
necessity. If anything marked the Middle Ages it was the reign of
priests and nobles. This reign it will be my object to present in the
Lectures which are to fill the next volume of this Work, together with
subjects closely connected with papal domination and feudal life.
AUTHORITIES.
Works of Leo, edited by Quesnel; Zosimus; Socrates; Theodoret; Fleury's
Ecclesiastical History; Tillemont's Histoire des Empereurs; Gibbon's
Decline and Fall; Beugot's Histoire de la Destruction du Paganism;
Alexander de Saint Chéron's Histoire du Pontificat de Saint Leo le
Grande, et de son Siècle; Dumoulin's Vie et Religion de deux Papes Léon
I. et Grégoire I.; Maimbourg's Histoire du Pontificat de Saint Léon;
Arendt's Leo der Grosse und seine Zeit; Butler's Lives of the Saints;
Neander; Milman's Latin Christianity; Biographie Universelle;
Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Church historians universally praise
this Pope.