MORAL HISTORY OF THE AGE OF CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM
I. CONCEPTIONS OF LIFE AND HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES THAT PRODUCED THE
ASCETIC IDEAL
[Sidenote: General fostering
causes of asceticism]
Before the close of the third century the development in the Christian
communities of the East of asceticism, the germs of which were
immanent from the first in Christianity, had given a remarkable trend
to the moral movement inaugurated by the new religion. We shall gain
a sympathetic understanding of this phase of Christian ethics only
as we bear in mind the conceptions of life and of the world, and the
historical conditions which in general tend to foster the development
of the ascetic ideal of goodness.
Asceticism, a definitive characteristic of which is renunciation of the
world and all earthly pleasures, springs from various roots. Sometimes
it grows out of a dualistic world philosophy, which, holding matter to
be an evil creation and “the corruptible body a load upon the soul,”
teaches the meritoriousness of the suppression, in the interest of the
spirit, of all bodily impulses and appetites.
Sometimes it arises from inequitable and oppressive conditions of
society, which have made life for the enslaved and impoverished masses
so joyless and wretched as to create an inappeasable yearning for
deliverance from its intolerable burdens.
Again, it springs from a world philosophy, which, because of its vivid
vision of another world of eternal realities, undervalues and reduces
to nothingness this earthly life and all its relationships.
Still again, it may spring from the soil of a morally decadent
civilization, for, unless the sources of spiritual life have been
wholly destroyed, from a debasing sensuality and dissoluteness that
rob life of worth and dignity there is ever sure to come a reaction--a
reaction expressing itself in an extreme emphasis laid upon the worth
and meritoriousness of world renunciation.
[Sidenote: Fostering causes of
Christian asceticism: (_a_)
certain Christian teachings]
Now in the case of Christianity there was, in the early Christian
centuries, an unusual concurrence of causes and conditions conducive to
the growth of asceticism. First, there were virile germs of asceticism
in the teachings of the new religion. It taught that the things of the
spirit are the only abiding realities. It caused this earthly life to
shrink into insignificance and to disappear as it opened to the eyes of
faith the infinite perspectives of another world. The Master said: “He
that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal....
Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot
be my disciple.” And to the young man who asked him what he should do
to inherit eternal life, he replied, “Sell all that thou hast, and
distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and
come, follow me.” He seemed to set the relationships of the spiritual
life above the most intimate of earthly relationships when he declared,
“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife,
and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he
cannot be my disciple.” He taught the worthlessness of earthly riches
compared with the treasures of the spirit, and declared that the rich
should hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
The disciples and near followers of the Master spoke in like manner.
These teachings tended directly and powerfully to cause men to regard
this earthly life as fleeting and valueless, and to esteem those as
choosing the better and worthier part who, breaking all earthly ties
and suppressing all natural affections and desires, sought in the
solitude of the desert or the quiet of the cloister to win the life
eternal.
[Sidenote: (_b_) The social and
moral state of the Greco-Roman
world]
These seeds of Asian asceticism fell into a soil well fitted to nourish
them into a vigorous growth. The doctrine of world renunciation was
one easy of acceptance by the age in which Christianity arose,[639]
for the world into which primitive Christianity entered was a senile,
disillusioned, morally corrupt, and life-weary world.
It was an aged and disillusioned world. The great races of the East and
the West, which had been the pioneers in human culture, were now old.
They had lost the youthful zest of life. It was the disillusionment of
age that predisposed the minds of men to an acceptance of the doctrine
of deliverance through self-denial and renunciation of the world.
And this old world was morally corrupt. The vice of ancient
civilization in its senility was sensuality. Christian asceticism was
in part a recoil from this dissoluteness which denied the worth and
majesty of life.[640]
And because it was a sensual world it was a life-weary world. The
prevailing mood of society of the Greco-Roman Empire at the time of the
great propaganda of Christianity was one of satiety and weariness. It
was a favorable moment to preach contempt of the world and all earthly
things.
Thus did the state of decrepitude and moral decadence into which
the cultured communities of the ancient world had fallen, help to
develop into a spirit of absolute world renunciation the spirit of
unworldliness which characterized primitive Christianity.
[Sidenote: (_c_) The Platonic
philosophy]
Still another influence which contributed to give direction and force
to the ethical movement of the age was the Platonic philosophy. There
is in this philosophy an ascetic element. Plato taught that a life of
contemplation aloof from society is the highest and the truly blessed
life. This teaching was one of the formative forces in the creation of
the monastic ideal.
II. THE IDEAL AND ITS CHIEF TYPES
[Sidenote: The two types of
the ascetic ideal: (_a_) the
anchoretic; (_b_) the monastic]
The moral ideal of Christian asceticism is, in its essential elements,
the same as the ascetic ideal of other religions. Its leading
requirement, after that of right belief, is, in comprehensive terms,
world renunciation. In the early Christian period with which we have
here to do, the ideal presented two types, the anchoretic and the
monastic. The anchoretic or eremite conception of the perfect life
was complete renunciation of the world with all its domestic, social,
business, and political ties, and a life in the desert, apart from all
human companionship, spent in ceaseless vigils, prayer, and meditation.
He who followed this mode of life with the utmost rigor, who suppressed
every natural desire,--desire of family and wealth and reputation
and pleasure,--and tamed his body by fasting, scourging, and other
austerities was looked upon as a saint and was regarded with peculiar
homage and veneration.
Throughout the third and much of the fourth century in all the
countries of the Orient where Christianity had spread, the anchoretic
ideal was regarded as the highest and most meritorious type of the
Christian life. But as the ascetic enthusiasm overspread the lands of
the West, various influences, such as climate and race temperament,
caused the ascetics in general to avoid the solitary life, and,
gathering in communities, to subject themselves to rules and the
oversight of superiors. After the legislation of St. Benedict (480–543
A.D.) this quickly became the prevailing mode of life for ascetics.
Thus came into existence the monastic system with its distinctive
ideal of character, which added to the virtues of the eremite ideal
the virtue of obedience or humility and abated somewhat its bodily
austerities. This ideal was destined to exercise for centuries a
profound influence upon the religious ethical evolution of the European
peoples.
Both types are mirrored in _The Lives of the Saints_,[641] the
characteristic literary product of the earlier medieval time. This
species of literature, a creation of the pious inventiveness of the
monks, was steeped in the spirit that pervaded hermitage and cloister.
The tales illustrate many sides of the life of the recluses, but are
chiefly valuable in showing what acts and practices were regarded as
constituting the most meritorious and morally excellent life.
[Sidenote: The moral standard for
the ordinary life]
The ascetic life was not binding upon all. It could not, of course,
become the universal mode of life. It was a sort of extra service,
which secured extra merit for him who rendered it.[642] It is true that
the ascetic ideal absorbed a vast amount of the moral enthusiasm of the
age, nevertheless it was a standard of moral attainment for the lesser
number; for the larger body of Christians there was the less exacting
ideal of excellence which could be realized in the ordinary life in
the world. He who practiced the common domestic, social, and business
virtues, who accepted the creed of the Church, paid tithes to the
priest, and was faithful in the performance of all required religious
duties, was accounted a good man, and had the approval of his fellow
men and the approbation of his own conscience.
III. THE CHIEF MORAL FACTS OF THE PERIOD
[Sidenote: Introductory]
In the present division of this chapter it will be our aim merely
to indicate the essential facts in the moral history of the earlier
medieval centuries. Some of these facts will serve to show in how
remarkable a manner the age was dominated by the monastic conception of
good life, while others will simply reveal the historical outworkings,
in its more general manifestations, of the new conscience brought into
the world by Christianity.
[Sidenote: The ideal of the saint
and that of the hero: “Dialogue
between Oisin and St. Patrick”]
As a prelude to the brief review proposed we shall do well to consider
for a moment the contrariety between the new ideal of the Christian
monk and the old ideal of the pagan hero as this oppositeness emerges
in the so-called “Dialogue between Oisin and St. Patrick.”[643] This
poem discloses most impressively the vast revolution which the incoming
of Christianity effected in the moral feelings and judgments of men.
Oisin, “the blind Homer of Erin,” is represented as in his old age
entering into a controversy with the saint respecting the relative
merits of the monk’s and the hero’s conception of worthiness. The
dialogue runs as follows:
ST. PATRICK. Oisin, long is thy slumber, arise and listen to the
psalm; forsaken is thy activity, forsaken thy strength, yet wouldst
thou delight in battle and wild uproar.
OISIN. My swiftness and my strength have deserted me since the Fenii,
with Fionn their chief, are no longer alive; for clerks I have no
attachment, and their melodies are not sweet to me.
* * * * *
O Patrick, hard is thy service, and shameful is it for you to
reproach me for my appearance; if Fionn lived, and the Fenii, I
would forsake the clergy of the cross.
* * * * *
Patrick, pray thou to the God of heaven for Fionn of the Fenii and
for his children, making entreaty of the prince, whose equal I have
never heard of.
ST. PATRICK. O learned man, I desire not strife with thee, but I will
not make request to heaven for Fionn, for all the actions of his
life were to be in love and to urge the sounding chase.
OISIN. If you were to be in company with the Fenii, O clerk of clergy
and of bells, not for long wouldst thou be able to give heed to the
God of truth, and serve the clergy.
ST. PATRICK. ... Oisin, the remainder of your life is short, and
badly will you fare if you despise the clergy.
OISIN. Small is my esteem for thyself and clergy, O holy Patrick of
the crozier: I have greater regard for Fionn, the white-handed king
of the Fenii, but he is not near me now.
Mournful I am without his hounds bounding, and his dogs all around
me; if they and their agile hero were alive, Patrick, you would
have to fear rebuke from me.
ST. PATRICK. In that way did you and the Fenii of Erin forsake
heaven: you never submitted to religion, but ever put confidence in
strength of limbs, and in battles.
OISIN. Were Fionn alive, and the Fenii comely and warlike, with their
hounds running propitiously, they would seem to me more majestic
than those who dwell in heaven.
ST. PATRICK. Desolate are the Fenii, without slumber or liberty in
the house of torment, for never in any way did they render service
to the Holy Father.
* * * * *
OISIN. Fionn delighted in strokes upon shields, in conquering heroes,
and hunting on hills; the sound of his dogs in toil was more
melodious to me than the preaching of clerks in church of bells.
* * * * *
ST. PATRICK. It is because his time and delight were taken up by
pleasures of the chase, and the array of warlike hosts; and because
he never thought about God, that Fionn of the Fenii is in thralldom.
He is now shut up in torment; all his generosity and wealth do not
avail him now, for lack of piety toward God, for this he is in
sorrow, in the mansion of pain.
OISIN. Little do I believe in thy speech, thou man from Rome with
white books, that Fionn the generous hero is now with demons and
devils.
* * * * *
O Patrick, doleful is the story: Fionn the hospitable to be under
locks! heart without malice and without aversion, heart stern in
defense of battle.
ST. PATRICK. However great the number of troops fighting for Fionn,
he did not act the will of God above: his crimes are above him in
pains of fire, forever in anguish.
OISIN. It is plain that your God does not delight in giving gold and
food to others: Fionn never refused strong or weak, and shall he
receive hell for his abode!!!
ST. PATRICK. However much he may have divided gold and venison, hard
are his bonds in the den of pains: no glimpse of light for him, no
sight of brightness such as he first received from God.
* * * * *
OISIN. Patrick, inquire of God if He remembers the Fenii when alive:
ask if, east or west, He ever saw men better in conflict.
Or did He observe in His own country, although it is high above
us, for sense, for conflict, or for strength, any man good in
comparison with Fionn?
* * * * *
Patrick, I am wretched, a poor bard, ever changing residence,
without power, without activity, without force, journeying to mass
and altars.
Without good food, without getting wealth and booty, without play
in athletic games; without going a-wooing and hunting, two objects
for which I always longed.
Without reciting deeds of champions, without bearing spear; alas! I
have lost Osgur and Fionn, and I am left standing like a withered
tree, out under injury.
ST. PATRICK. Cease, O Bard! Leave off thy folly; you have as yet said
but little in favour of yourself: think of the torments that await
you; the Fenii are departed, and ere long you will go likewise.
* * * * *
OISIN. I will not obey you, O Patrick, though great your creed and
faith. I own without lie that firm is my belief that the devil will
be your portion.
* * * * *
I would rather return to the Fenii once more, O Patrick, if they
were alive, than go to the heaven of Jesus Christ, to be forever
under tribute to Him.
ST. PATRICK. O withered Bard, thou art foolish; thou wouldst not pay
tribute to any one if thou wast in the heaven of Jesus Christ, nor
wouldst thou witness battle and uproar.
OISIN. I would rather be in Fionn’s court harkening to the voices of
hounds every morning, and meditating on hard-fought battles, than
in the court of Jesus Christ; that is certain.
* * * * *
It was easier for me to obtain without fail both meat and drink in
Fionn’s court than in thy mansion, and in the dwelling of the Son
of God, O Patrick, not generous in dividing.
* * * * *
ST. PATRICK. It is better for thee to be with me and the clergy, as
thou art, than to be with Fionn and the Fenii, for they are in hell
without order of release.
OISIN. By thy book and its meaning, by thy crozier and by thy image,
better were it for me to share their torments, rather than be among
the clergy continually talking.
* * * * *
Ah! Patrick, your religion may be great; but I have not, up to this
day, witnessed among ye dinner nor banquet like banquet of the
Fenii.
ST. PATRICK. Although Fionn spent generously all he obtained by
strength, fleetness, and plunder, he is now sorrowful in the
mansion of a lord who furnishes no dinner, and demons torment him
forever.
OISIN. It would be pitiful and mournful, if thy story were true, ah
Patrick! for all the saints who are in heaven, if they were to
strive with Fionn in contest of liberality, could not obtain the
victory over him.
* * * * *
Tell to me without controversy what is the reason of the custom you
have to be ever beating your breasts, and each evening kneeling
under gloom?
ST. PATRICK. I tell thee that it is not because we have scarcity of
food and of drink that we are under armour (watching), but because
we desire to be perpetually on our guard against gluttony.
OISIN. It is not fear of gluttony, nor in dread of king of saints
that I receive for myself scarcity of bread, but because I am not
able to obtain it from the clergy.
Astonishment is upon me to witness the greatness of your love for
the man you call Christ, if hereafter he will perpetually upbraid
you for the abundance of your portions and of your drink!
Farewell to Fionn of the noble Fenii; with him was ample banquet
and division; he was not like the man who is called God; and
moreover he gave without waiting for remuneration.... Never at any
time did I witness him asking for kneeling and bitter weeping.[644]
But vain was the lament of the blind bard. The ideal of the pagan
hero, whose fame he vaunted, had lost its primal appeal. It was the
ideal of the cloister, incarnate in the “saint of many prayers and
many vigils,” that was now enthralling the affections and shaping the
consciences of men.
[Sidenote: The monasteries as
the cradle of the modern social
conscience]
In the course of a few generations the vast enthusiasm awakened for the
ascetic life covered all Christian lands with convents and monasteries,
which in their ethical influence constituted one of the most important
of the institutions of the Church. In truth, the monasteries stand
in closer and more vital relation than does any other ecclesiastical
institution to the ethical evolution of the Western world. The service
they rendered to civilization in preserving and transmitting to the
modern world various elements of the intellectual and material cultures
of antiquity has been fully recognized and gratefully acknowledged;
but not so full justice has been rendered them for their contribution
to the moral life of modern times. Yet it is probably true that the
most precious thing conserved by the monasteries from the wreck of
ancient civilization was that social conscience which was generated
in the heart of old Judaism and bequeathed to Christianity. Professor
Nash, in his work entitled _The Genesis of the New Social Conscience_,
maintains, and we think with right, that the distinctive qualities
of the modern conscience--tenderness for the unfortunate, a lofty
altruism, a noble capacity for self-sacrifice--were qualities conserved
and cradled in the medieval monasteries.
This view of the relation of the monasteries to the moral evolution
in Western civilization may be accepted by the student of morals as
a correct interpretation of medieval monastic history, while at the
same time he admits the truth of Lecky’s contention that there was
a self-regarding motive in Christian asceticism--it was personal
salvation, he says, that the monk was primarily seeking--which made
the morality of the Christian saints inferior to the morality of the
heroes of Greece and Rome. It is undoubtedly true that many entered
upon the monastic life from self-regarding motives; but it is also
true that constant meditation upon religious themes, and especially
the holding ever before the imagination the ideal of the Master,
who for love of man made the supreme self-sacrifice of the Cross,
had as a natural result the deepening of the altruistic feelings,
the sensitizing of the conscience, and the moving of the will to
self-denying service for others. As a consequence the spirit of true
self-renunciation was often exalted among the recluses of the cloister
to an unwonted degree, and thus it came about in the course of time
that many who out of solicitude for their own salvation had sought the
solitude of the cloister are later found in the outside world, going
about, in imitation of their Master, doing good, ministering in the
spirit of absolute self-forgetfulness to the needs, temporal as well
as spiritual, of the poor, the afflicted, the heavy-laden, and the
life-weary. A large part of the philanthropic work of the Church during
the Middle Ages was carried on by the monks.
This humanitarian spirit, this cloister conscience of monasticism, was
bequeathed to society at large. Thus may the direct line of descent of
the modern social conscience be traced through the medieval monasteries.
[Sidenote: The new conscience
condemns and finally suppresses
the gladiatorial games]
One of the earliest and the most important of the moral reforms
effected by the new conscience in the institutions of pagan Rome was
the suppression of the gladiatorial games. For almost seven hundred
years preceding the triumph of Christianity in the Roman world, these
spectacles had formed the favorite amusement of the Roman people
without having awakened any special moral protest. Some of the pagan
philosophers and moralists, particularly Seneca and Plutarch, had
denounced them as opposed to the sentiment of humanity, but their
protest had found no echo in the common conscience of the age. As a
rule the pagan moralists saw nothing in them to condemn.
It was reserved for the Christian moralists to awaken the conscience
to a recognition of the criminality of these cruel spectacles. It was
particularly the Christian teaching of the sacredness of human life
that contributed powerfully to create the new ethical feeling as to
the immoral character of these amusements, and prepared the way for
their final abolition (404 A.D.) through the protest made by the monk
Telemachus and sealed by his martyr death.
Speaking of the significance of the abolition of the gladiatorial
games, Lecky declares that “there is scarcely any other reform so
important in the moral history of mankind.”[645] One thing which
enhanced greatly the importance of the reform was its timeliness. Just
at the moment of the suppression of these spectacles the Germanic
tribes were passing the frontiers of the Empire and adopting the
customs and institutions of the Romans. Had not these amusements been
abolished or put under the ban of the moral feelings before the final
catastrophe to the Empire, the barbarian tastes and fighting instincts
of this new race would have led to the eager introduction of these
sports into all the northern countries, just as certainly as the humane
spirit of the Greeks prevented their general introduction into Grecian
lands. When we recall the indurating and dehumanizing effects of these
amusements upon the Roman populace, we realize the importance and
timeliness of the reform which kept the barbarian nations free from
their brutalizing and deadening influence.
[Sidenote: The new conscience
condemns infanticide and
self-destruction]
Equally emphatic was the condemnation which the new conscience
pronounced on infanticide and self-destruction. We have seen in our
review of the morality of the classical peoples how almost universal
was the practice of the exposition of infants, and how slight was the
moral condemnation which the custom evoked even from philosophers and
moralists. When the practice was prohibited, usually the prohibition
sprang from considerations of a prudential or economic character rather
than from scruples of conscience.
But the Christian teachers, proclaiming the sacredness of human life
and the immortal destiny of every human soul, declared the destruction
of the infant as sinful as the taking of the life of the adult. It is
to this teaching doubtless that is, in large measure, due the existence
in Christian lands of a conscience which condemns the destruction of
the newborn babe as an act of deep moral turpitude.
It was the same Christian doctrine of the sacredness of human life,
along with the teaching of the duty of resignation, that created also a
new moral feeling in regard to suicide. We have seen how the conscience
of the classical peoples in general passed no condemnation upon the act
of self-destruction if life had in any way become a burden; but the
Church taught that suicide is the same as murder, indeed a greater sin
because it destroys not only the body but also the soul. Some Christian
moralists maintained that “Judas committed a greater sin in killing
himself than in betraying his master Christ.”[646]
Throughout the Middle Ages, under the influence of the Church, the act
of self-destruction was regarded with the greatest abhorrence,[647] and
without that commingling of tenderness and pity which with us has come
to temper the feeling of condemnation.
[Sidenote: The great missionary
propaganda as an expression of
Christian altruism]
But the new conscience found most characteristic expression not in
its restraints and prohibitions but in its impulsions to altruistic
activity and endeavor. In our account of the primitive ethical
ideals of Greece and Rome we noticed how the virtue of altruism or
self-abnegation for the common good was hidden under the guise of
courage.[648] It was therefore no new virtue which Christianity brought
into the world when it proclaimed the supreme moral excellence of
self-renunciation for others. What it did was to widen the circle of
those for whom the supreme sacrifice should be made, and to give the
virtue fuller and richer content. It thus imparted fresh impulse to
that altruistic movement which we have seen to characterize the last
centuries of the civilization of Greco-Roman antiquity. The deepened
ethical sentiment found various forms of expression, but the most
important of these was the great missionary propaganda which, during
the centuries from the sixth to the ninth, carried the new gospel to
the pagan German tribes of Europe. Lecky regards this as the chief
altruistic movement of the medieval period.
This conquest of the continent for Christianity was effected in large
part by men whose fervid zeal for social service had been kindled in
the quiet and holy atmosphere of the cloister.[649] The movement was
inspired and maintained by that same spirit of self-devotion which
animated the missionaries of the apostolic age of Christianity. The
declaration of the first great apostle to the gentiles, St. Paul, that
he would himself willingly be a castaway if thereby he might secure
the salvation of others, could have been made by many a self-devoted
monk-apostle who won a like crown of martyrdom. In the romance of
Christian missions the monastic chronicles of Iona and Lindisfarne and
St. Gall, and the tales of the labors and martyrdom of Saints Columba,
Wilfrid, Boniface, and a great company of others will never cease to
enthrall the imagination so long as the virtue of self-renunciation is
esteemed and reverenced among men.
This great missionary movement which brought within the pale of the
Church the northern peoples is of transcendent interest to the student
of the history of morals, not merely because it is such a splendid
exhibition of the altruistic spirit of Christianity, but also because
the success of these medieval missions meant, besides the winning of
the barbarians to a new religion, the winning of them to a new moral
life; for to give a people a new religion is to give them also a new
conscience.
[Sidenote: Almsgiving and
the founding of charitable
institutions]
The altruistic spirit of the new religion found a second expression
in charity, in the sense of almsgiving to the poor and the wretched.
This was not a new virtue any more than that of general benevolence. It
was never, it is true, a prominent virtue with the Greeks and Romans,
but it had always been given a place among the cardinal virtues by all
the great ethical religions of the East. Judaism laid special stress
upon the duty of open-handedness to the poor, while Buddhism made it
a rudimentary virtue.[650] Christianity inherited from Judaism this
attractive virtue and laid a fresh emphasis upon it. Since the incoming
of Christianity the poor and the afflicted have been cared for in a
spirit of compassion and tenderness never before known in the history
of the Western races. Asylums and hospitals and charitable institutions
of every kind have multiplied in number and have been increased in
effectiveness in relieving want and distress as the centuries have
passed, until these endowments and provisions have become a distinctive
feature of Christian civilization. In the period we are here reviewing,
and throughout the later medieval ages, gifts to the monasteries were
especially numerous and large, one reason for this being that the
monks were looked upon as the almoners of society and “trustees for
the poor.” The founding of hospitals and the endowing of infirmaries
afforded another outlet for the unbounded charity of the age. The first
Christian hospital was founded at Rome in the fourth century by a Roman
lady named Fabiola, a widow of the ancient house of the Fabii, who
also established a hospice for pilgrims at the mouth of the Tiber.[651]
The spirit of charity found further expression in the emancipation of
slaves, and in the ransoming of prisoners of war, especially, after the
rise of Islam, of Christian captives. Unfortunately the teaching of
the Church respecting the possibility of possession by demons caused
insanity to be regarded as obsession by an evil spirit, and for more
than a thousand years this belief not only put the unhappy class of the
insane outside the pale of Christian charity, but subjected them to the
most cruel treatment that fear and superstition could devise.[652]
[Sidenote: Mitigations of slavery]
A religion or a philosophy which has for aim the reform and improvement
of human society may act directly either upon the individual or upon
institutions. Thus modern socialism ignores the individual, maintaining
that the individual is the product of environment, and makes its direct
proximate end and aim the reform of social and economic institutions.
Through the improvement and perfection of these it would bring about
the improvement and perfection of the individual, and thus usher in the
era of equality, justice, and brotherhood among men.
Now the method of Christianity is exactly the reverse of this. Its
appeal is made to the individual; it does not concern itself directly
with social and industrial systems, or with governmental institutions
and arrangements. It would reform society by reforming the individual.
When Christianity entered the world Cæsarism had just established
itself upon the ruins of republican and national freedom, but the
Christian preachers said nothing about political liberty; the Master
had said, “Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s.” The war
system was in full vigor; after a period of Quakerism the Church first
condoned, then accepted, and finally consecrated this heritage of
barbarism as one of the necessary institutions of human society. The
gladiatorial games were the sole important institution of antiquity
which the Christian teachers absolutely condemned as an institution,
and the abolition of which they persistently demanded and finally
effected.
It was the same with slavery as with other social institutions. It
existed everywhere when Christianity appeared, but the Christian
teachers never preached abolition. The Christian emperors adopted, and
for two centuries maintained practically unchanged, the pagan slave
code. There were under these rulers, it is true, some ameliorations in
the laws, due to Christian influence; thus cruel forms of punishment,
as branding on the forehead or throwing from a precipice, were
prohibited. With the exception of these minor isolated mitigations of
the lot of the slave, slavery passed over into Christian civilization
as an unchanged heritage from the ancient world, and continued to
exist as a Christian institution until, through the action of various
agencies, political and economic as well as moral, it was gradually
transformed into serfdom. During the later centuries of its prevalence,
however, Christian teachings softened many of the cruelties of the
system, and caused, speaking generally, the individual slave to be
treated with greater consideration and humanity.
[Sidenote: The broadening moral
movement in progress in the
ancient world is checked]
Unfortunately there were large offsets to the moral gains of which
we have been speaking. Christianity had entered a world in which the
most important ethical movement in progress was the broadening of the
moral sympathies. The genius of the new religion, a genius inherited
from the great prophets of Judaism, was well calculated to impart, as
for a period it did, a fresh impulse to this cosmopolitan movement,
and to foster and strengthen this growing sentiment of philanthropy
and universal brotherhood. Its mission seemed to be to consummate the
work of Greek philosophy and of Roman world conquest, to complete the
obliteration of national boundaries, to throw down the partition wall
between Greek and barbarian, Jew and gentile, patrician and plebeian,
bond and free, and to make each man’s neighbor to be every fellow being
of whatsoever race or class or creed.
But this spirit of genuine Christianity was soon obscured and the world
movement toward ethical universalism obstructed and checked by the
theological teaching which made moral merit and salvation dependent
upon the acceptance of a prescribed creed. In place of the tribal and
racial walls of division which had originally separated the communities
of men and which the progress of events had thrown down, it raised
a new partition wall which divided mankind into two great ethically
artificial classes, believers and unbelievers, Christians and pagans.
In place of the doctrine of race election it substituted the doctrine
of individual election. Throughout a large part of the Christian
period “infidels” and “heathen” have too often been to Christians
what “gentiles” were to the “chosen people,” and “barbarians” to the
intellectually elect Greeks.
Thus was the broadening and leveling movement which marked the later
centuries of antiquity checked, while a new division as inimical to
universal charity as the old divisions of race and cult was created.
[Sidenote: St. Augustine as the
representative of the narrowing
movement]
The representative and promoter of this retrograde movement in the
moral domain was the African bishop St. Augustine. His “City of
God,” viewed from one side, is altogether like unto the old city of
man. It is simply the ancient classical city in its early period of
aristocratic pride and exclusiveness before it had felt the broadening
influence of a thousand years of varied experience and growing culture.
Only a few can acquire citizenship in the new city. Its privileges are
only for “the elect.” A great multitude, the nonelect, are left outside
the city gates. Thus, in the words of Wedgwood, “all the arrogance,
all the exclusiveness, all the love of privilege, for which the city
of man no longer afforded any escape, found a refuge in the city of
God.”[653]
The narrowing and hampering influence upon the moral development of the
European peoples of this unethical system of Augustinian theology and
metaphysics it would be difficult to exaggerate.
[Sidenote: Loss of the virtue of
toleration]
The new division was even more of a hindrance in some respects
than the old to the moral progress of the world; for there was not
merely created a tendency to the limitation of Christian charity to
the community of believers, but there was fostered an intolerant
and persecuting spirit. The world into which Christianity entered
was, speaking generally, a tolerant world. There were, it is true,
persecutions for opinion’s sake in the pre-Christian age, but these
were comparatively infrequent. In general, persecution in classical
antiquity sprang from some other motive than dislike or fear of
religious dissent, as we have seen to have been the case in the
persecution of the Christians by the pagan emperors of Rome.[654]
But after the promulgation of the moral code of the Church, which made
wrong belief or denial of the orthodox creed a fault of unmeasured
criminality, toleration ceased to be a virtue and became a vice.
Thus the virtue of toleration, which Lecky pronounces “the supreme
attainment of Roman civilization,” was lost. Intolerance became a duty,
and remained such for more than a thousand years, making a tragedy
of centuries of European history. Wars of annihilation or subjection
against pagans and infidels were waged, and the persecution of heretics
was carried on with a hatred and ferocity in strange contrast to
the unbounded charity and infinite tenderness of the Founder of the
religion in the name of which these things were done.
This spirit of intolerance thus called into existence led, during
the period under review, to the suppression, first, in the fourth
century by the Christian emperors, of freedom of religious worship;
and then quickly to the suppression of liberty of thought throughout
Christendom.[655] By the opening of the sixth century no one in any
Christian land could freely think or freely express his thought, even
on philosophical themes. This retrograde movement in its ultimate
consequences was one of the most far-reaching revolutions in the moral
history of the Western world.
[Sidenote: “Between moralities”;
the new-forming ideal]
Aside from the broad ethical movements traced above, induced by the
Christian conception of life and its new valuation of particular
virtues and duties, there was in this epoch a moral phenomenon of
another sort which we must now notice, namely, the moral anarchy which
characterized the later centuries of the period under review.
In an earlier chapter we spoke of the fusion of moral ideals which
ultimately takes place when two races meet and unite to form a new
race and a new culture.[656] But as Bagehot has pointed out, such a
commingling of races is always attended by a special danger. It is
likely for a time to produce “something not only between races, but
_between moralities_.”[657]
In the fact here stated we must doubtless look for the explanation in
part of the turbulent, anarchical character, ethically viewed, of the
period which immediately followed the downfall of ancient civilization,
and which saw the creation, out of Roman and barbarian elements, of
the new Romano-German world. In the migrations and settlements of the
German conquerors in the Roman provinces, and in the mixture of races
which there took place, there resulted necessarily, on the one side,
a break-up of all the old tribal relations which formed the basis of
the morality of the barbarians, and, on the other side, the destruction
of all the restraints and conventions which had formed the bulwark and
stay of the more refined, if less simple and pure, morality of the
Romans. With the old moral codes discredited, with ancestral ethical
ideals disintegrated,[658] men stood, to use Bagehot’s phrase, not
between races only but also between moralities, and the historical
ethical evolution was broken by what has been aptly called a moral
interregnum. The epoch covering the interval between the destruction
of the Roman governmental system in the West in the fifth century and
the establishment of a semblance of social order by Charlemagne toward
the end of the eighth century, presents, according to the concurrent
view of all chroniclers and historians of the period, one of the most
appalling spectacles of moral anarchy afforded by the records of human
history.
In the midst of this moral chaos, however, a new moral world was
forming. Gradually, under various influences, racial, cultural, and
religious, there was taking shape and form, through a fusion of
different ethical elements, a new moral ideal, the ideal of knighthood,
which for an epoch--throughout the crusading centuries--was to absorb a
large part of the moral enthusiasm of Christendom, and to determine in
great measure the character of the enterprises of the age.
Since one of the influences which produced this great transformation in
the Christian ideal was the creed and moral code of Islam, we shall in
our next chapter turn aside from following the ethical evolution among
the European peoples to watch for a space the rise and progress of this
new faith whose martial ethics was destined to leave so deep an impress
upon the moral ideal of Christianity.