(303,) LACTANTIUS, (306,) EUSEBIUS, (315,) ARIUS, (316,) GREGORY
NAZIANZEN, (320-389,) BASIL THE GREAT, Bishop Of Cesarea, (330-379,)
AMBROSE, (340-397,) AUGUSTINE (353-429,) THEODORET, (386-457,) MARTIN,
Bishop of Tours.
THE FOURTH CENTURY.
THE REMOVAL TO CONSTANTINOPLE--ESTABLISHMENT OF
CHRISTIANITY--APOSTASY OF JULIAN--SETTLEMENT OF THE GOTHS.
As the memory of the old liberties of Rome died out, a nearer approach
was made to the ostentatious despotisms of the East. Aurelian, in
270, was the first emperor who encircled his head with a diadem; and
Diocletian, in 284, formed his court on the model of the most gorgeous
royalties of Asia. On admission into his presence, the Roman Senator,
formerly the equal of the ruler, prostrated himself at his feet. Titles
of the most unmanly adulation were lavished on the fortunate slave or
herdsman who had risen to supreme power. He was clothed in robes of
purple and violet, and loaded with an incalculable wealth of jewels
and gold. It was from deep policy that Diocletian introduced this
system. Ceremony imposes on the vulgar, and makes intimacy impossible.
Etiquette is the refuge of failing power, and compensates by external
show for inherent weakness, as stiffness and formality are the refuge
of dulness and mediocrity in private life. There was now, therefore,
seated on the throne, which was shaken by every commotion, a personage
assuming more majestic rank, and affecting far loftier state and
dignity, than Augustus had ventured on while the strength of the
old Republic gave irresistible force to the new empire, or than the
Antonines had dreamt of when the prosperity of Rome was apparently at
its height. But there was still some feeling, if not of self-respect,
at least of resistance to pretension, in the populace and Senators
of the capital. Diocletian visited Rome but once. He was attacked in
lampoons, and ridiculed in satirical songs. His colleague established
his residence in the military post of Milan. We are not, therefore,
to feel surprised that an Orientalized authority sought its natural
seat in the land of ancient despotisms, and that many of the emperors
had cast longing eyes on the beautiful towns of Asia Minor, and even
on the far-off cities of Mesopotamia, as more congenial localities
for their barbaric splendours. By a sort of compromise between his
European origin and Asiatic tastes, the emperor Constantine, after many
struggles with his competitors, having attained the sole authority,
transferred the seat of empire from Rome to a city he had built on the
extreme limits of Europe, and only divided from Asia by a narrow sea.
All succeeding ages have agreed in extolling the situation of this
city, called, after its founder, Constantinople, as the finest that
could have been chosen. All ages, from the day of its erection till the
hour in which we live, have agreed that it is fitted, in the hands of a
great and enterprising power, to be the metropolis and arbiter of the
world; and Constantinople is, therefore, condemned to the melancholy
fate of being the useless and unappreciated capital of a horde of
irreclaimable barbarians. To this magnificent city Constantine removed
the throne in 329, and for nearly a thousand years after that, while
Rome was sacked in innumerable invasions, and all the capitals of
Europe were successively occupied by contending armies, Constantinople,
safe in her two narrow outlets, and rich in her command of the two
continents, continued unconquered, and even unassailed.
Rome was stripped, that Constantinople might be filled. All the wealth
of Italy was carried across the Ægean. The Roman Senator was invited
to remove with his establishment. He found, on arriving at his new
home, that by a complimentary attention of the emperor, a fac-simile of
his Roman palace had been prepared for him on the Propontis. The seven
hills of the new capital responded to the seven hills of the old. There
were villas for retirement along the smiling shores of the Dardanelles
or of the Bosphorus, as fine in climate, and perhaps equal in romantic
beauty, to Baiæ or Brundusium. There was a capital, as noble a piece
of architecture as the one they had left, but without the sanctity
of its thousand years of existence, or the glory of its unnumbered
triumphs. One omission was the subject of remark and lamentation. The
temples were nowhere to be seen. The images of the gods were left at
Rome in the solitude of their deserted shrines, for Constantine had
determined that Constantinople should, from its very foundation, be the
residence of a Christian people. Churches were built, and a priesthood
appointed. Yet, with the policy which characterized the Church at
that time, he made as little change as possible in the external
forms. There is still extant a transfer of certain properties from
the old establishment to the new. There are contributions of wax for
the candles, of frankincense and myrrh for the censers, and vestures
for the officiating priests as before. Only the object of worship is
changed, and the images of the heathen gods and heroes are replaced
with statues of the apostles and martyrs.
It is difficult to gather a true idea of this first of the Christian
emperors from the historians of after-times. The accounts of him by
contemporary writers are equally conflicting. The favourers of the old
superstition describe him as a monster of perfidy and cruelty. The
Church, raised to supremacy by his favour, sees nothing in him but
the greatest of men--the seer of visions, the visible favourite of
the Almighty, and the predestined overthrower of the powers of evil.
The easy credulity of an emancipated people believed whatever the
flattery of the courtiers invented. His mother Helena made a journey to
Jerusalem, and was rewarded for the pious pilgrimage by the discovery
of the True Cross. Chapels and altars were raised upon all the places
famous in Christian story; relics were collected from all quarters,
and we are early led to fear that the simplicity of the gospel is
endangered by its approach to the throne, and that Constantine's object
was rather to raise and strengthen a hierarchy of ecclesiastical
supporters than to give full scope to the doctrine of truth. But not
the less wonderful, not the less by the divine appointment, was this
unhoped-for triumph of Christianity, that its advancement formed part
of the ambitious scheme of a worldly and unprincipled conqueror. Rather
it may be taken as one among the thousand proofs with which history
presents us, that the greatest blessings to mankind are produced
irrespective of the character or qualities of the apparent author. A
warrior is raised in the desert when required to be let loose upon
a worn-out society as the scourge of God; a blood-stained soldier
is placed on the throne of the world when the time has come for the
earthly predominance of the gospel. But neither is Attila to be blamed
nor Constantine to be praised.
It was the spirit of his system of government to form every society
on a strictly monarchical model. There was everywhere introduced a
clearly-defined subordination of ranks and dignities. Diocletian, we
saw, surrounded the throne with a state and ceremony which kept the
imperial person sacred from the common gaze. Constantine perfected his
work by establishing a titled nobility, who were to stand between
the throne and the people, giving dignity to the one, and impressing
fresh awe upon the other. In all previous ages it had been the office
that gave importance to the man. To be a member of the Senate was a
mark of distinction; a long descent from a great historic name was
looked on with respect; and the heroic deeds of the thousand years of
Roman struggle had founded an aristocracy which owed its high position
either to personal actions or hereditary claims. But now that the
emperors had so long concentrated in themselves all the great offices
of the State--now that the bad rulers of the first century had degraded
the Senate by filling it with their creatures, the good rulers of
the second century had made it merely the recorder of their decrees,
and the anarchy of the third century had changed or obliterated its
functions altogether--there was no way left to the ambitious Roman
to distinguish himself except by the favour of the emperor. The
throne became, as it has since continued in all strictly monarchical
countries, the fountain of honour. It was not the people who could name
a man to the consulship or appoint him to the command of an army. It
was not even in the power of the emperor to find offices of dignity
for all whom he wished to advance. So a method was discovered by which
vanity or friendship could be gratified, and employment be reserved for
the deserving at the same time. Instead of endangering an expedition
against the Parthians by intrusting it to a rich and powerful courtier
who desired to have the rank of general, the emperor simply named
him Nobilissimus, or Patricius, or Illustris, and the gratified
favourite, the "most noble," the "patrician," or the "illustrious,"
took place with the highest officers of the State. A certain title
gave him equal rank with the Senator, the judge, or the consul. The
diversity of these honorary distinctions became very great. There
were the clarissimi--the perfectissimi--and the egregii--bearing the
same relative dignity in the court-guide of the fourth century, as the
dukes, marquises, earls, and viscounts of the peerage-books of the
present day. But so much did all distinction flow from proximity to the
throne, that all these high-sounding names owed their value to the fact
of their being bestowed on the associates of the sovereign. The word
Count, which is still the title borne by foreign nobles, comes from the
Latin word which means "companion." There was a Comes, or Companion, of
the Sacred Couch, or lord chamberlain--the Companion of the Imperial
Service, or lord high steward--a Companion of the Imperial Stables,
or lord high constable; through all these dignitaries, step above
step, the glorious ascent extended, till it ended in the Companion of
Private Affairs, or confidential secretary. At the head of all, sacred
and unapproachable, stood the embodied Power of the Roman world, who,
as he had given titles to all the magnates of his court, heaped also
a great many on himself. His principal appellation, however, was not
as in our degenerate days "Majesty," whether "Most Catholic," "Most
Christian," or "Most Orthodox," but consisted in the rather ambitious
attribute--eternity. "Your Eternity" was the phrase addressed to some
miserable individual whose reign was ended in a month. It was proposed
by this division of the Roman aristocracy to furnish the empire with
a body for show and a body for use; the latter consisting of the real
generals of the armies and administrators of the provinces. And with
this view the two were kept distinct; but military discipline suffered
by this partition. The generals became discontented when they saw
wealth and dignities heaped upon the titular nobles of the court; and
to prevent the danger arising from ill will among the legions on the
frontier, the emperor withdrew the best of his soldiers from the posts
where they kept the barbarians in check, and entirely destroyed their
military spirit by separating them into small bodies and stationing
them in towns. This exposed the empire to the foreign foes who still
menaced it from the other side of the boundary, and gave fresh
settlements in the heart of the country to the thousands of barbarian
youth who had taken service with the eagles. In every legion there was
a considerable proportion of this foreign element: in every district
of the empire, therefore, there were now settled the advanced guards
of the unavoidable invasion. Men with barbaric names, which the Romans
could not pronounce, walked about Roman towns dressed in Roman uniforms
and clothed with Roman titles. There were consulars and patricians in
Ravenna and Naples, whose fathers had danced the war-dance of defiance
when beginning their march from the Vistula and the Carpathian range.
All these troops must be supported--all these dignitaries maintained
in luxury. How was this done? The ordinary revenue of the empire in
the time of Constantine has been computed at forty millions of our
money a year. Not a very large amount when you consider the number of
the population; but this is the sum which reached the treasury. The
gross amount must have been far larger, and an ingenious machinery was
invented by which the tax was rigorously collected; and this machinery,
by a ludicrous perversion of terms, was made to include one of the most
numerous classes of the artificial nobility created by the imperial
will. In all the towns of the empire some little remains were still to
be found of the ancient municipal government, of which practically they
had long been deprived. There were nominal magistrates still; and among
these the _Curials_ held a distinguished rank. They were the men who,
in the days of freedom, had filled the civic dignities of their native
city--the aldermen, we should perhaps call them, or, more nearly, the
justices of the peace. They were now ranked with the peerage, but with
certain duties attached to their elevation which few can have regarded
in the light of privilege or favour. To qualify them for rank, they
were bound to be in possession of a certain amount of land. They were,
therefore, a territorial aristocracy, and never was any territorial
aristocracy more constantly under the consideration of the government.
It was the duty of the curials to distribute the tax-papers in their
district; but, in addition to this, it was unfortunately their duty
to see that the sum assessed on the town and neighbourhood was paid
up to the last penny. When there was any deficiency, was the emperor
to suffer? Were the nobilissimi, the patricii, the egregii, to lose
their salaries? Oh, no! As long as the now ennobled curial retained
an acre of his estate, or could raise a mortgage on his house, the
full amount was extracted. The tax went up to Rome, and the curial,
if there had been a poor's house in those days, would have gone into
it--for he was stripped of all. His farm was seized, his cattle were
escheated; and when the defalcation was very great, himself, his wife
and children were led into the market and sold as slaves. Nothing so
rapidly destroyed what might have been the germ of a middle class
as this legalized spoliation of the smaller landholders. Below this
rank there was absolutely nothing left of the citizenship of ancient
times. Artificers and workmen formed themselves into companies; but
the trades were exercised principally by slaves for the benefit of
their owners. These slaves formed now by far the greatest part of the
Roman population, and though their lot had gradually become softened
as their numbers increased, and the domestic bondsman had little to
complain of except the greatest of all sorrows, the loss of freedom,
the position of the rural labourers was still very bad. There were
some of them slaves in every sense of the word--mere chattels, which
were not so valuable as horse or dog. But the fate of others was
so far mitigated that they could not be sold separate from their
family--that they could not be sold except along with the land; and at
last glimpses appear of a sort of rent paid for certain portions of the
lord's estate in full of all other requirements. But this process had
again to be gone through when many centuries had elapsed, and a new
state of society had been fully established, and it will be sufficient
to remind you that in the fourth century, to which we are now come,
the Roman world consisted of a monarchy where all the greatness and
magnificence of the empire were concentrated on the emperor and his
court; that the monarchical system was rapidly pervading the Church;
and that below these two distinct but connected powers there was no
people, properly so called--the country was oppressed and ruined, and
the ancient dignity of Rome transplanted to new and foreign quarters,
at the sacrifice of all its oldest and most elevating associations.
The half-depopulated city of Romulus and the Kings--of the Consuls
and Augustus, looked with ill-disguised hatred and contempt on the
modern rival which denied her the name of Capital, and while fresh
from the builder's hand, robbed her of the name of the Eternal City.
We shall see great events spring from this jealousy of the two towns.
In the mean time, we shall finish our view of Constantine by recording
the greatness of his military skill, and merely protest against the
enrolment in the list of _saints_ of a man who filled his family
circle with blood--who murdered his wife, his son, and his nephew,
encouraged the contending factions of the now disputatious Church--gave
a fallacious support to the orthodox Athanasius, and died after a
superstitious baptism at the hands of the heretical Arius. [A.D. 337.]
An unbiassed judgment must pronounce him a great politician, who
played with both parties as his tools, a Christian from expediency and
not from conviction. It is a pity that the subserviency of the Greek
communion has placed him in the number of its holy witnesses, for we
are told by a historian that when the emperor, after the dreadful
crimes he had perpetrated, applied at the heathen shrines for expiatory
rites, the priests of the false gods had truly answered, "there are no
purifications for such deeds as these." But nothing could be refused
to the benefactor of the Church. The great ecclesiastical council of
this age, (325), consisting of three hundred and eighteen bishops,
and presided over by Constantine in person, gave the Nicene Creed as
the result of their labours--a creed which is still the symbol of
Christendom, but which consists more of a condemnation of the heresies
which were then in the ascendant, than in the plain enunciation
of the Christian faith. A layman, we are told, an auditor of the
learned debates in this great assembly, a man of clear and simple
common sense, met some of the disputants, and addressed them in these
words:--"Arguers! Christ and his apostles delivered to us, not the art
of disputation, nor empty eloquence, but a plain and simple rule which
is maintained by faith and good works." The disputants, we are further
told, were so struck with this undeniable truth that they acknowledged
their error at once.
But not yet firm and impregnable were the bulwarks of Christianity.
[A.D. 360.] While dreaming anchorites in the deserts of Thebais were
repeating the results of fasting and insanity as the manifestation
of divine favour, the world was startled from its security by the
appalling discovery that the emperor himself, the young and vigorous
Julian, was a follower of the old philosophers, and a worshipper of
the ancient gods. And a dangerous antagonist he was, even independent
of his temporal power. His personal character was irreproachable, his
learning and talent beyond dispute, and his eloquence and dialectic
skill sharpened and improved by an education in Athens itself. Less
than forty years had elapsed since Constantine pronounced the sentence
of banishment on the heathen deities. It was not possible that the
Christian truth was in every instance received where the old falsehood
was driven away. We may therefore conclude, without the aid of historic
evidence, that there must have been innumerable districts--villages
in far-off valleys, hidden places up among the hills--where the name
of Christ had not yet penetrated, and all that was known was, that
the shrine of the local gods was overthrown, and the priests of the
old ceremonial proscribed. When we remember that the heathen worship
entered into almost all the changes of the social and family life--that
its sanction was necessary at the wedding--that its auguries were
indispensable at births--that it crowned the statue of the household
god with flowers--that it kept alive the fire upon the altar of the
emperor--and that it was the guardian of the tombs of the departed, as
it had been the principal consolation during the funeral rites,--we
shall perceive that, irrespective of absolute faith in his system of
belief, the cessation of the priest's office must have been a serious
calamity. The heathen establishment had been enriched by the piety or
ostentation of many generations. There must have been still alive many
who had been turned out of their comfortable temples, many who viewed
the assumption of Christianity into the State as a political engine
to strengthen the tyranny under which the nations groaned. We may see
that self-interest and patriotism may easily have been combined in the
effort made by the old faith to regain the supremacy it had lost. The
Emperor Julian endeavoured to lift up the fallen gods. He persecuted
the Christians, not with fire and sword, but with contempt. He scorned
and tolerated. He preached moderation, self-denial, and purity of life,
and practised all these virtues to an extent unknown upon a throne, and
even then unusual in a bishop's palace.