the Huns, could not escape the destroying enmity of Genseric and the
Vandals. Dashing across from Africa, these furious conquerors destroyed
for destruction's sake, and affixed the name of Vandalism on whatever
is harsh and unrefined. For fourteen days the spoilers were at work in
Rome, and it is only wonderful that after so many plunderings any thing
worth plundering remained. When the sated Vandals crossed to Carthage
again, the Gothic and Suevic kings gave the purple to whatever puppet
they chose. Afraid still to invest themselves with the insignia of
the Imperial power, they bestowed them or took them away, and at last
rendered the throne and the crown so contemptible, that when Odoacer
was proclaimed King of Italy, the phantom assembly which still called
itself the Roman Senate sent back to Constantinople the tiara and
purple robe, in sign that the Western Empire had passed away. Zeno, the
Eastern ruler, retained the ornaments of the departed sovereignty, and
sent to the Herulean Odoacer the title of "Patrician," sole emblem left
of the greatness and antiquity of the Roman name. It may be interesting
to remember that the last who wore the Imperial crown was a youth who
would probably have escaped the recognition of posterity altogether, if
he had not, by a sort of cruel mockery of his misfortunes, borne the
names of Romulus Augustulus--the former recalling the great founder of
the city, and the latter the first of the Imperial line.
Thus, then, in 476, Rome came to her deserved and terrible end; and
before we trace the influence of this great event upon the succeeding
centuries, it will be worth while to devote a few words to the cause of
its overthrow. These were evidently three--the ineradicable barbarity
and selfishness of the Roman character, the depravation of manners in
the capital, and the want of some combining influence to bind all the
parts of the various empire into a whole. From the earliest incidents
in the history of Rome, we gather that she was utterly regardless of
human life or suffering. Her treatment of her vanquished enemies, and
her laws upon parental authority, upon slaves and debtors, show the
pitiless disposition of her people. Look at her citizens at any period
of her career--her populace or her consuls--in the field of battle
or in the forum, you will always find them the true descendants of
those blood-stained refugees, who established their den of robbers on
the seven hills, and pretended they were led by a man who had been
suckled by a wolf. While conquest was their object, this sanguinary
disposition enabled them to perform great exploits; but when victory
had secured to them the blessings of peace and safety, the same thirst
for excitement continued. They cried out for blood in the amphitheatre,
and had no pleasure in any display which was not accompanied with pain.
The rival chief who had perilled their supremacy in the field was led
in ferocious triumph at the wheel of his conqueror, and beheaded or
flogged to death at the gate of the Capitol. The wounded gladiator
looked round the benches of the arena in hopes of seeing the thumbs
of the spectators turned down--the signal for his life being spared;
but matrons and maids, the high and the low, looked with unmoved faces
upon his agonies, and gave the signal for his death without remorse.
They were the same people, even in their amusements, who gave order for
the destruction of Numantium and Carthage. But cruelty was not enough.
They sank into the wildest vices of sensuality, and lost the dignity
of manhood, and the last feelings of self-respect. Never was a nation
so easily habituated to slavery. They licked the hand that struck them
hardest. They hung garlands for a long time on the tomb of Nero. They
insisted on being revenged on the murderers of Commodus, and frequently
slew more citizens in broils in the street and quarrels in the theatre,
than had fought at Cannæ or Zama. It might have been hoped that the
cruelty which characterized the days of their military aggression
would be softened down when they had become the acknowledged rulers of
the world. Luxury itself, it might be thought, would be inconsistent
with the sight of blood. But in this utterly detestable race the two
extremes of human society seemed to have the same result. The brutal,
half-clothed savage of an early age conveyed his tastes as well as his
conquests to the enervated voluptuary of the empire. The virtues, such
as they were, of that former period--contempt of danger, unfaltering
resolution, and a certain simplicity of life--had departed, and all the
bad features were exaggerated. Religion also had disappeared. Even a
false religion, if sincerely entertained, is a bond of union among all
who profess its faith. But between Rome and its colonies, and between
man and man, there was soon no community of belief. The sweltering
wretches in the Forum sneered at the existence of Bacchus in the midst
of his mysteries, and imitated the actions of their gods, while they
laughed at the hypocrisy of priests and augurs, who treated them as
divine. A cruel, depraved, godless people--these were the Romans who
had enslaved the world with their arms and corrupted it with their
civilization. When their capital fell, men felt relieved from a burden
and shame. The lessons of Christianity had been thrown away on a
population too gross and too truculent to receive them. Some of gentler
mould than others had received the Saviour; but to the mass of Romans
the language of peace and justice, of forgiveness and brotherhood, was
unknown. It was to be the worthier recipients of a pure and elevating
faith, that the Goth was called from his wilderness and the German from
his forest.
But the faith had to be purified itself before it was fitted for the
reception of the new conquerors of the world. The dissensions of the
Christian Churches had added only a fresh element of weakness to the
empire of Rome. There were heretics everywhere, supporting their
opinions with bigotry and violence--Arians, Sabellians, Montanists, and
fifty names besides. Torn by these parties, dishonoured by pretended
conversions, the result of flattery and ambition, the Christian Church
was further weakened by the effect of wealth and luxury upon its
chiefs. While contending with rival sects upon some point of discipline
or doctrine, they made themselves so notorious for the desire of
riches, and the infamous arts they practised to get themselves
appointed heirs of the rich members of their congregations, that a
law was passed making a conveyance in favour of a priest invalid. And
it is not from Pagan enemies or heretical rivals we learn this--it
is from the letters still extant of the most honoured Fathers of the
Church. One of them tells us that the Prefect Pretextatus, alluding
to the luxury of the Pontiffs, and to the magnificence of their
apparel, said to Pope Damasus, "Make me Bishop of Rome, and I will
turn Christian." "Far, then," says a Roman Catholic historian of our
own day, "from strengthening the Roman world with its virtues, the
Christian society seemed to have adopted the vices it was its office
to overcome." But the fall of Roman power was the resurrection of
Christianity. It had a Resurrection, because it had had a Death, and a
new world was now prepared for its reception. Its everlasting truths,
indeed, had been full of life and vigour all through the sad period
of Roman depravation, but the ground was unfitted for their growth;
and the great characteristic of this century is not the conquest of
Rome by Alaric the Goth, or the dreadful assault on Europe by Attila
the Hun, or the final abolition of the old capital of the world by
Odoacer the Herulean, but rather the ecclesiastical chaos which spread
over the earth. The age of martyrs had passed--the philosophers had
begun their pestiferous tamperings with the facts of revelation--and
over all rioted and stormed an ambitious and worldly priesthood, who
hated their opponents with more bitterness than the heathens had
displayed against the Christians, and ran wild in every species of
lawlessness and vice. The deserts and caves which used to give retreat
to meditative worshippers or timid believers, now teemed with thousands
of furious and fanatical monks, who rushed occasionally into the great
cities of the empire, and filled their streets with blood and rapine.
Guided by no less fanatical bishops, they spread murder and terror
over whole provinces. Alexandria stood in more fear of these professed
recluses than of an army of hostile soldiers. "There is a race," says
Eunapius, "called monks--men indeed in form, but hogs in life, who
practise and allow abominable things. Whoever wears a black robe, and
is not ashamed of filthy garments, and presents a dirty face to the
public view, obtains a tyrannical authority." False miracles, absurd
prophecies, and ludicrous visions were the instruments with which these
and other impostors established their power. Mad enthusiasts imprisoned
themselves in dungeons, or exposed themselves on the tops of pillars,
naked, except by the growth of their tangled hair, and the coating of
filth upon their persons,--and gained credit among the ignorant for
self-denial and abnegation of the world.
All the high offices of the Church were so lucrative and honourable as
to be the object of universal desire.
To be established archbishop of a diocese cost more lives than the
conquest of a province. When the Christian community needed support
from without, they had recourse to some rich or powerful individual,
some general of an army, or governor of a district, and begged him
to assume the pastoral staff in exchange for his military sword.
Sometimes the assembled crowd cried out the name of a favourite who
was not even known to be a Christian, and the mitre was conveyed by
acclamation to a person who had to undergo the ceremonies of baptism
and ordination before he could place it on his head. Sometimes the
exigencies of the congregation required a scholar or an orator for
its head. It applied to a philosopher to undertake its direction. He
objected that his philosophy had been declared inconsistent with the
Christian faith, and his mode of life contrary to Christian precept.
They forgave him his philosophy, his horses and hounds, his wife and
children, and constituted him their chief. Age was of no consequence.
A youth of eighteen has been saluted bishop by a cry which seemed to
the multitude the direct inspiration of Heaven, and seated in the
chair of his dignity almost without his knowledge. Once established
on his episcopal seat, he had no superior. The Roman Bishop had not
yet asserted his supremacy over the Church. Each prelate was sovereign
Pontiff of his own see, and his doctrines for a long time regulated the
doctrines of his flock. Under former bishops, Milan had been Arian,
under Ambrose it was orthodox, and with a change of master might
have been Arian again. The emperors had occasionally interfered with
their authoritative decisions, but generally the dispute was left in
divided dioceses to be settled by argument, when the rivals' tempers
allowed such a mode of warfare, but more frequently by armed bands of
the retainers of the respective creeds, and sometimes by an appeal to
miracles. But with this century a new spirit of bitterness was let
loose upon the Church. Councils were held, at which the doctrines of
the minority were declared dangerous to the State, and the civil power
was invoked to carry the sentence into effect. In Africa, where the
great name of Augustin of Hippo admitted no opposition, the Donatists,
though represented by no less than two hundred and seventy-nine
prelates, were condemned as heretics, and given over to the persecuting
sword. But in other quarters the dissidents looked for support to
the civil power, when it happened to be of their opinion in Church
affairs. Rome chose Clovis, the politic and energetic Frank, for its
guardian and protector, and the Arians threw themselves in the same
way on the support of the Visigoths and Burgundians. A difference of
faith became a pretext for war. Clovis, who envied his neighbours
their territories south of the Loire, led an expedition against them,
crying, "It is shameful to see those Arians in possession of such
goodly lands!" and everywhere a vast activity was perceptible in
the Church, because its interests were now connected with those of
kings and peoples. In earlier times, discussions were carried on on a
great variety of doctrines which, though widely spread, were not yet
authoritatively declared to be articles of faith. St. Jerome himself,
and others, had had to defend their opinions against the attacks of
various adversaries, who, without ceasing to be considered true members
of the Church, wrote powerfully against the worship of martyrs and
their relics; against the miracles professedly wrought at their tombs;
against fasting, austerities, and celibacy. No appeal was made on
those occasions either to the Bishop of Rome as head of the Church,
or to the emperor as head of the State. Now, however, the spirit of
moderation was banished, and the decrees of councils were considered
superior to private or even diocesan judgment. Life and freedom of
discussion were at an end under an enforced and rigid uniformity. But
the struggle lasted through the century. It was the period of great
convulsions in the State, and disputations, wranglings, and struggle
in the Church. How these, in a State tortured by perpetual change,
and a Church filled with energy and fire, acted upon each other, may
easily be supposed. The doubtful and unsteady civil government had
subordinated itself to the turbulent ardour of the perplexed but
highly-animated Church. After the conquest of Rome, where was the
barbaric conqueror to look for any guide to internal unity, or any
relic of the vanished empire by which to connect himself with the past?
There was only the Church, which was now not only the professed teacher
of obedience, peace, and holiness, but the only undestroyed institution
of the State. The old population of Rome had been wasted by the sword,
and famine, and deportation. The emperors of the West had left the
scene; the Roman Senate was no more. There was but one authority which
had any influence on the wretched crowd who had returned to their
ancient capital, or sought refuge in its ruined palaces or grass-grown
streets from the pursuit of their foes; and that was the Bishop of
the Christian congregation--whose palace had been given to him by
Constantine--who claimed already the inheritance of St. Peter--and who
carried to the new government either the support of a willing people,
or the enmity of a seditious mob.
[A.D. 489.]
A new hero came upon the scene in the person of Theodoric, the
Ostrogoth. Odoacer tried in vain to resist the two hundred thousand
warriors of this tribe who poured upon Italy in 490, and, after
a long resistance in Ravenna, yielded the kingdom of Italy to his
rival. Theodoric, though an Arian, cultivated the good opinion of the
orthodox, and gained the favour of the Roman Bishop. He had almost a
superstitious veneration for the dignities of ancient Rome. He treated
with respect an assembly which called itself the Senate, but did not
allow his love of antiquity to blind him to the degeneracy of the
present race. He interdicted arms to all men of Roman blood, and tried
in vain to prevent his followers from using the appellation "Roman"
as their bitterest form of contempt. Lands were distributed to his
followers, and they occupied and improved a full third of Italy. Equal
laws were provided for both populations, but he forbade the toga and
the schools to his countrymen, and left the studies and refinements of
life, and offices of civil dignity, to the native race. The hand that
holds the pen, he said, becomes unfitted for the sword. But, barbarian
as he was called, he restored the prosperity which the fairest region
of the earth had lost under the emperors. Bridges, aqueducts, theatres,
baths, were repaired; palaces and churches built. Agriculture was
encouraged, attempts were made to drain the Pontine Marshes; iron-mines
were worked in Dalmatia, and gold-mines in Bruttium. Large fleets
protected the coasts of the Mediterranean from pirates and invaders.
Population increased, taxes were diminished; and a ruler who could
neither read nor write attracted to his court all the learned men of
his time. Already the energy of a new and enterprising people was felt
to the extremities of his dominions. A new race, also, was established
in Gaul. Klodwig, leader of the Franks, received baptism at the hands
of St. Remi in 496, and began the great line of French rulers, who,
passing his name through the softened sound of Clovis, presented, in
the different families who succeeded him, eighteen kings of the name of
Louis, as if commemorative of the founder of the monarchy.
In England the petty kingdoms of the Heptarchy were in the course of
formation, and though, when viewed closely, we seemed a divided and
even hostile collection of individual tribes, the historian combines
the separate elements, and tells us that, before the fifth century
expired, another branch of the barbarians had settled into form and
order, and that the Anglo-Saxon race had taken possession of its place.
With these newly-founded States rising with fresh vigour from among the
decayed and festering remains of an older society, we look hopefully
forward to what the future years will show us.
SIXTH CENTURY.
Kings of the Franks.
A.D.
CLOVIS.--(_cont._)
511. CHILDEBERT, THIERRY, CLOTAIRE, CLODOMIR.
559. CLOTAIRE (sole King).
562. CHARIBERT, GONTRAN, SIGEBERT and CHILDERIC.
584. CLOTAIRE II., (of Soissons.)
596. THIERRY II., THEODOBERT, (of Paris and Austrasia.)
Emperors of the East.
A.D.
ANASTASIUS.--(_cont._)
518. JUSTIN.
527. JUSTINIAN I.
565. JUSTIN II.
578. TIBERIUS II.
582. MAURICE.
Authors.
BOETHIUS, PROCOPIUS, GILDAS, GREGORY OF TOURS, COLUMBA, (520-597,)
PRISCIAN, COLUMBANUS, BENEDICT, EVAGRIUS, (SCHOLASTICUS,) FULGENTIUS,
GREGORY THE GREAT.
THE SIXTH CENTURY.
BELISARIUS AND NARSES IN ITALY--SETTLEMENT OF THE LOMBARDS--LAWS OF
JUSTINIAN--BIRTH OF MOHAMMED.
Theodoric, though not laying claim to universal empire in right of
his possession of Rome and Italy, exercised a sort of supremacy over
his contemporaries by his wisdom and power. He also strengthened his
position by family alliances. His wife was sister of Klodwig or Clovis,
King of the Franks. He married his own sister to Hunric, King of the
Vandals, his niece to the Thuringian king. One of his daughters he
gave to Sigismund, King of the Burgundians, and the other to Alaric
the Second, King of the Visigoths. Relying on the double influence
which his relationship and reputation secured to him, he rebuked or
praised the potentates of Europe as if they had been his children, and
gave them advice in the various exigencies of their affairs, to which
they implicitly submitted. He would fain have kept alive what was
left of the old Roman civilization, and heaped honours on the Senator
Cassiodorus, one of the last writers of Rome. "We send you this man
as ambassador," he said to the King of the Burgundians, "that your
people may no longer pretend to be our equals when they perceive what
manner of men we have among us." But his rule, though generous, was
strict. He imprisoned the Bishop of Rome for disobedience of orders
in a commission he had given him, and repressed discontent and the
quarrels of the factions with an unsparing hand. But the death of this
great and wise sovereign showed on what unstable foundations a barbaric
power is built. Frightful tragedies were enacted in his family. His
daughter was murdered by her nephew, whom she had associated with her
in the guardianship of her son. But vengeance overtook the wrong-doer,
and a strange revolution occurred in the history of the world. The
emperor reigning at Constantinople was the celebrated Justinian. He
saw into what a confused condition the affairs of the new conquerors
of Italy had fallen. Rallying round him all the recollections of the
past--giving command of his armies to one of the great men who start
up unexpectedly in the most hopeless periods of history, whose name,
Belisarius, still continues to be familiar to our ears--and rousing
the hostile nationalities to come to his aid, he poured into the
peninsula an army with Roman discipline and the union which community
of interests affords. [A.D. 535.] In a remarkably short space of time,
Belisarius achieved the conquest of Italy. The opposing soldiers threw
down their arms at sight of the well-remembered eagles. The nations
threw off the supremacy of the Ostrogoths. Belisarius had already
overthrown the kingdom of the Vandals and restored Africa to the empire
of the East. He took Naples, and put the inhabitants to the sword.
He advanced upon Rome, which the Goths deserted at his approach. The
walls of the great city were restored, and a victory over the fugitives
at Perugia seemed to secure the whole land to its ancient masters.
But Witig, the Ostrogoth, gathered courage from despair. He besought
assistance from the Franks, who had now taken possession of Burgundy;
and volunteers from all quarters flocked to his standard, for he had
promised them the spoils of Milan. Milan was immensely rich, and had
espoused the orthodox faith. The assailants were Arians, and intent on
plunder. Such destruction had scarcely been seen since the memorable
slaughter of the Huns at Châlons on the Marne. The Ostrogoths and
Burgundian Franks broke into the town, and the streets were piled up
with the corpses of all the inhabitants. There were three hundred
thousand put to death, and multitudes had died of famine and disease.
The ferocity was useless, and Belisarius was already on the march;
Witig was conquered, in open fight, while he was busy besieging Rome;
Ravenna itself, his capital, was taken, and the Ostrogothic king was
led in triumph along the streets of Constantinople.
[A.D. 540.]