their interests differed from those of the Church. The Church placed
itself at the head of the democracy in opposition to the overweening
pretensions of the chiefs. It opened its ranks to the conquered races,
and invested even the converted serf with dignities which placed him
above the level of Thane or Count. The head of the Western Church, now
by general consent recognised in the Bishop of Rome, was not slow to
see the advantage of his position as leader of a combination in favour
of the million. The doctrine of the equality of all men in the sight
of Heaven was easily commuted into a demand of universal submission
to the Holy See; and so wide was the range given to this claim to
obedience that it embraced the proudest of the nobles and haughtiest
of kings. It was a satisfaction to the slave in his dungeon to hear
that the great man in his castle had been forced to do homage to the
Church. There was one earthly power to which the oppressed could look
up with the certainty of support. It was this intimate persuasion in
the minds of the people which gave such undying vigour to the counsels
and pretensions of the ecclesiastical power. It was a power sprung from
the people, and exercised for the benefit of the people. The Popes
themselves were generally selected from the lowest rank. But what did
it matter to the man who led the masses of the trampled nations, and
stood as a shield between them and their tyrants, whether he claimed
relationship with emperors or slaves? What did it matter, on the other
hand, to those hoping and trusting multitudes, whether the object of
their confidence was personally a miracle of goodness and virtue, or a
monster of sin and cruelty? It was his office to trample on the necks
of kings and nobles, and bid the captive go free. While he continued
true to the people, the people were true to him. Monarchs who governed
mighty nations, and dukes who ruled in provinces the size of kingdoms,
looked on with surprise at the growth of a power supported apparently
by no worldly arms, but which penetrated to them through their courts
and armies. There was no great mind to guide the opposition to its
claims. The bishops were sunk in ignorance and sloth, and had lost the
respect of their countrymen. The populations everywhere were divided.
The succession to the throne was uncertain. The Franks, the leading
nation, were never for any length of time under one head. Neustria,
or the Western State, comprising all the land between the Meuse,
the Loire, and the Mediterranean, Austrasia, or the Eastern State,
comprising the land between the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Moselle,
and Burgundy, extending from the Loire to the Alps, were at one time
united under a common head, and at another held by hostile kings. The
Visigoths were obscurely quarrelling about points of divinity within
their barrier of the Pyrenees. England was the battle-field of half a
dozen little chieftains who called themselves kings; Germany was only
civilized on its western border. Italy was cut up into many States,
Lombards looking with suspicion on the Exarchate, which was still
nominally attached to the Eastern Empire, and Greeks established in the
South, sighing for the restoration of their power. Over all this chaos
of contending powers appeared the mitre and crozier of the Pope; always
at the head of the disaffected people, supported by the monks, who
felt the tyranny of the bishops as keenly as the commonalty felt the
injustice of their lords; always threatening vengeance on overweening
baron or refractory monarch--enhancing his influence with the glory
of new miracles wrought in his support, and witnessed unblushingly
by preaching friars, who were the missionaries of papal power;
concentrating all authority in his hands, and gradually laying the
foundation for a trampling and domination over mind and body such as
the world had never seen. From this almost universal prostration before
the claims of Rome, it is curious to see that the native Irish were
totally free. With contemptuous independence, they for a long time
rejected the arrogant assumptions of the successor of St. Peter, and
were firm in their maintenance of the equality of all the Sees. It was
from the newly-converted Anglo-Saxons that the chief recruits in the
campaign against the liberties of the national churches were collected.
Almost all the names of missionaries on behalf of the Roman pontiff in
this century have the home-sound in our ears of "Wigbert," "Willibald,"
"Wernefried," or "Adalbert." But there are no Gaelic patronymics from
the Churches of Ireland or Wales. They were sisters, they haughtily
said, not daughters of the Roman See, as the Anglo-Saxon Church had
been; and dwelt with pride on the antiquity of their conversion before
the pretensions of the Roman Bishops had been heard of; and thus was
added one more to the elements of dissension which wasted the strength
of Europe at the very time when unanimity was most required.
But towards the end of this period the rumours of a new power in the
East drew men's attention to the defenceless state in which their
internal disagreements had left them. The monasteries were filled with
exaggerated reports of the progress of this vast invasion, which not
only threatened the national existences of Europe, but the Christian
faith. It was a hostile creed and a destroying enemy. What had the
Huns been, compared with this new swarm--not of savage warriors turned
aside with a bribe or won by a prayer, but enthusiasts in what they
considered a holy cause, flushed with victory, armed and disciplined
in a style superior to any thing the West could show? We should try to
enter into the feelings of that distant time, when day by day myriads
of strange and hitherto unconquerable enemies were reported to be on
their march.
In the year 621 of the Christian era, Mohammed made his triumphant
entry into Medina, a great city of Arabia, having been expelled from
Mecca by the enmity of the Jews and the tribe of Koreish. This entry is
called the Hegira or Flight, and forms the commencement of the Moslem
chronology. All their records are dated from this event. The persons
who accompanied him were few in number--his father-in-law, some of
his wives, and some of his warriors; but the procession was increased
by the numerous believers in his prophetship who resided in the town.
At this place began the public worship inculcated by the leader. The
worshippers were summoned by a voice sounding from the highest pinnacle
of the mosque or church, and pronouncing the words which to this hour
are heard from every minaret in the East:--"God is great! God is great!
There is no God but God. Mohammed is the apostle of God. Come to
prayers, come to prayers!" and when the invitation is given at early
dawn, the declaration is added, "Prayer is better than sleep! prayer is
better than sleep." These exhortations were not without their intended
effect. Prayer was uttered by many lips, and sleep was banished from
many eyes; but the prayers were never thought so effectual as when
accompanied by sword and lance. Courage and devotedness were now the
great supports of the faith. Ali, the husband of Fatima the favourite
daughter of the chief, fought and prayed with the same irresistible
force. He conquered the unbelieving Jews and Koreishites, cleaving
armed men from the crown to the chin with one blow, and wielding a
city gate which eight men could not lift, as a shield. Abou Beker,
whose daughter was one of the wives of Mohammed, was little inferior
to Ali; and Mohammed himself saw visions which comforted and inspired
his followers in the midst of battle, and shouted, "On, on! Fight and
fear not! The gates of Paradise are under the shade of swords. He will
assuredly find instant admission who falls fighting for the faith!" It
was impossible to play the hypocrite in a religion where such strength
of arm and sharpness of blade were required. Prayers might indeed be
mechanical, or said for show, but the fighting was a real thing, and,
as such, prevailed over all the shams which were opposed to it. Looking
forth already beyond the narrow precincts of his power, Mohammed saw
in the distance, across the desert, the proud empires of Persia and
Constantinople. To both he wrote letters demanding their allegiance as
God's Prophet, and threatening vengeance if they disobeyed. Chosroes,
the Persian, tore the letter to pieces. "Even so," said Mohammed,
"shall his kingdom be torn." Heraclius the Greek was more respectful.
He placed the missive on his pillow, and very naturally fell asleep,
and thought of it no more. But his descendants were not long of having
their pillows quite so provocative of repose. The city of Medina
grew too small to hold the Prophet's followers, and they went forth
conquering and to conquer. There were Abou Beker the wise, and Omar
the faithful, and Khaled the brave, and Ali the sword of God. Mecca
fell before them, and city after city sent in its adhesion to the
claims of a Prophet who had such dreadful interpreters as these. The
religion he preached was comparatively true. He destroyed the idols
of the land, inculcated soberness, chastity, charity, and, by some
faint transmission of the precepts of the Bible, inculcated brotherly
love and forgiveness of wrong. But the sword was the true gospel. Its
light was spread in Syria and all the adjoining territories. People in
apparently sheltered positions could never be sure for an hour that
the missionaries of the new faith would not be climbing over their
walls with shouts of conquest, and giving them the option of conversion
or death. Power spread in gradually-widening circles, but at the
centre sad things were going on. Mohammed was getting old. He lost
his only son. He laid him in the grave with tears and sighs, and made
his farewell pilgrimage to Mecca. Had he no relentings at the visible
approach of the end? Was he to go to the grave untouched by all the
calamities he had brought upon mankind? the blood he had shed, the
multitudes he had beguiled? He had no touch of remorse for any of these
things; rather he continued firmer in his course than ever--seemed more
persuaded of the genuineness of his mission, and uttered prophecies of
the universal extension of his faith. "When the angels ask thee who
thou art," he said, as the body of his son was lowered into the tomb,
"say, God is my Lord, the Prophet of God was my father, and my faith
was Islam!" Islam continued his own faith till the last. He tottered to
the mosque where Abou Beker was engaged in leading the prayers of the
congregation, and addressed the people for the last time. "Every thing
happens," he said, "according to the will of God, and has its appointed
time, which is not to be hastened or avoided. My last command to you is
that you remain united; that you love, honour, and uphold each other;
that you exhort each other to faith and constancy in belief, and to the
performance of pious deeds: by these alone men prosper; all else leads
to destruction." A few days after this there was grief and lamentation
all over the faithful lands. He died on his sixty-third birthday, in
the eleventh year of the Hegira, which answers to our year 632.
Great contentions arose among the chief disciples for the succession
to the leadership of the faithful. Abou Beker was father-in-law of
the Prophet, and his daughter supported his cause. Omar was also
father-in-law of the Prophet, and his daughter supported his cause.
Othman had married two of the daughters of the Prophet, but both were
dead, and they had left no living child. Ali, the hero of the conquest,
was cousin-german of the Prophet, and husband of his only surviving
daughter. Already the practices of a court were perceptible in the
Emir's tent. The courtiers caballed and quarrelled; but Ayesha, the
daughter of Abou Beker, had been Mohammed's favourite wife, and her
influence was the most effectual. How this influence was exercised
amid the Oriental habits of the time, and the seclusion to which the
women were subjected, it is difficult to decide; but, after a struggle
between her and Hafya, the daughter of Omar, the widowed Othman was
found to have no chance; and only Ali remained, still young and ardent,
and fittest, to all ordinary judgments, to be the leader of the armies
of Allah. While consulting with some friends in the tent of Fatima,
his rivals came to an agreement. In a distant part of the town a
meeting had been called, and the claims of the different pretenders
debated. Suddenly Omar walked across to where Abou Beker stood, bent
lowly before him, and kissed his hand in token of submission, saying,
"Thou art the oldest companion and most secret friend of the Prophet,
and art therefore worthy to rule us in his place." The example was
contagious, and Abou Beker was installed as commander and chief of
the believers. A resolution was come to at the same time, that any
attempt at seizing the supremacy against the popular will should be
punished with death. Ali was constrained to yield, but lived in haughty
submission till Fatima died. He then rose up in his place, and taking
his two sons with him, Hassan and Hossein, retired into the inner
district of Arabia, carrying thus from the camp of the usurping caliph
the only blood of the Prophetchief which flowed in human veins. Yet
the spirit of the Prophet animated the whole mass. Energy equal to
Ali's was exhibited in Khaled. Omar was earnest in the collection
of all the separated portions of the Koran. Othman was burning to
spread the new empire over the whole earth; and in this combination
of courage, ambition, and fanaticism all Arabia found its interest to
join, and ere a year had elapsed from the death of the Prophet, the
whole of that peninsula, and all the swart warriors who travelled its
sandy steppes, had accepted the great watchword of his religion--"There
is no God but God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God." Ere another
year had elapsed the desert had sent forth its swarms. The plains of
Asia were overflowed. The battle-cry of Zeyd, the general of the army,
was heard in the great commercial cities of the East, and in the lands
where the gospel of peace had first been uttered, Emasa and Damascus,
and on the banks of Jordan. It was natural that the first effort of the
false should be directed against the true. But not indiscriminate was
the wrath of Abou Beker against the professors of Christianity. The
claims of that dispensation were ever treated with respect, but the
depraved priesthood were held up to contempt. "Destroy not fruit-tree
nor fertile field on your path," these were the instructions of the
Caliph to the leaders of the host. "Be just, and spare the feelings of
the vanquished. Respect all religious persons who live in hermitages or
convents, and spare their edifices. But should you meet with a class
of unbelievers of a different kind, who go about with shaven crowns,
and belong to the synagogue of Satan, be sure you cleave their skulls,
unless they embrace the true faith or render tribute."
Gentle and merciful, therefore, to the peaceful inhabitants, respectful
to the gloomy anchorite and industrious monk, but breathing death
and disgrace against the proud bishop and ambitious presbyter, the
mighty horde moved on. Syria fell; the Persian monarchy was menaced,
and its western provinces seized; a Christian kingdom called Hira,
situated on the confines of Babylonia, was made tributary to Medina;
and Khaled stood triumphant on the banks of the Euphrates, and sent a
message to the Great King, commanding him either to receive the faith,
or atone for his incredulity with half his wealth. The despot's ears
were unaccustomed to such words, and the fiery deluge went on. At the
end of the third year, Abou Beker died, and Omar was the successor
appointed by his will. This was already a departure from the law of
popular election, but Islam was busy with its conquests far from its
central home, and accepted the nomination. Khaled's course continued
westward and eastward, forcing his resistless wedge between the
exhausted but still majestic empires of the Greeks and Persians. Blow
after blow resounded as the great march went on. Constantinople, and
Madayn upon the Tigris, the capitals of Christianity and Mithrism, were
equally alarmed and equally powerless. Omar, the Caliph--the word means
the Successor of the Apostle--determined to join the army which was
encamped against the walls of Jerusalem, and added fresh vigour to the
assailants by the knowledge that they fought under his eye.
Heraclius, the degenerate inheritor of the throne of Constantine,
and Yezdegird, the successor of Darius and Xerxes, if they had moved
towards the seat of war would have been surrounded by all the pomp of
their exalted stations. Battalions of guards would have encompassed
their persons, and countless officers of their courts attended their
progress.
Omar, who saw already the world at his feet, journeyed by slow
stages on a wretched camel, carrying his provisions hanging from his
saddle-bow, and slept at night under the shelter of some tree, or on
the margin of some well. He had but one suit, and that of worsted
material, and yet his word was law to all those breathless listeners,
and wherever he placed his foot from that moment became holy ground.
Jerusalem and Aleppo yielded; Antioch, the chief seat of Grecian
government, fell into his hands; Tyre and Tripoli submitted to his
power; and the Saracenic hosts only paused when they reached the border
of the sea, which they knew washed the fairest shores of Africa and
Europe. It did not much matter who was in nominal command. Khaled
died; Amru took his place; and yet the tide went on. The great city of
Alexandria, which disputed with Constantinople the title of Capital of
the World, with its almost fabulous wealth, its four thousand palaces,
and five thousand baths, and four hundred theatres, was twice taken,
and brought on the submission and conversion of the whole of Egypt.
Amru in his hours of leisure was devoted to the cultivation of taste
and genius. In John the Grammarian, a Christian student, he found a
congenial spirit. Poetry, philosophy, and rhetoric were treated of in
the conversations of the Arabic conqueror and the monkish scholar. At
last, in reliance on his literary taste, the priest confided to the
Moslem that in a certain building in the town there was a library so
vast that it had no equal on earth either for number or value of the
manuscripts it contained. This was too important a treasure to be dealt
with without the express sanction of the Caliph. So the Christian
legend is, that Omar replied to the announcement of his general,
"Either what those books contain is in the Koran, or it is not. If it
is, these volumes are useless; if it is not, they are wicked. Burn
them." The skins and parchments heated the baths of Alexandria for
many months, irrecoverable monuments of the past, and an everlasting
disgrace to the Saracen name. Yet the story has been doubted; at
least, the extent of the destruction. Rather, it has been supposed,
the ignorant fanaticism of the illiterate monks, in covering with the
legends of saints the obliterated lines of the classic authors, has
been more destructive to the literary treasures of those ancient times
than the furious zeal of Amru or the bigotry of Omar.
If this great overflow from the desert of Arabia had consisted of
nothing but armed warriors or destructive fanatics, its course would
have been as transient as it was terrible. The Gothic invaders who had
desolated Europe fortunately possessed the flexibility and adaptiveness
of mind which fitted them for the reception of the purer faith and more
refined manners of the vanquished races. They mixed with the people who
submitted to their power, and in a short time adopted their habits and
religion. Whatever faith they professed in their original seats, seems
to have worn out in the long course of their immigration. The powers
they had worshipped in their native wilds were local, and dependent on
clime and soil. An easy opening, therefore, was left for Christianity
into hearts where no hostile deity guarded the portal of approach. But
with the Saracens the case was reversed. Incapable of assimilation with
any rival belief--jealously exclusive of the commonest intercourse
with the nations they subdued--unbending, contemptuous to others, and
carried on by burning enthusiasm in their own cause, and confidence
in the Prophet they served, there was no possibility of softening or
elevating them from without. The pomps of religious worship, which
so awed the wondering tribes of Franks and Lombards, were lost on a
people who considered all pomp offensive both to God and man. They
saw the sublimity of simple plainness both in word and life. Their
caliph lived on rice, and saddled his camel with his own hands. He
ordered a palace to be burned, which Seyd, who had conquered for
him the capital of Persia, had built for his occupation. Unsocial,
bigoted, austere, drinking no wine, accumulating no personal wealth,
how was the mind of this warrior of the wilderness to be trained to the
habits of civilized society, or turned aside from the rude instincts
of destructiveness and domination? But the Arab intellect was subtle
and active. Mohammedanism, indeed, armed the multitude in an exciting
cause, and sent them forth like a destroying fire; but there was
wisdom, policy, refinement, among the chiefs. While they devastated the
worn-out territories of the Persian, and laid waste his ostentatious
cities, which had been purposely built in useless places to show the
power of the king, they founded great towns on sites so adapted for
the purposes of trade and protection that they continue to the present
time the emporiums and fortresses of their lands. Balsorah, at the top
of the Persian Gulf, at the junction of the Tigris and the Euphrates,
was as wisely selected for the commercial wants of that period as
Constantinople itself. Bagdad was encouraged, Cufa built and peopled in
exchange for the gorgeous but unwholesome Madayn, from which Yezdegird
was driven. Many other towns rose under the protection of the Crescent;
and by the same impulse which made the Saracens anxious to raise new
centres of wealth and enterprise in the East, they were excited to the
most amazing efforts to make themselves masters of the greatest city
in the world, the seat of arts, of literature, and religion; and they
pushed forward from river to river, from plain to plain, till, in the
year 672, they raised their victorious standard in front of the walls
of Constantinople. Here, however, a new enemy came to the encounter,
and for the first time scattered dismay among the Moslem ranks. From
the towers and turrets came down a shower of fire, burning, scorching,
destroying, wherever it touched. Projected to great distances, and
wrapping in a moment ship after ship in unextinguishable flames, these
discharges appeared to the warriors of the Crescent a supernatural
interference against them. This was the famous Greek fire, of which the
components are not now known, but it was destructive beyond gunpowder
itself. Water could not quench it, nor length of time weaken its power.
For five successive years the assault was renewed by fresh battalions
of the Saracens, but always with the same result. So, giving up at
last their attempts against a place guarded by lightning and by the
unmoved courage of the Greek population, they poured their thousands
along the northern shores of Africa. Cyrene, the once glorious capital
of the Pentapolis, in which Carthage saw her rival and Athens her
superior, yielded to their power. Everywhere high-peaked mosques,
rising where a short time before the shore had been unoccupied or in
cities where the Basilicas of Christian worship had been thrown down,
marked the course of conquest. Carthage received its new lords. Hippo,
the bishopric of the best of ancient saints, the holy Augustine,
saw its church supplanted by the temples of the Arabian impostor. A
check was sustained at Tchuda, where their course was interrupted by
a combined assault of Christian Greeks and the indigenous Berbers.
Internal troubles also arrested their career, for there were disputes
for the succession, and court intrigues and open murders, and all the
usual accompaniments of a contest for an elective throne. One after
another, the Caliphs had been murdered, or had died of broken hearts.
The old race--the "Companions," as they were called, because they had
been the contemporaries and friends of Mohammed--had died out. Ali,
after three disappointments, had at last been chosen. His sons Hassan
and Hossein had been put to death; and it was only in the time of the
eighth successor, when Abdelmalek had overcome all competition, that
the unity of the Moslem Empire was restored, and the word given for
conquest as before. This was in the 77th year of the Hegira, (698 of
our era,) and an army was let loose upon the great city of Carthage, at
the same time that movements were again ordered across the limits of
the Grecian Empire, in Asia, and advances made towards Constantinople.
Carthage fell--Tripoli was occupied--and now, with their territories
stretching in unbroken line from Syria along the two thousand miles
of the southern shore of the great Mediterranean Sea, the conquerors
rested from their labours for a while, and prepared themselves for
a dash across the narrow channel, from which the hills of Atlas and
the summits of Gibraltar are seen at the same time. What has Europe,
with its divided peoples, its worn-out kings, its indolent Church, and
exhausted fields, to oppose to this compact phalanx of united blood,
burning with fanatical faith, submissive to one rule, and supported
by all the wealth of Asia and Africa; whose fleets sweep the sea, and
whose myriads are every day increased by the accession of fresh nations
of Berbers, Mauritanians, and the nameless children of the desert?
This is the hopeless century. Manhood, patriotism, Christianity
itself, are all at the lowest ebb. But let us turn to the next, and
see how good is worked out of evil, and acknowledge, as in so many
instances the historian is obliged to do, that man can form no estimate
of the future from the plainest present appearances, but that all
things are in the hands of a higher intelligence than ours.
EIGHTH CENTURY.