EUROPE
IN THE MIDDLE AGES
EUROPE
IN THE MIDDLE AGES
BY
IERNE L. PLUNKET
M.A. OXON.
AUTHOR OF ‘THE FALL OF THE OLD ORDER’, ‘ISABEL OF CASTILE’, ETC.
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1922
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen
New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town
Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai
HUMPHREY MILFORD
Publisher to the University
Printed in England
PREFACE
The history of Mediaeval Europe is so vast a subject that the
attempt to deal with it in a small compass must entail either severe
compression or what may appear at first sight reckless omission.
The path of compression has been trodden many times, as in J. H.
Robinson’s _Introduction to the History of Western Europe_, or in
such series as the ‘Periods of European History’ published by Messrs.
Rivingtons for students, or text-books of European History published by
the Clarendon Press and Messrs. Methuen.
To the authors of all these I should like to express my indebtedness
both for facts and perspective, as to Mr. H. W. Davis for his admirable
summary of the mediaeval outlook in the Home University Library series;
but in spite of so many authorities covering the same ground, I venture
to claim for the present book a pioneer path of ‘omission’; it may be
reckless but yet, I believe, justifiable.
It has been my object not so much to supply students with facts as to
make Mediaeval Europe live, for the many who, knowing nothing of her
history, would like to know a little, in the lives of her principal
heroes and villains, as well as in the tendencies of her classes, and
in the beliefs and prejudices of her thinkers. This task I have found
even more difficult than I had expected, for limits of space have
insisted on the omission of many events and names I would have wished
to include. These I have sacrificed to the hope of creating reality and
arousing interest, and if I have in any way succeeded I should like
to pay my thanks first of all to Mr. Henry Osborn Taylor for his two
volumes of _The Mediaeval Mind_ that have been my chief inspiration,
and then to the many authors whose names and books I give elsewhere,
and whose researches have enabled me to tell my tale.
IERNE L. PLUNKET.
CONTENTS
I. The Greatness of Rome 1
II. The Decline of Rome 9
III. The Dawn of Christianity 21
IV. Constantine the Great 27
V. The Invasions of the Barbarians 37
VI. The Rise of the Franks 54
VII. Mahomet 66
VIII. Charlemagne 79
IX. The Invasions of the Northmen 101
X. Feudalism and Monasticism 117
XI. The Investiture Question 130
XII. The Early Crusades 143
XIII. The Making of France 159
XIV. Empire and Papacy 176
XV. Learning and Ecclesiastical Organization in the Middle
Ages 196
XVI. The Faith of the Middle Ages 207
XVII. France under Two Strong Kings 223
XVIII. The Hundred Years’ War 236
XIX. Spain in the Middle Ages 259
XX. Central and Northern Europe in the Later Middle Ages 276
XXI. Italy in the Later Middle Ages 297
XXII. Part I: The Fall of the Greek Empire 327
Part II: Voyage and Discovery 337
XXIII. The Renaissance 346
Some Authorities on Mediaeval History 365
Chronological Summary, 476-1494 368
Mediaeval Genealogies 375
Index 385
MAPS
The Roman Empire in the Time of Constantine the Great 28
The Empire of Charlemagne 80
France in the Reign of Henry II 161
The Treaty of Bretigni 246
France in 1429 254
The Spanish Kingdoms, 1263-1492 260
North-East Europe in the Middle Ages 287
Italy in the Later Middle Ages 298
The Near East in the Middle Ages 328
I
THE GREATNESS OF ROME
‘_Ave, Roma Immortalis!_’, ‘_Hail, Immortal Rome!_’ This cry, breaking
from the lips of a race that had carried the imperial eagles from the
northern shores of Europe to Asia and Africa, was no mere patriotic
catchword. It was the expression of a belief that, though humanity must
die and personal ambitions fade away, yet Rome herself was eternal and
unconquerable, and what was wrought in her name would outlast the ages.
In the modern world it is sometimes necessary to remind people of
their citizenship, but the Roman never forgot the greatness of his
inheritance. When St. Paul, bound with thongs and condemned to be
scourged, declared, ‘I am Roman born,’ the Captain of the Guard, who
had only gained his citizenship by paying a large sum of money, was
afraid of the prisoner on whom he had laid hands without a trial.
To be a Roman, however apparently poor and defenceless, was to walk the
earth protected by a shield that none might set aside save at great
peril. Not to be a Roman, however rich and of high standing, was to
pass in Roman eyes as a ‘barbarian’, a creature of altogether inferior
quality and repute.
‘Be it thine, O Roman,’ says Virgil, the greatest of Latin poets, ‘to
govern the nations with thy imperial rule’: and such indeed was felt by
Romans to be the destiny of their race.
Stretching on the west through Spain and Gaul to the Atlantic, that
vast ‘Sea of Darkness’ beyond which according to popular belief the
earth dropped suddenly into nothingness, the outposts of the Empire in
the east looked across the plains of Mesopotamia towards Persia and the
kingdoms of central Asia. Babylon ‘the Wondrous’, Syria, and Palestine
with its turbulent Jewish population, Egypt, the Kingdom of the
Pharaohs long ere Romulus the City-builder slew his brother, Carthage,
the Queen of Mediterranean commerce, all were now Roman provinces,
their lustre dimmed by a glory greater than they had ever known.
[Sidenote: Roman Trade Routes]
The Mediterranean, once the battle-ground of rival Powers, had become
an imperial lake, the high road of the grain ships that sailed
perpetually from Spain and Egypt to feed the central market of the
world; for Rome, like England to-day, was quite unable to satisfy
her population from home cornfields. The fleets that brought the
necessaries of life convoyed also shiploads of oriental luxuries,
silks, jewels, and perfumes, transported from Ceylon and India in
trading-sloops to the shores of the Red Sea, and thence by caravans of
camels to the port of Alexandria.
Other trade routes than the Mediterranean were the vast network of
roads that, like the threads of a spider’s web, kept every part of
the Empire, however remote, in touch with the centre from which their
common fate was spun. At intervals of six miles were ‘post-houses’,
provided each with forty or more horses, that imperial messengers,
speeding to or from the capital with important news, might dismount
and mount again at the different stages, hastening on their way with
undiminished speed.
How firm and well made were their roads we know to-day, when, after
the lapse of nearly nineteen centuries of traffic, we use and praise
them still. They hold in their strong foundations one secret of
their maker’s greatness, that the Roman brought to his handiwork the
thoroughness inspired by a vision not merely of something that should
last a few years or even his lifetime, but that should endure like the
city he believed eternal.
It was the boast of Augustus, 27 B.C.-A.D. 14, the first of the Roman
Emperors, that he had found his capital built of brick and had left it
marble; and his tradition as an architect passed to his successors.
There are few parts of what was once the Roman Empire that possess no
trace to-day of massive aqueduct or Forum, of public baths or stately
colonnades. In Rome itself, the Colosseum, the scene of many a martyr’s
death and gladiator’s struggle; elsewhere, as at Nîmes in southern
France, a provincial amphitheatre; the aqueduct of Segovia in Spain,
the baths in England that have made and named a town; the walls that
mark the outposts of empire--all are the witnesses of a genius that
dared to plan greatly, nor spared expense or labour in carrying out its
designs.
Those who have visited the Border Country between England and Scotland
know the Emperor Hadrian’s wall, twenty feet high by seven feet broad,
constructed to keep out the fierce Picts and Scots from this the most
northern of his possessions. Those of the enemy that scaled the top
would find themselves faced by a ditch and further wall, bristling with
spears; while the legions flashed their summons for reinforcements from
guardhouse to guardhouse along the seventy miles of massive barrier.
All that human labour could do had made the position impregnable.
A scheme of fortifications was also attempted in central Europe along
the lines of the Rhine and Danube. These rivers provided the third of
the imperial trade routes, and it is well to remember them in this
connexion, for their importance as highways lasted right through Roman
and mediaeval into modern times. Railways have altered the face of
Europe: they have cut through her waste places and turned them into
thriving centres of industry: they have looped up her mines and ports
and tunnelled her mountains: there is hardly a corner of any land where
they have not penetrated; and the change they have made is so vast that
it is often difficult to imagine the world before their invention.
In Roman times, in neighbourhoods where the sea was remote and road
traffic slow and inconvenient, there only remained the earliest of
all means of transport, the rivers. The Rhine and Danube, one flowing
north-west, the other south-east, both neither too swift nor too
sluggish for navigation, were the natural main high roads of central
Europe: they were also an obvious barrier between the Empire and
barbarian tribes.
To connect the Rhine and Danube at their sources by a massive wall,
to establish forts with strong garrisons at every point where these
rivers could be easily forded, such were the precautions by which wise
Emperors planned to shut in Rome’s civilization, and to keep out all
who would lay violent hands upon it.
The Emperor Augustus left a warning to his successors that they should
be content with these natural boundaries, lest in pushing forward to
increase their territory they should in reality weaken their position.
It is easy to agree with his views centuries afterwards, when we know
that the defences of the Empire, pushed ever forward, snapped at the
finish like an elastic band; but the average Roman of imperial days
believed his nation equal to any strain.
It was a boast of the army that ‘Roman banners never retreat’. If then
a tribe of barbarians were to succeed in fording the Danube and in
surprising some outpost fort, the legions sent to punish them would
clamour not merely to exact vengeance and return home, but to conquer
and add the territory to the Empire. In the case of swamps or forest
land the clamour might be checked; but where there was pasturage or
good agricultural soil, it would be almost irresistible. Emigrants from
crowded Italy would demand leave to form a colony, traders would hasten
in their footsteps, and soon another responsibility of land and lives,
perhaps with no natural protection of river, sea, or mountains, would
be added to Rome’s burden of government. Such was the fertile province
of Dacia, north of the Danube, a notable gain in territory, but yet a
future source of weakness.
[Sidenote: Government of the Roman Empire]
At the head of the Empire stood the Emperor, ‘Caesar Augustus’, the
commander-in-chief of the army, the supreme authority in the state, the
fountain of justice, a god before whose altar every loyal Roman must
burn incense and bow the knee in reverence.
It was a great change from the old days, when Rome was a republic, and
her Senate, or council of leading citizens, had been responsible to
the rest of the people for their good or bad government. The historian
Tacitus, looking back from imperial days with a sigh of regret, says
that in that happy age man could speak what was in his mind without
fear of his neighbours, and draws the contrast with his own time when
the Emperor’s spies wormed their way into house and tavern, paid to
betray those about them to prison or death for some chance word or
incautious action. Yet Rome by her conquests had brought on herself the
tyranny of the Empire.
It is comparatively easy to rule a small city well, where fraud and
self-seeking can be quickly detected; but when Rome began to extend
her boundaries and to employ more people in the work of government,
unscrupulous politicians appeared. These built up private fortunes
during their term of office: they became senators, and the Senate
ceased to represent the will of the people and began to govern in the
interests of a small group of wealthy men. Members of their families
became governors of provinces, first in Italy, and then as conquests
continued, across the mountains in Gaul and Spain, and beyond the seas
in Egypt and Asia Minor. Except in name, senators and governors ceased
to be simple citizens and lived as princes, with officials and servants
ready to carry out their slightest wish.
Perhaps it may seem odd that the Roman people, once so fond of liberty
that they had driven into exile the kings who oppressed them, should
afterwards let themselves be bullied or neglected by a hundred petty
tyrants; but in truth the people had changed even more than the class
of ‘patricians’ to whom they found themselves in bondage.
No longer pure Roman or Latin, but through conquest and intermarriage
of every race from the stalwart Teuton to the supple Oriental or
swarthy Egyptian, few amongst the men and women crowding the streets of
Rome remembered or reverenced the traditions of her early days. Rome
stood for military glory, luxury, culture, at her best for even-handed
justice, but no longer for an ideal of liberty. If national pride
was satisfied, and adequate food and amusement provided, the Roman
populace was content to be ruled from above and to hail rival senators
as masters, according to the extent of their promises and success. A
failure to fulfil such promises, resulting in a lost campaign or a
dearth of corn, would throw the military tyrant of the moment from his
pedestal, but only to set up another in his place.
It was an easy transition from the rule of a corrupt Senate to that of
an autocrat. ‘Better one tyrant than many’ was the attitude of mind of
the average citizen towards Octavius Caesar, when under the title of
Augustus he gathered to himself the supreme command over army and state
and so became the first of the Emperors. Had he been a tactless man and
shouted his triumph to the Seven Hills he would probably have fallen a
victim to an assassin’s knife; but he skilfully disguised his authority
and posed as being only the first magistrate of the state.
Under his guiding hand the Senate was reformed, and its outward dignity
rather increased than shorn. Augustus could issue his own ‘edicts’ or
commands independently of the Senate’s consent; but he more frequently
preferred to lay his measures before it, and to let them reach the
public as a senatorial decree. In this he ran no risk, for the
senators, impressive figures in the eyes of the ordinary citizen, were
really puppets of his creation. At any minute he could cast them away.
His fellow magistrates were equally at his mercy, for in his hands
alone rested the supreme military command, the _imperium_, from which
the title of _imperator_, or ‘emperor’, was derived. At first he
accepted the office only for ten years, but at the end of that time,
resigning it to a submissive Senate, he received it again amid shouts
of popular joy. The tyranny of Augustus had proved a blessing.
Instead of corps of troops raised here and there in different
provinces by governors at war with one another, and thus divided in
their allegiance, there had begun to develop a disciplined army,
whose ‘legions’ were enrolled, paid, and dismissed in the name of the
all-powerful Caesar, and who therefore obeyed his commands rather than
those of their immediate captains.
The same system of centring all authority in one absolute ruler was
followed in the civil government. Governors of provinces, once petty
rulers, became merely servants of the state. Caesar sent them from
Rome: he appointed the officials under them: he paid them their
salaries: and to him they must give an account of their stewardship.
‘If thou let this man go thou art not Caesar’s friend.’ Such was the
threat that induced Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judea in the reign of
Tiberius, to condemn to death a man he knew to be innocent of crime.
This is but one of many stories that show the dread of the Emperor’s
name in Rome’s far-distant provinces. Governors, military commanders,
judges, tax-collectors, all the vast army of officials who bore the
responsibility of government on their shoulders, had an ultimate appeal
from their decisions to Caesar, and were exalted by his smile or
trembled at his frown.
It is not a modern notion of good government, this complete power
vested in one man, but Rome nearly two thousand years ago was content
that a master should rule her, so long as he would guarantee prosperity
and peace at home. This under the early Caesars was at least secured.
Two fleets patrolled the Mediterranean, but their vigilance was not
needed, save for an occasional brush with pirates. Naught but storms
disturbed her waters. The legions on the frontiers, whether in Syria or
Egypt, or along the Rhine and Danube, kept the barbarians at bay until
Romans ceased to think of war as a trade to which every man might one
day be called. It was a profession left to the few, the ‘many’ content
to pay the taxes required by the state and to devote themselves to a
civilian’s life.
To one would fall the management of a large estate, another would stand
for election to a government office, a third would become a lawyer or a
judge. Others would keep shops or taverns or work as hired labourers,
while below these again would be the class of slaves, whether prisoners
of war sold in the market-place or citizens deprived of their freedom
for crime or debt.
In Rome itself was a large population, living in uncomfortable
lodging-houses very like the slum tenements of a modern city. Some of
the inhabitants would be engaged in casual labour, some idle; but when
the Empire was at its zenith lavish gifts of corn from the government
stood between this otherwise destitute population and starvation. It
crowded the streets to see Caesar pass, threw flowers on his chariot,
and hailed him as Emperor and God, and in return he bestowed on it
food and amusements.
The huge amphitheatres of Rome and her provinces were built to satisfy
the public desire for pageantry and sport; and, because life was held
cheap, and for all his boasted civilization the Roman was often a
savage at heart, he would spend his holidays watching the despised sect
of Christians thrown to the lions, or hired gladiators fall in mortal
struggle. ‘We, about to die, salute thee.’ With these words the victims
of an emperor’s lust of bloodshed bent the knee before the imperial
throne, and at Caesar’s nod passed to slay or be slain. The emperor’s
sceptre did not bring mercy, but order, justice, and prosperity above
the ordinary standard of the age.
II
THE DECLINE OF ROME
The years of Rome’s greatness seemed to her sons an age of gold, but
even at the height of her prosperity there were traces of the evils
that brought about her downfall. An autocracy, that is, the rule of one
man, might be a perfect form of government were the autocrat not a man
but a god, thus combining superhuman goodness and understanding with
absolute power. Unfortunately, Roman emperors were representatives of
human nature in all its phases. Some, like Augustus, were great rulers;
others, though good men, incompetent in the management of public
affairs; whilst not a few led evil lives and regarded their office as a
means of gratifying their own desires.
The Emperor Nero (54-68), for instance, was cruel and profligate,
guilty of the murder of his half-brother, mother, and wife, and also of
the deaths of numberless senators and citizens whose wealth he coveted.
Because he was an absolute ruler his corrupt officials were able to
bribe and oppress his subjects as they wished until he was fortunately
assassinated. He was the last of his line, the famous House of Julius
to which Augustus had belonged, and the period that followed his death
was known as ‘the year of the four Emperors’, because during that time
no less than four rivals claimed and struggled for the coveted honour.
Nominally, the right of election lay with the Senate, but the final
champion, Vespasian (69-79), was not even a Roman nor an aristocrat,
but a soldier from the provinces. He had climbed the ladder of fame by
sheer endurance and his power of managing others, and his accession was
a triumph not for the Senate but the legions who had supported him and
who now learned their power. Henceforward it would be the soldier with
his naked sword who could make and unmake emperors, and especially the
Praetorian Guard whose right it was to maintain order in Rome.
The gradual recognition of this idea had a disastrous effect on the
government of the Empire. Too often the successful general of a
campaign on the frontier would remember Vespasian and become obsessed
with the thought that he also might be a Caesar. Led by ambition he
would hold out to his legions hopes of the rewards they would receive
were he crowned in Rome, and some sort of bargain would be struck,
lowering the tone of the army by corrupting its loyalty and making its
soldiers insolent and grasping.
The Senate attempted to deal with this difficulty of the succession by
passing a law that every Emperor should, during his lifetime, name his
successor, and that the latter should at once be hailed as Caesar, take
a secondary share in the government, and have his effigy printed on
coins. In this way he would become known to the whole Roman world, and
when the Emperor died would at once be acknowledged in his place. Thus
the Romans hoped to establish the theory that England expresses to-day
in the phrase ‘The King never dies’.
Though to a certain extent successful in their efforts to avoid
civil war, they failed to arrest other evils that were undermining
the prosperity of the government. One of these was the imperial
expenditure. It was only natural that the Emperor should assume a
magnificence and liberality in excess of his wealthiest subjects,
but in addition he found it necessary to buy the allegiance of the
Praetorian Guard and to keep the Roman populace satisfied in its
demands for free corn and expensive amusements.
The standard of luxury had grown, and Romans no longer admired, except
in books, the simple life of their forefathers. Instead the fashionable
ideal was that of the East they had enslaved, and the Emperor was
gradually shut off from the mass of his subjects by a host of court
officials who thronged his antechambers and exacted heavy bribes for
admission. In this unhealthy atmosphere suspicion and plots grew apace
like weeds, and money dripped through the imperial fingers as through
a sieve, now into the pockets of one favourite, now of another.
‘I have lost a day,’ was said by the Emperor Titus (A.D. 79-81),
whenever twenty-four hours had passed without his having made some
valuable present to those about him. His courtiers were ready to fall
on their knees and hail him for his liberality as ‘Darling of the human
race’; but he only reigned for two years. Had he lived to exhaust his
treasury it is probable that the greedy throng would have passed a
different verdict.
Extravagance is as catching as the plague, and the Roman aristocracy
did not fail to copy the imperial example. Just as the Emperor was
surrounded by a court, so every noble of importance had his following
of ‘clients’ who would wait submissively on his doorstep in the morning
and attend him when he walked abroad to the Forum or the Public Baths.
Some would be idle gentlemen, the penniless younger sons of noble
houses, others professional poets ready to write flattering verses
to order, others again famous gladiators whose long death-roll of
victims had made them as popular in Rome as a champion tennis-player
or footballer in England to-day. All were united in the one hope of
gaining something from their patron, perhaps a gift of money, or his
influence to secure them a coveted office, at the least an invitation
to a banquet or feast.
[Sidenote: The Roman Villa]
The class of senators to which most of these aristocrats belonged had
grown steadily richer as the years of empire increased, building up
immense landed properties something like the feudal estates of a later
date. These ‘villas’, as they were called, were miniature kingdoms
over which their owners had secured absolute power. Their affairs were
administered by an agent, probably a favoured slave who had gained his
freedom, assisted by a small army of officials. The principal subjects
of the landlord would be the small proprietors of farms who paid a rent
or did various services in return for their houses, while below these
again would be a larger number of actual slaves, employed as household
servants, bakers, shoe-makers, shepherds, &c.
The most striking thing about the Roman ‘villa’ was that it was
absolutely self-contained. All that was needed for the life of its
inhabitants, whether food or clothing, could be grown and manufactured
on the estate. The crimes that were committed there would be judged by
the master or his agent, and from the former’s decision there would
be little hope of appeal. Where the proprietor was harsh or selfish,
miserable indeed was the condition of those condemned to live on his
‘villa’.
The income of the average senator in the fourth century A.D. was
about £60,000, a very large sum when money was not as plentiful as
it is to-day. Aurelius Symmachus, a young senator typical of this
time, possessed no less than fifteen country seats, besides large
estates in different parts of Italy and three town houses in Rome or
her suburbs. It was his object to become Praetor of Rome, one of the
highest offices in the city; and in order to gain popularity he and
his father organized public games that cost them some £90,000. Lions
and crocodiles were fetched from Africa, dogs from Scotland, a special
breed of horses from Spain; while captured warriors were brought from
Germany, whom he destined to fight with one another in the arena.
The life of this young senator, according to his letters, was
controlled by purely selfish considerations. He did not want the
praetorship in order to be of use to the Empire, but merely that the
Empire might crown his career with a coveted honour. The same narrow
outlook and lack of public spirit was common to the majority of the
other men and women of his class, and so great was their blindness that
they could not even see that they were undermining Rome’s power, far
less avail to save her.
More fatal even than the corruption of the aristocracy was the decline
of the middle classes, usually called the backbone of a nation’s
greatness. ‘The name of Roman citizen,’ says a native of Marseilles in
the fifth century, ‘formerly so highly valued and even bought with a
great price, is now ... shunned, nay it is regarded with abomination.’
[Sidenote: Taxation under the Roman Empire]
This change from the days of St. Paul may be traced back long before
the time when Symmachus wasted his patrimony in bringing crocodiles
from Africa and horses from Spain. Its cause was the gradual but
constant increase of taxation required to fill the imperial treasury,
and the unequal scale according to which such taxation was levied.
Rome’s main source of revenue was an impost on land, and ought by
rights to have been exacted from the senatorial class that owned the
majority of the large estates. Unfortunately, it was left to the local
municipal councils, the _curias_, to collect this tax, and if it
fell short of the amount required from the locality by the imperial
treasury, the _curiales_, or class compelled as a duty to attend the
councils, were held responsible for the deficit.
Here was a problem for Roman citizens of medium wealth, members of
their _curia_ by birth, quite unable to divest themselves of this more
than doubtful honour, and conscious that their sons at eighteen must
also accept the dignity and put their shoulders to the burden. It was
one thing to assess the chief landlords of the neighbourhood at a
sum that matched their revenues, it was another to obtain the money
from them. In England to-day the man who refuses to pay his taxes is
punished; in imperial Rome it was the tax-collector.
Possessed of money and influence, it was not hard for a senator to
outwit mere _curiales_, either by obtaining an exemption from the
Emperor, or by bribing the occasional inspectors sent by the central
government to condone his refusal to pay. The imperial court set an
example of corruption, and those who could imitate this example did so.
The _curiales_, faced by ruin, sought relief in various ways. Those
with most wealth tried to raise themselves to senatorial rank: others,
unable to achieve this, yet conscious that they must obtain the money
required at all costs, demanded the heaviest taxes from those who could
not resist them, so that the phrase spread abroad, ‘So many _curiales_
just so many robbers.’
Less important members of the middle classes, unable to pay their share
of taxation or to force others to do so instead, tried in every way to
divest themselves of an honour grown intolerable, and the legislation
of the later Empire shows their efforts to escape out of the net in
which the government tried to hold them enmeshed. Some sought the
protection of the nearest landowners, and joined the dependants of
their ‘villas’: others, though forbidden by law, entered the army:
while others again sold themselves into slavery, since a master’s
self-interest would at least secure them food and clothing.
More desperate and adventurous spirits saw in brigandage a means both
of livelihood and of revenge. Joining themselves to bands of criminals
and escaped slaves, they infested the high roads, waylaid and robbed
travellers, and carried off their spoils to mountain fastnesses. Thus,
through fraud or violence, the ranks of the _curiales_ diminished, and
taxation fell with still heavier pressure on those who remained to
support its burdens.
This evil state of affairs was intensified by the widespread system of
slavery that, besides its bad influence on the character of both master
and slave, had other economic defects. When forced labour and free work
side by side, the former will nearly always drive the latter out of the
market, because it can be provided more cheaply. A master need not pay
his slaves wages; he can make them work as many hours as he chooses,
and lodge and feed them just as he pleases. From his point of view it
is more convenient to employ men who cannot leave his service however
much they dislike the work and conditions. For these reasons business
and trade tended to fall into the hands of wealthy slave-owners who
could undersell the employers of free labour, and as the number of
slaves increased the number of free workmen grew less.
In Rome, and the large towns also, free labourers who remained
were corrupted like men and women of a higher rank by the general
extravagance and love of pleasure. They did not agitate so much for a
reform of taxation or the abolition of slavery, but for larger supplies
of free corn and more frequent public games and spectacles.
An extravagant court, a corrupt government, slavery, class selfishness,
these were some of the principal causes of Rome’s decline; but in
recording them it must be remembered that the taint was only gradual,
like some corroding acid eating away good metal. Not all _curiales_,
in spite of popular assertions, were robbers, not every taxpayer on
the verge of starvation, not every dependant of a ‘villa’ cowed and
miserable. In many houses masters would free or help their slaves,
slaves be found ready to die for their masters. The canker lay in the
indifference of individual Roman citizens to evils that did not touch
them personally, in the refusal to cure with radical reform even those
that did, in the foolish confidence of the majority in the glory of the
past as a safeguard for the present. ‘Faith in Rome killed all faith in
a wider future for humanity.’
This lack of vision has ruined many an empire and kingdom, and Rome
only half-opened her eyes even when the despised barbarians who were to
expose her weakness were already knocking at the imperial gates.
* * * * *
‘Barbarian’, we have noticed, was the epithet used by the Roman of the
early Empire to describe and condemn the person not fortunate enough to
share his citizenship.
At this time the most formidable of the barbarians were the German
tribes who inhabited large stretches of forest and mountain land to the
north of the Danube and east of the Rhine--a tall, powerfully built
race for the most part with ruddy hair and fierce blue eyes, whose
business was warfare, and the occupation of their leisure hours the
chase or gambling.
[Sidenote: Tacitus’ ‘Germania’]
In his book, the _Germania_, Tacitus, a famous Roman historian of the
first century, describes these Teutons, and besides drawing attention
to their primitive customs and lack of culture, he made copy of their
simplicity to lash the vices of his own countrymen.
The Germans, he said, did not live in walled towns but in straggling
villages standing amid fields. These were either shared as common
pasturage or tilled in allotments, parcelled out annually amongst the
inhabitants. A number of villages would form a _pagus_ or canton, a
number of _pagi_ a _civitas_ or state. At the head of the state was
more usually a king, but sometimes only a number of important chiefs,
or dukes, who would be treated with the utmost reverence.
It was their place to preside over the small councils that dealt with
the less important affairs of the state, and to lay before the larger
meeting of the tribe measures that seemed to require public discussion.
Lying round their camp fire in the moonlight the younger men would
listen to the advice of the more experienced and clash their weapons as
a sign of approval when some suggestion pleased them.
At the councils were chosen the _principes_, or magistrates, whose
duty it was to administer justice in the various cantons and villages.
Tribal law was very primitive in comparison with the Roman code that
required highly trained lawyers to interpret it. Had a man betrayed
his fellow villagers to their enemies, let him be hung from the
nearest tree that all might learn the fitting reward of treachery.
Had he turned coward and fled from the battle, let him be buried in
a morass out of sight beneath a hurdle, that such shame should be
quickly forgotten. Had he in a rage or by accident slain or injured a
neighbour, let him pay a fine in compensation, half to his victim’s
nearest relations, half to the state. If the decision did not satisfy
those concerned, the family of the injured person could itself exact
vengeance, but since it would probably meet with opposition in so
doing, more bloodshed would almost certainly result, and a feud, like
the later Corsican _vendetta_, be handed down from generation to
generation.
Such a state of unrest had no horror for the German tribesman. From his
earliest days he looked forward to the moment when, receiving from his
kinsmen the gift of a shield and sword, he might leave boyhood behind
him and assume a man’s responsibilities and dangers. With his comrades
he would at once hasten to offer his services to some great leader of
his tribe, and as a member of the latter’s _comitatus_, or following,
go joyfully out to battle.
Like the Spartan of old he went with the cry ringing in his ears, ‘With
your shield or on your shield!’
‘It is a disgrace’, says Tacitus, ‘for the chief to be surpassed in
battle ... and it is an infamy and a reproach for life to have survived
the chief and returned from the field.’
This statement explains the reckless daring with which the scattered
groups of Germans would fling themselves time after time against
the disciplined Roman phalanxes. The women shared the hardihood of
the race, bringing and receiving as wedding-gifts not ornaments or
beautiful clothes but a warrior’s horse, a lance, or sword.
‘Lest a woman should think herself to stand apart from aspirations
after noble deeds and from the perils of war, she is reminded by the
ceremony that inaugurates marriage that she is her husband’s partner
in toil and danger, destined to suffer and die with him alike both in
peace and war.’
Chaste, industrious, devoted to the interests of husband and children,
yet so patriotic that, watching the battle, she would urge them rather
to perish than retreat, the barbarian woman struck Tacitus as a living
reproach to the many faithless, idle, pleasure-seeking wives and
mothers of Rome in his own day. The German tribes might be uncouth,
their armies without discipline, even their nobles ignorant of culture,
but they were brave, hospitable, and loyal. Above all they held a
distinction between right and wrong: they did not ‘laugh at vice’.
It is probable that in the days of Tacitus his views were received
throughout the Roman Empire with an amused shrug of the shoulders, for
to many the Germans were merely good fighters, whose giant build added
considerably to the glory of a triumphal procession, when they walked
sullenly in their shackles behind the Victor’s car. With the passing of
the years into centuries, however, intercourse changed this attitude,
and much of the contempt on one side and hatred on the other vanished.
Germans captured in childhood were brought up in Roman households and
grew invaluable to their masters: numbers were freed and remained as
citizens in the land of their captivity. The tribes along the borders
became more civilized: they exchanged raw produce or furs in the
nearest Roman markets for luxuries and comforts, and as their hatred of
Rome disappeared admiration took its place. Something of the greatness
of the Empire touched their imagination: they realized for the first
time the possibilities of peace under an ordered government; and whole
tribes offered their allegiance to a power that knew not only how to
conquer but to rule.
Emperors, nothing loath, gathered these new forces under their
standards as auxiliaries or allies (_foederati_), and Franks from
Flanders, at the imperial bidding, drove back fellow barbarians from
the left bank of the Rhine; while fair-haired Alemanni and Saxons fell
in Caesar’s service on the plains of Mesopotamia or on the arid sands
of Africa. From auxiliary forces to the ranks of the regular army was
an easy stage, the more so as the Roman legions were every year in
greater need of recruits as the boundaries of the Empire spread.
It is at first sight surprising to find that the military profession
was unpopular when we recall that it rested in the hands of the legions
to make or dispossess their rulers; but such opportunities of acquiring
bribes and plunder did not often fall to the lot of the ordinary
soldier, while the disadvantages of his career were many.
A very small proportion of the army was kept in the large towns of the
south, save in Rome that had its own Praetorian Guards: the majority
of the legions defended the Rhine and Danube frontiers, or still
worse were quartered in cold and foggy Britain, shut up in fortress
outposts like York or Chester. English regiments to-day think little of
service in far-distant countries like Egypt or India, indeed men are
often glad to have the experience of seeing other lands; but the Roman
soldier as he said farewell to his Italian village knew in his heart
that it had practically passed out of his life. The shortest period of
military service was sixteen years, the longest twenty-five; and when
we remember that, owing to the slow and difficult means of transport,
leave was impossible we see the Roman legionary was little more than
the serf of his government, bound to spend all the best years of his
life defending less warlike countrymen.
Moving with his family from outpost to outpost, the memories of his
old home would grow blurred, and the legion to which he belonged would
occupy the chief place in his thoughts. As he grew older his sons,
bred in the atmosphere of war, would enlist in their turn, and so the
military profession would tend to become a caste, handed down from
father to son.
The soldier could have little sympathy with fellow citizens whose
interests he did not share, but would despise them because they did not
know how to use arms. The civilians, on their side, would think the
soldier rough and ignorant, and forget how much they were dependent
on his protection for their trade and pleasure. Instead of trying to
bridge this gulf, the government, in their terror of losing taxpayers,
widened it by refusing to let _curiales_ enlist. At the same time they
filled up the gaps in the legions with corps of Franks, Germans, or
Goths; because they were good fighting material, and others of their
tribe had proved brave and loyal.
In the same way, when land in Italy fell out of cultivation, the
Emperor would send numbers of barbarians as _coloni_ or settlers to
till the fields and build themselves homes. At first they might be
looked on with suspicion by their neighbours, but gradually they would
intermarry and their sons adopt Roman habits, until in time their
descendants would sit in municipal councils, and even rise to become
Praetors or Consuls.
[Sidenote: Barbarian Invasions]
When it is said that the Roman Empire fell because of the inroads of
barbarians, the impression sometimes left on people’s minds is that
hordes of uncivilized tribes, filled with contempt for Rome’s luxury
and corruption, suddenly swept across the Alps in the fifth century,
laying waste the whole of North Italy. This is far from the truth.
The peaceful invasion of the Empire by barbarians, whether as slaves,
traders, soldiers, or colonists, was a continuous movement from early
imperial days. There is no doubt that, as it increased, it weakened
the Roman power of resistance to the actually hostile raids along the
frontiers that began in the second and third centuries and culminated
in the collapse of the imperial government in the West in the fifth.
An army partly composed of half-civilized barbarian troops could not
prove so trustworthy as the well-disciplined and seasoned Romans of
an earlier age; for the foreign element was liable in some gust of
passion to join forces with those of its own blood against its oath of
allegiance.
As to the main cause of the raids, it was rather love of Rome’s wealth
than a sturdy contempt of luxury that led these barbarians to assault
the dreaded legions. Had it been mere love of fighting, the Alemanni
would as soon have slain their Saxon neighbours as the imperial troops;
but nowhere save in Spain, or southern Gaul, or on the plains of Italy
could they hope to find opulent cities or herds of cattle. Plunder was
their earliest rallying cry; but in the third century the pressure of
other tribes on their flank forced them to redouble in self-defence
efforts begun for very different reasons.
This movement of the barbarians has been called ‘the Wandering of
the Nations’. Gradually but surely, like a stream released from some
mountain cavern, Goths from the North and Huns and Vandals from the
East descended in irresistible numbers on southern Germany, driving the
tribes who were already in possession there up against the barriers,
first of the Danube and then of the Alps and Rhine.
Italy and Gaul ceased to be merely a paradise for looters, but were
sought by barbarians, who had learned something of Rome’s civilization,
as a refuge from other barbarians who trod women and children
underfoot, leaving a track wherever their cruel hordes passed red with
blood and fire. With their coming, Europe passed from the brightness of
Rome into the ‘Dark Ages’.
III
THE DAWN OF CHRISTIANITY
When Augustus became Emperor of Rome, Jesus Christ was not yet born.
With the exception of the Jews, who believed in the one Almighty
‘Jehovah’, most of the races within the boundaries of the Empire
worshipped a number of gods; and these, according to popular tales,
were no better than the men and women who burned incense at their
altars, but differed from them only in being immortal, and because they
could yield to their passions and desires with greater success.
The Roman god ‘Juppiter’, who was the same as the Greek ‘Zeus’, was
often described as ‘King of gods and men’; but far from proving
himself an impartial judge and ruler, the legends in which he appears
show him cruel, faithless, and revengeful. ‘Juno’, the Greek ‘Hera’,
‘Queen of Heaven’, was jealous and implacable in her wrath, as the
‘much-enduring’ hero, Ulysses, found when time after time her spite
drove him from his homeward course from Troy. ‘Mercury’, the messenger
of the gods, was merely a cunning thief.
Most of the thoughtful Greeks and Romans, it is true, came to regard
the old mythology as a series of tales invented by their primitive
ancestors to explain mysterious facts of nature like fire, thunder,
earthquakes. Because, however, this form of worship had played so great
a part in national history, patriotism dictated that it should not be
forgotten entirely; and therefore emperors were raised to the number of
the gods; and citizens of Rome, whether they believed in their hearts
or no, continued to burn incense before the altars of Juppiter, Juno,
or Augustus in token of their loyalty to the Empire.
The human race has found it almost impossible to believe in nothing,
for man is always seeking theories to explain his higher nature and
why it is he recognizes so early the difference between right and
wrong. Far back in the third and fourth centuries before Christ, Greek
philosophers had discussed the problem of the human soul, and some of
them had laid down rules for leading the best life possible.
Epicurus taught that since our present life is the only one, man must
make it his object to gain the greatest amount of pleasure that he
can. Of course this doctrine gave an opening to people who wished to
live only for themselves; but Epicurus himself had been simple, almost
ascetic in his habits, and had clearly stated that although pleasure
was his object, yet ‘we can not live pleasantly without living wisely,
nobly, and righteously’. The self-indulgent man will defeat his own
ends by ruining his health and character until he closes his days not
in pleasure but in misery.
Another Greek philosopher was Zeno, whose followers were called
‘Stoics’ from the _stoa_ or porch of the house in Athens in which
he taught his first disciples. Zeno believed that man’s fortune was
settled by destiny, and that he could only find true happiness by
hardening himself until he grew indifferent to his fate. Death, pain,
loss of friends, defeated ambitions, all these the Stoic must face
without yielding to fear, grief, or passion. Brutus, the leader of the
conspirators who slew Julius Caesar, was a Stoic, and Shakespeare in
his tragedy shows the self-control that Brutus exerted when he learned
that his wife Portia whom he loved had killed herself.
The teaching of Epicurus and Zeno did something during the Roman Empire
to provide ideals after which men could strive, but neither could hold
out hopes of a happiness without end or blemish. The ‘Hades’ of the old
mythology was no heaven but a world of shades beyond the river Styx,
gloomy alike for good and bad. At the gates stood the three-headed
monster Cerberus, ready to prevent souls from escaping once more to
light and sunshine.
Paganism was thus a sad religion for all who thought of the future:
and this is one of the reasons why the tidings of Christianity were
received so joyfully. When St. Paul went to Athens he found an altar
set up to ‘the unknown God’, showing that men and women were out of
sympathy with their old beliefs and seeking an answer to their doubts
and questions. He tried to tell the Greeks that the Christ he preached
was the God they sought; but those who heard him ridiculed the idea
that a Jewish peasant who had suffered the shameful death of the cross
could possibly be divine.
[Sidenote: Early Christianity]
The earliest followers of Christianity were not as a rule cultured
people like the Athenians, but those who were poor and ignorant. To
them Christ’s message was one of brotherhood and love overriding
all differences between classes and nations. Yet it did not merely
attract because it promised immortality and happiness; it also set up
a definite standard of right and wrong. The Jewish religion had laid
down the Ten Commandments as the rule of life, but the Jews had never
tried to persuade other nations to obey them--rather they had jealously
guarded their beliefs from the Gentiles. The Christians on the other
hand had received the direct command ‘to go into all the world and
preach the Gospel to every creature’; and even the slave, when he felt
within himself the certainty of his new faith, would be sure to talk
about it to others in his household. In time the strange story would
reach the ears of his master and mistress, and they would begin to
wonder if what this fellow believed so earnestly could possibly be true.
In a brutal age, when the world was largely ruled by physical force,
Christianity made a special appeal to women and to the higher type
of men who hated violence. One argument in its favour amongst the
observant was the life led by the early Christians--their gentleness,
their meekness, and their constancy. It is one thing to suffer an
insult through cowardice, quite another to bear it patiently and
yet be brave enough to face torture and death rather than surrender
convictions. Christian martyrs taught the world that their faith had
nothing in it mean or spiritless.
Perhaps it may seem strange that men and women whose conduct was so
quiet and inoffensive should meet with persecution at all. Christ
had told His disciples to ‘render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar’s’, and the strength of Christianity lay not in rebellion to the
civil government but in submission. This is true, yet the Christian who
paid his taxes and took care to avoid breaking the laws of his province
would find it hard all the same to live at peace with pagan fellow
citizens. Like the Jew he could not pretend to worship gods whom he
considered idols: he could not offer incense at the altars of Juppiter
and Augustus: he could not go to a pagan feast and pour out a libation
of wine to some deity, nor hang laurel branches sacred to the nymph
Daphne over his door on occasions of public rejoicing.
Such neglect of ordinary customs made him an object of suspicion and
dislike amongst neighbours who did not share his faith. A hint was
given here and there by mischief makers, and confirmed with nods and
whisperings, that his quietness was only a cloak for evil practices
in secret; and this grew into a rumour throughout the Empire that the
murder of newborn babies was part of the Christian rites.
Had the Christians proved more pliant the imperial government
might have cleared their name from such imputations and given them
protection, but it also distrusted their refusal to share in public
worship. Lax themselves, the emperors were ready to permit the god of
the Jews or Christians a place amongst their own deities; and they
could not understand the attitude of mind that objected to a like
toleration of Juppiter or Juno. The commandment ‘Thou shalt have none
other gods but me’ found no place in their faith, and they therefore
accused the Christians and Jews of want of patriotism, and used them as
scapegoats for the popular fury when occasion required.
In the reign of Nero a tremendous fire broke out in Rome that reduced
more than half the city to ruins. The Emperor, who was already
unpopular because of his cruelty and extravagance, fearing that he
would be held responsible for the calamity, declared hastily that he
had evidence that the fire was planned by Christians; and so the first
serious persecution of the new faith began.
[Sidenote: Persecution of the Christians]
Here is part of an account given by Tacitus, whose history of the
German tribes we have already noticed:
‘He, Nero, inflicted the most exquisite tortures on those men who under
the vulgar appellation of Christians were already branded with deserved
infamy.... They died in torments, and their torments were embittered
by insult and derision. Some were nailed on crosses; others sewn up
in the skins of wild beasts and exposed to the fury of dogs; others
again, smeared over with combustible materials, were used as torches to
illuminate the darkness of the night. The gardens of Nero were destined
for this melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied with a horse race
and honoured with the presence of the Emperor.’
Tacitus was himself a pagan and hostile to the Christians, yet
he admits that this cruelty aroused sympathy. Nevertheless the
persecutions continued under different emperors, some of them, unlike
Nero, wise rulers and good men.
‘These people’, wrote the Spanish Emperor Trajan (98-117), referring to
the Christians, ‘should not be searched for, but if they are informed
against and convicted they should be punished.’
Marcus Aurelius (161-180) declared that those who acknowledged that
they were Christians should be beaten to death; and during his reign
men and women were tortured and killed on account of their faith in
every part of the Empire. The test required by the magistrates was
nearly always the same, that the accused must offer wine and incense
before the statue of the Emperor and revile the name of Christ.
The motive that inspired these later emperors was not Nero’s innate
love of cruelty or desire of finding a scapegoat, but genuine fear of a
sect that grew steadily in numbers and wealth, and that threatened to
interfere with the ordinary worship of the temples, so bound up with
the national life.
In the reign of Trajan the Governor of Bithynia wrote to the Emperor
complaining that on account of the spread of Christian teaching little
money was now spent in buying sacrificial beasts. ‘Nor’, he added,
‘are cities alone permeated by the contagion of this superstition, but
villages and country parts as well.’
Emperors and magistrates were at first confident that, if only they
were severe enough in their punishments, the new religion could be
crushed out of existence. Instead it was the imperial government that
collapsed while Christianity conquered Europe.
Very early in the history of Christianity the Apostles had found it
necessary to introduce some form of government into the Church; and
later, as the faith spread from country to country, there arose in each
province men who from their goodness, influence, or learning, were
chosen by their fellow Christians to control the religious affairs of
the neighbourhood. These were called ‘Episcopi’, or bishops, from the
Latin word _Episcopus_, ‘an overseer’. Tradition claims that Peter was
the first bishop of the Church in Rome, and that during the reign of
Nero he was crucified for loyalty to the Christ he had formerly denied.
To help the bishops a number of ‘presbyters’ or ‘priests’ were
appointed, and below these again ‘deacons’ who should undertake
the less responsible work. The first deacons had been employed in
distributing the alms of the wealthier members of the congregation
amongst the poor; and though in early days the sums received were not
large, yet as men of every rank accepted Christianity regardless of
scorn or danger and made offerings of their goods, the revenues of the
Church began to grow. The bishops also became persons of importance in
the world around them.
In time emperors and magistrates whose predecessors had believed in
persecution came to recognize that it was not an advantage to the
government, even a danger, and instead they began to consult and honour
the men who were so much trusted by their fellow citizens. At last, in
the fourth century, there succeeded to the throne an emperor who looked
on Christianity not with hatred or dread, but with friendly eyes as
a more valuable ally than the paganism of his fathers. This was the
Emperor Constantine the Great.
IV
CONSTANTINE THE GREAT
Constantine the Great was born at a time when the Empire was divided
up between different emperors. His father, Constantius Chlorus, ruled
over Spain, Gaul, and Britain; and when he died at York in A.D. 306,
Constantine his eldest son succeeded to the government of these
provinces. The new Emperor, who was thirty-two years old, had been bred
in the school of war. He was handsome, brave, and capable, and knew
how to make himself popular with the legions under his command without
losing his dignity or letting them become undisciplined.
When he had reigned a few years he quarrelled with his brother-in-law
Maxentius who was Emperor at Rome, and determined to cross the Alps and
drive him from his throne. The task was difficult; for the Roman army,
consisting of picked Praetorian Guards, and regiments of Sicilians,
Moors, and Carthaginians, was quite four times as large as the invading
forces. Yet Constantine, once he had made his decision, did not
hesitate. He knew his rival had little military experience, and that
the corruption and luxury of the Roman court had not increased either
his energy or valour.
It is said also that Constantine believed that the God of the
Christians was on his side, for as he prepared for a battle on the
plains of Italy against vastly superior forces, he saw before him in
the sky a shining cross and underneath the words ‘By this conquer!’ At
once he gave orders that his legions should place on their shields the
sign of the cross, and with this same sign as his banner he advanced
to the attack. It was completely successful, the Roman army fled in
confusion, Maxentius was slain, and Constantine entered the capital
almost unopposed. The arch in Rome that bears his name celebrates this
triumph.
Constantine was now Emperor of the whole of Western Europe, and some
years later, after a furious struggle with Licinius the Emperor of the
East, he succeeded in uniting all the provinces of the Empire under his
rule.
[Illustration: The ROMAN EMPIRE
in the time of Constantine the Great]
This was a joyful day for Christians, for though Constantine was not
actually baptized until just before his death, yet, throughout his
reign, he showed his sympathy with the Christian religion and did all
in his power to help those who professed it. He used his influence
to prevent gladiatorial shows, abolished the horrible punishment of
crucifixion, and made it easier than ever before for slaves to free
themselves. When he could, he avoided pagan rites, though as Emperor he
still retained the office of _Pontifex Maximus_, or ‘High Priest’, and
attended services in the temples.
His mother, the Empress Helena, to whom he was devoted, was a
Christian; and one of the old legends describes her pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, and how she found and brought back with her some wood from
the cross on which Christ had been crucified.
[Sidenote: Growth of Christianity]
Soon after Constantine conquered Rome he published the famous ‘Edict
of Milan’ that allowed liberty of worship to all inhabitants of the
Empire, whether pagans, Jews, or Christians. The latter were no longer
to be treated as criminals but as citizens with full civil rights,
while the places of worship and lands that had been taken from them
were to be restored.
Later, as Constantine’s interest in the Christians deepened, he
departed from this impartial attitude and showed them special favours,
confiscating some of the treasures of the temples and giving them to
the Church, as well as handing over to it sums of money out of the
public revenues. He also tried to free the clergy from taxation, and
allowed bishops to interfere with the civil law courts.
Many of these measures were unwise. For one thing, Christianity when it
was persecuted or placed on a level with other religions only attracted
those who really believed in Christ’s teaching. When it received
material advantages, on the other hand, the ambitious at once saw a way
to royal favour and their own success by professing the new beliefs. A
false element was thus introduced into the Church.
For another thing, few even of the sincere Christians could be trusted
not to abuse their privileges. The fourth century did not understand
toleration; and those who had suffered persecution were quite ready
as a rule to use compulsion in their turn towards men and women who
disagreed with them, whether pagans or those of their own faith. Quite
early in its history the Church was torn by disputes, since much of its
teaching had been handed down by ‘tradition’, or word of mouth, and
this led to disagreement as to what Christ had really said or meant by
many of his words. At length the Church decided that it would gather
the principal doctrines of the ‘Catholic’ or ‘universal’ faith into a
form of belief that men could learn and recite. Thus the ‘Apostles’
Creed’ came into existence.
In spite of this definition of the faith controversy continued. At the
beginning of the fourth century a dispute as to the exact relationship
of God the Father to God the Son in the doctrine of the Trinity broke
out between Arius, a presbyter of the Church in Egypt, and the Bishop
of Alexandria, the latter declaring that Arius had denied the divinity
of Christ. Partisans defended either side, and the quarrel grew so
embittered that an appeal was made to the Emperor to give his decision.
Constantine was reluctant to interfere. ‘They demand my judgement,’
he said, ‘who myself expect the judgement of Christ. What audacity of
madness!’ When he found, however, that some steps must be taken if
there was to be any order in the Church at all, he summoned a Council
to meet at Nicea and consider the question, and thither came bishops
and clergy from all parts of the Christian world. The meetings were
prolonged and stormy; but the eloquence of a young Egyptian deacon
called Athanasius decided the case against Arius; and the latter,
refusing to submit to the decrees of the Council, was proclaimed a
heretic, or outlaw. The orthodox Catholics, that is, the majority of
bishops who were present, then drew up a new creed to express their
exact views, and this took its name from the Council, and was called
the ‘Nicene Creed’. In a revised form it is still recited in all the
Catholic churches of Christendom.
Arius, though defeated at the Council, succeeded in winning the Emperor
over to his views, and Constantine tried to persuade the Catholics
to receive him back into the Church. When this suggestion met with
refusal the Emperor, who now believed that he had a right to settle
ecclesiastical matters, was so angry that he tried to install Arius in
one of the churches of his new city of Constantinople by force of arms.
The orthodox bishop promptly closed and barred the gates, and riots
ensued that were only ended by the death of Arius himself.
The schism, however, continued, and it may be claimed that its
bitterness had a considerable influence in deciding the future of
Europe by raising barriers between races that might otherwise have
become friends. Arianism, like orthodox Catholicism, was full of the
missionary spirit, and from its priests the half-civilized tribes of
Goths and Vandals learned the new faith. A Gothic bishop was present
at the Council of Nicea, while another, Ulfilas, who had studied Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew at Constantinople, afterwards translated a great part
of the Bible into his own tongue. This is the first-known missionary
Bible; and, though the original has disappeared, a copy made about a
century later is in a museum at Upsala, written in Gothic characters in
silver and gold on purple vellum.
The Goths regarded their Bible with deep awe, and carried it with them
on their wanderings, consulting it before they went into battle. Like
the Vandals, who had also been converted by the Arians, they considered
themselves true Christians; but the orthodox Catholics disliked them as
heretics almost more than the pagans.
[Sidenote: Early Monasticism]
Constantine himself imbibed the spirit of fanaticism; and when he
became the champion of Arius, persecuted Athanasius, who had been made
Bishop of Alexandria, and compelled him to go into exile. Athanasius
went to Rome, where it is said that he was at first ridiculed because
he was accompanied by two Egyptian monks in hoods and cowls. Western
Europe had heard little as yet of monasticism, though the Eastern
Church had adopted it for some time.
To the early Christians with their high ideals the world around them
seemed a wicked place, in which it was difficult for them to lead a
Christ-like life. They thought that by withdrawing from an atmosphere
of brutality and material pleasure, and by giving themselves up to
fasting and prayer, they would be able more easily to fix their minds
on God and so fit themselves for Heaven. Sometimes they would go to
desert places and live as hermits in caves, perhaps without talking to
a living person for months or even years. Others who could not face
such loneliness would join a community of monks, dwelling together
under special rules of discipline. At fixed hours of the day and night
they would recite the services of the Church, and in between whiles
they would work or pray and study the Scriptures.
Many of the austerities they practised sound to us absurd, for it is
hard to feel in sympathy with a Simon Stylites who spent the best days
of his manhood crouched on a high pillar at the mercy of sun, wind,
and rain, until his limbs stiffened and withered away. Yet the hermits
and monks were an arresting witness to Christianity in an age that had
not fully realized what Christ’s teaching meant. ‘He that will serve
me let him take up his cross and follow me.’ This ideal of sacrifice
was brought home for the first time to hundreds of thoughtless men
and women when they saw some one whom they knew give up his worldly
prospects and the joy of a home and children in order to lead a life of
perpetual discomfort until death should come to him as a blessing not
a curse. The majority of the leading clergy in the early Church, the
‘Fathers of the Church’, as they are usually called, were monks.
[Sidenote: The Fathers of the Church]
Two of them, St. Gregory and St. Basil, studied together at the
University of Athens in the fourth century. St. Basil founded a
community of monks in Asia Minor, where his reputation for holiness
soon drew together a large number of disciples. He did not try to
win them by fair words or the promise of ease and comfort, for his
monks were allowed little to eat and spent their days in prayer and
manual labour of the hardest kind. The Arians, who hated St. Basil
as an orthodox Catholic, once threatened that they would confiscate
his belongings, torture him, and put him to death. ‘My sole wealth is
a ragged cloak and some books,’ replied the hermit calmly. ‘My days
on earth are but a pilgrimage, and my body is so feeble that it will
expire at the first torment. Death will be a relief.’ It came when
he was only fifty, but not at the hands of his enemies, for he died
exhausted by the penances and privations of his customary life. He left
many letters and theological works that throw light on the religious
questions of his day.
St. Gregory had lived for a time with St. Basil and his monks in Asia
Minor but was not strong enough to submit to the same harsh discipline.
Indeed he declared that but for the kindness of St. Basil’s mother he
would have died of starvation. Afterwards he returned home and was
ordained a priest. He was a gentler type of man than St. Basil, a poet
of no little merit and an eloquent preacher.
Yet another of the Catholic ‘Fathers of the Church’ was St. Ambrose,
Bishop of Milan. He was elected to this see against his own will by
the people of the town, who respected him because he was strong and
fearless. St. Ambrose did not hesitate to use the wealth of the Church,
even melting down some of the altar-vessels, to ransom Christians who
had been carried away captive during one of the barbarian invasions.
‘The Church,’ he declared, ‘possesses gold and silver not to hoard, but
to spend on the welfare and happiness of men.’
The impetuosity and vigour that made him a born leader he also employed
to express his intolerance of those who disagreed with him. When
some Christians in Milan burned a Jewish synagogue and the Emperor
Theodosius ordered them to rebuild it, St. Ambrose advised them not to
do so. ‘I myself,’ he said, ‘would have burned the synagogue.... What
has been done is but a trifling retaliation for acts of plunder and
destruction committed by Jews and heretics against the Catholics.’ This
was not the spirit of the Founder of Christianity: it was too often the
spirit of the mediaeval Church.
A man of even greater influence than St. Ambrose of Milan was St.
Jerome, a monk of the fifth century, who is chiefly remembered to-day
because of his Latin translation of the Bible, ‘the Vulgate’ as it is
called, that is still the recognized edition of the Roman Catholic
Church.
St. Jerome was born in Italy, but in his extreme asceticism he followed
the practices of the Eastern rather than the Western Church. As a youth
he had led a wild life, but, suddenly repenting, he disappeared to live
as a hermit in the desert, starving and mortifying himself. So strongly
did he believe that this was the only road to Heaven that when he went
to Rome he preached continually in favour of celibacy, urging men and
women not to marry, as if marriage had been a sin. He was afraid that
if they became happy and contented in their home life they would forget
God.
Many of the leading families, and especially their women, came under
St. Jerome’s influence, but such exaggerated views could never be
really popular and, instead of being chosen Bishop of Rome as he had
expected, he was forced, by the many enemies he had aroused, to leave
the town, and returned once more to the desert. Of his sincerity there
can be little doubt, but his outlook on life was warped because, like
so many good and earnest contemporary Christians, he believed that
human nature and this earth were entirely bad and that only by the
suppression of any enjoyment in them could the soul obtain salvation.
Several centuries were to pass before St. Francis of Assisi taught his
fellow men the beauty and value of what is human.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Foundation of Constantinople]
Constantinople (the _Polis_ or city of Constantine) had been a Greek
colony under the name of Byzantium long before Rome existed. Built on
the headland of the Golden Horn, its walls were lapped by an inland sea
whose depth and smoothness made a splendid harbour from the rougher
waters of the Mediterranean. Almost impregnable in its fortifications,
it frowned on Asia across the narrow straits of the Hellespont and
completely commanded the entrance to the Black Sea, with its rich
ports, markets then as now for the corn and grain of southern Russia.
Constantine, when he decided that Byzantium should be his capital,
was well aware of these advantages. He had been born in the Balkans,
had spent a great part of his life as a soldier in Asia, had assumed
the imperial crown in Britain, and ruled Gaul for his first kingdom.
This medley of experience left little place in his heart for Italy,
and the name of Rome had no power to stir his blood. Rome to him was
a corrupt town in one of the outlying limbs of his Empire: it had no
harbour nor special military value on land, while the Alps were a
barrier preventing news from passing quickly to and fro. Byzantium, on
the other hand, near the mouth of the Danube, was easy of access and
yet could be rendered almost impregnable to his foes. It had the great
military advantage also of serving as an admirable head-quarters for
keeping watch over the northern frontier and an outlook towards the
East.
The walls of the original town could not embrace the Emperor’s
ambitions, and he himself, wand in hand, designed the boundaries. His
court, following him, gasped with dismay. ‘It is enough,’ they urged;
‘no imperial city was ever so great before.’ ‘I shall go on,’ replied
Constantine, ‘until he, the invisible guide who marches before me,
thinks fit to stop.’
Not until the seven hills outside Byzantium were enclosed within
his circuit was the Emperor satisfied; and then the great work of
building began, and the white marble of Forum and Baths, of Palaces
and Colonnades, arose to adorn the Constantinople that has ever since
this time played so large a part in the history of Europe. In the new
market-place, just beyond the original walls, was placed the ‘Golden
Milestone’, a marble column within a small temple, bearing the proud
inscription that here was the ‘central point of the world’. Inside were
statues of Constantine and Queen Helena his mother, while Rome herself
and the cities of Greece were robbed of their masterpieces of sculpture
to embellish the buildings of the new capital.
In May A.D. 330 Constantinople was solemnly consecrated, and the
Empire kept high festival in honour of an event that few of the
revellers recognized would alter the whole course of her destiny. The
new capital, through her splendid strategic position, was to preserve
the imperial throne with one short lapse for more than a thousand
years, but this advantage was obtained at the expense of Rome, and the
complete severance of the interests of the Empire in the East and West.
The Romans had never loved the Greeks, even when they most admired
their art and subtle intellect, and now in the fourth century this
persistent distrust was intensified when Greece usurped the glory that
had been her conqueror’s. In the absence of an Emperor and of the many
high officials who had gone to swell the triumph of his new court,
Rome set up another idol. The symbols of material glory might vanish,
but the Christian faith had supplied men with fresh ideals through the
teaching of the Apostles and their representatives, the Bishops.
Roman bishops claimed that the gift of grace they received at their
consecration had been passed down to them by the successive laying-on
of hands from St. Peter himself. ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock I
will build my Church ... and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall
be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall
be loosed in heaven.’ These words of Christ seemed to grant to his
apostle complete authority over the souls of men; and Christians at
Rome began to ask if the power of St. Peter to ‘bind and loose’ had not
been handed down to his successors? If so _Il Papa_, that is, ‘their
father’, the Pope, was undoubtedly the first bishop in Christendom, for
on no other apostle had Christ bestowed a like authority.
It must not be imagined that this reasoning came like a flash of
inspiration or was willingly received by all Christians. Many
generations of Popes, from the days of St. Peter onwards, were regarded
merely as Bishops of Rome, that is, as ‘overseers’ of the Church in
the chief city of the Empire. They were loved and esteemed by their
flock not on account of special divine authority but because they
stood neither for self-interest nor for faction, but for principles of
justice, mercy, and brotherhood.
Had a Roman been robbed by a fellow citizen, were there a plague or
famine, was the city threatened by enemies without her walls, it was
to her bishop Rome turned, demanding help and protection. Afterwards
it was only natural that the one power that could and did afford these
things when Emperors and Senators were far away should in time take the
Emperor’s place, and that the Pope should appear to Rome, and gradually
as we shall see to Western Europe, God’s very viceroy on earth.
To the Church in Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor he never assumed this
halo of glory. Byzantium, the great Constantinople, was the pivot
on which the eastern world turned, and the Bishop of Rome with his
tradition of St. Peter made no authoritative appeal. Thus far back in
the fourth century the cleft had already opened between the Churches of
the East and West that was to widen into a veritable chasm.
Constantine ‘the Great’ died in 337, and if greatness be measured by
achievement he well deserves his title. Where men of higher genius
and originality had failed he had succeeded, beating down with calm
perseverance every object that threatened his ambitions, until at
last the Christian ruler of a united empire, feared and respected by
subjects and enemies alike, he passed to his rest.
V
THE INVASIONS OF THE BARBARIANS
Instead of endeavouring to maintain a united empire, Constantine in
his will divided up his dominions between three sons and two nephews.
Before thirty years were over, however, a series of murders and civil
wars had exterminated his family; and two brothers, Valentian and
Valens, men of humble birth but capable soldiers, were elected as joint
emperors. Valens ruled at Constantinople, his brother at Milan; and it
was during this reign that the Empire received one of the worst blows
that had ever befallen her.
We have already mentioned the Goths, a race of barbarians
half-civilized by Roman influence and converted to Christianity by
followers of Arius. One of their tribes, the Visigoths, had settled
in large numbers in the country to the north of the Danube. On the
whole their relations with the Empire were friendly, and it was
hardly their fault that the peace was finally broken, but rather of
a strange Tartar race the Huns, that, massing in the plains of Asia,
had suddenly swept over Europe. Here is a description given of the
Huns by a Gothic writer: ‘Men with faces that can scarcely be called
faces, rather shapeless black collops of flesh with tiny points instead
of eyes: little in stature but lithe and active, skilful in riding,
broad-shouldered, hiding under a barely human form the ferocity of a
wild beast.’
Tradition says that these monsters, mounted on their shaggy ponies,
rode women and children under foot and feasted on human flesh. Whether
this be true or no, their name became a terror to the civilized world,
and after a few encounters with them the Visigoths crowded on the edge
of the Danube and implored the Emperor to allow them to shelter behind
the line of Roman forts.
Valens, to whom the petition was made, hesitated. There was obvious
danger to his dominions in this sudden influx of a whole tribe; but on
the other hand fear might madden the Visigoths into trying to cross
even if he refused, and if so could he withstand them?
‘All the multitude that had escaped from the murderous savagery of the
Huns,’ says a writer of the day, ‘no less than 200,000 fighting men
besides women and old men and children, were there on the river bank,
stretching out their hands with loud lamentations ... and promising
that they would ever faithfully adhere to the imperial alliance, if
only the boon was granted them.’
Reluctantly Valens yielded; and soon the province of Dacia was crowded
with refugees; but here the real trouble began. Food must be found
for this multitude, and it was evident that the local crops would not
suffice. In vain the Emperor commanded that corn should be imported:
the greed of officials who were responsible for carrying out this order
led them to hold up large consignments, and to sell what little they
allowed to pass at wholly extortionate rates. Their unwelcome guests,
half-starved and fleeced of the small savings they had been able to
bring with them, complained, plotted, and broke at last into open
rebellion.
This treatment of the Visigoths in Dacia is one of the worst pages
in the history of the Roman Empire, but it brought its own speedy
punishment. The suspicion and hatred engendered by misery spread like a
flame, and the barbarian forces were joined by deserters of their own
race from the imperial legions and by runaway slaves until they had
grown into a formidable army. Valens, forced to take steps to preserve
his throne, met them on the battle-field of Adrianople, but only to
suffer crushing defeat. He himself was slain, and some 40,000 of those
who had served under his banner.
[Sidenote: The Emperor Theodosius]
Never before had the imperial eagles met with such a reverse at
barbarian hands, and the Visigoths after the first moment of triumph
were almost alarmed at the extent of their own success. Before the
frowning walls of Constantinople their courage faltered, and without
attempting a siege they retreated northwards into Thrace. Gladly they
came to terms with Theodosius, Valens’s successor, who, not content
with regranting them the lands to the south of the Danube that they so
much desired, increased his army by taking whole regiments of their
best warriors into his pay.
‘Lover of peace and of the Goths’ is the character with which
Theodosius has passed down to posterity, and during his reign the
Visigoths and other northern tribes received continual marks of his
favour.
One of the Gothic kings, the old chief Athanaric, went to visit him at
Constantinople, and was overwhelmed by the magnificence and luxury he
saw around him. ‘Now do I at last behold,’ he exclaimed, ‘what I have
often heard but deemed incredible.... Doubtless the Emperor is a God on
earth, and he who raises a hand against him is guilty of his own blood.’
The alliance between Goth and Greek served its purpose at the moment,
for by the aid of his new troops Theodosius was able to defeat the
rival Emperor of Rome and to conquer Italy. When he died he left
Constantinople and the East to his eldest son Arcadius, a youth of
eighteen, and Rome and the West to the younger, Honorius, who was only
eleven. True to his belief in barbarian ability, Theodosius selected
a Vandal chief, Stilicho, to whom he had given his niece in marriage,
that he might act as the boy’s adviser and command the imperial forces.
Under a wise regent a nation may wait in patience for their child ruler
to mature. Unfortunately, Honorius, as he grew up, belied any promise
of manliness he had ever shown, languidly refusing to continue his
boyish sports of riding or archery, and taking no interest save in
some cocks and hens that it was his daily pleasure to feed himself. He
had no affection or reverence for Rome, and finally settled in Ravenna
on the Adriatic as the safest fortress in his dominions. From here he
consented to sign the orders that dispatched the legions to protect his
frontiers, or issued haughty manifestoes to his enemies.
So long as Stilicho lived such feebleness passed comparatively
unnoticed; for the Vandal, a man of giant build and strength, possessed
to the full the tireless energy and daring that the dangers of the time
demanded.
Theodosius had made the Visigoths his friends; but on his death they
began to chafe at the restrictions laid upon them by the imperial
alliance. Arcadius was nearly as poor a creature as his younger
brother, ‘so inactive that he seldom spoke and always looked as though
he were about to fall asleep.’ The barbarians bore him no hatred, but
on the other hand he could scarcely inspire their affection or fear,
and so they chose a king of their own, Alaric, one of their most famous
generals, and from this moment they began to think of fresh conquests
and pillage.
[Sidenote: Visigothic Invasion]
The suggestion of sacking Constantinople was put on one side. Those
massive walls against their background of sea would make it a difficult
task; besides, the Visigoths argued, were there not other towns equally
rich and more vulnerable? With an exultant shout that answered this
question they set out on their march first towards Illyricum on the
eastern coast of the Adriatic, and then to the fertile plains of Italy.
Alaric and Stilicho were well matched as generals, and for years,
through arduous campaigns of battles and sieges, the Vandal kept the
Goth at bay. When at last death forced him to resign the challenge, it
was no enemy’s sword but the weapon of treachery that robbed Rome of
her best defender.
Honorius, lacking in gratitude as in other virtues, had been ill
pleased at the success of his armies; for wily courtiers, hoping to
plant their fortunes amid another’s ruin, told him that Stilicho
intended to secure the imperial throne for himself and that in order to
do so he would think little of murdering his royal master. Suspicion
made the timid Emperor writhe with terror through sleepless nights. It
seemed to him that he would never know peace of mind again until he had
rid himself of his formidable commander-in-chief; and so by his orders
Stilicho was put to death and Italy lay at the mercy of Alaric and his
followers.
Sweeping across the Alps, the Visigoths paused at last before the gates
of Rome. ‘We are many in number and prepared to fight,’ boldly began
the ambassadors sent out from the city. ‘Thick grass is easier to mow
than thin,’ replied Alaric.
Dropping their lofty tone, the ambassadors demanded the price of peace,
and on the answer, ‘Your gold and silver, your treasures, all that you
have,’ they exclaimed in horror, ‘What then do you leave us?’ ‘Your
souls,’ was the mocking rejoinder.
After much argument the Visigoths consented to be bought off and
retreated northwards, but it was only to return in the summer of the
year 410, when Rome after a feeble resistance opened her gates. Her
enemies poured in triumph through the streets; but Alaric was no Hun
loving slaughter for its own sake, and ordered his troops to respect
human life and to spare the churches and the gold and silver vessels
that rested on their altars.
He spent only a few days in sacking the city and then marched
southwards, intending to invade Africa. While his army was embarking,
however, he fell ill and died, and so great was his loss that all
thought of the campaign was surrendered. Alaric was mourned by his
people as a national hero, and, unable to bear the thought that his
enemies might one day desecrate his tomb, they dammed up a river in the
neighbourhood, and dug a grave for their general deep in its bed. When
they had laid his body there, they released the stream into its old
course, and so left their hero safe from insult beneath the waters.
The sack of Rome that moved the civilized world profoundly made little
impression upon the young Emperor. He had named one of his favourite
hens after the capital; and when a messenger, haggard with the news he
had brought, fell on his knees, gasping, ‘Sire, Rome has perished,’
Honorius only frowned, and replied, ‘Impossible! I fed her myself this
morning.’
St. Jerome, in his hermit’s cell at Bethlehem, was stupefied at the
fate of the ‘Eternal City’. ‘The world crumbles,’ he said. ‘There is
no created work that rust or age does not consume: but Rome! Who could
have believed that, raised by her victories above the universe, she
would one day fall?’
Why had Rome fallen? This was the question on everybody’s lips. We
know to-day that the process of her corruption had been working for
centuries; but men and women rarely see what is going on around them,
and some began to murmur that the old gods of Olympus were angry
because their religion had been forsaken. It was affirmed that Christ
would save the world, but what had He done to save Rome?
Christianity was not long in finding a champion to defend her cause--an
African monk, Augustine, to mediaeval minds the greatest of all the
‘Fathers of the Church’. Augustine was the son of a pagan father and a
Christian mother and grew up a wild and undisciplined boy. After some
years at the University of Carthage, spent in casual study and habitual
dissipation, he determined to go to Rome, and from there passed to
Milan, where he went out of curiosity to listen to the preaching of
St. Ambrose. It was obvious that he would either hate or be strongly
influenced by this fiery old man; and in truth Augustine, who secretly
repented of the way he had wasted his life, was in a ripe mood to
receive the message that he had refused to hear from the lips of Monica
his mother. Soon he was converted and baptized, and later he was made
Bishop of Hippo, a place not far from Carthage.
It is difficult to give a picture of Augustine in a few words. Like St.
Ambrose and others of the early ‘Fathers’ he was quite intolerant of
heresy and believed that ordinary human love and the simplest pleasures
of the world were snares set by the devil to catch the unwary; but
against these unbalanced views, largely the product of the age in which
he lived, must be set his burning enthusiasm for God, and the services
that he rendered to Christianity.
A modern writer says of him, ‘As the supreme man of his time he summed
up the past as it still lived, remoulded it, added to it from himself,
and gave it a new unity and form wherein it was to live on.... The
great heart, the great mind, the mind led by the heart’s inspiration,
the heart guided by the mind--this is Augustine.’
Superior in intellect to other men of his day, his whole being filled
with the love of God and fired by the desire to make the world share
his worship, he preached, worked, and wrote only to this end. In his
_Confessions_ he describes his youth and repentance; but his most
famous work is his _Civitas Dei_.
Here was the answer to those who declared that Rome had fallen because
she neglected her pagan deities. Rome, he maintained, was not and never
could be eternal; for the one eternal kingdom was the _Civitas Dei_, or
‘City of God’, towards whose reign of triumph the human race had been
tending since earliest times. Before her glory the kingdoms of this
world, and all the culture and civilization of which men boasted, must
fade away. Thus God had destined; and St. Augustine exerted all his
eloquence and powers of reasoning to prove from history the magnitude
and sureness of the divine purpose.
[Sidenote: Vandal Invasion]
The author of the _Civitas Dei_ was to have his faith severely tested,
for he died amid scenes of desolation and horror that held out no hope
of happiness for man on earth. Rome stood at the mercy of barbarians,
and Christian Africa was also fast falling under their yoke. These
new invaders, the Vandals, were also a German tribe, who, as soon as
Stilicho withdrew legions from the Rhine to defend Italy from the
Visigoths, broke over the weakened frontier into Gaul, and from there
crossed the Pyrenees and marched southwards.
Spain had been one of the richest of Rome’s provinces, and besides her
minerals and corn had provided the Empire with not a few rulers as
well as famous authors and poets. In her commercial prosperity she had
grown, like her neighbours, corrupt and unwarlike, so that the Vandals
met with little resistance and plundered and pillaged at their will.
Instead of settling down amid their conquests they were driven by the
promise of further loot and the pressure of other barbarian tribes
following hard on their heels to cross the narrow Strait of Gibraltar
and to pursue their way due east along the African coast. In Spain
they have left the memory of their presence in the name of one of her
fairest provinces, Andalusia.
The chief of the Vandals at this time was Genseric, who not only
conquered all the coast-line of North Africa, but also built a fleet
that became the terror of the Mediterranean. Like the Goths the Vandals
were Christians, but they held the views of Arius and there could be
little hope that they would tolerate the orthodox Catholics. Though
hardly as inhuman and ruthless as their opponents would have had
the world believe, they pillaged and laid waste as they passed; and
posterity has since applied the word _vandal_ to the man who wilfully
destroys.
The name ‘Hun’ is of even more sinister repute. In the first half of
the fifth century the Huns in their triumphant march across Europe were
led by their king, Attila, ‘the Scourge of God’, whose boast it was
that never grass grew again where his horse’s hoofs had once trod. So
short and squat as to be almost deformed, flat-nosed, with a swarthy
skin and deep-set eyes, that he would roll hideously when angered, the
King loved to inspire terror not only amongst his enemies but in the
chieftains under his command. Pity, gentleness, civilization, such
words were either unknown or abhorrent to him; and in the towns whose
walls were stormed by his troops, old men, women, priests, and children
fell alike victims to his sword.
It was his ambition that the name of ‘Attila’ should become a terror
to the whole earth, but the extent to which he succeeded in realizing
this aim brought a serious check to his arms; for when he reached the
boundaries of Gaul, he found that fear had gathered into a single
hostile force of formidable size races that had warred for centuries
amongst themselves. Here were not only ‘Provincials’, descendants of
the Romanized inhabitants of Gaul, but Goths, Franks, Burgundians, and
other tribes who, like the Vandals, had forced the passage of the Rhine
as soon as the imperial garrisons were weakened or withdrawn. They had
little in common save hatred of the Hun, a passion so strong that in a
desperate battle on the plain of Chalons they hurled back the Tartar
hordes for ever from the lands of Western Europe.
Shaken by his defeat, but sullen and vindictive, Attila turned his
thoughts to Italy; and he and his warriors swept across the passes of
the Alps and descended on the fertile country lying to the north-west
of the Adriatic. The Italians made but a feeble resistance, and the
palaces, baths, and amphitheatres of once wealthy towns vanished in
smoking ruins.
One important work of construction Attila unconsciously assisted, for
the inhabitants of Aquileia, seeking a refuge from their cruel foe,
fled to the coast, and there amid the desolate lagoons they and their
descendants built for themselves in the course of centuries a new city,
Venice, the future ‘Queen of the Adriatic’. Aquileia had been a city of
repute, but it can be safely guessed that she would never have attained
the world-wide glory that Venice, safe behind her barrier of marshes
and with every incentive to naval enterprise, was to establish in the
Middle Ages.
From the Adriatic provinces Attila passed to Rome, but refrained from
sacking the city. It is said that he was uneasy because the armies
of Gaul that had defeated him at Chalons still hung on his rear,
threatening to cut off his retreat across the Alps. At any rate,
he consented to make terms negotiated by the Pope on behalf of the
citizens of Rome. Contemporary accounts declare that the Hun was awed
by the sight of Leo I in his priestly robes and by the fearlessness of
his bearing, and certainly for his mediation he well deserved the title
of ‘Great’ that the people in their gratitude bestowed on him.
Attila, when he left Rome, turned northwards, but died quite shortly
after some drunken orgy. The kingdom of massacre and fire that he had
built on the terror of his name fell rapidly to pieces, and only the
remembrance of that terror remained; while Huns merged themselves in
the armies of other tribes or fought together in petty rivalry.
[Sidenote: Vandal Sack of Rome]
Rome had been taken by Alaric the Visigoth and spared by Attila, but
her trials were not yet at an end. Genseric, the Vandal king, who had
established himself at Carthage, was only awaiting his opportunity to
plunder a city that was still a world-famous treasure house. His fleet,
that had cut off Italy entirely from the cornfields of Egypt, blockaded
the mouth of the Tiber, and the Romans, weakened by famine and the
warfare of the past few years, quickly sued for peace.
Once more Pope Leo went as mediator to the camp of his enemies; but
the Arian Vandal, unlike the pagan Hun, was adamant. He was willing
to forgo a general massacre but nothing further, and for a fortnight
the city was ruthlessly pillaged. Then Genseric sailed away, carrying
with him thousands of prisoners besides all the treasures of money and
art on which he could lay hands. Nearly four hundred years before, the
Emperor Titus, when he sacked Jerusalem, brought to Rome the golden
altar and candlesticks of the Jewish Temple, and now Rome in her turn
was despoiled of these trophies of her former victories.
It was little wonder if the Western emperors, who had systematically
failed to save their capital, became discredited at last among their
own troops, and Rome, that had begun life according to tradition under
a ‘Romulus’, was to end her Empire under another, a handsome boy,
nicknamed in derision of his helplessness ‘Augustulus’, or ‘little
Augustus’.
The pretext of his deposition was his refusal to grant Italian lands
to the German troops who formed the main part of the imperial army, on
which their captain, Odoacer, compelled him to abdicate. So low had
the imperial dignity sunk in public estimation that Odoacer, instead
of claiming the once-coveted honour, sent the diadem and purple robe
to the Emperor at Constantinople. ‘We disclaim the necessity or even
the wish’, wrote Augustulus, ‘of continuing any longer the imperial
succession in Italy.... The majesty of a sole monarch is sufficient to
pervade and protect at the same time both East and West.’
The writer, so fortunate in his insignificance that no one wished
to assassinate him, spent the rest of his days in a castle by the
Mediterranean, supported by a revenue from the state; while Odoacer,
with the title of ‘Patrician’, ruled the land with statesmanlike
moderation for fourteen years.
[Sidenote: Ostrogothic Invasion]
Two more waves of invasion were yet to break across the Alps and
hinder all attempts at restoration and unity. The first was that
of the ‘Ostrogoths’, or ‘Eastern’ Goths, a tribe of the same race
as the Visigoths that, meeting the first onslaught of the Huns in
their advance from Asia, had only just on the death of Attila freed
themselves from this terrible yoke. They sought now an independent
kingdom, and under the leadership of their prince, Theodoric, chafed
on the boundaries of the Eastern Empire, with which they had formed an
alliance.
Theodoric had been educated in Constantinople, and though brave and
warlike did not share the reckless love of battle that animated his
followers. He realized, however, that he must lead the Ostrogoths
to a new land of plenty or incur their hatred and suspicion, so he
appealed to the Emperor Zeno for leave to go to Italy as his general
and depose Odoacer. ‘Direct me with the soldiers of my nation,’ he
wrote, ‘to march against the tyrant. If I fall you will be relieved
from an expensive and troublesome friend; if, with divine permission, I
succeed, I shall govern in your name and to your glory.’
Zeno had not been sufficiently powerful to prevent Odoacer from taking
the title of ‘Patrician’, but he had never liked the ‘barbarian
upstart’ who had dared to depose an emperor. He had also begun to dread
the presence of the restless Ostrogoths so close to Constantinople, and
warmly appreciated Theodoric’s arguments in favour of their exodus.
If the two barbarian kings destroyed one another, it would be all the
better for the Empire, and so with the imperial blessing Theodoric
started on his great adventure.
He took with him not only his warriors but the women and children
of his tribe and all their possessions; and after several battles
succeeded in defeating and slaying his opponent. Rome, that looked upon
him as the Emperor’s representative, joyfully opened her gates, but
Theodoric preferred to make Ravenna his capital, and here he settled
and planted an orchard with his own hands.
It was his hope that he might win the trust and affection of his
new subjects, and, though he ruled exactly as he liked, he remained
outwardly submissive to the Emperor, writing him humble letters and
marking the coinage with the imperial stamp. He frequently consulted
the Senate at Rome that, though it had long ago lost any real power,
had never ceased to take a nominal share in the government; and when
he gave a third of the Italian lands to his own countrymen he allowed
Roman officials to make the division.
Theodoric also maintained the laws and customs of Italy and forced
the Ostrogoths to respect them too; but his army remained a national
bodyguard, and in spite of his efforts at conciliation the two peoples
did not mingle. Between them stood the barrier of religious bitterness,
for the Ostrogoths were Arians, and, though their ruler was very
tolerant in his attitude, the Catholics were always suspicious of his
intentions.
On one occasion there had been a riot against the Jews and several
synagogues had been burned. Theodoric ordered a collection of money to
be made amongst the orthodox Catholics who were responsible, that the
buildings might be restored. This command was disobeyed, and when the
ring-leaders of the strike were whipped through the streets, popular
anger against the Gothic king grew to white heat. He himself changed in
character as he became older and showed himself morose and tyrannical.
Towards the end of his reign he put to death Boethius, a Roman senator,
who had been one of his favourite advisers, but who had dared to defend
openly a man whom he himself had condemned.
Boethius was not only a fearless champion of his friends--he was a
great scholar who had kept alight the torch of classical learning amid
the darkness and horror of invasion. Besides translating some of the
works of Aristotle he wrote treatises on logic, arithmetic, geometry,
and astronomy, and made an able defence of the Nicene Creed against
Arian attacks. The last and most famous of his works, that for ten
centuries men have remembered and loved, was his _Consolations of
Philosophy_, written when death in a most horrible form was already
drawing close. Tortured by a cord drawn closely round his forehead,
and then beaten with clubs, the philosopher escaped from a life where
fortune had dealt with him cruelly. His master survived him by two
years, repenting on his death-bed in an agony of remorse the brutal
sentence he had meted out.
It is scarcely fair to judge Theodoric by the tyranny of his last
days. It is better to recall the glory of his prime, and how ‘in
the Western part of the Empire there was no people who refused him
homage’. Allied by family ties with the Burgundians, the Visigoths,
the Vandals, and the Franks, he was undoubtedly the greatest of all
the barbarians of his age. Had his successors shown a little of his
statesmanlike qualities, Ostrogoth and Italian, in spite of their
religious differences, might have united to form a single nation, but
unfortunately, before twenty years had passed, the kingdom he had
founded was destined to disappear.
Theodoric was succeeded by his grandson, a boy who lived only a
few years, and then by a worthless nephew, without either royal or
statesmanlike qualities. In contrast to this weak dynasty, there ruled
at Constantinople an Emperor who possessed in the highest degree the
ability and steadfastness of purpose that the times required.
[Sidenote: The Emperor Justinian]
Justinian was only a peasant by birth, but he had been well educated
and took a keen interest not only in questions of law and finance that
concerned the government but in theology, music, and architecture.
In his manner to his subjects he was friendly though dignified, but
there was something unsympathetic in his nature that prevented him
from becoming popular. His courtiers regarded his industry with awe,
but some professed to believe that he could not spend so many midnight
hours at work unless he were an evil spirit not requiring sleep. One
writer says that ‘no one ever remembered him young’: yet this serious
prince married for love a beautiful actress, Theodora, and dared, in
the face of general indignation, to make her his empress. An historian
of the time says of Theodora, ‘it were impossible for mere man to
describe her comeliness in words or imitate it in art’; yet she was
no doll, but took a very definite share in the government, extorting
admiration by her dignity even from those who had pretended to despise
her.
Justinian’s chief passion was for building, and he spent a great part
of his revenue in erecting bridges, baths, forts, and palaces. Most
famous of all the architecture of his time was Saint Sophia, ‘the
Church of the Holy Wisdom’, that after Constantinople passed into the
hands of the Turks became a mosque.
It is not, however, for Saint Sophia that Justinian is chiefly
remembered but for the _Corpus Juris Civilis_, literally ‘the body of
Civil Law’, that he published in order that his subjects might know
what the Roman law really was. The _Corpus Juris Civilis_ consisted
of three parts--the ‘Code’, a collection of decrees made by various
emperors; next the ‘Digest’, the decisions of eminent lawyers; and
thirdly the ‘Institutes’, an explanation of the principles of Roman
law. ‘After thirteen centuries,’ says a modern writer, ‘it stands
unsurpassed as a treasury of legal knowledge;’ and all through the
Middle Ages men were to look to it for inspiration. Thus it was on the
_Corpus Juris Civilis_ that ecclesiastical lawyers based the Canon law
that gave to the Pope an emperor’s power over the Church.
Justinian worked for the progress of the world when he codified Roman
law. It was unfortunate that military ambition led him to exhaust his
treasury and overtax his subjects, in order that he might establish his
rule over the whole of Europe like Theodosius and Constantine. Besides
carrying on an almost continuous war with the King of Persia, he sent
an army and fleet under an able general, Belisarius, to fight against
the Vandals in North Africa; and so successful was this campaign that
Justinian became master of the whole coast-line, and even of a part of
southern Spain. This gave him command of the Mediterranean, and he at
once determined to overthrow the feeble descendants of Theodoric, and
to restore the imperial dominion over Italy in deed, not as it had been
from the time of Odoacer merely in name.
The task was not easy, for the Italians, as we have noticed, did not
love the Greeks, while the Goths fought bravely for independence. At
length, in the year 555, after nineteen campaigns, Narses, an Armenian
who was at the head of Justinian’s forces, succeeded in crushing the
Barbarians and established his rule at Ravenna, from which city, under
the title of _Exarch_, he controlled the whole peninsula.
[Sidenote: Lombard Invasion]
Narses’ triumph had been in a great measure due to a German tribe, ‘The
Lombards’, whose hosts he had enrolled under the imperial banner. These
Lombards, _Longobardi_ or ‘Long Beards’ as the name originally stood,
had migrated from the banks of the Elbe to the basin of the Danube, and
there, looking about them for a warlike outlet for their energies, were
quite as willing to invade Italy at Justinian’s command as to go on any
other campaign that promised to be profitable.
Narses, as soon as he was assured of success, paid them liberally for
their services and sent them back to their own people; but the Lombards
had learned to love the sunny climate and the vines growing out of
doors, and were soon discontented with their bleaker homeland. They
waited therefore until Narses, whom they knew and feared, was dead; and
then, under the leadership of Alboin, their king, crossed over the Alps
and invaded North Italy. They did not come in such tremendous strength
as the Ostrogoths in the past, nor were the imperial troops powerless
to stand against them: indeed, the two forces were so balanced that,
while the Lombards succeeded in establishing themselves in the province
of Lombardy, to which they gave their name, with Pavia as its capital,
the representatives of the Emperor still held the coast-line on both
sides, also Ravenna, Naples, Rome, and other principal towns.
This Lombard inroad, the last of the great Barbarian invasions of
Italy, was by far the most important in its effects. For one thing, two
hundred years were to pass before the power of the new settlers was
seriously shaken; and therefore, even the fact that they were pagans
and imposed their own laws ruthlessly on the Italians could not keep
the races from gradually intermingling. In time the higher civilization
conquered, and the fair-haired Teutons learned to worship the Christian
God, forgot their own tongue, and adopted the customs and habits they
saw around them. The Italians, on their part, in the course of their
struggles with the Lombards became trained in the art of war they had
almost forgotten. By the eighth century the fusion was complete.
Another very interesting and important result of the Lombard invasion
was that the prolonged duel between Barbarians and Greeks prevented
the development of any common form of government. There might in time
emerge an Italian race, but there could be no Italian nation so long as
towns and provinces were dominated by rulers whose policy and ambitions
were utterly opposed. The _Exarch_ of Ravenna claimed, in the name of
the Emperor at Constantinople, to collect taxes from and administer
the whole peninsula, but in practice he often ruled merely the strip
of land round his city cut off from other Greek officials by Lombard
dukes. He would be able to communicate by sea with the important towns
on or near the coast, such as Naples, but so irregularly that their
governments would tend to grow every year more independent of his
control. In Rome, for instance, there was not only the Senate with its
traditions of government, but the Pope, who even more than the Senate
had become the protector and adviser of his fellow citizens.
[Sidenote: Pope Gregory ‘the Great’]
We have seen how Leo ‘the Great’ persuaded Attila the Hun to withdraw
when his armies threatened the very gates of Rome, while later he went
on a like though unavailing mission to Genseric the Vandal. It was acts
like these that won recognition for the Papacy amongst other rulers;
and more than any of the Popes before him, Gregory ‘the Great’, who
ascended the chair of Peter in A.D. 590, built up the foundations of
this authority.
A Roman of position and wealth, Gregory had become in middle age a poor
monk, giving all his money to the poor and disciplining himself by
fasting and penance. He is remembered best in England to-day for the
interest he showed in the fair-haired Angles in the Roman slave-market.
‘They have Angels’ faces, they should be fellow-heirs of the Angels in
Heaven.’ His comment he followed up by a petition that he might sail
as a missionary to the northern island from which these slaves came;
and, when instead he was sent on an embassy to Constantinople, he did
not forget England in the years that passed, but after he became Pope,
chose St. Augustine to go and convert the heathen King of Kent. In this
way southern England was christianized and brought into touch with the
life of Western Europe.
‘A great Pope,’ it has been said, ‘is always a missionary Pope.’
Gregory had the true missionary’s enthusiasm, and his writings, all
of them theological, bear the stamp of St. Augustine of Hippo’s
ardent spirit enforced with a faith absolutely assured and unbending.
Besides being instrumental in converting England, Gregory during his
pontificate saw the Arian Church in Spain reconciled to the Catholic,
while he succeeded in winning the Lombard king to Christianity and
friendship.
It was little wonder that the people of Rome, who had been at war with
these invaders for long years, looked up to the peace-maker not only
as their spiritual father but also as a temporal ruler. Had he not fed
them when they were starving, declaring that it was thus the Church
should use her wealth? Had he not raised soldiers to guard the walls
and sent out envoys to plead the city’s cause against her enemies?
There was no such practical help to be obtained from the Exarchs of
Ravenna, talk as they might about the glories of Constantinople.
Thus Romans argued, and Gregory, who knew the real weakness of
Constantinople, was able to disregard the imperial viceroys when he
chose, a policy of independence followed by his successors.
Since the Lombard kingdom had split up into a number of duchies each
with its own capital, Italy, in the early Middle Ages, tended to become
a group of city states, each jealous of its neighbours and ambitious
only for local interests. This provincial influence was so strong that
it has lasted into modern times. An Englishman or a Frenchman will
claim his country before thinking of the particular part from which he
comes, but it is more natural for an Italian to say first ‘I am Roman,’
or ‘Neapolitan,’ or ‘Florentine,’ as the case may be. It is only by
remembering this difference that Italian history can be read aright.
_Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73._
A.D.
The Emperors Valentian and Valens 364
Battle of Adrianople 378
The Emperor Theodosius 379-95
Vandal Invasion of Africa 441
Battle of Chalons 451
Huns invade Italy 452
Pope Leo I ‘the Great’ 440
VI
THE RISE OF THE FRANKS