far when he makes the gods responsible for this riot of sensuality. What is
true is that they did nothing to hinder it. And it is also true that the
lechery, which he flings so acridly in the face of the pagans, the gross
stage-plays, the songs, dances, and even prostitution, were all more or
less included in the essence of paganism. The theatre, like the games of
the arena and circus, was a divine institution. At certain feasts, and in
certain temples, fornication became sacred. All the world knew what took
place at Carthage in the courts and under the porticoes of the Celestial
Virgin, and what the ears of the most chaste matrons were obliged to hear,
and also what the use was of the castrated priests of the Great Mother
of the gods. Augustin, who declaims against these filthy sports, has not
forced the note of his denunciation to make out a good case. If anybody
wants to know in more detail the sights enjoyed at the theatre, or what
were the habits of certain pious confraternities, he has only to read what
is told by Apuleius, the most devout of pagans. He takes evident pleasure
in these stories, or, if he sometimes waxes indignant, it is the depravity
of men he accuses. The gods soar at a great height above these wretched
trifles. To Augustin, on the contrary, the gods are unclean devils who fill
their bellies with lust and obscenities, as if they were hankering for the
blood and grease of sacrifices.
And so he puts his finger on the open wound of paganism--its basic
immorality, or, if you like, its unmorality. Like our scientism of to-day,
it was unable to lay down a system of morals. It did not even try to. What
Augustin has written on this subject in _The City of God_, is perhaps the
strongest argument ever objected to polytheism. Anyhow, pages like this are
very timely indeed to consider:
"But such friends and such worshippers of those gods, whom they rejoice
to follow and imitate in all villainies and mischiefs--do they trouble
themselves about the corruption and great decay of the Republic? Not so.
Let it but stand, say they; let it but prosper by the number of its troops
and be glorious by its victories; or, _which is best of all, let it but
enjoy security and peace_, and what care we? Yes, what we care for above
all is that every one may have the means to increase his wealth, to pay the
expenses of his usual luxury, and that the powerful may still keep under
the weak. Let the poor crouch to the rich to be fed, or to live at ease
under their protection; let the rich abuse the poor as things at their
service, and to shew how many they have soliciting them. Let the people
applaud such as provide them with pleasures, not such as have a care for
their interests. _Let naught that is hard be enjoined, nothing impure
be prohibited_.... Let not subdued provinces obey their governors as
supervisors of their morality, but as masters of their fortune and the
procurers of their pleasures. What matters it if this submission has no
sincerity, but rests upon a bad and servile fear! _Let the law protect
estates rather than fair justice_. Let there be a good number of public
harlots, either for all that please to enjoy themselves in their company,
or for those that cannot keep private ones. Let stately and sumptuous
houses be erected, so that night and day each one according to his liking
or his means may gamble and drink and revel and vomit. Let the rhythmed
tinkling of dances be ordinary, the cries, the uncontrolled delights,
the uproar of all pleasures, even the bloodiest and most shameful in the
theatres. He who shall assay to dissuade from these pleasures, let him
be condemned as a public enemy. And if any one try to alter or suppress
them--let the people stifle his voice, let them banish him, let them
kill him. On the other hand, those that shall procure the people these
pleasures, and authorize their enjoyment, let them be eternized for the
true gods."...
However, Augustin acknowledges a number of praiseworthy minds among
pagans--those philosophers, with Plato in the first rank, who have done
their best to put morality into the religion. The Christian teacher renders
a magnificent tribute to Platonism. But these high doctrines have scarcely
got beyond the portals of the schools, and this moral teaching which
paganism vaunts of, is practically limited to the sanctuaries. "Let them
not talk," says he, "of some closely muttered instructions, taught in
secret, and whispered in the ear of a few adepts, which hold I know not
what lessons of uprightness and virtue. But let them shew the temples
ordained for such pious meetings, wherein were no sports with lascivious
gestures and loose songs.... Let them shew us the places where the gods'
doctrine was heard against covetousness, the suppression of ambition, the
bridling of luxury, and where wretches might learn what the poet Persius
thunders unto them, saying:
'Learn, wretches, and conceive the course of things,
What man is, and why nature forth him brings;...
How to use money; how to help a friend;
What we on earth, and God in us, intend.'
Let them shew where their instructing gods were used to give such lessons;
and where their worshippers used to go _often_ to hear these matters.
As for us, we can point to our churches, built for this sole purpose,
wheresoever the religion of Christ is diffused."
Can it surprise, then, if men so ignorant of high morality, and so deeply
embedded in matter, were also plunged in the grossest superstitions?
Materialism in morals always ends by producing a low credulity. Here
Augustin triumphs. He sends marching under our eyes, in a burlesque array,
the innumerable army of gods whom the Romans believed in. There are so many
that he compares them to swarms of gnats. Although he explains that he is
not able to mention them all, he amuses himself by stupefying us with the
prodigious number of those he discovers. Dragged into open day by him, a
whole divine population is brought out of the darkness and forgetfulness
where it had been sleeping perhaps for centuries: the little gods who work
in the fields, who make the corn grow and keep off the blight, those who
watch over children, who aid women in labour, who protect the hearth, who
guard the house. It was impossible to take a step among the pagans, to make
a movement, without the help of a god or goddess. Men and things were as if
fettered and imprisoned by the gods.
"In a house," says Augustin scoffingly, "there is but one porter. He is but
a mere man, yet he is sufficient for that office. But it takes three gods,
Forculus for the door, Cardea for the hinge, Limentinus for the threshold.
Doubtless, Forculus all alone could not possibly look after threshold, door
and hinges." And if it is a case of a man and woman retiring to the bridal
chamber after the wedding, a whole squadron of divinities are set in motion
for an act so simple and natural. "I beseech you," cries Augustin, "leave
something for the husband to do!"
This African, who had such a strong sense of the unity and fathomless
infinity of God, waxed indignant at this sacrilegious parcelling of the
divine substance. But the pagans, following Varro, would answer that it was
necessary to distinguish, among all these gods, those who were just the
imagination of poets, and those who were real beings--between the gods of
fable and the gods of religion. "Then," as Tertullian had said already,
"if the gods be chosen as onions are roped, it is obvious that what is not
chosen is condemned." "Tertullian carries his fancy too far," comments
Augustin. The gods refused as fabulous are not held reprobate on that
account. The truth is, they are a cut of the same piece as the admitted
gods. "Have not the pontiffs, like the poets, a bearded Jupiter and a
Mercury without beard?... Are the old Saturn and the young Apollo so much
the property of the poets that we do not see their statues too in the
temples?..."
And the philosophers, in their turn, however much they may protest against
the heap of fabulous gods and, like Plato and Porphyry, declare that there
exists but one God, soul of the universe, yet they no less accepted the
minor gods, and intermediaries or messengers betwixt gods and men, whom
they called demons. These hybrid beings, who pertained to humanity by their
passions, and to the divinity by the privilege of immortality, had to be
appeased by sacrifices, questioned and gratified by magic spells. And there
is what the highest pagan wisdom ended in--yes, in calling up spirits, and
the shady operations of wizards and wonder-smiths. That is what the pagans
defended, and demanded the continuation of with so much obstinacy and
fanaticism.
By no means, replied Augustin. It does not deserve to survive. It is not
the forsaking of these beliefs and superstitious practices which has
brought about the decay of the Empire. If you are asking for the temples
of your gods to be opened, it is because they are easy to your passions.
At heart, you scoff at them and the Empire; all you want is freedom and
impunity for your vices. There we have the real cause of the decadence!
Little matter the idle grimaces before altars and statues. Become chaste,
sober, brave, and poor, as your ancestors were. Have children, agree to
compulsory military service, and you will conquer as they did. Now, all
these virtues are enjoined and encouraged by Christianity. Whatever certain
heretics may say, the religion of Christ is not contrary to marriage or the
soldier's profession. The Patriarchs of the old law were blest in marriage,
and there are just and holy wars.
And even supposing, that in spite of all efforts to save it, the Empire is
condemned, must we therefore despair? We should be prepared for the end
of the Roman city. Like all the things of this world, it is liable to old
age and death. It will die then, one day. Far from being cast down, let
us strengthen ourselves against this disaster by the realization of the
eternal. Let us strengthen our hold upon that which passes not. Above the
earthly city, rises the City of God, which is the communion of holy souls,
the only one which gives complete and never-failing joy. Let us try to be
the citizens of that city, and to live the only life worth calling life.
For the life here below is but the shadow of a shadow....
The people of those times were wonderfully prepared to hearken to such
exhortations. On the eve of the Barbarian invasions, these Christians, for
whom the dogma of the Resurrection was perhaps the chief reason of their
faith, these people, sick at heart, who looked on in torture at the ending
of a world, must have considered this present life as a bad dream, from
which there should be no delay in escaping.
At the very moment even that Augustin began to write _The City of God_, his
friend Evodius, Bishop of Uzalis, told him this story.
He had as secretary a very young man, the son of a priest in the
neighbourhood. This young man had begun by obtaining a post as stenographer
in the office of the Proconsul of Africa. Evodius, who was alarmed at what
might happen to his virtue in such surroundings, having first made certain
of his absolute chastity, offered to take him into his service. In the
bishop's house, where he had scarcely anything to do but read the Holy
Scripture, his faith became so enthusiastic that he longed for nothing now
but death. To go out of this life, "to be with Christ," was his eager wish.
It was heard. After sixteen days of illness he died in the house of his
parents.
"Now, two days after his funeral, a virtuous woman of Figes, a servant of
God, a widow for twelve years, had a dream, and in her dream she saw a
deacon who had been dead some four years, together with men, and women too,
virgins and widows--she saw these servants of God getting ready a palace.
This dwelling was so rich that it shone with light, and you would have
believed it was all made of silver. And when the widow asked whom these
preparations were for, the deacon replied that they were for a young man,
dead the evening before, the son of a priest. In the same palace, she saw
an old man, all robed in white, and he told two other persons, also robed
in white, to go to the tomb of this young man, and lift out the body, and
carry it to Heaven. When the body had been drawn from the tomb and carried
to Heaven, there arose (said she) out of the tomb a bush of virgin-roses,
which are thus named because they never open...."
So the son of the priest had chosen the better part. What was the good of
remaining in this abominable world, where there was always a risk of being
burned or murdered by Goths and Vandals, when, in the other world, angels
were preparing for you palaces of light?
III
THE BARBARIAN DESOLATION
Augustin was seventy-two years old when he finished the _City of God_. This
was in 426. That year, an event of much importance occurred at Hippo, and
the report of it was inserted in the public acts of the community.
"The sixth of the calends of October," _The Acts_ set forth, "the very
glorious Theodosius being consul for the twelfth time, and Valentinian
Augustus for the second, Augustin the bishop, accompanied by Religianus
and Martinianus, his fellow-bishops, having taken his place in the
Basilica of Peace at Hippo, and the priests Saturnius, Leporius, Barnaby,
Fortunatianus, Lazarus, and Heraclius, being present, with all the clergy
and a vast crowd of people--Augustin the bishop said:
"'Let us without delay look to the business which I declared yesterday to
your charity, and for which I desired you to gather here in large numbers,
as I see you have done. If I were to talk to you of anything else, you
might be less attentive, seeing the expectation you are in.
"'My brothers, we are all mortal in this life, and no man knows his last
day. God willed that I should come to dwell in this town in the force of my
age. But, as I was a young man then--see, I am old now, and as I know that
at the death of bishops, peace is troubled by rivalry or ambition (this
have I often seen and bewailed it)--I ought, so far as it rests with me, to
turn away so great a mischief from your city.... I am going then to tell
you that my will, which I believe also to be the will of God, is that I
have as successor the priest Heraclius.'
"At these words all the people cried out:
"'Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!'
"And this cry they repeated three-and-twenty times.
"'Christ, hear us! Preserve us Augustin!'
"This cry they repeated sixteen times.
"'Be our father! Be our bishop!'
"This cry they repeated eight times.
"When the people became silent, the bishop Augustin spoke again in these
words:
"'There is no need for me to praise Heraclius. As much as I do justice
to his wisdom, in equal measure should I spare his modesty.... As you
perceive, the secretaries of the church gather up what we say and what you
say. My words and your shouts do not fall to the ground. To put it briefly,
these are ecclesiastical decrees that we are now drawing up, and I desire
by these means, as far as it is in the power of man, to confirm what I have
declared to you.'
"Here the people cried out:
"'Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!'
* * * * *
"'Be our father, and let Heraclius be our bishop!'
"When silence was made again, Augustin the bishop thus spoke:
"'I understand what you would say. But I do not wish that it happen to him
as it happened to me. Many of you know what was done at that time.... I was
consecrated bishop during the lifetime of my father and bishop, the aged
Valerius, of blessed memory, and with him I shared the see. I was ignorant,
as he was, that this was forbidden by the Council of Nice. I would not
therefore that men should blame in Heraclius, my son, what they blamed in
me.'
"With that the people cried out thirteen times:
"'Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!'
"After a little silence, Augustin the bishop said again:
"'So he will remain a priest till it shall please God for him to be a
bishop. But with the aid and mercy of Christ, I shall do in future what up
to now I have not been able to do.... You will remember what I wanted to
do some years ago, and you have not allowed me. For a work upon the Holy
Scriptures, with which my brothers and my fathers the bishops had deigned
to charge me in the two Councils of Numidia and Carthage, _I was not to be
disturbed by anybody during five days of the week_. That was a thing agreed
upon between you and me. The act was drawn up, and you all approved of
it after hearing it read. But your promise did not last long. I was soon
encroached upon and overrun by you all. I am no longer free to study as I
desire. Morning and afternoon, I am entangled in your worldly affairs. I
beg of you and supplicate you in Christ's name to suffer me to shift the
burthen of all these cares upon this young man, the priest Heraclius, whom
I signal, in His name, as my successor in the bishopric.'
"Upon this the people cried out six-and-twenty times:
"'We thank thee for thy choice!'
"And the people having become silent, Augustin the bishop said:
"'I thank you for your charity and goodwill, or rather, I thank God for
them. So, my brothers, you will address yourselves to Heraclius upon all
the points you are used to submit to me. Whenever he needs counsel, my care
and my help will not be wanting.... In this way, without any loss to you,
I shall be able to devote the remainder of life which it may please God
still to leave me, not to laziness and rest, but to the study of the Holy
Scriptures. This work will be useful to Heraclius, and hence to yourselves.
Let nobody then envy my leisure, for this leisure will be very busy....
"'It only remains for me to ask you, at least those who can, to sign these
acts. Your agreement I cannot do without; so kindly let me learn it by your
voices.'
"At these words the people shouted:
"'Let it be so! Let it be so!'
* * * * *
"When all there became silent, Augustin the bishop made an end, saying:
"'It is well. Now let us fulfil our duty to God. While we offer Him the
Sacrifice, and during this hour of supplication, I would urge of your
charity to lay aside all business and personal cares, and to pray the Lord
God for this church, for me, and for the priest Heraclius.'"
The dryness and official wording of the document do not succeed in stifling
the vividness and colour of this crowded scene. Through the piety of the
formal cries, it is easy to see that Augustin's hearers were hard to
manage. This flock, which he loved and scolded so much, was no easier to
lead now than when he first became bishop. Truly it was no sinecure to rule
and administrate the diocese of Hippo! The bishop was literally the servant
of the faithful. Not only had he to feed and clothe them, to spend his time
over their business and quarrels and lawsuits, but he belonged to them body
and soul. They kept a jealous eye on the employment of his time; if he
went away, they asked for an explanation. Whenever Augustin went to preach
at Carthage or Utica, he apologized to his own people. And before he can
undertake a commentary on the Scriptures, a commentary, moreover, which he
has been asked by two Councils to prepare, he must get their permission,
or, at any rate, their agreement.
At last, at seventy-two years old, after he had been a bishop for
thirty-one years, he got their leave to take a little rest. But what a
rest! He himself said: "This leisure will be very busy"--this leisure which
is going to fill the five holidays in the week. He intends to study and
fathom the Scripture, and this, besides, to the profit of his people and
clergy and the whole Church. It is the fondest dream of his life--the
plan he was never able to realize. All that, at first sight, astonishes
us. We ask ourselves, "What else had he been doing up to this time in his
treatises and letters and sermons, in all that sea of words and writings
which his enemies threw up at him, if he was not studying and explaining
the Holy Scriptures?" The fact is, that in most of these writings and
sermons he elucidates the truth only in part, or else he is confuting
heresiarchs. What he wanted to do was to study the truth for its own sake,
without having to think of and be hindered by the exposure of errors; and
above all, to seize it in all its breadth and all its depths, to have
done with this blighting and irritating eristic, and to reflect in a vast
_Mirror_ the whole and purest light of the sacred dogmas.
He never found the time for it. He had to limit himself to a handbook
of practical morals, published under this title before his death, and
now lost. Once more the heresiarchs prevented him from leading a life of
speculation. During his last years, amid the cruellest anxieties, he had
to battle with the enemies of Grace and the enemies of the Trinity, with
Arius and Pelagius. Pelagius had found an able disciple in a young Italian
bishop, Julian of Eclanum, who was a formidable opponent to the aged
Augustin. As for Arianism, which had seemed extinguished in the West, here
it was given a new life by the Barbarian invasion.
It was a grave moment for Catholicism, as it was for the Empire. The Goths,
the Alani, and the Vandals, after having laid waste Gaul and Spain, were
taking measures to pass over into Africa. Should they renew the attempts
of Alaric and Radagaisus against Italy, they would soon be masters of the
entire Occident. Now these Barbarians were Arians. Supposing (and it seemed
more and more likely) that Africa and Italy were vanquished after Gaul and
Spain, then it was all over with Western Catholicism. For the invaders
carried their religion in their baggage, and forced it on the conquered.
Augustin, who had cherished the hope of equalling the earthly kingdom
of Christ to that of the Cæsars, was going to see the ruin of both.
His terrified imagination exaggerated still more the only too real and
threatening peril. He must have lived hours of agony, expecting a disaster.
If only the truth might be saved, might swim in this sea of errors which
spread like a flood in the wake of the Barbarian onflow! It was from this
wish, no doubt, that sprang the tireless persistence which the old bishop
put into a last battle with heresy. If he selected Pelagius specially to
fall upon with fury, if he forced his principles to their last consequences
in his theory of Grace, the dread of the Barbarian peril had perhaps
something to do with it. This soul, so mild, so moderate, so tenderly
human, promulgated a pitiless doctrine which does not agree with his
character. But he reasoned, no doubt, that it was impossible to drive
home too hard the need of the Redemption and the divinity of the Redeemer
in front of these Arians, these Pelagians, these enemies of Christ, who
to-morrow perhaps would be masters of the Empire.
Therefore, Augustin continued to write, and discuss, and disprove. There
came a time when he had to think of fighting otherwise than with the pen.
His life, the lives of his flock, were threatened. He had to see to the
bodily defence of his country and city. The fact was, that some time
before the great drive of the Vandals, forerunners of them, in the shape
of hordes of African Barbarians, had begun to lay waste the provinces. The
Circoncelliones were not dead, nor their good friends the Donatists either.
These sectaries, encouraged by the widespread anarchy, came out of their
hiding-places and shewed themselves more insolent and aggressive than ever.
Possibly they hoped for some effective support against the Roman Church
from the Arian Vandals who were drawing near, or at least a recognition of
what they believed to be their rights. Day after day, bands of Barbarians
were landing from Spain. In the rear of these wandering troops of brigands
or irregular soldiers, the old enemies of the Roman peace and civilization,
the Nomads of the South, the Moors of the Atlas, the Kabylian mountaineers,
flung themselves upon country and town, pillaging, killing, and burning
everything that got in their way. All was laid desolate. "Countries but
lately prosperous and populated have been changed into solitudes," said
Augustin.
At last, in the spring of the year 429, the Vandals and the Alani, having
joined forces on the Spanish coast under their King, Genseric, crossed
the Straits of Gibraltar. It was devastation on a large scale this time.
An army of eighty thousand men set themselves methodically to plunder the
African provinces. Cherchell, which had already been sorely tried during
the revolt of Firmus the Moor, was captured again and burned. All the towns
and fortified places on the coast fell, one after another. Constantine
alone, from the height of its rock, kept the invaders at bay. To starve out
those who fled from towns and farms and took refuge in the fastnesses of
the Atlas, the Barbarians destroyed the harvest, burned the grain-houses,
and cut down the vines and fruit trees. And they set fire to the forests
which covered the slopes of the mountains, to force the refugees out of
their hiding-places.