righteous god, but they also thought of him as a trading god who had
made a bargain with their Father Abraham about them, a very good
bargain indeed for them, to bring them at last to predominance in the
earth. With dismay and anger they heard Jesus sweeping away their dear
securities. God, he taught, was no bargainer; there were no chosen
people and no favourites in the Kingdom of Heaven. God was the loving
father of all life, as incapable of showing favour as the universal
sun. And all men were brothers—sinners alike and beloved sons alike—of
this divine father. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus cast
scorn upon that natural tendency we all obey, to glorify our own people
and to minimize the righteousness of other creeds and other races. In
the parable of the labourers he thrust aside the obstinate claim of the
Jews to have a special claim upon God. All whom God takes into the
kingdom, he taught, God serves alike; there is no distinction in his
treatment, because there is no measure to his bounty. From all
moreover, as the parable of the buried talent witnesses, and as the
incident of the widow’s mite enforces, he demands the utmost. There are
no privileges, no rebates and no excuses in the Kingdom of Heaven.
EARLY IDEAL PORTRAIT, IN GILDED GLASS, OF JESUS CHRIST IN WHICH THE
TRADITIONAL BEARD IS NOT SHOWN
EARLY IDEAL PORTRAIT, IN GILDED GLASS, OF JESUS CHRIST IN WHICH THE
TRADITIONAL BEARD IS NOT SHOWN
But it is not only the intense tribal patriotism of the Jews that Jesus
outraged. They were a people of intense family loyalty, and he would
have swept away all the narrow and restrictive family affections in the
great flood of the love of God. The whole kingdom of Heaven was to be
the family of his followers. We are told that, “While he yet talked to
the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring
to speak with him. Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy
brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered
and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my
brethren? And he stretched forth his hands towards his disciples, and
said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the
will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and
sister, and mother.? [1]
THE ROAD FROM NAZARETH TO TIBERIAS
THE ROAD FROM NAZARETH TO TIBERIAS
_Photo: Fannaway_
And not only did Jesus strike at patriotism and the bonds of family
loyalty in the name of God’s universal fatherhood and brotherhood of
all mankind, but it is clear that his teaching condemned all the
gradations of the economic system, all private wealth, and personal
advantages. All men belonged to the kingdom; all their possessions
belonged to the kingdom; the righteous life for all men, the only
righteous life, was the service of God’s will with all that we had,
with all that we were. Again and again he denounced private riches and
the reservation of any private life.
DAVID’S TOWER AND WALL OF JERUSALEM
DAVID’S TOWER AND WALL OF JERUSALEM
_Photo: Fannaway_
“And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and
kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may
inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, Why callest thou me good?
there is none good but one, that is God. Thou knowest the
commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not
bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother. And he
answered and said unto him, Master, all these things have I observed
from my youth. Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him,
One thing thou lackest; go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give
to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, take up
the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away
grieved; for he had great possessions.
A STREET IN JERUSALEM
A STREET IN JERUSALEM
Along such a thoroughfare Christ carried his cross to the place of
execution
_Photo: Fannaway_
“And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly
shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God! And the
disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answered again, and
saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches
to enter into the Kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the
Kingdom of God.” [2]
Moreover, in his tremendous prophecy of this kingdom which was to make
all men one together in God, Jesus had small patience for the
bargaining righteousness of formal religion. Another large part of his
recorded utterances is aimed against the meticulous observance of the
rules of the pious career. “Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him,
Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders,
but eat bread with unwashen hands? He answered and said unto them,
Well hath Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honoureth me with their lips,
“But their heart is far from me.
“Howbeit in vain do they worship me,
“Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
“For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men,
as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such things ye do. And
he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye
may keep your own tradition.” [3]
It was not merely a moral and a social revolution that Jesus
proclaimed; it is clear from a score of indications that his teaching
had a political bent of the plainest sort. It is true that he said his
kingdom was not of this world, that it was in the hearts of men and not
upon a throne; but it is equally clear that wherever and in what
measure his kingdom was set up in the hearts of men, the outer world
would be in that measure revolutionized and made new.
Whatever else the deafness and blindness of his hearers may have missed
in his utterances, it is plain they did not miss his resolve to
revolutionize the world. The whole tenor of the opposition to him and
the circumstances of his trial and execution show clearly that to his
contemporaries he seemed to propose plainly, and did propose plainly,
to change and fuse and enlarge all human life.
In view of what he plainly said, is it any wonder that all who were
rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things, a swimming of
their world at his teaching? He was dragging out all the little
private reservations they had made from social service into the light
of a universal religious life. He was like some terrible moral
huntsman digging mankind out of the snug burrows in which they had
lived hitherto. In the white blaze of this kingdom of his there was to
be no property, no privilege, no pride and precedence; no motive indeed
and no reward but love. Is it any wonder that men were dazzled and
blinded and cried out against him? Even his disciples cried out when
he would not spare them the light. Is it any wonder that the priests
realized that between this man and themselves there was no choice but
that he or priestcraft should perish? Is it any wonder that the Roman
soldiers, confronted and amazed by something soaring over their
comprehension and threatening all their disciplines, should take refuge
in wild laughter, and crown him with thorns and robe him in purple and
make a mock Cæsar of him? For to take him seriously was to enter upon
a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts
and impulses, to essay an incredible happiness. . . .
[1] Matt. xii, 46-50.
[2] Mark x, 17-25.
[3] Mark vii, 1-9.
XXXVIII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY
In the four gospels we find the personality and teachings of Jesus but
very little of the dogmas of the Christian church. It is in the
epistles, a series of writings by the immediate followers of Jesus,
that the broad lines of Christian belief are laid down.
Chief among the makers of Christian doctrine was St. Paul. He had never
seen Jesus nor heard him preach. Paul’s name was originally Saul, and
he was conspicuous at first as an active persecutor of the little band
of disciples after the crucifixion. Then he was suddenly converted to
Christianity, and he changed his name to Paul. He was a man of great
intellectual vigour and deeply and passionately interested in the
religious movements of the time. He was well versed in Judaism and in
the Mithraism and Alexandrian religion of the day. He carried over
many of their ideas and terms of expression into Christianity. He did
very little to enlarge or develop the original teaching of Jesus, the
teaching of the Kingdom of Heaven. But he taught that Jesus was not
only the promised Christ, the promised leader of the Jews, but also
that his death was a sacrifice, like the deaths of the ancient
sacrificial victims of the primordial civilizations, for the redemption
of mankind.
When religions flourish side by side they tend to pick up each other’s
ceremonial and other outward peculiarities. Buddhism, for example, in
China has now almost the same sort of temples and priests and uses as
Taoism, which follows in the teachings of Lao Tse. Yet the original
teachings of Buddhism and Taoism were almost flatly opposed. And it
reflects no doubt or discredit upon the essentials of Christian
teaching that it took over not merely such formal things as the shaven
priest, the votive offering, the altars, candles, chanting and images
of the Alexandrian and Mithraic faiths, but adopted even their
devotional phrases and their theological ideas. All these religions
were flourishing side by side with many less prominent cults. Each was
seeking adherents, and there must have been a constant going and coming
of converts between them. Sometimes one or other would be in favour
with the government. But Christianity was regarded with more suspicion
than its rivals because, like the Jews, its adherents would not perform
acts of worship to the God Cæsar. This made it a seditious religion,
quite apart from the revolutionary spirit of the teachings of Jesus
himself.
MOSAIC OF SS. PETER AND PAUL POINTING TO A THRONE, ON GOLD BACKGROUND
MOSAIC OF SS. PETER AND PAUL POINTING TO A THRONE, ON GOLD BACKGROUND
From the Ninth Century original, in the Church of Sta. Prassede, Rome
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
St. Paul familiarized his disciples with the idea that Jesus, like
Osiris, was a god who died to rise again and give men immortality. And
presently the spreading Christian community was greatly torn by
complicated theological disputes about the relationship of this God
Jesus to God the Father of Mankind. The Arians taught that Jesus was
divine, but distant from and inferior to the Father. The Sabellians
taught that Jesus was merely an aspect of the Father, and that God was
Jesus and Father at the same time just as a man may be a father and an
artificer at the same time; and the Trinitarians taught a more subtle
doctrine that God was both one and three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
For a time it seemed that Arianism would prevail over its rivals, and
then after disputes, violence and wars, the Trinitarian formula became
the accepted formula of all Christendom. It may be found in its
completest expression in the Athanasian Creed.
We offer no comment on these controversies here. They do not sway
history as the personal teaching of Jesus sways history. The personal
teaching of Jesus does seem to mark a new phase in the moral and
spiritual life of our race. Its insistence upon the universal
Fatherhood of God and the implicit brotherhood of all men, its
insistence upon the sacredness of every human personality as a living
temple of God, was to have the profoundest effect upon all the
subsequent social and political life of mankind. With Christianity,
with the spreading teachings of Jesus, a new respect appears in the
world for man as man. It may be true, as hostile critics of
Christianity have urged, that St.. Paul preached obedience to slaves,
but it is equally true that the whole spirit of the teachings of Jesus
preserved in the gospels was against the subjugation of man by man.
And still more distinctly was Christianity opposed to such outrages
upon human dignity as the gladiatorial combats in the arena.
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST
_(Sixth Century Ivory Panel in the British Museum)_
Throughout the first two centuries after Christ, the Christian religion
spread throughout the Roman Empire, weaving together an ever-growing
multitude of converts into a new community of ideas and will. The
attitude of the emperors varied between hostility and toleration.
There were attempts to suppress this new faith in both the second and
third centuries; and finally in 303 and the following years a great
persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. The considerable
accumulations of Church property were seized, all bibles and religious
writings were confiscated and destroyed, Christians were put out of the
protection of the law and many executed. The destruction of the books
is particularly notable. It shows how the power of the written word in
holding together the new faith was appreciated by the authorities.
These “book religions,” Christianity and Judaism, were religions that
educated. Their continued existence depended very largely on people
being able to read and understand their doctrinal ideas. The older
religions had made no such appeal to the personal intelligence. In the
ages of barbaric confusion that were now at hand in western Europe it
was the Christian church that was mainly instrumental in preserving the
tradition of learning.
The persecution of Diocletian failed completely to suppress the growing
Christian community. In many provinces it was ineffective because the
bulk of the population and many of the officials were Christian. In
317 an edict of toleration was issued by the associated Emperor
Galerius, and in 324 Constantine the Great, a friend and on his
deathbed a baptized convert to Christianity, became sole ruler of the
Roman world. He abandoned all divine pretensions and put Christian
symbols on the shields and banners of his troops.
In a few years Christianity was securely established as the official
religion of the empire. The competing religions disappeared or were
absorbed with extraordinary celerity, and in 300 Theodosius the Great
caused the great statue of Jupiter Serapis at Alexandria to be
destroyed. From the outset of the fifth century onward the only
priests or temples in the Roman Empire were Christian priests and
temples.
XXXIX
THE BARBARIANS BREAK THE EMPIRE INTO EAST AND WEST
Throughout the third century the Roman Empire, decaying socially and
disintegrating morally, faced the barbarians. The emperors of this
period were fighting military autocrats, and the capital of the empire
shifted with the necessities of their military policy. Now the imperial
headquarters would be at Milan in north Italy, now in what is now
Serbia at Sirmium or Nish, now in Nicomedia in Asia Minor. Rome halfway
down Italy was too far from the centre of interest to be a convenient
imperial seat. It was a declining city. Over most of the empire peace
still prevailed and men went about without arms. The armies continued
to be the sole repositories of power; the emperors, dependent on their
legions, became more and more autocratic to the rest of the empire and
their state more and more like that of the Persian and other oriental
monarchs. Diocletian assumed a royal diadem and oriental robes.
All along the imperial frontier, which ran roughly along the Rhine and
Danube, enemies were now pressing. The Franks and other German tribes
had come up to the Rhine. In north Hungary were the Vandals; in what
was once Dacia and is now Roumania, the Visigoths or West Goths.
Behind these in south Russia were the East Goths or Ostrogoths, and
beyond these again in the Volga region the Alans. But now Mongolian
peoples were forcing their way towards Europe. The Huns were already
exacting tribute from the Alans and Ostrogoths and pushing them to the
west.
In Asia the Roman frontiers were crumpling back under the push of a
renascent Persia. This new Persia, the Persia of the Sassenid kings,
was to be a vigorous and on the whole a successful rival of the Roman
Empire in Asia for the next three centuries.
A glance at the map of Europe will show the reader the peculiar
weakness of the empire. The river Danube comes down to within a couple
of hundred miles of the Adriatic Sea in the region of what is now
Bosnia and Serbia. It makes a square re-entrant angle there. The
Romans never kept their sea communications in good order, and this two
hundred mile strip of land was their line of communication between the
western Latin-speaking part of the empire and the eastern
Greek-speaking portion. Against this square angle of the Danube the
barbarian pressure was greatest. When they broke through there it was
inevitable that the empire should fall into two parts.
Map: The Empire and the Barbarians
A more vigorous empire might have thrust forward and reconquered Dacia,
but the Roman Empire lacked any such vigour. Constantine the Great was
certainly a monarch of great devotion and intelligence. He beat back a
raid of the Goths from just these vital Balkan regions, but he had no
force to carry the frontier across the Danube. He was too pre-occupied
with the internal weaknesses of the empire. He brought the solidarity
and moral force of Christianity to revive the spirit of the declining
empire, and he decided to create a new permanent capital at Byzantium
upon the Hellespont. This new-made Byzantium, which was re-christened
Constantinople in his honour, was still building when he died. Towards
the end of his reign occurred a remarkable transaction. The Vandals,
being pressed by the Goths, asked to be received into the Roman Empire.
They were assigned lands in Pannonia, which is now that part of
Hungary west of the Danube, and their fighting men became nominally
legionaries. But these new legionaries remained under their own
chiefs. Rome failed to digest them.
Constantine died working to reorganize his great realm, and soon the
frontiers were ruptured again and the Visigoths came almost to
Constantinople. They defeated the Emperor Valens at Adrianople and made
a settlement in what is now Bulgaria, similar to the settlement of the
Vandals in Pannonia. Nominally they were subjects of the emperor,
practically they were conquerors.
CONSTANTINE’S PILLAR, CONSTANTINOPLE
CONSTANTINE’S PILLAR, CONSTANTINOPLE
_Photo: Sebah & Foaillier_
From 379 to 395 A.D. reigned the Emperor Theodosius the Great, and
while he reigned the empire was still formally intact. Over the armies
of Italy and Pannonia presided Stilicho, a Vandal, over the armies in
the Balkan peninsula, Alaric, a Goth. When Theodosius died at the
close of the fourth century he left two sons. Alaric supported one of
these, Arcadius, in Constantinople, and Stilicho the other, Honorius,
in Italy. In other words Alaric and Stilicho fought for the empire
with the princes as puppets. In the course of their struggle Alaric
marched into Italy and after a short siege took Rome (410 A.D.).
The opening half of the fifth century saw the whole of the Roman Empire
in Europe the prey of robber armies of barbarians. It is difficult to
visualize the state of affairs in the world at that time. Over France,
Spain, Italy and the Balkan peninsula, the great cities that had
flourished under the early empire still stood, impoverished, partly
depopulated and falling into decay. Life in them must have been
shallow, mean and full of uncertainty. Local officials asserted their
authority and went on with their work with such conscience as they had,
no doubt in the name of a now remote and inaccessible emperor. The
churches went on, but usually with illiterate priests. There was
little reading and much superstition and fear. But everywhere except
where looters had destroyed them, books and pictures and statuary and
such-like works of art were still to be found.
The life of the countryside had also degenerated. Everywhere this
Roman world was much more weedy and untidy than it had been. In some
regions war and pestilence had brought the land down to the level of a
waste. Roads and forests were infested with robbers. Into such
regions the barbarians marched, with little or no opposition, and set
up their chiefs as rulers, often with Roman official titles. If they
were half civilized barbarians they would give the conquered districts
tolerable terms, they would take possession of the towns, associate and
intermarry, and acquire (with an accent) the Latin speech; but the
Jutes, the Angles and Saxons who submerged the Roman province of
Britain were agriculturalists and had no use for towns, they seem to
have swept south Britain clear of the Romanized population and they
replaced the language by their own Teutonic dialects, which became at
last English.
BASE OF THE “OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS,” CONSTANTINOPLE
BASE OF THE “OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS,” CONSTANTINOPLE
The obelisk of Thothmes, taken from Egypt to Constantinople by
Theodosius and placed upon the pedestal her shown; an interesting
example of early Byzantine art. The complete obelisk is seen on page
239.
_Photo: Sebah & Foaillier_
It is impossible in the space at our disposal to trace the movements of
all the various German and Slavonic tribes as they went to and fro in
the disorganized empire in search of plunder and a pleasant home. But
let the Vandals serve as an example. They came into history in east
Germany. They settled as we have told in Pannonia. Thence they moved
somewhen about 425 A.D. through the intervening provinces to Spain.
There they found Visigoths from South Russia and other German tribes
setting up dukes and kings. From Spain the Vandals under Genseric
sailed for North Africa (429), captured Carthage (439), and built a
fleet. They secured the mastery of the sea and captured and pillaged
Rome (455), which had recovered very imperfectly from her capture and
looting by Alaric half a century earlier. Then the Vandals made
themselves masters of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and most of the other
islands of the western Mediterranean. They made, in fact, a sea empire
very similar in its extent to the sea empire of Carthage seven hundred
odd years before. They were at the climax of their power about 477.
They were a mere handful of conquerors holding all this country. In
the next century almost all their territory had been reconquered for
the empire of Constantinople during a transitory blaze of energy under
Justinian I.
The story of the Vandals is but one sample of a host of similar
adventures. But now there was coming into the European world the least
kindred and most redoubtable of all these devastators, the Mongolian
Huns or Tartars, a yellow people active and able, such as the western
world had never before encountered.
XL
THE HUNS AND THE END OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE
This appearance of a conquering Mongolian people in Europe may be taken
to mark a new stage in human history. Until the last century or so
before the Christian era, the Mongol and the Nordic peoples had not
been in close touch. Far away in the frozen lands beyond the northern
forests the Lapps, a Mongolian people, had drifted westward as far as
Lapland, but they played no part in the main current of history. For
thousands of years the western world carried on the dramatic interplay
of the Aryan, Semitic and fundamental brunette peoples with very little
interference (except for an Ethiopian invasion of Egypt or so) either
from the black peoples to the south or from the Mongolian world in the
far East.
It is probable that there were two chief causes for the new westward
drift of the nomadic Mongolians. One was the consolidation of the
great empire of China, its extension northward and the increase of its
population during the prosperous period of the Han dynasty. The other
was some process of climatic change; a lesser rainfall that abolished
swamps and forests perhaps, or a greater rainfall that extended grazing
over desert steppes, or even perhaps both these processes going on in
different regions but which anyhow facilitated a westward migration. A
third contributary cause was the economic wretchedness, internal decay
and falling population of the Roman Empire. The rich men of the later
Roman Republic, and then the tax-gatherers of the military emperors had
utterly consumed its vitality. So we have the factors of thrust, means
and opportunity. There was pressure from the east, rot in the west and
an open road.
The Hun had reached the eastern boundaries of European Russia by the
first century A.D., but it was not until the fourth and fifth centuries
A.D. that these horsemen rose to predominance upon the steppes. The
fifth century was the Hun’s century. The first Huns to come into Italy
were mercenary bands in the pay of Stilicho the Vandal, the master of
Honorius. Presently they were in possession of Pannonia, the empty nest
of the Vandals.