discipline had been introduced in the monastic establishments of
the Latin church. About that period Cassianus, the first abbot of
St. Victor of Marseilles, wrote out, for the benefit of the ruder
monasticism of the West, the details of discipline in which he had
perfected himself among the renowned communities of the East. He
deplores the absence of any fixed rule in the Latin convents, where
every abbot governed on the plan which suited his fancy; where more
difficulty was found in preserving order among two or three monks
than the Abbot of Tabenna in the Thebaïd experienced with the flock
of five thousand committed to his single charge; and where each
individual retained his own private hoards, which were carefully locked
up and sealed to keep them from the unscrupulous covetousness of his
brethren.[229] How little all these efforts accomplished is clearly
manifested when, in 494, we find Gelasius I. lamenting the incestuous
marriages which were not uncommon among the virgins dedicated to God,
and venturing only to denounce excommunication on the offenders, unless
they should avert it by undergoing public penance. As for widows
who married after professing chastity, he could indicate no earthly
chastisement, but only held out to them the prospect of eternal reward
or punishment, and left it for them to decide whether they would seek
or abandon the better part.[230] Still, the irrevocable nature of the
vow of celibacy was so little understood or respected that in 502
Cæsarius, who had just been translated from the abbacy of a monastery
to the bishopric of Arles, wrote to Pope Symmachus asking him to issue
a precept forbidding marriage to nuns, to which the pontiff promptly
acceeded.[231]
A new apostle was clearly needed to aid the organizing spirit of Rome
in her efforts to regulate the increasing number of devotees, who
threatened to become the worst scandal of the church, and who could
be rendered so efficient an instrument for its aggrandizement. He was
found in the person of St. Benedict of Nursia, who, about the year 494,
at the early age of sixteen, tore himself from the pleasures of the
world, and buried his youth in the solitudes of the Latian Apennines.
A nature that could wrench itself away from the allurements of a
splendid career dawning amid the blandishments of Rome was not likely
to shrink from the austerities which awe and attract the credulous and
the devout. Tempted by the Evil Spirit in the guise of a beautiful
maiden, and finding his resolution on the point of yielding, with a
supreme effort Benedict cast off his simple garment and threw himself
into a thicket of brambles and nettles, through which he rolled until
his naked body was lacerated from head to foot. The experiment, though
rude, was eminently successful; the flesh was effectually conquered,
and Benedict was never again tormented by rebellious desires.[232]
A light so shining was not created for obscurity. Zealous disciples
assembled around him, attracted from distant regions by his sanctity,
and after various vicissitudes he founded the monastery of Monte
Casino, on which for a thousand years were lavished all that veneration
and munificence could accumulate to render illustrious the birthplace
and capital of the great Benedictine Order.
The rule promulgated by Benedict, which virtually became the
established law of Latin Monachism, shows the more practical character
of the western mind. Though pervaded by the austerest asceticism, yet
labor, charity, and good works occupy a much more prominent place in
its injunctions than in the system of the East. Salvation was not
to be sought simply by abstinence and mortification, and the innate
selfishness of the monastic principle was relaxed in favor of a broader
and more human view of the duties of man to his Creator and to his
fellows. This gave to the institution a firmer hold on the affections
of mankind and a more enduring vitality, which preserved its fortunes
through the centuries, in spite of innumerable aberrations and
frightful abuses.
Still there were as yet no irrevocable vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience exacted of the novice. After a year of probation he promised,
before God and the Saints, to keep the Rule under pain of damnation,
and he was then admitted with imposing religious ceremonies. His
worldly garments were, however, preserved, to be returned to him in
case of expulsion, to which he was liable if incorrigibly disobedient.
If he left the monastery, or if he was ejected, he could return twice,
but after the third admission, if he again abandoned the order, he was
no longer eligible.[233] Voluntary submission was thus the corner-stone
of discipline, and there was nothing indelible in the engagement which
bound the monk to his brethren.
Contemporary with St. Benedict was St. Cæsarius of Arles, whose Rule
has been transmitted to us by his nephew, St. Tetradius. It is very
short, but is more rigid than that of Benedict, inasmuch as it requires
from the applicant the condition of remaining for life in the convent,
nor will it permit his assumption of the habit until he shall have
executed a deed bestowing all his property either on his relatives or
on the establishment of his choice, thus insuring the rule of poverty,
and depriving him of all inducement to retire.[234]
The Rule of St. Benedict, however, overcame all rivalry, and was at
length universally adopted; Charlemagne, indeed, inquired in 811
whether there could be any monks except those who professed obedience
to it.[235] Under it were founded the innumerable monasteries which
sprang up in every part of Europe, and were everywhere the pioneers
of civilization; which exercised a more potent influence in extending
Christianity over the Heathen than all other agencies combined; which
carried the useful arts into barbarous regions, and preserved to modern
times whatever of classic culture has remained to us. If they were
equally efficient in extending the authority of the Roman curia, and in
breaking down the independence of local and national churches, it is
not to be rashly assumed that even that result was a misfortune, when
the anarchical tendencies of the Middle Ages were to be neutralized
principally by the humanizing force of religion, and consolidation
was requisite to carry the church through the wilderness. Until the
thirteenth century the Benedictines were practically without rivals,
and their numbers and holiness may be estimated by the fact that in the
fifteenth century one of their historians computed that the order had
furnished fifty-five thousand five hundred and five blessed members to
the calendar of saints.[236]
Yet it could not but be a scandal to all devout minds that a man who
had once devoted himself to religious observances should return to the
world. Not only did it tend to break down the important distinction
now rapidly developing itself between the clergy and the laity, but
the possibility of such escape interfered with the control of the
church over those who formed so large a class of its members, and
diminished their utility in aiding the progress of its aggrandizement.
We cannot be surprised, therefore, that within half a century after
the death of St. Benedict, among the reforms energetically inaugurated
by St. Gregory the Great, in the first year of his pontificate, was
that of commanding the forcible return of all who abandoned their
profession—the terms of the decretal showing that no concealment had
been thought necessary by the renegades in leading a secular life
and in publicly marrying.[237] Equally determined were his efforts
to reform the abuses which had so relaxed the discipline of some
monasteries that women were allowed perfect freedom of access, and the
monks contracted such intimacy with them that they openly acted as
godfathers to their children;[238] and when, in 601, he learned that
the monks of St. Vitus, on Mount Etna, considered themselves at liberty
to marry, apparently without leaving their convent, he checked the
abuse by the most prompt and decided commands to the ecclesiastical
authorities of Sicily.[239]
By the efforts of Gregory the monk was thus, in theory at least,
separated irrevocably from the world, and committed to an existence
which depended solely upon the church. Cut off from family and friends,
the door closed behind him forever, and his only aspirations, beyond
his own personal wants and hopes, could but be for his abbey, his
order, or the church, with which he was thus indissolubly connected.
There was one exception, however, to this general rule. No married man
was allowed to become a monk unless his wife assented, and likewise
became a nun. The marriage-tie was too sacred to be broken, unless both
parties agreed simultaneously to embrace the better life. Thus, on the
complaint of a wife, Gregory orders her husband to be forcibly removed
from the monastery which he had entered and to be restored to her.
We shall see hereafter how entirely the church in time outgrew these
scruples, and how insignificant the sacrament of marriage became in
comparison with that of ordination or the vow of religion.[240]
The theory of perpetual segregation from the world was thus
established, and it accomplished at last the objects for which it
was designed, but it was too much in opposition to the invincible
tendencies of human nature to be universally enforced without a
struggle which lasted for nearly a thousand years. To follow out
in detail the vicissitudes of this struggle would require too much
space. Its nature will be indicated by occasional references in the
following pages, and meanwhile it will be sufficient to observe how
little was accomplished even in his own age by the energy and authority
of Gregory. It was only a few years after his death that the council
of Paris, in 615, proves to us that residence in monasteries was not
considered necessary for women who took the vows, and that the civil
power had to be invoked to prevent their marriage.[241] Indeed, it
was not uncommon for men to turn their houses, nominally at least,
into convents, living there surrounded with their wives and families,
and deriving no little worldly profit from the assumption of superior
piety, to the scandal of the truly religious.[242] St. Isidor of
Seville, about the same period, copies the words of St. Augustin
in describing the wandering monastic impostors who lived upon the
credulous charity of the faithful;[243] and he also enlarges upon the
disgraceful license of the _acephali_, or clerks bound by no rule,
whose vagabond life and countless numbers were an infamy to the western
kingdoms which they infested.[244] The quotation of this passage by
Louis-le-Débonnaire, in his attempt to reform the church, shows that
these degraded vagrants continued to flourish unchecked in the ninth
century;[245] and, indeed, Smaragdus, in his Commentary on the Rule
of St. Benedict, assures us that the evil had rather increased than
diminished.[246]
* * * * *
Monachism was but one application of the doctrine of justification
by works, which, by the enthusiasm and superstition of ages, was
gradually built into a vast system of sacerdotalism. Through it were
eventually opened to the mediæval church sources of illimitable power
and wealth by means of the complicated machinery of purgatory, masses
for the dead, penances, indulgences, &c., under the sole control of
the central head, to which were committed the power of the keys and
the dispensation of the exhaustless treasure of salvation bestowed on
the church by the Redeemer and perpetually increased by the merits of
the saints. To discuss these collateral themes, however, would carry
us too far from our subject, and I must dismiss them with the remark
that at the period now under consideration there could have been no
anticipation of these ulterior advantages to be gained by assuming to
regulate the mode in which individual piety might seek to propitiate
an offended God. Sufficient motives for the assumption existed in the
evils and aspirations of the moment without anticipating others which
only received their fullest development under the skilful logic of the
Thomists.
VIII.
THE BARBARIANS.
While the Latin church had thus been engaged in its hopeless combat
with the incurable vices of a worn-out civilization, it had found
itself confronted by a new and essentially different task. The
Barbarians who wrenched province after province from the feeble grasp
of the Cæsars had to be conquered, or religion and culture would be
involved in the wreck which blotted out the political system of the
Empire. The destinies of the future hung trembling in the balance,
and it might not be an uninteresting speculation to consider what
had been the present condition of the world if Western Europe had
shared the fate of the East, and had fallen under the domination of
a race bigoted in its own belief and incapable of learning from its
subjects. Fortunately for mankind, the invaders of the West were not
semi-civilized and self-satisfied; their belief was not a burning
zeal for a faith sufficiently elevated to meet many of the wants of
the soul; they were simple barbarians, who, while they might despise
the cowardly voluptuaries on whom they trampled, could not fail to
recognize the superiority of a civilization awful even in its ruins.
Fortunately, too, the Latin church was a more compact and independently
organized body than its Eastern rival, inspired by a warmer faith and a
more resolute ambition. It faced the difficulties of its new position
with consummate tact and tireless energy; and whether its adversaries
were Pagans like the Franks, or Arians like the Goths and Burgundians,
by alternate pious zeal and artful energy it triumphed where success
seemed hopeless, and where bare toleration would have appeared a
sufficient victory.
While the celibacy, which bound every ecclesiastic to the church and
dissevered all other ties, may doubtless be credited with a leading
share in this result, it introduced new elements of disorder where
enough existed before. The chaste purity of the Barbarians at their
advent aroused the wondering admiration of Salvianus, as that of
their fathers four centuries earlier had won the severe encomium of
Tacitus;[247] but the virtue which sufficed for the simplicity of the
German forests was not long proof against the allurements accumulated
by the cynicism of Roman luxury. At first the wild converts, content
with the battle-axe and javelin, might leave the holy functions of
religion to their new subjects, their strength scarcely feeling the
restraint of a faith which to them was little more than an idle
ceremony; but as they gradually settled down in their conquests, and
recognized that the high places of the church conferred riches, honor,
and power, they coveted the prizes which were too valuable to be
monopolized by an inferior race. Gradually the hierarchy thus became
filled with a class of warrior bishops, who, however efficient in
maintaining and extending ecclesiastical prerogatives, were not likely
to shed lustre on their order by the rigidity of their virtue, or to
remove, by a strict enforcement of discipline, the scandals inseparable
from endless civil commotions.
* * * * *
Reference has been made above (p. 80), to the perpetual iteration
of the canon of celibacy, and of the ingenious devices to prevent
its violation, by the numerous councils held during this period,
showing at once the disorders which prevailed among the clergy and the
fruitlessness of the effort to repress them. The history of the time is
full of examples illustrating the various phases of this struggle.
The episcopal chair, which at an earlier period had been filled by the
votes of the people, and which subsequently came under the control
of the Papacy, was at this time a gift in the hands of the untamed
Merovingians, who carelessly bestowed it on him who could most lavishly
fill the royal coffers, or who had earned it by courtly subservience
or warlike prowess. The supple Roman or the turbulent Frank, who
perchance could not recite a line of the Mass, thus leaped at once from
the laity through all the grades;[248] and as he was most probably
married, there can be no room for surprise if the rule of continence,
thus suddenly assumed from the most worldly motives, should often prove
unendurable. Even in the early days of the Frankish conquest we see a
cultured noble, like Genebaldus, married to the niece of St. Remy, when
placed in the see of Laon ostensibly putting his wife away and visiting
her only under pretext of religious instruction, until the successive
births of a son and a daughter—whom he named Latro and Vulpecula in
token of his sin—and we may not unreasonably doubt the chronicler’s
veracity when he informs us that the remorse of Genebaldus led him
to submit to seven years’ imprisonment as an expiatory penance.[249]
Equally instructive is the story of Felix of Nantes, whose wife,
banished from his bed on his elevation to the episcopate, rebelled
against the separation, and, finding him obdurate to her allurements,
was filled with jealousy, believing that only another attachment could
account for his coldness. Hoping to detect and expose his infidelity,
she stole into the chamber where he was sleeping and saw on his breast
a lamb, shining with heavenly light, indicative of the peaceful repose
which had replaced all earthly passions in his heart.[250] A virtue
which was regarded as worthy of so miraculous a manifestation must
have been rare indeed among the illiterate and untutored nominees of
a licentious court, and that it was so in fact is indicated by the
frequent injunctions of the councils that bishops must regard their
wives as sisters; while a canon promulgated by the council of Macon,
in 581, ordering that no woman should enter the chamber of a bishop
without two priests, or at least two deacons, in her company, shows how
little hesitation there was in publishing to the world the suspicions
that were generally entertained.[251] How the rule was sometimes obeyed
by the wild prelates of the age, while trampling upon other equally
well-known canons, is exemplified by the story of Macliaus of Britanny.
Chanao, Count of Britanny, had made way with three of his brothers; the
fourth, Macliaus, after an unsuccessful conspiracy, sought safety in
flight, entered the church, and was created Bishop of Vannes. On the
death of Chanao, he promptly seized the vacant throne, left the church,
threw off his episcopal robes, and took back to himself the wife whom
he had quitted on obtaining the see of Vannes—for all of which he was
duly excommunicated by his brother prelates.[252]
When such was the condition of morals and discipline in the high places
of the church, it is not to be wondered at if the second council of
Tours, in 567, could declare that the people suspect, not indeed all,
but many of the arch-priests, vicars, deacons, and subdeacons, of
maintaining improper relations with their wives, and should command
that no one in orders should visit his own house except in company
with a subordinate clerk, without whom, moreover, he was never to
sleep; the clerk refusing the performance of the duty to be whipped,
and the priest neglecting the precaution to be deprived of communion
for thirty days. Any one in orders found with his wife was to be
excommunicated for a year, deposed, and relegated among the laity;
while the arch-priest who neglected the enforcement of these rules was
to be imprisoned on bread and water for a month. An equally suggestive
illustration of the condition of society is afforded by another
canon, directed against the frequent marriages of nuns, who excused
themselves on the ground that they had taken the veil to avoid the
risk of forcible abduction. Allusion is made to the laws of Childebert
and Clotair, maintained in vigor by Charibert, punishing such attempts
severely, and girls who anticipate them are directed to seek temporary
asylum in the church until their kindred can protect them under the
royal authority, or find husbands for them.[253]
* * * * *
Morals were even worse among the Arian Wisigoths of Spain than among
the orthodox believers of France. It is true that priestly marriage
formed no part of the Arian doctrines, but as the heresy originated
prior to the council of Nicæa, and professed no obedience to that or
any other council or decretal, its practice in this respect was left
to such influence as individual asceticism might exercise. Having no
acknowledged head to promulgate general canons or to insist upon their
observance, no rule of the kind, even if theoretically admitted, could
be effectually enforced. How little, indeed, the rule was obeyed is
shown by the proceedings of the third council of Toledo, held in
589 to confirm the reunion of the Spanish kingdom with the orthodox
church. It complains that even the converted bishops, priests, and
deacons are found to be publicly living with their wives, which it
forbids for the future under threat of degrading all recalcitrants to
the rank of lector.[254] The conversion of the kingdom to Catholicism
did not improve matters. The clergy continued not only to associate
with their wives, but also to marry openly, for the secular power was
soon afterwards forced to interfere, and King Recared I. issued a law
directing that any priest, deacon, or subdeacon connecting himself with
a woman by marriage or otherwise, should be separated from his guilty
consort by either the bishop or judge, and be punished according to
the canons of the church, while the unfortunate woman was subjected
to a hundred lashes and denied all access to her husband. To insure
the enforcement of the edict, the heavy mulct of two pounds of gold
was levied on any bishop neglecting his duty in the premises.[255]
Recared also interposed to put a stop to the frequent marriages of
nuns, whose separation from their husbands and condign punishment
were decreed, with the enormous fine of five pounds of gold exacted
of the careless ecclesiastic who might neglect to carry the law into
effect—a fair measure of the difficulties experienced in enforcing the
rule of celibacy.[256] This legislation had little effect, for a half
century later the eighth council of Toledo, in 653, shows us that all
ranks of the clergy, from bishops to subdeacons, had still no scruple
in publicly maintaining relations with wives and concubines;[257]
and, despite these well-meant efforts, clerical morals went from bad
to worse until the licentious reign of King Witiza broke down all
the accustomed barriers. According to the monkish chroniclers, that
reckless prince issued, in 706, a law authorizing not only polygamy
but unlimited concubinage to both laity and clergy; a privilege of
which it is not unreasonable, from what we have seen, to suppose that
they largely availed themselves.[258] There seems to be no record of
any remonstrance on the part of the Gothic prelates, and when, three
years later, Pope Constantine took cognizance of the innovation, and
threatened Witiza with dethronement if he should not abrogate his
iniquitous legislation, the monarch retorted with a promise to repeat
the exploits of his predecessor Alaric, in sacking and plundering the
Apostolic city. It is a little singular, however, that one of the
first acts of the usurper, Don Roderic, in 711, was the repeal of this
obnoxious law.[259] If he had any intentions of undertaking the reform
of his subjects’ morals, however, his adventure with Count Julian’s
daughter and the Saracenic invasion caused its indefinite postponement.
* * * * *
Italy was almost equally far removed from the ideal purity of Jerome
and Augustin. In the early part of the sixth century was fabricated
an account of a supposititious council, said to have been held in
Rome by Silvester I., and the neglect of celibacy is evident when it
was felt to be necessary to insert in this forgery a canon forbidding
marriage to priests, under penalty of deprivation of functions for ten
years.[260] Even in this it is observable that there was no thought of
annulling the marriage, as subsequently became established in orthodox
doctrines. Nothing can be more suggestive of the demoralization of
the Italian church than the permission granted about the year 580 by
Pelagius II. for the elevation to the diaconate of a clerk at Florence,
who while a widower had had children by a concubine. What renders the
circumstance peculiarly significant is the fact that the Pope pleads
the degeneracy of the age as his apology for this laxity.[261]
* * * * *