Christianity.—Part II.
Pleasure and guilt are synonymous terms in the language of the
monks, and they discovered, by experience, that rigid fasts, and
abstemious diet, are the most effectual preservatives against the
impure desires of the flesh. 44 The rules of abstinence which
they imposed, or practised, were not uniform or perpetual: the
cheerful festival of the Pentecost was balanced by the
extraordinary mortification of Lent; the fervor of new
monasteries was insensibly relaxed; and the voracious appetite of
the Gauls could not imitate the patient and temperate virtue of
the Egyptians. 45 The disciples of Antony and Pachomius were
satisfied with their daily pittance, 46 of twelve ounces of
bread, or rather biscuit, 47 which they divided into two frugal
repasts, of the afternoon and of the evening. It was esteemed a
merit, and almost a duty, to abstain from the boiled vegetables
which were provided for the refectory; but the extraordinary
bounty of the abbot sometimes indulged them with the luxury of
cheese, fruit, salad, and the small dried fish of the Nile. 48 A
more ample latitude of sea and river fish was gradually allowed
or assumed; but the use of flesh was long confined to the sick or
travellers; and when it gradually prevailed in the less rigid
monasteries of Europe, a singular distinction was introduced; as
if birds, whether wild or domestic, had been less profane than
the grosser animals of the field. Water was the pure and innocent
beverage of the primitive monks; and the founder of the
Benedictines regrets the daily portion of half a pint of wine,
which had been extorted from him by the intemperance of the age.
49 Such an allowance might be easily supplied by the vineyards of
Italy; and his victorious disciples, who passed the Alps, the
Rhine, and the Baltic, required, in the place of wine, an
adequate compensation of strong beer or cider.
44 (return) [ St. Jerom, in strong, but indiscreet, language,
expresses the most important use of fasting and abstinence: “Non
quod Deus universitatis Creator et Dominus, intestinorum
nostrorum rugitu, et inanitate ventris, pulmonisque ardore
delectetur, sed quod aliter pudicitia tuta esse non possit.” (Op.
tom. i. p. 32, ad Eustochium.) See the twelfth and twenty-second
Collations of Cassian, de Castitate and de Illusionibus
Nocturnis.]
45 (return) [ Edacitas in Graecis gula est, in Gallis natura,
(Dialog. i. c. 4 p. 521.) Cassian fairly owns, that the perfect
model of abstinence cannot be imitated in Gaul, on account of the
aerum temperies, and the qualitas nostrae fragilitatis,
(Institut. iv. 11.) Among the Western rules, that of Columbanus
is the most austere; he had been educated amidst the poverty of
Ireland, as rigid, perhaps, and inflexible as the abstemious
virtue of Egypt. The rule of Isidore of Seville is the mildest;
on holidays he allows the use of flesh.]
46 (return) [ “Those who drink only water, and have no nutritious
liquor, ought, at least, to have a pound and a half (twenty-four
ounces) of bread every day.” State of Prisons, p. 40, by Mr.
Howard.]
47 (return) [ See Cassian. Collat. l. ii. 19-21. The small
loaves, or biscuit, of six ounces each, had obtained the name of
Paximacia, (Rosweyde, Onomasticon, p. 1045.) Pachomius, however,
allowed his monks some latitude in the quantity of their food;
but he made them work in proportion as they ate, (Pallad. in
Hist. Lausiac. c. 38, 39, in Vit. Patrum, l. viii. p. 736, 737.)]
48 (return) [ See the banquet to which Cassian (Collation viii.
1) was invited by Serenus, an Egyptian abbot.]
49 (return) [ See the Rule of St. Benedict, No. 39, 40, (in Cod.
Reg. part ii. p. 41, 42.) Licet legamus vinum omnino monachorum
non esse, sed quia nostris temporibus id monachis persuaderi non
potest; he allows them a Roman hemina, a measure which may be
ascertained from Arbuthnot’s Tables.]
The candidate who aspired to the virtue of evangelical poverty,
abjured, at his first entrance into a regular community, the
idea, and even the name, of all separate or exclusive
possessions. 50 The brethren were supported by their manual
labor; and the duty of labor was strenuously recommended as a
penance, as an exercise, and as the most laudable means of
securing their daily subsistence. 51 The garden and fields, which
the industry of the monks had often rescued from the forest or
the morass, were diligently cultivated by their hands. They
performed, without reluctance, the menial offices of slaves and
domestics; and the several trades that were necessary to provide
their habits, their utensils, and their lodging, were exercised
within the precincts of the great monasteries. The monastic
studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to
dispel, the cloud of superstition. Yet the curiosity or zeal of
some learned solitaries has cultivated the ecclesiastical, and
even the profane, sciences; and posterity must gratefully
acknowledge, that the monuments of Greek and Roman literature
have been preserved and multiplied by their indefatigable pens.
52 But the more humble industry of the monks, especially in
Egypt, was contented with the silent, sedentary occupation of
making wooden sandals, or of twisting the leaves of the palm-tree
into mats and baskets. The superfluous stock, which was not
consumed in domestic use, supplied, by trade, the wants of the
community: the boats of Tabenne, and the other monasteries of
Thebais, descended the Nile as far as Alexandria; and, in a
Christian market, the sanctity of the workmen might enhance the
intrinsic value of the work.
50 (return) [ Such expressions as my book, my cloak, my shoes,
(Cassian Institut. l. iv. c. 13,) were not less severely
prohibited among the Western monks, (Cod. Regul. part ii. p. 174,
235, 288;) and the rule of Columbanus punished them with six
lashes. The ironical author of the Ordres Monastiques, who laughs
at the foolish nicety of modern convents, seems ignorant that the
ancients were equally absurd.]
51 (return) [ Two great masters of ecclesiastical science, the P.
Thomassin, (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. iii. p. 1090-1139,) and
the P. Mabillon, (Etudes Monastiques, tom. i. p. 116-155,) have
seriously examined the manual labor of the monks, which the
former considers as a merit and the latter as a duty.]
52 (return) [ Mabillon (Etudes Monastiques, tom. i. p. 47-55) has
collected many curious facts to justify the literary labors of
his predecessors, both in the East and West. Books were copied in
the ancient monasteries of Egypt, (Cassian. Institut. l. iv. c.
12,) and by the disciples of St. Martin, (Sulp. Sever. in Vit.
Martin. c. 7, p. 473.) Cassiodorus has allowed an ample scope for
the studies of the monks; and we shall not be scandalized, if
their pens sometimes wandered from Chrysostom and Augustin to
Homer and Virgil. But the necessity of manual labor was
insensibly superseded.]
The novice was tempted to bestow his fortune on the saints, in
whose society he was resolved to spend the remainder of his life;
and the pernicious indulgence of the laws permitted him to
receive, for their use, any future accessions of legacy or
inheritance. 53 Melania contributed her plate, three hundred
pounds weight of silver; and Paula contracted an immense debt,
for the relief of their favorite monks; who kindly imparted the
merits of their prayers and penance to a rich and liberal sinner.
54 Time continually increased, and accidents could seldom
diminish, the estates of the popular monasteries, which spread
over the adjacent country and cities: and, in the first century
of their institution, the infidel Zosimus has maliciously
observed, that, for the benefit of the poor, the Christian monks
had reduced a great part of mankind to a state of beggary. 55 As
long as they maintained their original fervor, they approved
themselves, however, the faithful and benevolent stewards of the
charity, which was entrusted to their care. But their discipline
was corrupted by prosperity: they gradually assumed the pride of
wealth, and at last indulged the luxury of expense. Their public
luxury might be excused by the magnificence of religious worship,
and the decent motive of erecting durable habitations for an
immortal society. But every age of the church has accused the
licentiousness of the degenerate monks; who no longer remembered
the object of their institution, embraced the vain and sensual
pleasures of the world, which they had renounced, 56 and
scandalously abused the riches which had been acquired by the
austere virtues of their founders. 57 Their natural descent, from
such painful and dangerous virtue, to the common vices of
humanity, will not, perhaps, excite much grief or indignation in
the mind of a philosopher.
53 (return) [ Thomassin (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. iii. p.
118, 145, 146, 171-179) has examined the revolution of the civil,
canon, and common law. Modern France confirms the death which
monks have inflicted on themselves, and justly deprives them of
all right of inheritance.]
54 (return) [ See Jerom, (tom. i. p. 176, 183.) The monk Pambo
made a sublime answer to Melania, who wished to specify the value
of her gift: “Do you offer it to me, or to God? If to God, He who
suspends the mountain in a balance, need not be informed of the
weight of your plate.” (Pallad. Hist. Lausiac. c. 10, in the Vit.
Patrum, l. viii. p. 715.)]
55 (return) [ Zosim. l. v. p. 325. Yet the wealth of the Eastern
monks was far surpassed by the princely greatness of the
Benedictines.]
56 (return) [ The sixth general council (the Quinisext in Trullo,
Canon xlvii in Beveridge, tom. i. p. 213) restrains women from
passing the night in a male, or men in a female, monastery. The
seventh general council (the second Nicene, Canon xx. in
Beveridge, tom. i. p. 325) prohibits the erection of double or
promiscuous monasteries of both sexes; but it appears from
Balsamon, that the prohibition was not effectual. On the
irregular pleasures and expenses of the clergy and monks, see
Thomassin, tom. iii. p. 1334-1368.]
57 (return) [ I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession
of a Benedictine abbot: “My vow of poverty has given me a hundred
thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the
rank of a sovereign prince.”—I forget the consequences of his vow
of chastity.]
The lives of the primitive monks were consumed in penance and
solitude; undisturbed by the various occupations which fill the
time, and exercise the faculties, of reasonable, active, and
social beings. Whenever they were permitted to step beyond the
precincts of the monastery, two jealous companions were the
mutual guards and spies of each other’s actions; and, after their
return, they were condemned to forget, or, at least, to suppress,
whatever they had seen or heard in the world. Strangers, who
professed the orthodox faith, were hospitably entertained in a
separate apartment; but their dangerous conversation was
restricted to some chosen elders of approved discretion and
fidelity. Except in their presence, the monastic slave might not
receive the visits of his friends or kindred; and it was deemed
highly meritorious, if he afflicted a tender sister, or an aged
parent, by the obstinate refusal of a word or look. 58 The monks
themselves passed their lives, without personal attachments,
among a crowd which had been formed by accident, and was
detained, in the same prison, by force or prejudice. Recluse
fanatics have few ideas or sentiments to communicate: a special
license of the abbot regulated the time and duration of their
familiar visits; and, at their silent meals, they were enveloped
in their cowls, inaccessible, and almost invisible, to each
other. 59 Study is the resource of solitude: but education had
not prepared and qualified for any liberal studies the mechanics
and peasants who filled the monastic communities. They might
work: but the vanity of spiritual perfection was tempted to
disdain the exercise of manual labor; and the industry must be
faint and languid, which is not excited by the sense of personal
interest.
58 (return) [ Pior, an Egyptian monk, allowed his sister to see
him; but he shut his eyes during the whole visit. See Vit.
Patrum, l. iii. p. 504. Many such examples might be added.]
59 (return) [ The 7th, 8th, 29th, 30th, 31st, 34th, 57th, 60th,
86th, and 95th articles of the Rule of Pachomius, impose most
intolerable laws of silence and mortification.]
According to their faith and zeal, they might employ the day,
which they passed in their cells, either in vocal or mental
prayer: they assembled in the evening, and they were awakened in
the night, for the public worship of the monastery. The precise
moment was determined by the stars, which are seldom clouded in
the serene sky of Egypt; and a rustic horn, or trumpet, the
signal of devotion, twice interrupted the vast silence of the
desert. 60 Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was
rigorously measured: the vacant hours of the monk heavily rolled
along, without business or pleasure; and, before the close of
each day, he had repeatedly accused the tedious progress of the
sun. 61 In this comfortless state, superstition still pursued and
tormented her wretched votaries. 62 The repose which they had
sought in the cloister was disturbed by a tardy repentance,
profane doubts, and guilty desires; and, while they considered
each natural impulse as an unpardonable sin, they perpetually
trembled on the edge of a flaming and bottomless abyss. From the
painful struggles of disease and despair, these unhappy victims
were sometimes relieved by madness or death; and, in the sixth
century, a hospital was founded at Jerusalem for a small portion
of the austere penitents, who were deprived of their senses. 63
Their visions, before they attained this extreme and acknowledged
term of frenzy, have afforded ample materials of supernatural
history. It was their firm persuasion, that the air, which they
breathed, was peopled with invisible enemies; with innumerable
demons, who watched every occasion, and assumed every form, to
terrify, and above all to tempt, their unguarded virtue. The
imagination, and even the senses, were deceived by the illusions
of distempered fanaticism; and the hermit, whose midnight prayer
was oppressed by involuntary slumber, might easily confound the
phantoms of horror or delight, which had occupied his sleeping
and his waking dreams. 64
60 (return) [ The diurnal and nocturnal prayers of the monks are
copiously discussed by Cassian, in the third and fourth books of
his Institutions; and he constantly prefers the liturgy, which an
angel had dictated to the monasteries of Tebennoe.]
61 (return) [ Cassian, from his own experience, describes the
acedia, or listlessness of mind and body, to which a monk was
exposed, when he sighed to find himself alone. Saepiusque
egreditur et ingreditur cellam, et Solem velut ad occasum tardius
properantem crebrius intuetur, (Institut. x. l.)]
62 (return) [ The temptations and sufferings of Stagirius were
communicated by that unfortunate youth to his friend St.
Chrysostom. See Middleton’s Works, vol. i. p. 107-110. Something
similar introduces the life of every saint; and the famous Inigo,
or Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, (vide d’Inigo de
Guiposcoa, tom. i. p. 29-38,) may serve as a memorable example.]
63 (return) [ Fleury, Hist. Ecclesiastique, tom. vii. p. 46. I
have read somewhere, in the Vitae Patrum, but I cannot recover
the place that several, I believe many, of the monks, who did not
reveal their temptations to the abbot, became guilty of suicide.]
64 (return) [ See the seventh and eighth Collations of Cassian,
who gravely examines, why the demons were grown less active and
numerous since the time of St. Antony. Rosweyde’s copious index
to the Vitae Patrum will point out a variety of infernal scenes.
The devils were most formidable in a female shape.]
The monks were divided into two classes: the Coenobites, who
lived under a common and regular discipline; and the Anachorets,
who indulged their unsocial, independent fanaticism. 65 The most
devout, or the most ambitious, of the spiritual brethren,
renounced the convent, as they had renounced the world. The
fervent monasteries of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, were
surrounded by a Laura, 66 a distant circle of solitary cells; and
the extravagant penance of Hermits was stimulated by applause and
emulation. 67 They sunk under the painful weight of crosses and
chains; and their emaciated limbs were confined by collars,
bracelets, gauntlets, and greaves of massy and rigid iron. All
superfluous encumbrance of dress they contemptuously cast away;
and some savage saints of both sexes have been admired, whose
naked bodies were only covered by their long hair. They aspired
to reduce themselves to the rude and miserable state in which the
human brute is scarcely distinguishable above his kindred
animals; and the numerous sect of Anachorets derived their name
from their humble practice of grazing in the fields of
Mesopotamia with the common herd. 68 They often usurped the den
of some wild beast whom they affected to resemble; they buried
themselves in some gloomy cavern, which art or nature had scooped
out of the rock; and the marble quarries of Thebais are still
inscribed with the monuments of their penance. 69 The most
perfect Hermits are supposed to have passed many days without
food, many nights without sleep, and many years without speaking;
and glorious was the man ( I abuse that name) who contrived any
cell, or seat, of a peculiar construction, which might expose
him, in the most inconvenient posture, to the inclemency of the
seasons.
65 (return) [ For the distinction of the Coenobites and the
Hermits, especially in Egypt, see Jerom, (tom. i. p. 45, ad
Rusticum,) the first Dialogue of Sulpicius Severus, Rufinus, (c.
22, in Vit. Patrum, l. ii. p. 478,) Palladius, (c. 7, 69, in Vit.
Patrum, l. viii. p. 712, 758,) and, above all, the eighteenth and
nineteenth Collations of Cassian. These writers, who compare the
common and solitary life, reveal the abuse and danger of the
latter.]
66 (return) [ Suicer. Thesaur. Ecclesiast. tom. ii. p. 205, 218.
Thomassin (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p. 1501, 1502) gives a
good account of these cells. When Gerasimus founded his monastery
in the wilderness of Jordan, it was accompanied by a Laura of
seventy cells.]
67 (return) [ Theodoret, in a large volume, (the Philotheus in
Vit. Patrum, l. ix. p. 793-863,) has collected the lives and
miracles of thirty Anachorets. Evagrius (l. i. c. 12) more
briefly celebrates the monks and hermits of Palestine.]
68 (return) [ Sozomen, l. vi. c. 33. The great St. Ephrem
composed a panegyric on these or grazing monks, (Tillemont, Mem.
Eccles. tom. viii. p. 292.)]
69 (return) [ The P. Sicard (Missions du Levant, tom. ii. p.
217-233) examined the caverns of the Lower Thebais with wonder
and devotion. The inscriptions are in the old Syriac character,
which was used by the Christians of Abyssinia.]
Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and genius of
Simeon Stylites 70 have been immortalized by the singular
invention of an aerial penance. At the age of thirteen, the young
Syrian deserted the profession of a shepherd, and threw himself
into an austere monastery. After a long and painful novitiate, in
which Simeon was repeatedly saved from pious suicide, he
established his residence on a mountain, about thirty or forty
miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a mandra, or
circle of stones, to which he had attached himself by a ponderous
chain, he ascended a column, which was successively raised from
the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground. 71 In
this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the
heat of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit
and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation
without fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the
different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect
attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross,
but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre
skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator,
after numbering twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions, at
length desisted from the endless account. The progress of an
ulcer in his thigh 72 might shorten, but it could not disturb,
this celestial life; and the patient Hermit expired, without
descending from his column. A prince, who should capriciously
inflict such tortures, would be deemed a tyrant; but it would
surpass the power of a tyrant to impose a long and miserable
existence on the reluctant victims of his cruelty. This voluntary
martyrdom must have gradually destroyed the sensibility both of
the mind and body; nor can it be presumed that the fanatics, who
torment themselves, are susceptible of any lively affection for
the rest of mankind. A cruel, unfeeling temper has distinguished
the monks of every age and country: their stern indifference,
which is seldom mollified by personal friendship, is inflamed by
religious hatred; and their merciless zeal has strenuously
administered the holy office of the Inquisition.
70 (return) [ See Theodoret (in Vit. Patrum, l. ix. p. 848-854,)
Antony, (in Vit. Patrum, l. i. p. 170-177,) Cosmas, (in Asseman.
Bibliot. Oriental tom. i. p. 239-253,) Evagrius, (l. i. c. 13,
14,) and Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xv. p. 347-392.)]
71 (return) [ The narrow circumference of two cubits, or three
feet, which Evagrius assigns for the summit of the column is
inconsistent with reason, with facts, and with the rules of
architecture. The people who saw it from below might be easily
deceived.]
72 (return) [ I must not conceal a piece of ancient scandal
concerning the origin of this ulcer. It has been reported that
the Devil, assuming an angelic form, invited him to ascend, like
Elijah, into a fiery chariot. The saint too hastily raised his
foot, and Satan seized the moment of inflicting this chastisement
on his vanity.]
The monastic saints, who excite only the contempt and pity of a
philosopher, were respected, and almost adored, by the prince and
people. Successive crowds of pilgrims from Gaul and India saluted
the divine pillar of Simeon: the tribes of Saracens disputed in
arms the honor of his benediction; the queens of Arabia and
Persia gratefully confessed his supernatural virtue; and the
angelic Hermit was consulted by the younger Theodosius, in the
most important concerns of the church and state. His remains were
transported from the mountain of Telenissa, by a solemn
procession of the patriarch, the master-general of the East, six
bishops, twenty-one counts or tribunes, and six thousand
soldiers; and Antioch revered his bones, as her glorious ornament
and impregnable defence. The fame of the apostles and martyrs was
gradually eclipsed by these recent and popular Anachorets; the
Christian world fell prostrate before their shrines; and the
miracles ascribed to their relics exceeded, at least in number
and duration, the spiritual exploits of their lives. But the
golden legend of their lives 73 was embellished by the artful
credulity of their interested brethren; and a believing age was
easily persuaded, that the slightest caprice of an Egyptian or a
Syrian monk had been sufficient to interrupt the eternal laws of
the universe. The favorites of Heaven were accustomed to cure
inveterate diseases with a touch, a word, or a distant message;
and to expel the most obstinate demons from the souls or bodies
which they possessed. They familiarly accosted, or imperiously
commanded, the lions and serpents of the desert; infused
vegetation into a sapless trunk; suspended iron on the surface of
the water; passed the Nile on the back of a crocodile, and
refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace. These extravagant tales,
which display the fiction without the genius, of poetry, have
seriously affected the reason, the faith, and the morals, of the
Christians. Their credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of
the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and
superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of
philosophy and science. Every mode of religious worship which had
been practised by the saints, every mysterious doctrine which
they believed, was fortified by the sanction of divine
revelation, and all the manly virtues were oppressed by the
servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks. If it be possible
to measure the interval between the philosophic writings of
Cicero and the sacred legend of Theodoret, between the character
of Cato and that of Simeon, we may appreciate the memorable
revolution which was accomplished in the Roman empire within a
period of five hundred years.
73 (return) [ I know not how to select or specify the miracles
contained in the Vitae Patrum of Rosweyde, as the number very
much exceeds the thousand pages of that voluminous work. An
elegant specimen may be found in the dialogues of Sulpicius
Severus, and his Life of St. Martin. He reveres the monks of
Egypt; yet he insults them with the remark, that they never
raised the dead; whereas the bishop of Tours had restored three
dead men to life.]
II. The progress of Christianity has been marked by two glorious
and decisive victories: over the learned and luxurious citizens
of the Roman empire; and over the warlike Barbarians of Scythia
and Germany, who subverted the empire, and embraced the religion,
of the Romans. The Goths were the foremost of these savage
proselytes; and the nation was indebted for its conversion to a
countryman, or, at least, to a subject, worthy to be ranked among
the inventors of useful arts, who have deserved the remembrance
and gratitude of posterity. A great number of Roman provincials
had been led away into captivity by the Gothic bands, who ravaged
Asia in the time of Gallienus; and of these captives, many were
Christians, and several belonged to the ecclesiastical order.
Those involuntary missionaries, dispersed as slaves in the
villages of Dacia, successively labored for the salvation of
their masters. The seeds which they planted, of the evangelic
doctrine, were gradually propagated; and before the end of a
century, the pious work was achieved by the labors of Ulphilas,
whose ancestors had been transported beyond the Danube from a
small town of Cappadocia.
Ulphilas, the bishop and apostle of the Goths, 74 acquired their
love and reverence by his blameless life and indefatigable zeal;
and they received, with implicit confidence, the doctrines of
truth and virtue which he preached and practised. He executed the
arduous task of translating the Scriptures into their native
tongue, a dialect of the German or Teutonic language; but he
prudently suppressed the four books of Kings, as they might tend
to irritate the fierce and sanguinary spirit of the Barbarians.
The rude, imperfect idiom of soldiers and shepherds, so ill
qualified to communicate any spiritual ideas, was improved and
modulated by his genius: and Ulphilas, before he could frame his
version, was obliged to compose a new alphabet of twenty-four
letters; 741 four of which he invented, to express the peculiar
sounds that were unknown to the Greek and Latin pronunciation. 75
But the prosperous state of the Gothic church was soon afflicted
by war and intestine discord, and the chieftains were divided by
religion as well as by interest. Fritigern, the friend of the
Romans, became the proselyte of Ulphilas; while the haughty soul
of Athanaric disdained the yoke of the empire and of the gospel.
The faith of the new converts was tried by the persecution which
he excited. A wagon, bearing aloft the shapeless image of Thor,
perhaps, or of Woden, was conducted in solemn procession through
the streets of the camp; and the rebels, who refused to worship
the god of their fathers, were immediately burnt, with their
tents and families. The character of Ulphilas recommended him to
the esteem of the Eastern court, where he twice appeared as the
minister of peace; he pleaded the cause of the distressed Goths,
who implored the protection of Valens; and the name of Moses was
applied to this spiritual guide, who conducted his people through
the deep waters of the Danube to the Land of Promise. 76 The
devout shepherds, who were attached to his person, and tractable
to his voice, acquiesced in their settlement, at the foot of the
Maesian mountains, in a country of woodlands and pastures, which
supported their flocks and herds, and enabled them to purchase
the corn and wine of the more plentiful provinces. These harmless
Barbarians multiplied in obscure peace and the profession of
Christianity. 77
74 (return) [ On the subject of Ulphilas, and the conversion of
the Goths, see Sozomen, l. vi. c. 37. Socrates, l. iv. c. 33.
Theodoret, l. iv. c. 37. Philostorg. l. ii. c. 5. The heresy of
Philostorgius appears to have given him superior means of
information.]
741 (return) [ This is the Moeso-Gothic alphabet of which many of
the letters are evidently formed from the Greek and Roman. M. St.
Martin, however contends, that it is impossible but that some
written alphabet must have been known long before among the
Goths. He supposes that their former letters were those inscribed
on the runes, which, being inseparably connected with the old
idolatrous superstitions, were proscribed by the Christian
missionaries. Everywhere the runes, so common among all the
German tribes, disappear after the propagation of Christianity.
S. Martin iv. p. 97, 98.—M.]
75 (return) [ A mutilated copy of the four Gospels, in the Gothic
version, was published A.D. 1665, and is esteemed the most
ancient monument of the Teutonic language, though Wetstein
attempts, by some frivolous conjectures, to deprive Ulphilas of
the honor of the work. Two of the four additional letters express
the W, and our own Th. See Simon, Hist. Critique du Nouveau
Testament, tom ii. p. 219-223. Mill. Prolegom p. 151, edit.
Kuster. Wetstein, Prolegom. tom. i. p. 114. * Note: The Codex
Argenteus, found in the sixteenth century at Wenden, near
Cologne, and now preserved at Upsal, contains almost the entire
four Gospels. The best edition is that of J. Christ. Zahn,
Weissenfels, 1805. In 1762 Knettel discovered and published from
a Palimpsest MS. four chapters of the Epistle to the Romans: they
were reprinted at Upsal, 1763. M. Mai has since that time
discovered further fragments, and other remains of Moeso-Gothic
literature, from a Palimpsest at Milan. See Ulphilae partium
inedi arum in Ambrosianis Palimpsestis ab Ang. Maio repertarum
specimen Milan. Ito. 1819.—M.]
76 (return) [ Philostorgius erroneously places this passage under
the reign of Constantine; but I am much inclined to believe that
it preceded the great emigration.]
77 (return) [ We are obliged to Jornandes (de Reb. Get. c. 51, p.
688) for a short and lively picture of these lesser Goths. Gothi
minores, populus immensus, cum suo Pontifice ipsoque primate
Wulfila. The last words, if they are not mere tautology, imply
some temporal jurisdiction.]
Their fiercer brethren, the formidable Visigoths, universally
adopted the religion of the Romans, with whom they maintained a
perpetual intercourse, of war, of friendship, or of conquest. In
their long and victorious march from the Danube to the Atlantic
Ocean, they converted their allies; they educated the rising
generation; and the devotion which reigned in the camp of Alaric,
or the court of Thoulouse, might edify or disgrace the palaces of
Rome and Constantinople. 78 During the same period, Christianity
was embraced by almost all the Barbarians, who established their
kingdoms on the ruins of the Western empire; the Burgundians in
Gaul, the Suevi in Spain, the Vandals in Africa, the Ostrogoths
in Pannonia, and the various bands of mercenaries, that raised
Odoacer to the throne of Italy. The Franks and the Saxons still
persevered in the errors of Paganism; but the Franks obtained the
monarchy of Gaul by their submission to the example of Clovis;
and the Saxon conquerors of Britain were reclaimed from their
savage superstition by the missionaries of Rome. These Barbarian
proselytes displayed an ardent and successful zeal in the
propagation of the faith. The Merovingian kings, and their
successors, Charlemagne and the Othos, extended, by their laws
and victories, the dominion of the cross. England produced the
apostle of Germany; and the evangelic light was gradually
diffused from the neighborhood of the Rhine, to the nations of
the Elbe, the Vistula, and the Baltic. 79
78 (return) [ At non ita Gothi non ita Vandali; malis licet
doctoribus instituti meliores tamen etiam in hac parte quam
nostri. Salvian, de Gubern, Dei, l. vii. p. 243.]
79 (return) [ Mosheim has slightly sketched the progress of
Christianity in the North, from the fourth to the fourteenth
century. The subject would afford materials for an ecclesiastical
and even philosophical, history]