Produced by Al Haines
THE CHURCH AND THE BARBARIANS
BEING AN OUTLINE OF
THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
FROM A.D. 461 TO A.D. 1003
BY THE REV.
WILLIAM HOLDEN HUTTON, B.D.
FELLOW AND TUTOR OF S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE, OXFORD
EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER
RIVINGTONS
34 KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN
LONDON
1906
[Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers
enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page
breaks occurred in the original book, in accordance with Project
Gutenberg's FAQ-V-99. For the book's Index, a page number has been
placed only at the start of that section.]
[Transcriber's note: Footnotes have been renumbered sequentially and
moved to the end of their respective chapters. The book's Index has a
number of references to footnotes, e.g. the "96 n." entry under
"Assyrians." In such cases, check the referenced page to see which
footnote(s) are relevant.]
[Transcriber's note: The original book had side-notes in its pages'
left or right margin areas. Some of these sidenotes were at or near
the beginning of a paragraph, and in this e-text, are placed to precede
their host paragraph. Some were placed elsewhere alongside a
paragraph, in relation to what the sidenote referred to inside the
paragraph. These have been placed into the paragraph near where they
were in the original book. All sidenotes have been enclosed in square
brackets, and preceded with "Sidenote:".]
EDITORIAL NOTE
While there is a general agreement among the writers as to principles,
the greatest freedom as to treatment is allowed to writers in this
series. The volumes, for example, will not be of the same length.
Volume II., which deals with the formative period of the Church, is,
not unnaturally, longer in proportion than the others. To Volume VI.,
which deals with the Reformation, will be allotted a similar extension.
The authors, again, use their own discretion in such matters as
footnotes and lists of authorities. But the aim of the series, which
each writer sets before him, is to tell, clearly and accurately, the
story of the Church, as a divine institution with a continuous life.
W. H. HUTTON
PREFACE
It has seemed to me impossible to deal with the long period covered by
this volume as briefly as the scheme of the series required without
leaving out a great many events and concentrating attention chiefly
upon a few central facts and a few important personages. I think that
the main results of the development may thus be seen, though there is
much which is here omitted that would have been included had the book
been written on other lines.
Some pages find place here which originally appeared in _The Guardian_
and _The Treasury_, and a few lines which once formed part of an
article in _The Church Quarterly Review_. My thanks are due for the
courtesy of the Editors. I have reprinted some passages from my
_Church of the Sixth Century_, a book which is now out of print and not
likely to be reissued.
I have to thank the Rev. L. Pullan for help from his wide knowledge,
and Mr. L. Strachan, of Heidelberg, of whose accuracy and learning I
have had long experience, for reading the proofs and making the index.
W. H. H.
S. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD,
_Septuagesima_, 1906.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
THE CHURCH AND ITS PROSPECTS IN THE FIFTH CENTURY . . . . 1
CHAPTER II
THE EMPIRE AND THE EASTERN CHURCH, 461-628 . . . . . . . . 6
CHAPTER III
THE CHURCH IN ITALY, 461-590 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
CHAPTER IV
CHRISTIANITY IN GAUL FROM THE SIXTH TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY 41
CHAPTER V
THE PONTIFICATE OF GREGORY THE GREAT . . . . . . . . . . . 60
CHAPTER VI
CONTROVERSY AND THE CATHOLICISM OF SPAIN . . . . . . . . . 72
CHAPTER VII
THE CHURCH AND THE MONOTHELITE CONTROVERSY . . . . . . . . 83
CHAPTER VIII
THE CHURCH IN ASIA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
CHAPTER IX
THE CHURCH IN AFRICA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
CHAPTER X
THE CHURCH IN THE WESTERN ISLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
CHAPTER XI
THE CONVERSION OF SLAVS AND NORTHMEN . . . . . . . . . . . 123
CHAPTER XII
PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH IN GERMANY . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
CHAPTER XIII
THE POPES AND THE REVIVAL OF THE EMPIRE . . . . . . . . . 143
CHAPTER XIV
THE ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
CHAPTER XV
LEARNING AND MONASTICISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
CHAPTER XVI
SACRAMENTS AND LITURGIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
CHAPTER XVII THE END OF THE DARK AGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. 191
APPENDIX I
LIST OF EMPERORS AND POPES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
APPENDIX II
A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
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THE CHURCH AND THE BARBARIANS
CHAPTER I
THE CHURCH AND ITS PROSPECTS IN THE FIFTH CENTURY
[Sidenote: The task of the Church]
The year 461 saw the great organisation which had ruled and united
Europe for so long trembling into decay. The history of the Empire in
relation to Christianity is indeed a remarkable one. The imperial
religion had been the necessary and deadly foe of the religion of Jesus
Christ; it had fought and had been conquered. Gradually the Empire
itself with all its institutions and laws had been transformed, at
least outwardly, into a Christian power. Questions of Christian
theology had become questions of imperial politics. A Roman of the
second century would have wondered indeed at the transformation which
had come over the world he knew: it seemed as if the kingdoms of the
earth had become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ. But also
it seemed that the new wine had burst the old bottles. The boundaries
of the Roman world had been outstepped: nations had come in from the
East and from the West. The {2} system which had been supreme was not
elastic: the new ideas, Christian and barbarian alike, pressed upon it
till it gave way and collapsed. And so it came about that if
Christianity had conquered the old world, it had still to conquer the
new.
[Sidenote: The decaying Empire.]
Now before the Church in the fifth century there were set several
powers, interests, duties, with which she was called upon to deal; and
her dealing with them was the work of the next five centuries. They
were,--the Empire, Christian, but obsolescent; the new nations, still
heathen, which were struggling for territory within the bounds of the
Empire, and for sway over the imperial institutions; the distant tribes
untouched by the message of Christ; and the growth, within the Church
itself, of new and great organisations, which were destined in great
measure to guide and direct her work. Politics, theology,
organisation, missions, had all their share in the work of the Church
from 461 to 1003. In each we shall find her influence: to harmonise
them we must find a principle which runs through her relation to them
all.
[Sidenote: The need of unity.]
The central idea of the period with which we are to deal is unity. Up
till the fifth century, till the Council of Chalcedon (451) completed
the primary definition of the orthodox Christian faith in the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ, Christians were striving for conversion,
organisation, definition. All these aims still remained, but in less
prominence. The Church's order was completed, the Church's creed was
practically fixed, and the dominant nations in Europe had owned the
name of Christ. There remained a new and severe test. Would the {3}
Church win the new barbarian conquerors as she had won the old imperial
power? There was to be a great epoch of missionary energy. But of the
firm solidity of the Church there could be no doubt. Heresies had torn
from her side tribes and even nations who had once belonged to her
fold. But still unity was triumphant in idea; and it was into the
Catholic unity of the visible Church that the new nations were to be
invited to enter. S. Augustine's grand idea of the City of God had
really triumphed, before the fifth century was half passed, over the
heathen conceptions of political rule. The Church, in spite of the
tendency to separate already visible in East and West, was truly one;
and that unity was represented also in the Christian Empire. "At the
end of the fifth century the only Christian countries outside the
limits of the Empire were Ireland and Armenia, and Armenia, maintaining
a precarious existence beside the great Persian monarchy of the
Sassanid kings, had been for a long time virtually dependent on the
Roman power." [1] Politically, while tyrants rise and fall, and
barbarian hosts, the continuance of the Wandering of the Nations, sweep
across the stage, we are struck above all by the significant fact which
Mr. Freeman (_Western Europe in the Fifth Century_) knew so well how to
make emphatic:--"The wonderful thing is how often the Empire came
together again. What strikes us at every step in the tangled history
of these times is the wonderful life which the Roman name and the Roman
Power still kept when it was thus attacked on every side from without
and torn in pieces in every quarter from within." And the reason for
this indubitably was that the {4} Empire had now another organisation
to support it, based on the same idea of central unity. One Church
stood beside one Empire, and became year by year even more certain,
more perfect, as well as more strong. In the West the papal power rose
as the imperial decayed, and before long came near to replacing it. In
the East, where the name and tradition of old Rome was always preserved
in the imperial government, the Church remained in that immemorial
steadfastness to the orthodox faith which was a bond of unity such as
no other idea could possibly supply. In the educational work which the
emperor had to undertake in regard to the tribes which one by one
accepted their sway, the Christian Church was their greatest support.
In East as well as West, the bishops, saints, and missionaries were the
true leaders of the nations into the unity of the Empire as well as the
unity of the Church. [Sidenote: The Church's conquest of barbarism.]
The idea of Christian unity saved the Empire and taught the nations.
The idea of Christian unity was the force which conquered barbarism and
made the barbarians children of the Catholic Church and fellow-citizens
with the inheritors of the Roman traditions.
If the dominant idea of the long period with which this book is to deal
is the unity of the Church, seen through the struggles to preserve, to
teach, or to attain it, the most important facts are those which belong
to the conversion, to Christ and to the full faith of the Catholic
Church, of races new to the Western world. The gradual extinction in
Italy of the Goths, the conversion of the Franks, of the English, of
many races on distant barbarian borderlands of civilisation, the
acceptance of Catholicism by the Lombards and {5} the Western Goths, do
not complete the historical tale, though they are a large part of it:
there was the falling back in Africa and for a long time in Europe of
the settlements of the Cross before the armies of the Crescent. There
were also two other important features of this long-extended age, to
which writers have given the name of dark. There was the survival of
ancient learning, which lived on through the flood of barbarian
immigration into the lands which had been its old home, yet was very
largely eclipsed by the predominance of theological interests in
literature. And there was the growth of a strong ecclesiastical power,
based upon an orthodox faith (though not without hesitations and
lapses), and gradually winning a formidable political dominion. That
power was the Roman Papacy.
[1] Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_, p. 13, ed. 1904.
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