THE EUROPEAN AGE OF FAITH.
AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST.
_Consolidation of the Byzantine System, or the Union of Church
and State.--The consequent Paganization of Religion and
Persecution of Philosophy._
_Political Necessity for the enforcement of Patristicism, or
Science of the Fathers.--Its peculiar Doctrines._
_Obliteration of the Vestiges of Greek Knowledge by
Patristicism.--The Libraries and Serapion of
Alexandria.--Destruction of the latter by Theodosius.--Death
of Hypatia.--Extinction of Learning in the East by Cyril, his
Associates and Successors._
[Sidenote: The age of Faith.]
The policy of Constantine the Great inevitably tended to the
paganization of Christianity. An incorporation of its pure doctrines
with decaying pagan ideas was the necessary consequence of the control
that had been attained by unscrupulous politicians and placemen. The
faith, thus contaminated, gained a more general and ready popular
acceptance, but at the cost of a new lease of life to those ideas. So
thorough was the adulteration, that it was not until the Reformation, a
period of more than a thousand years, that a separation of the true from
the false could be accomplished.
[Sidenote: Subdivision of the subject.]
Considering how many nations were involved in these events, and the
length of time over which they extend, a clear treatment of the subject
requires its subdivision. I shall therefore speak, 1st, of the Age of
Faith in the East; 2nd, of the Age of Faith in the West. The former was
closed prematurely by the Mohammedan conquest; the latter, after
undergoing slow metamorphosis, passed into the European Age of Reason
during the pontificate of Nicholas V.
In this and the following chapter I shall therefore treat of the age of
Faith in the East, and of the catastrophe that closed it. I shall then
turn to the Age of Faith in the West--a long but an instructive story.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The paganization of Christianity.]
[Sidenote: Discovery of the true cross and nails.]
The paganization of religion was in no small degree accomplished by the
influence of the females of the court of Constantinople. It soon
manifested all the essential features of a true mythology and
hero-worship. Helena, the empress-mother, superintended the building of
monumental churches over the reputed places of interest in the history
of our Saviour--those of his birth, his burial, his ascension. A vast
and ever-increasing crowd of converts from paganism, who had become such
from worldly considerations, and still hankered after wonders like those
in which their forefathers had from time immemorial believed, lent a
ready ear to assertions which, to more hesitating or better-instructed
minds, would have seemed to carry imposture on their very face. A temple
of Venus, formerly erected on the site of the Holy Sepulchre, being torn
down, there were discovered, in a cavern beneath, three crosses, and
also the inscription written by Pilate. The Saviour's cross, being by
miracle distinguished from those of the thieves, was divided, a part
being kept at Jerusalem and a part sent to Constantinople, together with
the nails used in the crucifixion, which were also fortunately found.
These were destined to adorn the head of the emperor's statue on the top
of the porphyry pillar. The wood of the cross, moreover, displayed a
property of growth, and hence furnished an abundant supply for the
demands of pilgrims, and an unfailing source of pecuniary profit to its
possessors. In the course of subsequent years there was accumulated in
the various churches of Europe, from this particular relic, a
sufficiency to have constructed many hundred crosses. The age that could
accept such a prodigy, of course found no difficulty in the vision of
Constantine and the story of the Labarum.
[Sidenote: Political causes of paganization.]
Such was the tendency of the times to adulterate Christianity with the
spirit of paganism, partly to conciliate the prejudices of worldly
converts, partly in the hope of securing its more rapid spread. There is
a solemnity in the truthful accusation which Faustus makes to Augustine:
"You have substituted your agapæ for the sacrifices of the pagans; for
their idols your martyrs, whom you serve with the very same honours. You
appease the shades of the dead with wine and feasts; you celebrate the
solemn festivals of the Gentiles, their calends and their solstices; and
as to their manners, those you have retained without any alteration.
Nothing distinguishes you from the pagans except that you hold your
assemblies apart from them."
[Sidenote: Relative action of faith and philosophy.]
[Sidenote: The emperors resist their ecclesiastical allies.]
As we have seen in the last chapter, the course of political affairs had
detached the power of the state from the philosophical and polytheistic
parties. Joined to the new movement, it was not long before it gave
significant proofs of the sincerity of its friendship by commencing an
active persecution of the remnant of philosophy. It is to be borne in
mind that the direction of the proselytism, which was thus leading to
important results, was from below upward through society. As to
philosophy, its action had been in the other direction; its depository
in the few enlightened, in the few educated; its course, socially, from
above downward. Under these circumstances, it was obvious enough that
the prejudices of the ignorant populace would find, in the end, a full
expression; that learning would have no consideration shown to it, or
would be denounced as mere magic; that philosophy would be looked upon
as a vain, and therefore sinful pursuit. When once a political aspirant
has bidden with the multitude for power, and still depends on their
pleasure for effective support, it is no easy thing to refuse their
wishes or hold back from their demands. Even Constantine himself felt
the pressure of the influence to which he was allied, and was compelled
to surrender his friend Sopater, the philosopher, who was accused of
binding the winds in an adverse quarter by the influence of magic, so
that the corn-ships could not reach Constantinople; and the emperor was
obliged to give orders for his decapitation to satisfy the clamours in
the theatre. Not that such requisitions were submitted to without a
struggle, or that succeeding sovereigns were willing to make their
dignity tacitly subordinate to ecclesiastical domination. It was the aim
of Constantine to make theology a branch of politics; it was the hope of
every bishop in the empire to make politics a branch of theology.
Already, however, it was apparent that the ecclesiastical party would,
in the end, get the upper hand, and that the reluctance of some of the
emperors to obey its behests was merely the revolt of individual minds,
and therefore ephemeral in its nature, and that the popular wishes would
be abundantly gratified as soon as emperors arose who not merely, like
Constantine, availed themselves of Christianity, but absolutely and
sincerely adopted it.
[Sidenote: The Emperor Julian.]
[Sidenote: Persecutions of his successors.]
Julian, by his brief but ineffectual attempt to restore paganism,
scarcely restrained for a moment the course of the new doctrines now
strengthening themselves continually in public estimation by
incorporating ideas borrowed from paganism. Through the reign of
Valentinian, who was a Nicenist, and of Valens, who was an Arian, things
went on almost as if the episode of Julian had never occurred. The
ancient gods, whose existence no one seems ever to have denied, were now
thoroughly identified with dæmons; their worship was stigmatized as the
practice of magic. Against this crime, regarded by the laws as equal to
treason, a violent persecution arose. Persons resorting to Rome for the
purposes of study were forbidden to remain there after they were
twenty-one years of age. The force of this persecution fell practically
upon the old religion, though nominally directed against the black art,
for the primary function of paganism was to foretell future events in
this world, and hence its connexion with divination and its punishment
as magic.
[Sidenote: Necessity of learning to the bishops.]
[Sidenote: Growth of bigotry and superstition.]
But the persecution, though directed at paganism, struck also at what
remained of philosophy. A great party had attained to power under
circumstances which compelled it to enforce the principle on which it
was originally founded. That principle was the exaction of unhesitating
belief, which, though it will answer very well for the humbler and more
numerous class of men, is unsuited for those of a higher intellectual
grade. The policy of Constantine had opened a career in the state,
through the Church, for men of the lowest rank. Many of such had already
attained to the highest dignities. A burning zeal rather than the
possession of profound learning animated them. But eminent position once
attained, none stood more in need of the appearance of wisdom. Under
such circumstances, they were tempted to set up their own notions as
final and unimpeachable truth, and to denounce as magic, or the sinful
pursuit of vain trifling, all the learning that stood in the way. In
this the hand of the civil power assisted. It was intended to cut off
every philosopher. Every manuscript that could be seized was forthwith
burned. Throughout the East, men in terror destroyed their libraries,
for fear that some unfortunate sentence contained in any of the books
should involve them and their families in destruction. The universal
opinion was that it was right to compel men to believe what the majority
of society had now accepted as the truth, and, if they refused, it was
right to punish them. No one in the dominating party was heard to raise
his voice in behalf of intellectual liberty. The mystery of things above
reason was held to be the very cause that they should be accepted by
Faith; a singular merit was supposed to appertain to that mental
condition in which belief precedes understanding.
[Sidenote: Fanaticism of Theodosius.]
The death-blow to paganism was given by the Emperor Theodosius, a
Spaniard, who, from the services he rendered in this particular, has
been rewarded with the title of "The Great." From making the practice of
magic and the inspection of the entrails of animals capital offences, he
proceeded to prohibit sacrifices, A.D. 391, and even the entering of
temples. He alienated the revenues of many temples, confiscated the
estates of others, some he demolished. The vestal virgins he dismissed,
and any house profaned by incense he declared forfeited to the imperial
exchequer. When once the property of a religious establishment has been
irrevocably taken away, it is needless to declare its worship a capital
crime.
But not only did the government thus constitute itself a thorough
auxiliary of the new religion; it also tried to secure it from its own
dissensions. Apostates were deprived of the right of bequeathing their
own property. Inquisitors of faith were established; they were at once
spies and judges, the prototypes of the most fearful tribunal of modern
times. Theodosius, to whom the carrying into effect of these measures
was due, found it, however, more expedient for himself to institute
living emblems of his personal faith than to rely on any ambiguous
creed. He therefore sentenced all those to be deprived of civil rights,
and to be driven into exile, who did not accord with the belief of
Damasus, the Bishop of Rome, and Peter, the Bishop of Alexandria. Those
who presumed to celebrate Easter on the same day as the Jews he
condemned to death. "We will," says he, in his edict, "that all who
embrace this creed be called catholic Christians"--the rest are
heretics.
[Sidenote: Responsibility of the clergy in these events.]
[Sidenote: Massacre at Thessalonica.]
Impartial history is obliged to impute the origin of these tyrannical
and scandalous acts of the civil power to the influence of the clergy,
and to hold them responsible for the crimes. The guilt of impure,
unscrupulous women, eunuchs, parasites, violent soldiers in possession
of absolute power, lies at their door. Yet human nature can never, in
any condition of affairs, be altogether debased. Though the system under
which men were living pushed them forward to these iniquities, the
individual sense of right and wrong sometimes vindicated itself. In
these pages we shall again and again meet this personal revolt against
the indefensible consequences of system. It was thus that there were
bishops who openly intervened between the victim and his oppressor, who
took the treasures of the Church to redeem slaves from captivity. For
this a future age will perhaps excuse Ambrose the Archbishop of Milan,
the impostures he practised, remembering that, face to face, he held
Theodosius the Great to accountability for the massacre of seven
thousand persons, whom, in a fit of vengeance, he had murdered in the
circus of Thessalonica, A.D. 390, and inexorably compelled the imperial
culprit, to whom he and all his party were under such obligations, to
atone for his crime by such penance as may be exacted in this world,
teaching his sovereign "that though he was of the Church and in the
Church, he was not above the Church;" that brute force must give way to
intellect, and that even the meanest human being has rights in the sight
of God.
[Sidenote: Introduction of Patristicism.]
Political events had thus taken a course disastrous to human knowledge.
A necessity had arisen that they to whom circumstances had given the
control of public faith should also have the control of public
knowledge. The moral condition of the world had thus come into
antagonism with scientific progress. As had been the case many ages
before in India, the sacred writings were asserted to contain whatever
was necessary or useful for man to know. Questions in astronomy,
geography, chronology, history, or any other branch which had hitherto
occupied or amused the human mind, were now to be referred to a new
tribunal for solution, and there remained nothing to be done by the
philosopher. A revelation of science is incompatible with any farther
advance; it admits no employment save that of the humble commentator.
[Sidenote: Apology of the fathers for Patristicism.]
The early ecclesiastical writers, or Fathers, as they are often called,
came thus to be considered not only as surpassing all other men in
piety, but also as excelling them in wisdom. Their dictum was looked
upon as final. This eminent position they held for many centuries;
indeed, it was not until near the period of the Reformation that they
were deposed. The great critics who appeared at that time, by submitting
the Patristic works to a higher analysis, comparing them with one
another and showing their mutual contradictions, brought them all to
their proper level. The habit of even so much as quoting them went out
of use, when it was perceived that not one of these writers could
present the necessary credentials to entitle him to speak with authority
on any scientific fact. Many of them had not scrupled to express their
contempt of the things they thus presumed to judge. Thus Eusebius says:
"It is not through ignorance of the things admired by philosophers, but
through contempt of such useless labour, that we think so little of
these matters, turning our souls to the exercise of better things." In
such a spirit Lactantius holds the whole of philosophy to be "empty and
false." Speaking in reference to the heretical doctrine of the globular
form of the earth, he says: "Is it possible that men can be so absurd as
to believe that the crops and the trees on the other side of the earth
hang downward, and that men have their feet higher than their heads? If
you ask them how they defend these monstrosities? how things do not fall
away from the earth on that side? they reply that the nature of things
is such, that heavy bodies tend toward the centre like the spokes of a
wheel, while light bodies, as clouds, smoke, fire, tend from the centre
to the heavens on all sides. Now I am really at a loss what to say of
those who, when they have once gone wrong, steadily persevere in their
folly, and defend one absurd opinion by another." On the question of the
antipodes, St. Augustine asserts that "it is impossible there should be
inhabitants on the opposite side of the earth, since no such race is
recorded by Scripture among the descendants of Adam."
[Sidenote: The doctrines of Patristicism.]
Patristicism, or the science of the Fathers, was thus essentially
founded on the principle that the Scriptures contain all knowledge
permitted to man. It followed, therefore, that natural phenomena may be
interpreted by the aid of texts, and that all philosophical doctrines
must be moulded to the pattern of orthodoxy. It asserted that God made
the world out of nothing, since to admit the eternity of matter leads to
Manichæism. It taught that the earth is a plane, and the sky a vault
above it, in which the stars are fixed, and the sun, moon, and planets
perform their motions, rising and setting; that these bodies are
altogether of a subordinate nature, their use being to give light to
man; that still higher and beyond the vault of the sky is heaven, the
abode of God and the angelic hosts; that in six days the earth, and all
that it contains, were made; that it was overwhelmed by a universal
deluge, which destroyed all living things save those preserved in the
ark, the waters being subsequently dried up by the wind; that man is the
moral centre of the world; for him all things were created and are
sustained; that, so far as his ever having shown any tendency to
improvement, he has fallen both in wisdom and worth, the first man,
before his sin, having been perfect in body and soul: hence Patristicism
ever looked backward, never forward; that through that sin death came
into the world; not even any animal had died previously, but all had
been immortal. It utterly rejected the idea of the government of the
world by law, asserting the perpetual interference of an instant
Providence on all occasions, not excepting the most trifling. It
resorted to spiritual influences in the production of natural effects,
assigning to angels the duty of moving the stars, carrying up water from
the sea to form rain, and managing eclipses. It affirmed that man had
existed but a few centuries upon earth, and that he could continue only
a little longer, for that the world itself might every moment be
expected to be burned up by fire. It deduced all the families of the
earth from one primitive pair, and made them all morally responsible for
the sin committed by that pair. It rejected the doctrine that man can
modify his own organism as absolutely irreligious, the physician being
little better than an atheist, but it affirmed that cures may be
effected by the intercession of saints, at the shrines of holy men, and
by relics. It altogether repudiated the improvement of man's physical
state; to increase his power or comfort was to attempt to attain what
Providence denied; philosophical investigation was an unlawful prying
into things that God had designed to conceal. It declined the logic of
the Greeks, substituting miracle-proof for it, the demonstration of an
assertion being supposed to be given by a surprising illustration of
something else.
A wild astronomy had thus supplanted the astronomy of Hipparchus; the
miserable fictions of Eusebius had subverted the chronology of Manetho
and Eratosthenes; the geometry of Euclid and Apollonius was held to be
of no use; the geography of Ptolemy a blunder; the great mechanical
inventions of Archimedes incomparably surpassed by the miracles worked
at the shrines of a hundred saints.
[Sidenote: Intrinsic weakness of the Patristic system.]
Of such a mixture of truth and of folly was Patristicism composed.
Ignorance in power had found it necessary to have a false and
unprogressive science, forgetting that sooner or later the time must
arrive when it would be impossible to maintain stationary ideas in a
world of which the affairs are ever advancing. A failure to include in
the system thus imposed upon men any provision for intellectual progress
was the great and fatal mistake of those times. Each passing century
brought its incompatibilities. A strain upon the working of the system
soon occurred, and perpetually increased in force. It became apparent
that, in the end, the imposition would be altogether unable to hold
together. On a future page we shall see what were the circumstances
under which it at last broke down.
[Sidenote: It commences by extinguishing Greek science.]
The wonder-worker who prepares to exhibit his phantasmagoria upon the
wall, knows well how much it adds to the delusion to have all lights
extinguished save that which is in his own dark lantern. I have now to
relate how the last flickering rays of Greek learning were put out; how
Patristicism, aided by her companion Bigotry, attempted to lay the
foundations of her influence in security.
[Sidenote: Acts of the Emperor Theodosius.]
[Sidenote: Alexandrian libraries.]
[Sidenote: Library of Pergamus transferred to Egypt.]
In the reign of Theodosius the Great, the pagan religion and pagan
knowledge were together destroyed. This emperor was restrained by no
doubts, for he was very ignorant and, it must be admitted, was equally
sincere and severe. Among his early measures we find an order that if
any of the governors of Egypt so much as entered a temple he should be
fined fifteen pounds of gold. He followed this by the destruction of the
temples of Syria. At this period the Archbishopric of Alexandria was
held by one Theophilus, a bold, bad man, who had once been a monk of
Nitria. It was about A.D. 390. The Trinitarian conflict was at the time
composed, one party having got the better of the other. To the monks and
rabble of Alexandria the temple of Serapis and its library were doubly
hateful, partly because of the Pantheistic opposition it shadowed forth
against the prevailing doctrine, and partly because within its walls
sorcery, magic, and other dealings with the devil had for ages been
going on. We have related how Ptolemy Philadelphus commenced the great
library in the aristocratic quarter of the city named Bruchion, and
added various scientific establishments to it. Incited by this example,
Eumenes, King of Pergamus, established out of rivalry a similar library
in his metropolis. With the intention of preventing him from excelling
that of Egypt, Ptolemy Epiphanes prohibited the exportation of papyrus,
whereupon Eumenes invented the art of making parchment. The second great
Alexandrian library was that established by Ptolemy Physcon at the
Serapion, in the adjoining quarter of the town. The library in the
Bruchion, which was estimated to contain 400,000 volumes, was
accidentally, or, as it has been said, purposely burned during the siege
of the city by Julius Cæsar, but that in the Serapion escaped. To make
amends for this great catastrophe, Marc Antony presented to Cleopatra
the rival library, brought for that purpose from Pergamus. It consisted
of 200,000 volumes. It was with the library in the Bruchion that the
Museum was originally connected; but after its conflagration, the
remains of the various surviving establishments were transferred to the
Serapion, which therefore was, at the period of which we are speaking,
the greatest depository of knowledge in the world.
[Sidenote: The temple of Serapis.]
The pagan Roman emperors had not been unmindful of the great trust they
had thus inherited from the Ptolemies. The temple of Serapis was
universally admitted to be the noblest religious structure in the world,
unless perhaps the patriotic Roman excepted that of the Capitoline
Jupiter. It was approached by a vast flight of steps; was adorned with
many rows of columns; and in its quadrangular portico--a matchless work
of skill--were placed most exquisite statues. On the sculptured walls of
its chambers, and upon ceilings, were paintings of unapproachable
excellence. Of the value of these works of art the Greeks were no
incompetent judges.
[Sidenote: Quarrel between the Christians and pagans in Alexandria.]
[Sidenote: Theodosius orders the Serapion to be destroyed.]
[Sidenote: Statue of Serapis is destroyed.]
[Sidenote: Persecutions of Theophilus.]
The Serapion, with these its precious contents, perpetually gave umbrage
to the Archbishop Theophilus and his party. To them it was a reproach
and an insult. Its many buildings were devoted to unknown, and therefore
unholy uses. In its vaults and silent chambers the populace believed
that the most abominable mysteries were carried on. There were magical
brazen circles and sun-dials for fortune-telling in its porch; every one
said that they had once belonged to Pharaoh or the conjurors who strove
with Moses. Alas! no one of the ferocious bigots knew that with these
Eratosthenes had in the old times measured the size of the earth, and
Timocharis had determined the motions of the planet Venus. The temple,
with its pure white marble walls, and endless columns projected against
a blue and cloudless Egyptian sky, was to them a whited sepulchre full
of rottenness within. In the very sanctuary of the god it was said that
the priests had been known to delude the wealthiest and most beautiful
Alexandrian women, who fancied that they were honoured by the raptures
of the god. To this temple, so well worthy of their indignation,
Theophilus directed the attention of his people. It happened that the
Emperor Constantius had formerly given to the Church the site of an
ancient temple of Osiris, and, in digging the foundation for the new
edifice, the obscene symbols used in that worship chanced to be found.
With more zeal than modesty, Theophilus exhibited them to the derision
of the rabble in the market-place. The old Egyptian pagan party rose to
avenge the insult. A riot ensued, one Olympius, a philosopher, being the
leader. Their head-quarters were in the massive building of the
Serapion, from which issuing forth they seized whatever Christians they
could, compelled them to offer sacrifice, and then killed them on the
altar. The dispute was referred to the emperor, in the meantime the
pagans maintaining themselves in the temple-fortress. In the dead of
night, Olympius, it is said, was awe-stricken by the sound of a clear
voice chanting among the arches and pillars the Christian Alleluia.
Either accepting, like a heathen, the omen, or fearing a secret
assassin, he escaped from the temple and fled for his life. On the
arrival of the rescript of Theodosius the pagans laid down their arms,
little expecting the orders of the emperor. He enjoined that the
building should forthwith be destroyed, intrusting the task to the swift
hands of Theophilus. His work was commenced by the pillage and dispersal
of the library. He entered the sanctuary of the god--that sanctuary
which was the visible sign of the Pantheism of the East, the memento of
the alliance between hoary primeval Egypt and free-thinking Greece, the
relic of the statesmanship of Alexander's captains. In gloomy silence
the image of Serapis confronted its assailants. It is in such a moment
that the value of a religion is tried; the god who cannot defend himself
is a convicted sham. Theophilus, undaunted, commands a veteran to strike
the image with his battle-axe. The helpless statue offers no resistance.
Another blow rolls the head of the idol on the floor. It is said that a
colony of frightened rats ran forth from its interior. The kingcraft,
and priestcraft, and solemn swindle of seven hundred years are exploded
in a shout of laughter; the god is broken to pieces, his members dragged
through the streets. The recesses of the Serapion are explored.
Posterity is edified by discoveries of frauds by which the priests
maintain their power. Among other wonders, a car with four horses is
seen suspended near the ceiling by means of a magnet laid on the roof,
which being removed by the hand of a Christian, the imposture fell to
the pavement. The historian of these events, noticing the physical
impossibility of such things, has wisely said that it is more easy to
invent a fictitious story than to support a practical fraud. But the
gold and silver contained in the temple were carefully collected, the
baser articles being broken in pieces or cast into the fire. Nor did the
holy zeal of Theophilus rest until the structure was demolished to its
very foundations--a work of no little labour--and a church erected in
the precincts. It must, however, have been the temple more particularly
which experienced this devastation. The building in which the library
had been contained must have escaped, for, twenty years subsequently,
Orosius expressly states that he saw the empty cases or shelves. The
fanatic Theophilus pushed forward his victory. The temple at Canopus
next fell before him, and a general attack was made on all similar
edifices in Egypt. Speaking of the monks and of the worship of relics,
Eunapius says: "Whoever wore a black dress was invested with tyrannical
power; philosophy and piety to the gods were compelled to retire into
secret places, and to dwell in contented poverty and dignified meanness
of appearance. The temples were turned into tombs for the adoration of
the bones of the basest and most depraved of men, who had suffered the
penalty of the law, and whom they made their gods."
Such was the end of the Serapion. Its destruction stands forth a token
to all ages of the state of the times.
[Sidenote: St. Cyril.]
[Sidenote: Determines on supremacy in Alexandria.]
[Sidenote: Riots in that city.]
In a few years after this memorable event the Archbishop Theophilus had
gone to his account. His throne was occupied by his nephew, St. Cyril,
who had been expressly prepared for that holy and responsible office by
a residence of five years among the monks of Nitria. He had been
presented to the fastidious Alexandrians with due precautions, and by
them acknowledged to be an effective and fashionable preacher. His pagan
opponents, however, asserted that the clapping of hands and encores
bestowed on the more elaborate passages of his sermons were performed by
persons duly arranged in the congregation, and paid for their trouble.
If doubt remains as to his intellectual endowments, there can be none
respecting the qualities of his heart. The three parties into which the
population of the city was divided--Christian, Heathen, and Jewish--kept
up a perpetual disorder by their disputes. Of the last it is said that
the number was not less than forty thousand. The episcopate itself had
become much less a religious than an important civil office, exercising
a direct municipal control through the Parabolani, which, under the
disguise of city missionaries, whose duty it was to seek out the sick
and destitute, constituted in reality a constabulary force, or rather
actually a militia. The unscrupulous manner in which Cyril made use of
this force, diverting it from its ostensible purpose, is indicated by
the fact that the emperor was obliged eventually to take the
appointments to it out of the archbishop's hands, and reduce the number
to five or six hundred. Some local circumstances had increased the
animosity between the Jews and the Christians, and riots had taken place
between them in the theatre. These were followed by more serious
conflicts in the streets; and the Jews, for the moment having the
advantage over their antagonists, outraged and massacred them. It was,
however, but for a moment; for, the Christians arousing themselves under
the inspirations of Cyril, a mob sacked the synagogues, pillaged the
houses of the Jews, and endeavoured to expel those offenders out of the
city. The prefect Orestes was compelled to interfere to stop the riot;
but the archbishop was not so easily disposed of. His old associates,
the Nitrian monks, now justified the prophetic forecast of Theophilus.
Five hundred of those fanatics swarmed into the town from the desert.
The prefect himself was assaulted, and wounded in the head by a stone
thrown by Ammonius, one of them. The more respectable citizens, alarmed
at the turn things were taking, interfered, and Ammonius, being seized,
suffered death at the hands of the lictor. Cyril, undismayed, caused his
body to be transported to the Cæsareum, laid there in state, and buried
with unusual honours. He directed that the name of the fallen zealot
should be changed from Ammonius to Thaumasius, or "the Wonderful," and
the holy martyr received the honours of canonization.
[Sidenote: Hypatia.]
[Sidenote: The city of Alexandria.]
In these troubles there can be no doubt that the pagans sympathized with
the Jews, and therefore drew upon themselves the vengeance of Cyril.
Among the cultivators of Platonic philosophy whom the times had spared,
there was a beautiful young woman, Hypatia, the daughter of Theon the
mathematician, who not only distinguished herself by her expositions of
the Neo-Platonic and Peripatetic doctrines, but was also honoured for
the ability with which she commented on the writings of Apollonius and
other geometers. Every day before her door stood a long train of
chariots; her lecture-room was crowded with the wealth and fashion of
Alexandria. Her aristocratic audiences were more than a rival to those
attending upon the preaching of the archbishop, and perhaps contemptuous
comparisons were instituted between the philosophical lectures of
Hypatia and the incomprehensible sermons of Cyril. But if the archbishop
had not philosophy, he had what on such occasions is more
valuable--power. It was not to be borne that a heathen sorceress should
thus divide such a metropolis with a prelate; it was not to be borne
that the rich, and noble, and young should thus be carried off by the
black arts of a diabolical enchantress. Alexandria was too fair a prize
to be lightly surrendered. It could vie with Constantinople itself. Into
its streets, from the yellow sand-hills of the desert, long trains of
camels and countless boats brought the abundant harvests of the Nile. A
ship-canal connected the harbour of Eunostos with Lake Mareotis. The
harbour was a forest of masts. Seaward, looking over the blue
Mediterranean, was the great lighthouse, the Pharos, counted as one of
the wonders of the world; and to protect the shipping from the north
wind there was a mole three quarters of a mile in length, with its
drawbridges, a marvel of the skill of the Macedonian engineers. Two
great streets crossed each other at right angles--one was three, the
other one mile long. In the square where they intersected stood the
mausoleum in which rested the body of Alexander. The city was full of
noble edifices--the palace, the exchange, the Cæsareum, the halls of
justice. Among the temples, those of Pan and Neptune were conspicuous.
The visitor passed countless theatres, churches, temples, synagogues.
There was a time before Theophilus when the Serapion might have been
approached on one side by a slope for carriages, on the other by a
flight of a hundred marble steps. On these stood the grand portico with
its columns, its chequered corridor leading round a roofless hall, the
adjoining porches of which contained the library, and from the midst of
its area arose a lofty pillar visible afar off at sea. On one side of
the town were the royal docks, on the other the Hippodrome, and on
appropriate sites the Necropolis, the market-places, the gymnasium, its
stoa being a stadium long; the amphitheatre, groves, gardens, fountains,
obelisks, and countless public buildings with gilded roofs glittering in
the sun. Here might be seen the wealthy Christian ladies walking in the
streets, their dresses embroidered with Scripture parables, the Gospels
hanging from their necks by a golden chain, Maltese dogs with jewelled
collars frisking round them, and slaves with parasols and fans trooping
along. There might be seen the ever-trading, ever-thriving Jew, fresh
from the wharves, or busy negotiating his loans. But, worst of all, the
chariots with giddy or thoughtful pagans hastening to the academy of
Hypatia, to hear those questions discussed which have never yet been
answered, "Where am I?" "What am I?" "What can I know?"--to hear
discourses on antenatal existence, or, as the vulgar asserted, to find
out the future by the aid of the black art, soothsaying by Chaldee
talismans engraved on precious stones, by incantations with a glass and
water, by moonshine on the walls, by the magic mirror, the reflection of
a sapphire, a sieve, or cymbals; fortune-telling by the veins of the
hand, or consultations with the stars.
[Sidenote: Murder of Hypatia by Cyril.]
Cyril at length determined to remove this great reproach, and overturn
what now appeared to be the only obstacle in his way to uncontrolled
authority in the city. We are reaching one of those moments in which
great general principles embody themselves in individuals. It is Greek
philosophy under the appropriate form of Hypatia; ecclesiastical
ambition under that of Cyril. Their destinies are about to be fulfilled.
As Hypatia comes forth to her academy, she is assaulted by Cyril's
mob--an Alexandrian mob of many monks. Amid the fearful yelling of these
bare-legged and black-cowled fiends she is dragged from her chariot, and
in the public street stripped naked. In her mortal terror she is haled
into an adjacent church, and in that sacred edifice is killed by the
club of Peter the Reader. It is not always in the power of him who has
stirred up the worst passions of a fanatical mob to stop their excesses
when his purpose is accomplished. With the blow given by Peter the aim
of Cyril was reached, but his merciless adherents had not glutted their
vengeance. They outraged the naked corpse, dismembered it, and
incredible to be said, finished their infernal crime by scraping the
flesh from the bones with oyster-shells, and casting the remnants into
the fire. Though in his privacy St. Cyril and his friends might laugh at
the end of his antagonist, his memory must bear the weight of the
righteous indignation of posterity.
[Sidenote: Suppression of Alexandrian science.]
Thus, in the 414th year of our era, the position of philosophy in the
intellectual metropolis of the world was determined; henceforth science
must sink into obscurity and subordination. Its public existence will no
longer be tolerated. Indeed, it may be said that from this period for
some centuries it altogether disappeared. The leaden mace of bigotry had
struck and shivered the exquisitely tempered steel of Greek philosophy.
Cyril's acts passed unquestioned. It was now ascertained that throughout
the Roman world there must be no more liberty of thought. It had been
said that these events prove Greek philosophy to have been a sham, and,
like other shams, it was driven out of the world when detected, and that
it could not withstand the truth. Such assertions might answer their
purposes very well, so long as the victors maintained their power in
Alexandria, but they manifestly are of inconvenient application after
the Saracens had captured the city. However this may be, an intellectual
stagnation settled upon the place, an invisible atmosphere of
oppression, ready to crush down, morally and physically, whatever
provoked its weight. And so for the next two dreary and weary centuries
things remained, until oppression and force were ended by a foreign
invader. It was well for the world that the Arabian conquerors avowed
their true argument, the scimitar, and made no pretensions to superhuman
wisdom. They were thus left free to pursue knowledge without involving
themselves in theological contradictions, and were able to make Egypt
once more illustrious among the nations of the earth--to snatch it from
the hideous fanaticism, ignorance, and barbarism into which it had been
plunged. On the shore of the Red Sea once more a degree of the earth's
surface was to be measured, and her size ascertained--but by a
Mohammedan astronomer. In Alexandria the memory of the illustrious old
times was to be recalled by the discovery of the motion of the sun's
apogee by Albategnius, and the third inequality of the moon, the
variation, by Aboul Wefa; to be discovered six centuries later in Europe
by Tycho Brahe. The canal of the Pharaohs from the Nile to the Red Sea,
cleared out by the Ptolemies in former ages, was to be cleared from its
sand again. The glad desert listened once more to the cheerful cry of
the merchant camel-driver instead of the midnight prayer of the monk.