discussion, and when the temporal power was beginning to predominate
over the Church in France, the greatest theologian of the age made an
attempt to apply the principles of secular polity to the Church.
According to Gerson (_Opera_, ii. 254), the fundamental forms into which
Aristotle divides all government recur in the ecclesiastical system. The
royal power is represented in the Papacy, the aristocracy by the
college of cardinals, whilst the councils form an ecclesiastical
democracy (_timocratia_). Analogous to this is the idea that the
constitution of the Church served as the model of the Christian States,
and that the notion of representation, for instance, was borrowed from
it. But it is not by the analogy of her own forms that the Church has
influenced those of the State; for in reality there is none subsisting
between them, and Gerson's adoption of a theory of Grecian origin proves
that he scarcely understood the spirit of that mediaeval polity which, in
his own country especially, was already in its decay. For not only is
the whole system of government, whether we consider its origin, its end,
or its means absolutely and essentially different, but the temporal
notion of power is altogether unknown in the Church. "Ecclesia subjectos
non habet ut servos, sed ut filios."[303] Our Lord Himself drew the
distinction: "Reges gentium dominantur eorum; et qui potestatem habent
super eos, benefici vocantur. Vos autem non sic: sed qui major est in
vobis, fiat sicut minor; et qui praedecessor, sicut minor" (Luc. xxii.
25, 26). The supreme authority is not the will of the rulers, but the
law of the Church, which binds those who are its administrators as
strictly as those who have only to obey it. No human laws were ever
devised which could so thoroughly succeed in making the arbitrary
exercise of power impossible, as that prodigious system of canon law
which is the ripe fruit of the experience and the inspiration of
eighteen hundred years. Nothing can be more remote from the political
notions of monarchy than the authority of the Pope. With even less
justice can it be said that there is in the Church an element of
aristocracy, the essence of which is the possession of hereditary
personal privileges. An aristocracy of merit and of office cannot, in a
political sense, legitimately bear the name. By baptism all men are
equal before the Church. Yet least of all can anything be detected
corresponding to the democratic principle, by which all authority
resides in the mass of individuals, and which gives to each one equal
rights. All authority in the Church is delegated, and recognises no such
thing as natural rights.
This confusion of the ideas belonging to different orders has been
productive of serious and dangerous errors. Whilst heretics have raised
the episcopate to a level with the papacy, the priesthood with the
episcopate, the laity with the clergy, impugning successively the
primacy, the episcopal authority, and the sacramental character of
orders, the application of ideas derived from politics to the system of
the Church led to the exaggeration of the papal power in the period
immediately preceding the Reformation, to the claim of a permanent
aristocratic government by the Council of Basel, and to the democratic
extravagance of the Observants in the fourteenth century.
If in the stress of conflicting opinions we seek repose and shelter in
the view that the kingdom of God is not of this world; that the Church,
belonging to a different order, has no interest in political forms,
tolerates them all, and is dangerous to none; if we try to rescue her
from the dangers of political controversy by this method of retreat and
evasion, we are compelled to admit her inferiority, in point of temporal
influence, to every other religious system. Every other religion
impresses its image on the society that professes it, and the government
always follows the changes of religion. Pantheism and Polytheism,
Judaism and Islamism, Protestantism, and even the various Protestant as
well as Mahometan sects, call forth corresponding social and political
forms. All power is from God, and is exercised by men in His stead. As
men's notions are, therefore, in respect to their position towards God,
such must their notion of temporal power and obedience also be. The
relation of man to man corresponds with his relations to God--most of
all his relations towards the direct representative of God.
The view we are discussing is one founded on timidity and a desire of
peace. But peace is not a good great enough to be purchased by such
sacrifices. We must be prepared to do battle for our religious system in
every other sphere as well as in that of doctrine. Theological error
affects men's ideas on all other subjects, and we cannot accept in
politics the consequences of a system which is hateful to us in its
religious aspect. These questions cannot be decided by mere reasoning,
but we may obtain some light by inquiring of the experience of history;
our only sure guide is the example of the Church herself.
"Insolentissima est insania, non modo disputare, contra id quod videmus
universam ecclesiam credere sed etiam contra id quod videmus eam facere.
Fides enim ecclesiae non modo regula est fidei nostrae, sed etiam
actiones ipsius actionum nostrarum, consuetudo ipsius consuetudinis quam
observare debemus."[304]
The Church which our Lord came to establish had a twofold mission to
fulfil. Her system of doctrine, on the one hand, had to be defined and
perpetually maintained. But it was also necessary that it should prove
itself more than a mere matter of theory,--that it should pass into
practice, and command the will as well as the intellect of men. It was
necessary not only to restore the image of God in man, but to establish
the divine order in the world. Religion had to transform the public as
well as the private life of nations, to effect a system of public right
corresponding with private morality and without which it is imperfect
and insecure. It was to exhibit and confirm its victory and to
perpetuate its influence by calling into existence, not only works of
private virtue, but institutions which are the product of the whole life
of nations, and bear an unceasing testimony to their religious
sentiments. The world, instead of being external to the Church, was to
be adopted by her and imbued with her ideas. The first, the doctrinal or
intellectual part of the work, was chiefly performed in the Roman
empire, in the midst of the civilisation of antiquity and of that
unparalleled intellectual excitement which followed the presence of
Christ on earth. There the faith was prepared for the world whilst the
world was not yet ready to receive it. The empire in which was
concentrated all the learning and speculation of ancient times was by
its intellectual splendour, and in spite, we might even say by reason,
of its moral depravity, the fit scene of the intellectual establishment
of Christianity. For its moral degradation ensured the most violent
antipathy and hostility to the new faith; while the mental cultivation
of the age ensured a very thorough and ingenious opposition, and
supplied those striking contrasts which were needed for the full
discussion and vigorous development of the Christian system. Nowhere
else, and at no other period, could such advantages have been found.
But for the other, equally essential part of her work the Church met
with an insurmountable obstacle, which even the official conversion of
the empire and all the efforts of the Christian emperors could not
remove. This obstacle resided not so much in the resistance of paganism
as a religion, as in the pagan character of the State. It was from a
certain political sagacity chiefly that the Romans, who tolerated all
religions,[305] consistently opposed that religion which threatened
inevitably to revolutionise a state founded on a heathen basis. It
appeared from the first a pernicious superstition ("exitiabilem
superstitionem," Tacit. _Annal._ xv. 44), that taught its followers to
be bad subjects ("exuere patriam," Tacitus, _Hist._ v. 5), and to be
constantly dissatisfied ("quibus praesentia semper tempora cum enormi
libertate displicent," Vopiscus, _Vit. Saturn._ 7). This hostility
continued in spite of the protestations of every apologist, and of the
submissiveness and sincere patriotism of the early Christians. They were
so far from recognising what their enemies so vaguely felt, that the
empire could not stand in the presence of the new faith, that it was the
common belief amongst them, founded perhaps on the words of St. Paul, 2
Thess. ii. 7,[306] that the Roman empire would last to the end of the
world.[307]
The persecution of Julian was caused by the feeling of the danger which
menaced the pagan empire from the Christian religion. His hostility was
not founded on his attachment to the old religion of Rome, which he did
not attempt to save. He endeavoured to replace it by a new system which
was to furnish the State with new vigour to withstand the decay of the
old paganism and the invasion of Christianity. He felt that the old
religious ideas in which the Roman State had grown up had lost their
power, and that Rome could only be saved by opposing at all hazards the
new ideas. He was inspired rather with a political hatred of
Christianity than with a religious love of paganism. Consequently
Christianity was the only religion he could not tolerate. This was the
beginning of the persecution of the Church on principles of liberalism
and religious toleration, on the plea of political necessity, by men who
felt that the existing forms of the State were incompatible with her
progress. It is with the same feeling of patriotic aversion for the
Church that Symmachus says (_Epist._ x. 61): "We demand the restoration
of that religion which has so long been beneficial to the State ... of
that worship which has subdued the universe to our laws, of those
sacrifices which repulsed Hannibal from our walls and the Gauls from the
Capitol."
Very soon after the time of Constantine it began to appear that the
outward conversion of the empire was a boon of doubtful value to
religion. "Et postquam ad Christianos principes venerint, potentia
quidem et divitiis major sed virtutibus minor facta est," says St.
Jerome (in _Vita Malchi_). The zeal with which the emperors applied the
secular arm for the promotion of Christianity was felt to be
incompatible with its spirit and with its interest as well. "Religion,"
says Lactantius (_Inst. Div._ v. 19), "is to be defended by exhorting,
not by slaying, not by severity, but by patience; not by crime, but by
faith: _... nihil enim est tam voluntarium quam religio_."[308] "Deus,"
says St. Hilary of Poitiers ("ad Constantium," _Opp._ i. p. 1221 C),
"obsequio non eget necessario, non requirit coactam confessionem."[309]
St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom protest in like manner against
the intemperate proselytism of the day.[310] For the result which
followed the general adoption of Christianity threw an unfavourable
light on the motives which had caused it. It became evident that the
heathen world was incapable of being regenerated, that the weeds were
choking the good seed. The corruption increased in the Church to such a
degree that the Christians, unable to divest themselves of the Roman
notion of the _orbis terrarum_, deemed the end of the world at hand. St.
Augustine (_sermo_ cv.) rebukes this superstitious fear: "Si non manet
civitas quae nos carnaliter genuit, manet quae nos spiritualiter genuit.
Numquid (Dominus) dormitando aedificium suum perdidit, aut non
custodiendo hostes admisit?... Quid expavescis quia pereunt regna
terrena? Ideo tibi coeleste promissum est, ne cum terrenis perires....
Transient quae fecit ipse Deus; quanto citius quod condidit Romulus....
Non ergo deficiamus, fratres: finis erit terrenis omnibus regnis."[311]
But even some of the fathers themselves were filled with despair at the
spectacle of the universal demoralisation: "Totius mundi una vox
Christus est ... Horret animus temporum nostrorum ruinas persequi....
Romanus orbis ruit, et tamen cervix nostra erecta non flectitur....
Nostris peccatis barbari fortes sunt. Nostris vitiis Romanus superatur
exercitus.... Nec amputamus causas morbi, ut morbus pariter
auferatur.... Orbis terrarum ruit, in nobis peccata non ruunt."[312] St.
Ambrose announces the end still more confidently: "Verborum coelestium
nulli magis quam nos testes sumus, quos mundi finis invenit.... Quia in
occasu saeculi sumus, praecedunt quaedam aegritudines mundi."[313] Two
generations later Salvianus exclaims: "Quid est aliud paene omnis coetus
Christianorum quam sentina vitiorum?"[314] And St. Leo declares, "Quod
temporibus nostris auctore diabolo sic vitiata sunt omnia, ut paene
nihil sit quod absque idolatria transigatur."[315]
When, early in the fifth century, the dismemberment of the Western
empire commenced, it was clear that Christianity had not succeeded in
reforming the society and the polity of the ancient world. It had
arrested for a time the decline of the empire, but after the Arian
separation it could not prevent its fall. The Catholics could not
dissociate the interests of the Church and those of the Roman State, and
looked with patriotic as well as religious horror at the barbarians by
whom the work of destruction was done. They could not see that they had
come to build up as well as to destroy, and that they supplied a field
for the exercise of all that influence which had failed among the
Romans. It was very late before they understood that the world had run
but half its course; that a new skin had been prepared to contain the
new wine; and that the barbarous tribes were to justify their claim to
the double inheritance of the faith and of the power of Rome. There were
two principal things which fitted them for their vocation. The Romans
had been unable to be the instruments of the social action of
Christianity on account of their moral depravity. It was precisely for
those virtues in which they were most deficient that their barbarous
enemies were distinguished. Salvianus expresses this in the following
words (_De Gubern. Dei_, vii. 6): "Miramur si terrae ... nostrorum
omnium a Deo barbaris datae sunt, cum eas quae Romani polluerant
fornicatione, nunc mundent barbari castitate?"[316] Whilst thus their
habits met half-way the morality of the Christian system, their
mythology, which was the very crown and summit of all pagan religions,
predisposed them in like manner for its adoption, by predicting its own
end, and announcing the advent of a system which was to displace its
gods. "It was more than a mere worldly impulse," says a famous northern
divine, "that urged the northern nations to wander forth, and to seek,
like birds of passage, a milder clime." We cannot, however, say more on
the predisposition for Christianity of that race to whose hands its
progress seems for ever committed, or on the wonderful facility with
which the Teutonic invaders accepted it, whether presented to them in
the form of Catholicism or of Arianism.[317] The great marvel in their
history, and their chief claim to the dominion of the world, was, that
they had preserved so long, in the bleak regions in which the growth of
civilisation was in every way retarded, the virtues together with the
ignorance of the barbarous State.
At a time when Arianism was extinct in the empire, it assumed among the
Teutonic tribes the character of a national religion, and added a
theological incitement to their animosity against the Romans. The Arian
tribes, to whom the work of destruction was committed, did it
thoroughly. But they soon found that their own preservation depended on
their submission to the Church. Those that persisted in their heresy
were extirpated. The Lombards and Visigoths saved themselves by a tardy
conversion from the fate with which they were threatened so long, as
their religion estranged them from the Roman population, and cut them
off from the civilisation of which the Church was already the only
guardian. For centuries the pre-eminence in the West belonged to that
race which alone became Catholic at once, and never swerved from its
orthodoxy. It is a sense of the importance of this fidelity which
dictated the well-known preamble of the Salic law: "Gens Francorum
inclita, Deo auctore condita, ad Catholicam fidem conversa et immunis ab
haeresi," etc.[318]
Then followed the ages which are not unjustly called the Dark Ages, in
which were laid the foundations of all the happiness that has been since
enjoyed, and of all the greatness that has been achieved, by men. The
good seed, from which a new Christian civilisation sprang, was striking
root in the ground. Catholicism appeared as the religion of masses. In
those times of simple faith there was no opportunity to call forth an
Augustine or an Athanasius. It was not an age of conspicuous saints, but
sanctity was at no time so general. The holy men of the first centuries
shine with an intense brilliancy from the midst of the surrounding
corruption. Legions of saints--individually for the most part obscure,
because of the atmosphere of light around them--throng the five
illiterate centuries, from the close of the great dogmatic controversies
to the rise of a new theology and the commencement of new contests with
Hildebrand, Anselm, and Bernard. All the manifestations of the Catholic
spirit in those days bear a character of vastness and popularity. A
single idea--the words of one man--electrified hundreds of thousands. In
such a state of the world, the Christian ideas were able to become
incarnate, so to speak, in durable forms, and succeeded in animating
the political institutions as well as the social life of the nations.
The facility with which the Teutonic ideas of Government shaped
themselves to the mould of the new religion, was the second point in
which that race was so peculiarly adapted for the position it has ever
since occupied towards Christianity. They ceased to be barbarians only
in becoming Christians. Their political system was in its infancy, and
was capable of being developed variously, according to the influences it
might undergo. There was no hostile civilisation to break down, no
traditions to oppose which were bound up with the recollections of the
national greatness. The State is so closely linked with religion, that
no nation that has changed its religion has ever survived in its old
political form. In Rome it had proved to be impossible to alter the
system, which for a thousand years had animated every portion of the
State; it was incurably pagan. The conversion of the people and the
outward alliance with the Church could not make up for this
inconsistency.
But the Teutonic race received the Catholic ideas wholly and without
reserve. There was no region into which they failed to penetrate. The
nation was collectively Catholic, as well as individually. The union of
the Church with the political system of the Germans was so complete,
that when Hungary adopted the religion of Rome, it adopted at the same
time, as a natural consequence, the institutions of the empire. The
ideas of Government which the barbarians carried with them into every
land which they conquered were always in substance the same. The
_Respublica Christiana_ of the Middle Ages, consisting of those States
in which the Teutonic element combined with the Catholic system, was
governed by nearly the same laws. The mediaeval institutions had this
also in common, that they grew up everywhere under the protection and
guidance of the Church; and whilst they subsisted in their integrity,
her influence in every nation, and that of the Pope over all the
nations, attained their utmost height. In proportion as they have since
degenerated or disappeared, the political influence of religion has
declined. As we have seen that the Church was baffled in the full
performance of her mission before Europe was flooded by the great
migration, so it may be said that she has never permanently enjoyed her
proper position and authority in any country where it did not penetrate.
No other political system has yet been devised, which was consistent
with the full development and action of Catholic principles, but that
which was constructed by the northern barbarians who destroyed the
Western empire.
From this it does not seem too much to conclude, that the Catholic
religion tends to inspire and transform the public as well as the
private life of men; that it is not really master of one without some
authority over the other. Consequently, where the State is too powerful
by long tradition and custom, or too far gone in corruption, to admit of
the influence of religion, it can only prevail by ultimately destroying
the political system. This helps us to understand the almost
imperceptible progress of Christianity against Mahometanism, and the
slowness of its increase in China, where its growth must eventually
undermine the whole fabric of government. On the other hand, we know
with what ease comparatively savage tribes--as the natives of California
and Paraguay--were converted to a religion which first initiated them in
civilisation and government. There are countries in which the natural
conditions are yet wanting for the kingdom of grace. There is a fulness
of time for every nation--a time at which it first becomes capable of
receiving the faith.[319] It is not harder to believe that certain
political conditions are required to make a nation fit for conversion
than that a certain degree of intellectual development is indispensable;
that the language, for instance, must have reached a point which that of
some nations has not attained before it is capable of conveying the
truths of Christianity.