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THE MAGIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES
BY VIKTOR RYDBERG
_Translated from the Swedish_
BY AUGUST HJALMAR EDGREN
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1879
Copyright 1879,
BY HENRY HOLT & CO
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
I. THE COSMIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES,
AND ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT 1
II. THE MAGIC OF THE CHURCH 56
III. THE MAGIC OF THE LEARNED 95
IV. THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE AND THE STRUGGLE
OF THE CHURCH AGAINST IT 158
I.
THE COSMIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES, AND ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT.
INTRODUCTORY.
It was the belief of Europe during the Middle Ages, that our globe was the
centre of the universe.
The earth, itself fixed and immovable, was encompassed by ten heavens
successively encircling one another, and all of these except the highest
in constant rotation about their centre.
This highest and immovable heaven, enveloping all the others and
constituting the boundary between created things and the void, infinite
space beyond, is the Empyrean, the heaven of fire, named also by the
Platonizing philosophers the world of archetypes. Here "in a light which
no one can enter," God in triune majesty is sitting on his throne, while
the tones of harmony from the nine revolving heavens beneath ascend to
him, like a hymn of glory from the universe to its Creator.
Next in order below the Empyrean is the heaven of crystal, or the sphere
of the _first movable_ (_primum mobile_). Beneath this revolves the heaven
of fixed stars, which, formed from the most subtile elements in the
universe, are devoid of weight. If now an angel were imagined to descend
from this heaven straight to earth,--the centre, where the coarsest
particles of creation are collected,--he would still sink through seven
vaulted spaces, which form the planetary world. In the first of these
remaining heavens is found the planet Saturn, in the second Jupiter, in
the third Mars; to the fourth and middle heaven belongs the Sun, queen of
the planets, while in the remaining three are the paths of Venus, Mercury,
and finally the moon, measuring time with its waning and increasing disk.
Beneath this heaven of the moon is the enveloping atmosphere of the earth,
and earth itself with its lands and seas.
There are four prime elements in the structure of the universe: fire, air,
water and earth. Every thing existing in the material world is a peculiar
compound of these elements, and possesses as such an energy of its own;
but matter in itself is devoid of quality and force. All power is
spiritual, and flows from a spiritual source,--from God, and is
communicated to the earth and the heavens above the earth and all things
in them, by spiritual agents, personal but bodiless. These beings fill the
universe. Even the prime elements derive their energy from them. They are
called intelligences or angels; and the _primum mobile_ as well as the
heaven of fixed stars is held in motion by them. The planets are guided in
their orbits by angels. "All the energies of plants, metals, stones and
all other objects, are derived from those intelligences whom God has
ordained to be the guardians and leaders of his works."[1] "God, as the
source and end of all power, lends the seal of ideas to his ministering
spirits, who, faithfully executing his divine will, stamp with a vital
energy all things committed to their care."[2]
No inevitable causation is admitted. Every thing is produced by the will
of God, and upheld by it. The laws of nature are nothing but the precepts
in accordance with which the angels execute their charge. They obey from
love and fear; but should they in a refractory spirit transgress the given
commandments, or cease their activity, which they have the power to do,
then the order of nature would be changed, and the great mechanism of the
universe fall asunder, unless God saw fit to interpose. "Sometimes God
suspends their agency, and is himself the immediate actor everywhere; or
he gives unusual commandments to his angels, and then their operations are
called miracles."[3]
A knowledge of the nature of things is consequently in the main a
knowledge of the angels. Their innumerable hosts form nine choirs or
orders, divided into three hierarchies, corresponding to the three worlds:
the empyreal, that of the revolving heavens, and the terrestrial. The
orders of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones which constitute the first
hierarchy, are nearest God. They surround his throne like a train of
attendants, rejoice in the light of his countenance, feel the abundant
inspiration of his wisdom, love and power, and chant eternal praises to
his glory. The order of the Thrones, which is the lowest in this empyreal
hierarchy, proclaims God's will to the middle hierarchy, to which is given
the rule of the movable heavens. It is the order of Dominion which thus
receives the commands of God; that of Power, which guides the stars and
planets in their orbits, and brings to pass all other celestial phenomena,
carries them into execution, while a third of Empire wards off every thing
which could interfere with their accomplishment. The third and lowest
hierarchy, embracing the orders of Principalities, Archangels and Angels,
holds supremacy over terrestrial things. Principalities, as the name
implies, are the guardian spirits of nations and kingdoms; Archangels
protect religion, and bear the prayers of saints on high to the throne of
God; Angels, finally, have the care of every mortal, and impart to beasts,
plants, stones and metals their peculiar nature. Together these
hierarchies and orders form a continuous chain of intermingling
activities, and thus the structure of the universe resembles a Jacob's
ladder, upon which
"Celestial powers, mounting and descending,
Their golden buckets ceaseless interchange."
All terrestrial things are images of the celestial; and all celestial have
their archetypes in the Empyrean. Things on earth are composed of the
coarsest of all matter; things in the surrounding heavens of a finer
substance, accessible to the influence of intelligences. Archetypes are
immaterial; and as such may be filled without resistance with spiritual
forces, and give of their plenitude to their corresponding effigies in
the worlds of stars and planets. These again through their rays send forth
of the abundance of their power to those objects on earth by which they
are represented. Every thing on earth is consequently not only under the
guidance of its own angel, but also under the influence of stars, planets,
and archetypes. The universe is a vast lyre whose strings, struck no
matter where, are sure to vibrate throughout their length.
It was for man that God called forth the four elements from nothing by his
fiat, and it was for man that he fashioned this wonderful earth from those
elements in six days. Man is the crown of creation, its master-piece, and
within the narrow limits of his nature an epitome of all things
existing,--a microcosm, and the image of the supreme God himself.
But since man, as a microcosm, must partake also of the coarsest matter,
his dwelling-place could not be within the Empyrean, but must be fixed on
earth. In order that it might be worthy to receive him, it was adorned
with all the beauty of a paradise, and angels gazed from heaven with
delight upon its vales and mountains, its lakes and groves, which in
changing lights and shadows shone now with the purple of morning, now with
the gold of the sun, and again with the silver of the moon. And this place
of habitation explains symbolically by its very position the destiny of
man and his place in the kingdom of God; for wherever he wanders, the
zenith still lingers over his head, and all the revolving heavens have his
habitation for their centre. The dance of the stars is but a fete in honor
of him, the sun and moon exist but to shine upon his pathway and fill his
heart with gladness.
The first human beings lived in this their paradise in a state of highest
happiness. Their will was undepraved; their understanding filled with the
immediate light of intuition. Often when the angel of the sun sank with
his gleaming orb towards the horizon and "day was growing cool," God
himself descended from his Empyrean to wander under the lovely trees of
paradise, in the company of his favored ones.
The world was an unbroken harmony. There was, to be sure, a contrast
between spirit and matter, but as yet none between good and evil. It was
not long to remain thus.
Lucifer, that is the Light-bringer, or Morning Star, was the highest of
all angels, the prince of seraphim, the favorite of the Creator, and in
purity, majesty and power inferior only to the Holy Trinity. Pride and
envy took possession, it is not known how, of this mighty spirit. He
conceived the plan of overthrowing the power of God, and seating himself
upon the throne of Omnipotence. Angels of all orders were won over to his
treason. At the first beck of the reckless spirit numberless intelligences
from the lower heavens and from earth assailed the Empyrean and joined
themselves to the rebellious seraphim, cherubim and thrones who had
flocked to the standard of revolt. In heaven raged a mighty contest, the
vicissitudes of which are covered by the veil of mystery. St. John,
however, in his Book of Revelation, lifts a single fold of it, and shows
us Michael at the head of the legions of God battling against Lucifer. The
contest ended with the overthrow of the rebel and his followers. The
beautiful Morning Star fell from heaven.[4] Christ beheld the once
faithful seraph hurled from its ramparts like a thunder-bolt from the
clouds.[5]
The conquered was not annihilated. Calm in the consciousness of
omnipotence, God inscrutably determined that Lucifer, changed by his
rebellion into a spirit wholly evil, should enjoy liberty of action within
certain limits. The activity of the fallen spirit consists in desperate
and incessant warfare against God; and he gains in the beginning a victory
of immeasurable consequence. He tempts man, and brings him under his
dominion. Humanity, as well as the beautiful earth which is its abode, is
under the curse of God.
The world is no longer an unbroken harmony, a moral unity. It is divided
forever into two antagonistic kingdoms, those of Good and Evil. That God
so wills, and permits the inevitable consequences, is confirmed by an
immediate change in the structure of the universe. Death is sent forth
commissioned to destroy all life. Hell opens its jaws in the once peaceful
realms of earth's bosom, and is filled with a fire which burns every
thing, but consumes nothing.
The battle-field is the whole creation except the spaces of the Empyrean;
for into its pure domain nothing corrupt can enter. Lucifer still adheres
to his claims upon its throne, and in every thing seeks to imitate God.
The fallen seraphim, cherubim and thrones constitute his princely retinue
and his council of war. The rebel intelligences of the middle hierarchy,
now transformed into demons, still love to rove among the same stars and
planets which were once confided to their care, and war against the good
angels who now guide the movements of the heavens. Other demons float upon
the atmosphere, causing storm and thunder, hail and snow, drouth and awful
omens (whence it is said the devil is a prince who controls the weather).
Others again fill the earth; its seas, lakes, fountains and rivers; its
woods, groves, meadows and mountains. They pervade the elements; they are
everywhere.
Man, the chief occasion of the strife, is in a sad condition. The bodily
pains and sufferings which the earth since its curse heaps upon the path
that successive generations, all partakers of Adam's sin, must tread, are
as nothing compared with the perils which on all sides assail and threaten
their immortal souls. And how can these dangers be averted? Each mortal is
indeed followed from his birth by a guardian angel; but how can his
promptings be distinguished from those that issue from the thousand hidden
agents of the Evil. Lucifer can transform himself into an angel of light,
his demons can entice with a voice which counterfeits that of God and
conscience. Man's will has no power to resist these temptations; it is
depraved by the fall. Reason gives no guidance; darkened on account of
man's apostasy, it degenerates, if left to itself, into a Satanic
instrument of heresy and error. Feeling is in subjection to matter, which,
already from the beginning opposed to spirit, shares the curse. Is it then
to be wondered at that the career of man, beginning with conception in a
sinful womb, has for its end, behind the portals of death, the eternal
torments of a hell? All these myriads of souls created by God and clothed
in garments of clay,--all these microcosms, each of which is a
master-piece, the glory of creation, a being of infinite value, form, link
by link, a chain extending from that nothingness out of which God has
created them, to that abyss in which, after a brief life on earth, they
must be tormented through countless ages, despairing and cursing their
Creator.
Lucifer triumphs. His kingdom increases; but the poor mortal has no right
to complain. The vessel must not blame the potter. When man looks into his
own heart he discovers a sinfulness and depravity as infinite as are his
punishments. However severe the law of the universe appears, it still
bears the impress of divine justice.
It is, therefore, but an act of pure grace, when God determines the
salvation of mankind. The Church, prepared for by the election of the
Jewish people, and founded by Jesus Christ the Son of God, who offered
himself for crucifixion to atone for the sins of men, has grown up and
disseminated its influences throughout regions where once demons, the gods
of the heathen, possessed temples, idols and altars. The Church is the
magic circle within which alone is salvation possible (_Extra ecclesiam
nullus salus_). Within her walls the Son of God offers himself daily as a
sacrifice for the transgressions of humanity; the Communion wine is by a
miracle changed into his blood, and the bread into his flesh, which,
eaten by the members of the Church, promote their growth in holiness and
their power of resistance to the Tempter. The Church is one body, animated
by the Holy Spirit of God; and thus one member compensated by surplus of
virtue for the deficiencies of another. Holy men, resigning all sensual
delights, and devoting their lives to the practice of penance and
severities, the contemplation of spiritual things, and doing good,
accumulate thereby a wealth of supererogatory works, which, deposited in
the treasury of the Church, enables her to compound for the sins of less
self-denying members. With liberal hand she grants remission of sins not
to the living merely, but also to the dead. Thus the race of men may
breathe more freely, and the multitude attach themselves again to the
transient joys and pleasures of a wretched life on earth; and when a
mortal plucks the flowers of pleasure which bloom in this vale of sorrows,
he need not fear so much its hidden poison, for the remedy is near at
hand. The knight in the castle yonder on the summit of the crag, or the
burgher beneath him in the valley, may without scruple take a wife, rear
children and live in conviviality according to his means; the happy
student may sing and realize his "_Gaudeamus igitur_"; the undaunted
soldier may seek a recompense for the hardships of his campaign by a merry
life in taverns and in women's company; even the followers of Mary
Magdalene, sinning in expectation of grace, may obtain at the feet of the
Church the same absolution which was given to their model at the feet of
Jesus, provided only that, grateful for the mercy of Christ, who has made
them members of his Church, they venerate it as their mother, partake of
its sacraments, and seek its aid. The continually increasing number of
cloisters, the homes of rigorous self-denial, uninterrupted penance, and
mysterious contemplation, is a guarantee of the inexhaustibleness of those
works of supererogation which the Church possesses. In these cloisters
young maidens, who have consecrated themselves to Christ after a
spiritual embrace for which the most intense impulses of their nature
have been suppressed, yearn away their lives. Here in prayer and toil the
pious recluse spends his days and nights. Those men also who, going forth
barefooted, covered with coarse mantles, and wearing ropes about their
waists, devote themselves like the apostles to poverty and the preaching
of the gospel, who receive charity at the door of the layman, giving him
in exchange the food of the word of God,--these all issue from the same
cloisters.
Thus is the Church a mole against the tide of Sin. The Christian has some
reason to exclaim: "O hell, where is thy victory?" for although the place
of torment is continually filled with lost spirits, there are thousands
upon thousands of ransomed souls that wing their flight to the
Empyrean,--whether immediately or by the way of Purgatory. First among the
beatified who mingling with angels surround the throne of God, are those
called saints. Their intercession is more efficacious even than that of
seraphim, and their power in the contest against the demons surpasses
that of cherubim. Therefore kingdoms, communities, orders, corporations
and guilds, yea, even lawless and disreputable professions (so needing
grace and intercession more than others) have their patron saints. The
individual finally is protected by the saint in whose name he has been
baptized.
The Church is the kingdom of God on earth; her ecclesiastical hierarchy is
an image of the heavenly; her highest ruler, the Pope, is God's vicar. Her
destiny, which is extension over the whole earth so as to include all
lands and nations within her magic circle, could not be realized unless
she possessed the power to command the kings and armies of Christendom. It
is evident, moreover, that spiritual power is above secular: the former
protects the soul, the latter the body only. They stand related to one
another as spirit is related to matter. Therefore it must be the Pope who
shall invest with the highest secular dignity,--that of the Roman Caesars.
He is the feudal lord of the emperors, as the emperor is, or should be,
of the kings, dukes and free cities. Were it not thus,--if the various
rulers were independent of the guardians of religion,--then woe to the
great mass of their subjects! To be sure these multitudes are placed on
earth to be disciplined by humanity and obedience; they have indeed no
rights upon which they may insist, since they stand outside the pale of
freedom; but, on the other hand, the oppression exercised upon them would
have no limit unless the Church, who is the common mother of all, reminded
those in authority of their duty to love and cherish the lowly: indeed,
all social order would crumble into dust, did not a higher power than that
dependent upon the sword compel the stronger to fulfil those vows to
protect the weaker which he made in the presence of the Holy Trinity. For
the only existing rights are those of privilege and investiture, founded
absolutely upon sealed stipulations.
According to the doctrines of the Church, which are the only key to
salvation, man has received as a gift what he never could have attained
by science,--a knowledge of the highest truths. Possessed of this
knowledge he must no longer allow himself to be tempted by the devil to
engage in efforts to penetrate the mysteries of the universe with nothing
to aid him but his darkened intellect; for such attempts generally end in
error and apostasy. Still the allurement is strong because the highest
truths, when clothed in the garb of human conceptions, sometimes appear
self-contradictory and absurd. They must therefore be submitted, not to
the decisions of reason, but the arbitration of faith. Faith alone is able
to penetrate and apprehend them. The doctrines which the Church, assisted
by the Holy Spirit, promulgates, since they alone are true, offer to the
believing investigator a mine of infinite treasures. There is consequently
possible within the Church a system of philosophy, provided that its
processes, always postulating the infallibility of the dogmas, be confined
to devout analysis and humble contemplation of religious tenets. For such
a purpose the adherent of the scholastic philosophy may employ the
Aristotelian dialectics as he chooses, and wield the lever of syllogism at
his pleasure. Even within the pale of orthodoxy there may arise many an
_if_ and _but_, many a _pro_ and _contra_. The scholastic reasoner has to
prove but the most probable; the infallible Pope and his synods sanction
the true deductions and refute the errors which, when recanted, are
forgiven. It is best for the inquirer to found his researches on the
propositions laid down by the early fathers of the Church; for thus
succeeding generations will build on foundations laid for them by their
predecessors long before. Inasmuch as they all follow the same dialectic
method of analysis and synthesis, so that the whole subject is pervaded
and its masses grouped into architectural order by these processes, there
is reared on the basis of the dogma a philosophical superstructure,
resembling those cupolas with which the skilful masters of masonry amaze
our eyes.
The world grows worse. The Church can pardon sin, but can not hinder its
increase. Every generation inherits from the preceding a burden of evil
dispositions, habits and examples, which it lays in its turn still heavier
on the shoulders of posterity. Every son has better reason for sighing
than his father. "Happy those who died ere beholding the light of day! who
tasted death ere the experience of life!"[6] The hosts of Satan assail the
Church on every side. From his tower the watchman of Zion looks out over
the world, and beholds the billows of history, now lashed fiercely by the
demons, roll against the rock upon which Christ has built his temple. With
great difficulty the cross-adorned hosts of Europe repel the invasion of
the Saracens, whose coming has been prefigured by pestilences and
portents. The emblem of the Church is an ark tossed about on a stormy sea
amid a tempest of rain and lightning. History is a spiritual comedy,
enacted on a stage of which the broad foreground, like that of the
mysteries, is a _theatrum diabolorum_; while in the narrow background the
Church of God, like a beleaguered citadel, points its pinnacles above the
turmoil towards the gloomy sky, from which its defenders expect Jesus and
his angels to come to their relief.
But before this relief arrives, iniquity shall have reached its height. It
is at work already within the sacred precincts of the Church itself. It is
with greater difficulty that God's vicar subdues the inner than the outer
enemies. On the one hand many a man believes that he has found in his own
reason and conscience leading truths, which he arrays, without any
authority outside of himself, against those commandments which have come
from above, and the divine origin of which is confirmed by the faith of a
hundred generations. He places himself in an attitude of opposition to the
common faith. Thus originate the heresies,--those cancers on the body of
the congregation which must be cured by the iron, when salves will not
restore, and by fire when the iron is ineffective. On the other hand men
are so overpowered by their passions that they abandon the God who rebukes
them, and become the bondsmen of another god who shows them favor. Pride,
fettered by obscure descent, and keen appetite for pleasure chained from
gratification by penury and privation, shake their shackles in despair,
and finally call the Morning Star of old to their assistance. The
archfiend promises pleasures without stint, and power without limitation.
The poor mortal for dread of the pains which afflict his body is urged on
to his destruction. His body formed from the dust of the accursed earth,
and always a centre of sensual desires, is abandoned by God a prey to the
assaults of the devil. "Here somebody loses an eye, somebody there a hand;
one falls into the fire and is burned to death, one into the water and is
drowned; another climbs a ladder and breaks his neck, another again
stumbles on the even ground and breaks a leg. All such unforeseen
accidents, occurring daily, are but the devil's thumps and strokes which
he inflicts upon us from sheerest malice."[7] Still more: the demon is
able to take possession so thoroughly of the human body that he becomes,
as it were, its second soul, moves its limbs, utters blasphemies with its
tongue at which even their fiendish author can not but tremble. But though
the God-fearing man, like pious Job, is benefited by such afflictions, and
although prayer is a powerful refuge, still there is a continually growing
number of those who, driven by cowardly dread of the might of the Prince
of Evil, seek their safety in a league with him; so much the more as he
lends them a partial control of the elements, and thus a means of
employment and of doing harm to others. Thus the dire pestilence of
sorcery multiplies its victims; and in the black hours of midnight
hundreds of thousands who bear the name of Christian, on mountains and
in deserts perform clandestine rites in honor of their Satanic master.
Time ripens for the advent of Antichrist, for the Day of Judgment and the
final conflagration.
In the flames of this last day the revolving heavens and the earth are
destroyed. Motion, activity, strife, history,--all are at an end. The
Empyrean and Hell alone remain, as the antipodal extremes of the former
universe. This conflagration is not a universal purifier, annihilating
what has no existence in itself.[8] It only separates forever the gold
from the dross. The kingdom of the devil continues to exist, and its prey
is its own for evermore. But it exists thus only because an eternal
existence means an eternal punishment for its ruler as well as for his
subjects. From the new heavens and the new earth which the fiat of God has
created to be the dwelling-place of those who have escaped destruction,
these ransomed spirits perceive the gnashing of teeth and lamentation of
their doomed brethren, and look down upon their tortures and misery, not
with compassion but with joy, because they recognize in their punishment
the vindication of divine justice; not with pain but delight, because the
sight of their wretchedness doubles their own felicity. From the depths of
that gulf of misery ascend without ceasing, to the Empyrean, cries of
despair, blasphemies of defiance, and curses of rage, yet do they not
disturb the hymns which saints and angels sing ever around the throne of
God and of the Lamb; they only intensify the solemnity of the worship.[9]
* * * * *
Such in its chief features was the cosmic philosophy of the Middle Ages;
not abstractly considered, but such as existed in reality during many
centuries among Christian people, guiding their thoughts, imagination and
feelings, and governing their actions. Remains of it are still apparent in
the systems of existing sects, though incompatible with the new philosophy
which the human mind has been laboring to unfold. Ever since the
intellect of Christendom began to free itself in the sixteenth century
from faith by authority, the influence of the old views upon the various
forms which life takes on, has been gradually declining.
Many of those characteristics which so strangely contrast the state of
society in the Middle Ages with the preceding Hellenic and the subsequent
modern European civilizations, have their origin in different theories of
the universe. It is not mere chance that we encounter, on the one hand, in
the history of Greece, so many harmonious forms with repose and tranquil
joy depicted in every lineament of their countenance, and on the other, in
that of the Middle Ages, so many beings buried in deepest gloom or exalted
in frenzied rapture, dripping with blood from self-inflicted wounds, or
glowing with the fever of mystic emotion--not a mere chance that the
former age loves those serene forms and immortalizes them in its heroic
galleries, while the latter worships its eccentric figures and describes
them in its legends as saintly models. It is not a mere accident that the
art of Greece mirrors a beautiful humanity, while that of the Middle Ages
loves to dwell upon monstrosities and throws itself between the extremes
of awful earnestness and wild burlesque; not an accident only that the
science of the Greek is rational--that he discovers the categories in
Logic, and rears a most perfect structure of rigid demonstration in his
Geometry, while the science of the Middle Ages on the contrary is
_magic_,--is a doctrine of correspondencies, Astrology, Alchemy, and
Sorcery.
To the Greek the universe was a harmonious unity. The law of reason,
veiled under the name of fate, ruled the gods themselves. The variegated
events of the myth lay far away in the distance; they did not even warp
the imagination of the poet, when he occupied himself with them; still
less the faith of the multitude, and least of all the investigations of
the thinker. The uninterrupted sequence of events invited to
contemplation, which could be indulged in the more readily, as no one
pretended to have received as a gift a complete system of revealed truth,
and the more freely, as no authority forced the individual to choose
between such a system and perdition. In general no doubt was entertained
concerning the ability of Reason to penetrate to the inner essence of
things, since no knowledge of the fall of man, which annihilated this
ability, had reached the Greeks. In regard to knowledge the Greek
consequently built on evidence and inner authority. The same was the case
in regard to morality. They were convinced that those impulses which
promoted the happiness of domestic life, were good; and that those which
did not counteract it were at least justified; and thus they enjoyed with
moderation the gifts of nature, without suspicion that the bountiful giver
was accursed. The ideal of wisdom which they had framed, was based on
their inner experience, whether it had the joyous features of Epicurus,
the severer lineaments of Zeno, or the mild and resigned expression of
Epictetus; and when they exerted themselves to realize it in their lives,
they always proceeded upon the supposition that this would be possible by
a daily strengthening of the will. The exertion put forth by the Greeks to
attain to purity and virtue was, as it were, a system of gymnastics for
developing the muscles of the brain. The same power and self-confidence
were displayed in these endeavors as in the palaestra. Sighs and anguish
were strangers to this kind of reformatory effort. Yet was it not
altogether fruitless. The old adage that God helps those who help
themselves can be here applied. That it developed great, powerful, and
noble natures was so undeniable that even one of the Christian fathers,
upon considering their achievements, began to doubt if his way of
attaining perfection was really the only one, until he succeeded in
convincing himself that "The virtues of the Gentiles are shining vices."
The harmonious personality of the Greek and the rationality of Grecian
science depended on the unity, the harmony of their cosmic views--upon
this, that they conceived of the whole as a unity in its diversity, not as
an irreconcilable disunion of two absolutely antagonistic principles.
If, on the contrary, the highest ruling power in nature is an arbitrary
divine caprice, if the world which lies open before mankind is ruled by
another's purely fortuitous decrees, themselves interfered with
continually by hostile influences from an infernal kingdom; if, moreover,
this struggle rages not merely in the external world, but also in the very
core of human nature, vitiating her reason, feelings and will, so to
employ them without her agency as means to her exaltation or perdition,
then is there indeed no causality to be sought for, and consequently no
field anywhere for scientific investigation. Were there even any such
thing as science, it would lie far beyond the powers of man, since reason,
a mere plaything for demoniac powers, can not be trusted. Neither has his
personality any longer its centre of gravity within itself. Then is man in
excessive need of such an institution of deliverance as the Church, which
teaches him what the divine authority has arbitrarily decided to be good
or evil; while the supernatural means of grace, the sacraments, afford him
power of resisting evil, and absolve him from his failings. In this way
external authority supplants the inner, which is torn up by the roots.
That ideal of human perfection which is possible under such conditions,
and which actually arises because the native activity of the mind
constantly endeavors to bring all accepted notions into union, places
itself on the doctrine of authority as its foundation, and accepts its
supernatural character. That the ideal of the Middle Ages is ascetic and
its science magical, is directly consequent upon its dualistic conception
of the universe and of its peculiar nature.
The dualism of the Middle Ages was derived from Persia. It is the
essential idea of the Zoroastrian doctrine, which finally, after a long
struggle against the unitarian notions of the Greeks, penetrates the
Occident and completely conquers it. This victorious combat of the Orient
against Europe is the sum of history between Cyrus and Constantine. The
external events which fill those centuries obtain their true significance
when within and behind them one perceives the struggle between the two
conflicting systems of ideas. Like concealed chess-players they move their
unconscious champions against each other on the board of history.
When Cyrus sends home the Jewish prisoners from the rivers of Babylon to
the mountains of Jerusalem, he gains for dualism that important
flank-position on the Mediterranean the significance of which is shown
centuries after in the progress of the battle. The "Adversary" (Satan) who
sometimes appears in the most recent portions of the Old Testament,
written under Persian influence, and plays a continually widening role in
the Rabbinical literature, is the Judaized Ahriman; the demoniacs who in
the time of Christ abounded in Palestine testify that the demon-belief of
Persian dualism had penetrated into the imagination and feeling of the
Jews, and there borne fruit. By the side of this peaceful conquest the
great war-drama between Greece and Persia is enacted. Although this is not
recognizedly a religious war, it is nevertheless Ormuzd and Ahriman who
are repelled at Marathon, Salamis and Plataea, it is the Grecian
unitarianism which is saved in these battles to develop itself, for a
season undisturbed, into a radiant and beautiful culture. As has been
shown already, magic, and belief upon authority, are the necessary
consequences of a dualistic religion; the restriction and annihilation of
free personality are equally necessary consequences of belief by
authority. Can any one regarding the conflict which raged on the field of
Marathon, fail to recognize the clash of two spiritual opposites, two
different systems of ideas, when he sees the bands of Greeks, drawn from
their agorai (places for political discussion) and gymnasiums, advance
cheerfully and garlanded, but without depreciating the danger, to meet the
innumerable hosts of the Orient driven on by the scourge of their
leaders? On the one side, a fully developed free personality, which has
its origin in a harmonious conception of nature, on the other, blind
submission to external force. On the one side, liberty, on the other,
despotism. One may add by the help of a logical conclusion, though this
may seem more removed,--on the one side rationality, on the other magic.
Strengthened thus by victory Europe goes to seek the enemy in his own
country. Alexander conquers Asia. But the new Achilles is fettered in the
chains of his own slave. For while Greek culture is spreading over the
surface of the conquered countries, the Oriental spirit advances beneath
it in a contrary direction. The waves of the two ideal currents are partly
mingled. In the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamus the literatures of
the Orient and of the Occident flow together; in their halls meet the
sages of the East and West; in their doctrinal systems Zoroaster and
Plato, fancy and speculation, magic and rationalism are blended in the
most extraordinary way. The victory of Alexander was that of the warrior,
and not that of sober Aristotle's pupil. The Judaico-Alexandrian
philosophy blooms, and gnosticism,--that monstrous bastard of specifically
different cosmical systems, is already begotten, when Christianity springs
up in Palestine, and unites itself with the Jewish dualism derived from
Zoroaster, and thus proceeds to conquer the world by the weapons of
belief.
In the mean time Rome has extended and established its empire. The
nationalities included in it have been mingled together; their various
gods have been carried into the same Pantheon; and their ideas have been
brought face to face. The universal empire, to maintain its existence, has
been forced to centralize itself into a despotism of the Oriental type,
the free forms of state have perished, philosophical skepticism and
eudemonism have abolished among the cultured classes the inherited notions
of religion. All this, with its accompaniments of moral depravity and
material necessity, have prepared the soil of the Occident for receiving
the seed of the new religion. Emptiness and misery make the difference
between ideality and reality, between good and evil, all the more
perceptible even to unitarian nations. Dualism thus prepared for in the
realms of thought and feeling, spreads in Christian form with irresistible
force over the Roman provinces. Innumerable masses of the poor and
oppressed devote themselves to the "philosophy of the Barbarians and the
Orient" (as a Greek thinker called Christianity) because they recognize in
it their own experience of life, and have full assurance in their hope of
relief.
The Hellenico-Roman paganism offers a fruitless resistance. The
persecutions on the part of the state only hasten the spread of
Christianity. What the state can not do, perhaps the Hellenic culture and
philosophy may do. These, once mutually hostile, are reconciled in the
face of common danger. The dying lamp of antiquity flares and brightens
when pure hearts and profound minds, otherwise despising the myths as
superstition, now grasp them as symbols of higher truths. Philosophy goes
forth, in the form of Neoplatonism.
But Neoplatonism has itself apostatized from the rational and unitarian.
Plotinus and Ammonius Saccas try in vain to restore it. It only
unwittingly helps its adversary, especially when, to gain the masses, it
consents to compete with him in miracles. Jamblichus and others practice
secret arts in order to outrival the Christian magi, and they glorify
Pythagoras and Appollonius of Tyana as fit to rank with Jesus of Nazareth
in miraculous gifts. By this they only contribute to the spread of magic
and the principles of dualism. The current of Oriental notions proceeds
all the more rapidly on its course of triumph.
Christian dualism already feels itself strong enough to battle not only
against its declared enemies, but also those Occidental elements of
culture which in its beginnings it had received into its bosom and which
had procured its entrance among the more intelligent classes. It feels
instinctively that even the school of thought which has sprung up within
the Church is far too unitarian and rationalistic to be tolerated in the
long run. Such men as Clemens of Alexandria and Origen, who are struck by
what is external and imperishable in Christianity, and know how to
separate this from its dualistic form, fight a tragical battle for the
union of belief and thought. Admitting that Christ is all in all, the
immediate power and wisdom of God, they nevertheless wish to save the
Hellenic philosophy from the destruction which a fanaticism, revelling in
the certainty and all-sufficiency of revelation, directs against every
expression of an occidental culture, whether in national life, or art, or
science. They point out that philosophy, if it can do nothing else that is
good, can furnish rational weapons against those who assail faith, and
that it can and ought to be the "real wall of defence about the vineyard."
Their argument is without effect. Philosophy is of the devil: yea,
everything true and good in life and doctrine which heathendom has
possessed, is declared by one of the fathers to be the imposture of Satan
(_ingenia diaboli quaedam de divinis affectandis_); and faith is so far
independent of thought that it is better to say "I believe _because_ it is
improbable, absurd, impossible."[10] In vain the dying Clemens exclaims:
"Even if philosophy were of the devil, Satan could deceive men only in the
garb of an angel of light: he must allure men by the appearance of truth,
by the intermixture of truth and falsehood; we ought therefore to seek and
recognize the truth from whatever source it come.... And even this gift to
the pagans can have been theirs only by the will of God, and must
consequently be included in the divine plan of educating humanity.... If
sin and disorder are attributable to the devil, how absurd to make him the
author and giver of so good a thing as philosophy!... God gave the Law to
the Jews, and philosophy to the Gentiles, only to prepare for the coming
of Christ." Such are the words that ring out the last dying echo of
Hellenic culture and humanity! It is not a mere accident that with
philosophy Clemens and Origen also sought to save the unitarian principles
in so far as to reject the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell, and
maintain that the devil will finally become good, and God be all in all.
But such a view could not command attention at a time when Christianity,
only because it was not sharply and consistently dualistic, felt itself
endangered by that wholly consistent and thorough-going dualism which
under the name of Manicheism once more advanced against Europe from the
Persian border. Although Manicheism seemed to incur defeat, nevertheless
one of its former adherents, Augustine, infused its spirit into the
Church. During the century which followed him the Germanic migration
destroyed, along with the last schools, the last vestiges of Graeco-Romaic
culture. The Barbarians were persuaded to receive baptism, often by means
of pomp and deceit; their divinities, as formerly the denizens of Olympus,
were degraded to evil demons. Every thing antecedent to their union with
the Church or disconnected with it,--the old experiences and traditions of
these converted nations,--all was condemned and referred to the world of
evil. The dominion of Oriental dualism in Europe was absolutely
established, and the long night of the Dark Ages had set in. Six centuries
separate Proclus, the last Neoplatonican of any note, and Augustine the
last of the Fathers educated in philosophy, from Anselm the founder of
scholasticism! Between them lies an expanse in which Gregory the Great and
Scotus Erigena are almost the only stars, and these by no means of the
first magnitude. "There are deserts in time, as well as space," says
Bacon.
When again a feeble attempt at scientific activity was possible, the
monkish scholar was happy enough to possess a few maculated leaves of
Aristotle, obtained, but not directly, from the Arabs. Upon these leaves
he read with amazement and admiration the method for a logical
investigation. It was, for the rest, Hermes Trismegistus, Dionysius
Areopagita (the translation of Scotus Erigena), and other such mystical
works from unknown hands, with here and there touches of Neoplatonism
which had been inserted by the dreamy scholiast when in need of material
for rounding out the cosmology, the principles of which he had found in
the dogmas of the Church.
As a matter of course the Dark Ages could not perceive, still less admit,
the intimate relation existing between its cosmic views and those of
Zoroaster; but still a dim suspicion of it can be detected. The learned
men of the Middle Ages ascribed to Zoroaster the founding of the magical
sciences. Sprenger (author of Malleus Malificarum, of which fatal work
hereafter), Remigius, Jean Bodin, Delrio, and several other jurists and
theologians, who have acquired a sad notoriety as judges of witch-trials,
in their writings ascribe the origin of witchcraft to Zoroaster.
The dualistic notion was not modified after entering Christianity, but
intensified. The religion of Zoroaster, which presupposes a good first
principle,[11] allows the evil which has in time arisen, in the course of
time to disappear; and it ends with the doctrine which shines out faintly
even in the New Testament, of the final "restoration of all things"
([Greek: apokatastasis panton]), and in consequence reduces evil to
something merely phenomenal. In the doctrines of the Church, however, as
they were established through the influence of Augustine, the Manicheian,
evil, though arisen in time, is made eternal. This difference is of great
practical significance and explains why dualism did not bear the same
terrible fruits in its home in the Orient as in the Occident. The awful
separation and contrast with which the divina comedia of the Middle Ages
ends,--the wails and curses that arise from hell to intensify the bliss
of the redeemed,--form a conception so revolting that it could not be
incorporated with thought and feeling without rendering them savage.
Compassion, benevolence, love,--those qualities through which man feels a
kinship with the divine, lose their significance and are despoiled of
their eternal seal, when they are found no longer in his Maker except as
limited or rather suspended by the action of another quality which the
pious man will force himself to call justice, but which an irrepressible
voice from the innermost recesses of his soul calls cruelty. To this must
be added a further important consideration. The servant of Ormuzd is no
more the property of the devil than the earth he treads upon. To be sure
he is surrounded on every side by the treachery of Ahriman and all the
demons, but this only because he is called and already endowed with power
to be the champion of the Good upon the earth. It is as such that he is
placed in the tumult of the battle. The power for good once imparted to
him, and constantly renewed through prayer, is withal also his own; he
may use it without losing himself in the perplexing question where liberty
ceases and grace begins. Every one adhering to the doctrine of light
stands on his own feet. This is true of every servant of Ormuzd; Zoroaster
has made in this respect no distinction between priest and layman. Even
belief upon authority, in itself an encroachment upon free personality,
preserves for it in this form of religion a free and inviolable arena.