THE DARK AGES.
The Anticipated Second Coming of Christ.――State of the World
in the Tenth Century.――Enduring Architecture.――Power of the
Papacy.――Vitality of the Christian Religion.――The Pope and
the Patriarch.――Intolerance of Hildebrand.――Humiliation of the
Emperor Henry IV.――Farewell Letter of Monomaque.――The Crusades.
――Vladimir of Russia.――His Introduction of Christianity to his
Realms.――Marriage with the Christian Princess Anne.――Extirpation
of Paganism.――The Baptism.――The Spiritual Conversion of Vladimir.
THERE had gradually arisen an almost universal impression in the
Church, that, in just a thousand years after the advent of Christ, the
world was to come to an end. Notwithstanding the emphatic declaration
of Jesus, that not even the angels in heaven know the period of his
second coming, through all the ages of the Church individuals have been
appearing who have fixed upon a particular year when Christ was to come
in clouds of glory.
The year of our Lord 999 was one of very solemn import. There was a
deep-seated impression throughout all Christendom that it was to be the
last year of time; and, indeed, all the signs in the heavens above and
on the earth beneath indicated that event. There was almost universal
anarchy,――no law, no government, no safety, anywhere. There were wars,
and rumors of wars. Sin abounded. There were awful famines, followed by
the fearful train of pestilence and death. The land was left untilled.
There was no motive to plant when the harvest could never be gathered.
The houses were left to fall into decay. Why make improvements, when in
one short month they might be swallowed up in a general conflagration?
It is an almost inexplicable peculiarity of human wickedness, that
danger and death are often the most intense incentives to reckless
sin. While Christians were watching and praying for the coming of the
Saviour to bring to a triumphal close this fearful tragedy of earth and
time, the godless surrendered themselves to all excesses, and shouted,
“Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die!”
The condition of society became quite unendurable. Robbers frequented
every wood: in strong bands they ravaged villages, and even walled
towns. As all were consuming, and few were producing, provisions soon
disappeared. Despair gave loose to every passion. In many places the
famine was so severe, that, when even rats and mice could no longer be
procured, human flesh was sold in the markets: women and children were
actually killed and roasted.
But, while many were thus stimulated to awful depravity, others,
inspired by Christian principle, were impelled to prayer, and to
every exercise of devotion which those dark days taught them could be
acceptable to God. Kings, in several cases, laid aside their crowns,
and, as humble monks, entered the monasteries, performing all the most
onerous and humiliating duties of midnight vigils, fastings, penances,
and prayers.
Henry, the Emperor of Germany, entered the Abbey of St. Vanne as a
monk. The holy father in charge, who was truly a good man, enlightened
and conscientious, received the emperor reluctantly. After much
remonstrance, he, however, administered the oath by which the monarch
vowed implicit obedience to the authority of his spiritual superior.
“Sire,” said this good monk to the emperor, “you are now under my
orders: you have taken a solemn oath to obey me. I command you to
retire immediately from the convent, and to resume the sceptre. Fulfil
the duties of the kingly state to which God has called you. Go forth
a monk of the Abbey of St. Vanne; but resume your responsibilities as
Emperor of Germany.”
The emperor obeyed with simplicity of trust, and nobility of character,
which have commanded the respect of all subsequent ages.
Robert, King of France, son of the illustrious Hugh Capet, entered
the Abbey of St. Denis. Here he became one of the choir of the
church, singing hymns and psalms of his own composition. Many of
the nobles emancipated their slaves, and bestowed large sums in
charity,――benevolence, indeed, which did not, perhaps, require a large
exercise of self-denial, if sincere in their belief that the fires were
just ready to burst out which were to wrap the world in flames.
As the year 999 drew near its end, men almost held their breath
to watch the result. For a whole generation, all the pulpits of
Christendom had been ringing with the text,――
“And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the
Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into
the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he
should deceive the nations no more; and, after that, he must be loosed
a little season.”[201]
But the dawn of the eleventh century rose, and all things continued
as they were from the beginning of the creation. Christians, finding
that the world was not coming to an end, rallied for more energetic
effort to make the world better. All Christendom combined in the
crusades to arrest the progress of Mohammedanism, and to reclaim the
Holy Land from Mohammedan sway. The churches were repaired. Stately
cathedrals rose,――those massive piles of imposing architecture which
are still the pride of Europe.
The impression that the world was to be stable for some centuries
longer led to the projection of buildings on the most gigantic scale
and of the most durable materials. Architecture became a science
which enlisted the energies of the ablest minds; and here originated
that Gothic architecture so much admired even at the present day. The
foundations of these time-defying edifices were broad and deep; the
walls of immense thickness; the roofs steep, effectually to shed rain
and snow; the towers square, buttressed to sustain the church, and also
to afford means, then so necessary, of military defence.
The castle of the noble rose by the same impulse which reared such
majestic sacred edifices. Thus Melrose and Kenilworth, Heidelberg and
Drachenfels, came into being.
In France alone, at the beginning of the eleventh century, there
were a thousand four hundred and thirty-four monasteries. Poverty
was universal. The cottages of the peasants were mere hovels, without
windows, damp and airless,――wretched kennels in which the joyless
inmates crept to sleep. By the side of these abodes of want and woe the
church rose in palatial splendor, with its massive walls, its majestic
spire, its spacious aisles, and its statuary and paintings, which
charmed the docile and unlettered multitude. The whole population of
the village could assemble beneath its vaulted ceiling. It was the
poor man’s palace: he felt that it belonged to him. There he received
his bride. In the churchyard he laid his dead. The church-bell rang
merrily on festal-days, and tolled sadly when sorrow crashed. Life’s
burden weighed heavily on all hearts. To the poor, unlettered, ignorant
peasant, the church was every thing: its religious pageants pleased his
eye; the church-door was ever open for his devotions; the sanctuary was
his refuge in danger; its massive grandeur filled his heart with pride;
its gilded shows and stately ceremonies took the place of amusements;
the officiating priests and bishops presented to his reverential eyes
an aspect almost divine.
We see the remains of this deep reverence in the attachment to their
forms of religion of nearly all the peasantry of Catholic Europe at
the present day. The Church, with its imposing ceremonies, hallowed
to them by all the associations of childhood and by the traditions of
past generations, still exerts over them a power which seems almost
miraculous.
The wonderful vitality which there is in the Church of Christ, and the
amazing influence which the teachings of Jesus exert over the human
mind, are in nothing more remarkable than in the stability with which
Christianity and its doctrines survive all the ordinary changes of
time. Dynasties rise and fall like ocean-waves, leaving no perceptible
influence behind them; but Christianity rides over all these storms
of time with immortal life. The Roman empire crumbles to dust; the
Eastern and Western empires moulder away; the Gothic kingdoms appear,
and vanish like a vision of the night; the Vandals and the Huns, the
Ostrogoths and the Normans, flit across the scene, each with their
brief span of life.
Yet Christianity, like the sun struggling through the clouds of a
stormy day, calmly, steadily, surely, continues on its course. Though a
storm-cloud may transiently obscure its brightness, nothing can impede
its onward progress; and, at the present day, Christianity, triumphant
over all the conflicts of centuries, shines brighter, clearer, with
more world-wide healing in its beams, than ever before.
The Bishop of Rome had become the recognized head of the Western
Church. Wielding both temporal and spiritual power, the pope towered
in dignity above all the monarchs of Europe. Towards the close of the
eleventh century, Hildebrand, with the title of Gregory VII., occupied
the pontifical chair. Henry IV., Emperor of Germany, claimed the right
of appointing bishops in his own realms. The pope haughtily summoned
the emperor immediately to repair to his presence in Rome, and answer
for his conduct. Henry, indignant at such an insult, issued a decree
declaring Gregory VII. no longer worthy of being regarded as pope.
In retaliation, the exasperated pontiff excommunicated the emperor,
deposing him from his throne, and prohibiting his subjects, under pain
of eternal damnation, from supporting the emperor, or from ministering
in any way to his wants. The superstitious people, believing that
the pope had entire power to send them all to hell, in their terror
simultaneously and universally abandoned the emperor. No servant dared
to engage in his employ; no soldier dared to serve under his banner.
The emperor found himself in an hour utterly crushed and helpless. The
pope summoned a congress, and appointed another emperor in the place of
his deposed victim.
Henry, finding himself thus overwhelmed beyond all possibility of
resistance, in dismay and despair crossed the Alps in the dead of
winter to throw himself at the feet of the offended pontiff, and
implore forgiveness. Gregory VII. was then at the Castle of Canossa,
in Tuscany. For three days, in mid-winter, the abject monarch stood
a suppliant at the gate of the castle before he could be admitted.
Barefoot, bareheaded, and clothed in a woollen shirt, he was compelled
thus to wait, day after day, that all might witness his abject
humiliation. At length, the haughty pontiff consented to grant
absolution to the humiliated and penitent emperor.
The extravagance of the claims of Hildebrand seem to approach insanity.
He published a collection of maxims, which is still extant. Among them
are the following, which evince his spirit, and the arrogance of the
papacy at that day:――
“There is but one name in the world; and that is the pope’s. All
princes ought to kiss his feet. He alone can nominate or displace
bishops, or dissolve councils. Nobody can judge him. He has never erred,
and never shall err in time to come. He can depose princes, and release
subjects from their oaths of fidelity.”
All the monarchs of Europe sustained these assumptions of the pope;
for, by sustaining them, they easily held their subjects under perfect
control. Nothing can be conceived more awful than was then the idea
of excommunication to the popular mind. It exposed one to almost all
possible misery in this world, and to the eternal flames of hell in the
next.
One becomes weary of the recital of the crimes and woes of those days.
There is, however, one truth which stands forth prominent from every
page of history: it is, that in the religion of Jesus alone can be
found the remedy for the ills of earth; it is the democracy of the
gospel, the recognition of the brotherhood of man, where only is to
be found hope for the world. Forms of government are of little avail
so long as the men who wield those forms are selfish and depraved.
Governments will become better only so fast as the men who administer
them become better.
It is one of the signal developments of human depravity that men will
reject and oppose the religion of Jesus because bad men, assuming
the Christian name, ignore, and trample beneath their feet, all the
teachings of the gospel. Christianity advocates every thing that is
lovely and of good report, urging all “to do justly, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with God; to visit the widow and fatherless in their
affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world;” while at the
same time it denounces, under penalty of the divine displeasure, every
act which is not consistent with love to God and love to man.
Notwithstanding papal pride and corruption, the spirit of Christ,
in those dark ages, was beautifully developed in thousands of hearts,
among the lofty as well as among the lowly. There is a great deal
of false religion now, a great deal of ritualistic pomp and of empty
profession. It was so then. Still, everywhere, then as now, could
be seen the most attractive evidences of the power of true religion.
Devoted missionaries had penetrated the most remote and savage wilds;
and not a few who wore regal crowns and ducal coronets were numbered
among the disciples of Jesus.
On the 19th of May, 1126, Monomaque, one of the most renowned of
the early sovereigns of semi-barbaric Russia, died at the age of
seventy-six. He had developed a very beautiful character, often praying
with a trembling voice and tearful eyes for suffering humanity. Just
before he fell asleep in Jesus, he wrote a farewell letter to his sons
and daughters. The letter was written in the Palace of Kief, nearly a
thousand years ago, and is still preserved on parchment in the archives
of the monarchy. Every reader will admire its truly Christian spirit.
“My dear children,” he wrote, “the foundation of all religion is
the love of God and the love of man. Obey your heavenly Father;
and love man, your brother. It is not fasting, it is not monastic
seclusion, which will confer the favor of God: it is doing good to your
brother-man. Never forget the poor: take care of them. Do not hoard up
riches: that is contrary to the teachings of our Saviour. Be a father
to orphans; protect widows; and never permit the powerful to oppress
the weak.
“Abstain from every thing that is wrong. Banish from your heart all
pride. Remember that we all must die: to-day full of life, to-morrow
in the tomb. When you are travelling on horseback, instead of allowing
your mind to wander upon vain thoughts, recite your prayers, or at
least repeat the best of them all: ‘O Lord! have mercy upon us.’
“Never retire at night without falling upon your knees before God in
prayer. Always go to church at an early hour in the morning to offer to
God the homage of your first and freshest thoughts. This was the custom
of my father, and of all the pious people who surrounded him. With the
first rays of the sun they praised the Lord, and exclaimed with fervor,
‘Condescend, O Lord! with thy Divine Spirit to illumine my soul.’”
Near the commencement of the twelfth century, nearly all Christendom
combined for the recovery of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the
Moslems. The crusades are generally regarded as among the strangest
of all earthly frenzies. In the first crusade, a rabble, unorganized
band of three hundred thousand persons, of all ages and both sexes,
set out on an insane expedition to drive out of Syria the warlike
Moslems. Though the crusaders deemed their enterprise a sacred one,
their conduct was often such as could scarcely have been exceeded in
wickedness by incarnate fiends. Not one of those who embarked in this
first crusade ever reached Jerusalem: only a remnant of about twenty
thousand, after extreme sufferings, ragged and starving, regained their
homes. The well-armed and organized Turks cut down the fanatic rabble
as the mower does the grass.
The next year there was another campaign commenced, still more
imposing in numbers, and a little more formidable in warlike character.
All the steel-clad knights of Europe mounted their chargers, eager to
gain and to win the favor of Heaven by the slaughter of the infidel
Turk. Six hundred thousand men――as motley an assemblage as ignorance
and fanaticism ever brought together――commenced their march across
Europe to the Holy Land. Trusting that they should receive supernatural
aid, they made but slight provision for their wants. Soon all the
horses died: famine and sickness decimated their ranks. There was no
discipline, no self-command; and the wildest excesses reigned. Their
track was strewn with the bodies of the dead.
As they drew near to Jerusalem, their numbers had dwindled to sixty
thousand; but these were the boldest, the strongest, the hardiest.
With energy which religions enthusiasm alone could inspire, they
hurled themselves upon the defences of Jerusalem, broke open the gates,
clambered the walls, and, after a scene of awful carnage, succeeded in
recapturing the city. This was in July, 1099. Of the vast army which
had left Europe, not ten thousand survived to return to their native
land.
Though Jerusalem was taken, there were many portions of Palestine still
in the hands of the Moslems. The insane idea then arose of organizing a
crusade of children against them. Fanaticism affirmed that Christ would
interpose in their behalf, and give the weak a victory over the strong;
thus showing how God, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, could
perfect his praise. It seems almost incredible, but it is apparently
well authenticated, that ninety thousand boys, of but ten or twelve
years of age, commenced their march across Europe to present their
innocence and helplessness to the cimeter of the bearded Turk.
“When the madness of the time,” writes Rev. James White, “had
originated a crusade of children, and ninety thousand boys, of but ten
or twelve years of age, had commenced their journey, singing hymns and
anthems, and hoping to conquer the infidels with the spiritual arms of
innocence and prayer, the whole band melted away before they reached
the coast. Barons and counts, and bishops and dukes, all swooped down
upon the devoted march; and, before many weeks’ journeying was achieved,
the crusade was brought to a close. Most of the children had died of
fatigue or starvation; and the survivors had been seized as legitimate
prey, and sold as slaves.”[202]
The introduction of Christianity into Russia early in the eleventh
century is one of the most interesting events in the history of the
Church. Vladimir the king, a pagan, but a thoughtful man, had heard
of Christianity, and became anxious respecting his own destiny beyond
the grave. He made earnest inquiries of the teachers of all forms of
religion respecting their peculiar tenets.
He summoned the Mohammedan doctors from Bulgaria, the Jews from
Jerusalem, and Christian bishops from the Papal Church at Rome and the
Greek Church at Constantinople. He soon rejected the systems of Jews
and of the Mohammedans as unworthy of further consideration, but was
undecided respecting the apparently-conflicting schemes of Rome and
Constantinople.
He therefore selected ten of the wisest men in his kingdom, and sent
them to visit Rome, and then Constantinople, and report in which
country divine worship was conducted in a manner most worthy of the
Supreme Being. The ambassadors seem to have made a very thorough
investigation in both capitals. Upon their return to Kief, they
reported in favor of the faith and ceremonies of the Greek Church.
The king, still undecided, and impressed with the importance of the
measures upon which he had entered, assembled a number of his most
virtuous and distinguished nobles, and took counsel of them. Their
voices also were in favor of the Greek Church.
This wonderful event is well authenticated. Nestor gives a recital of
it in its minute details. An old Greek manuscript, preserved in the
royal library of Paris, records the visit of these ambassadors to both
Rome and Constantinople.
There must have been a commingling of many motives which influenced
Vladimir in his course. He had been a very wicked man. He had sought,
but in vain, to appease the gnawings of conscience by the debasing
rites of paganism. Some light from Christianity had reached his mind,
as Christian missionaries occasionally traversed his semi-barbaric
realms. Indeed, the gospel had been already preached in idolatrous
Kief, and some converts had been won to it. Vladimir had also
sufficient intelligence to perceive that the paganism into which his
realms were plunged was brutalizing. It is not probable that thus far
he had been the subject of a change of heart: it was merely a change of
policy,――an intellectual rather than a spiritual transformation.
Having resolved to renounce paganism, and to adopt Christianity,
he deemed it important that the event should be accompanied with
pageantry so imposing as to produce a deep impression upon his simple
and ignorant subjects. The extraordinary measures he adopted show how
little he then comprehended the true spirit of Christianity.
He assembled an immense army; with it descended the Dneiper in boats;
sailed across the Black Sea; and entering the Gulf of Cherson, near
Sevastopol, after several bloody battles took military possession
of the Crimea. Thus victorious, he sent an embassage to Basil and
Constantine, the two emperors then unitedly reigning at Constantinople,
announcing that he wished the young Christian Princess Anne, daughter
of one of the emperors, for his bride; and that, if she were not
immediately sent to him, he would advance upon Constantinople, and
utterly destroy the city.
The emperors, trembling in view of this menace, which they were
conscious they had not the power to avert, after much anxious
deliberation returned the answer, that they would accede to his request
if he would first embrace Christianity. To this proposition Vladimir
cordially assented, as it was quite in accordance with his plans. He,
however, demanded that the Princess Anne should be sent immediately to
him, stating that he would be baptized at the time of his nuptials.
The unhappy maiden was overwhelmed with anguish in view of what
appeared to her a dreadful doom. She regarded the pagan Russians
as ferocious savages, and would have preferred repose in the grave
to her union with Vladimir. But policy, which is the religion of
cabinets, demanded the sacrifice. The princess, weeping in despair, was
conducted to the camp of Vladimir, accompanied by several of the most
distinguished ecclesiastics and nobles of the empire. She was received
with the most gorgeous demonstrations of rejoicing. The whole army was
drawn up in battle-array to add the brilliancy of military pageantry to
nuptial festivities.
The ceremony of baptizing the king was performed in the church of
Basil, in the city of Cherson. Immediately after this ceremony, the
marriage-rites with the princess were solemnized. Vladimir ordered a
large church to be built at Cherson in memory of his visit. He then
returned to Kief with the bride whom the sword and diplomacy had won,
taking with him several preachers distinguished for their eloquence.
He also obtained from Constantinople a communion-service wrought in the
most graceful proportions of Grecian art, and also several exquisite
specimens of statuary, that he might inspire his subjects with a love
for the beautiful.
With great docility the king accepted the Christian teachers as
his guides, and devoted himself with untiring energy to the work of
abolishing idolatry and establishing Christianity throughout his realms.
Vigorous and sagacious measures were adopted to throw contempt upon the
ancient paganism. The idols were collected, and burned in huge bonfires
amidst the derisive shoutings of the people. The statue of Péroune,
the most illustrious of the pagan gods, was dragged ignominiously
through the streets with a rope round its neck, followed by the hooting
multitude pelting it with mud and scourging it with whips; until at
last, battered and defaced, it was dragged to the top of a precipice,
and tumbled headlong into the river.
Vladimir now issued a decree to all the inhabitants of the capital and
of all the adjoining region to repair to the banks of the Dneiper, in
the vicinity of Kief, to be baptized. The rich and the poor, the nobles
and the serfs, were alike summoned. At the appointed day the multitude
assembled by tens of thousands, and crowded the banks of the stream.
The emperor himself at length appeared, accompanied by a large number
of ecclesiastics from Constantinople. He took his seat upon an elevated
throne that he might witness the imposing ceremonies.
At a given signal, the whole multitude waded slowly into the stream.
Some boldly advanced up to their necks; others, more timid, ventured
only up to their waists. Fathers and mothers led their children by the
hand. When all were standing quietly in the stream, the clergy upon
the shore offered baptismal prayers, chanted hymns of thanksgiving,
and then declared that all were Christians, having been baptized in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. The
multitude then came up from the water nominal Christians.
Vladimir, who was sincere and truthful in all these strange movements,
was in a transport of joy. Profoundly excited by the sublimity of the
scene, he raised his flooded eyes to heaven, and, with great fervor,
offered the following simple and touching prayer:――
“O thou Creator of heaven and earth! extend thy blessing to these thy
new children. May they know thee as the true God, and be strengthened
by thee in the true religion! Come to my help against the temptations
of the Evil Spirit, and I will praise thy name.”
Thus, at a blow, paganism was demolished throughout nearly all Russia,
and Christianity was introduced in its place. Imperial energies were
expended in rearing artistic churches of stone all over the empire.
Christian missionaries, under the patronage of the emperor, traversed
the realm, teaching the people the new religion. Nearly all the
population gladly received the Christian faith. Some, however, still
adhered to paganism. Vladimir respected their rights of conscience, and
for a few years the wretched delusions of idolatry lingered in secluded
spots; but Russia became nominally a Christian land.
Light dawned rapidly upon the mind of Vladimir, and he became a
warm-hearted Christian,――one of the most loving and lovable of men.
War had been his passion. In this respect his whole nature seemed to be
changed. Nothing but dire necessity could lead him to an appeal to arms.
The Princess Anne appears to have been a sincere Christian. She found
a happy home in the Palace of Kief. Her virtues and piety won the love
and reverence of her husband. Her whole life was devoted to doing good;
and, when this Christian sister fell asleep in Jesus, she was soon
followed to the tomb by her grief-stricken husband.
The name of Vladimir is still revered throughout all Russia. He was
the greatest benefactor Russia ever knew. In his career we see how
noble is the life of the Christian: it is the only life which is truly
noble. Christianity, as a principle, embraces every virtue which can
glow in an angel’s bosom: as an agent of beneficence, it promotes all
conceivable good for time and eternity; as an agent of happiness, it
fills all homes and all hearts with joy; as a motive to action, it
combines all the conceivable joys of an endless life to inspire one
with tireless energies to promote God’s glory and man’s welfare.