24 (return) [ This small, though not bar_The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes)

Columbkill, only two miles in length, aud one mile in breadth,

has been distinguished, 1. By the monastery of St. Columba,

founded A.D. 566; whose abbot exercised an extraordinary

jurisdiction over the bishops of Caledonia; 2. By a classic

library, which afforded some hopes of an entire Livy; and, 3. By

the tombs of sixty kings, Scots, Irish, and Norwegians, who

reposed in holy ground. See Usher (p. 311, 360-370) and Buchanan,

(Rer. Scot. l. ii. p. 15, edit. Ruddiman.)]

These unhappy exiles from social life were impelled by the dark

and implacable genius of superstition. Their mutual resolution

was supported by the example of millions, of either sex, of every

age, and of every rank; and each proselyte who entered the gates

of a monastery, was persuaded that he trod the steep and thorny

path of eternal happiness. 25 But the operation of these

religious motives was variously determined by the temper and

situation of mankind. Reason might subdue, or passion might

suspend, their influence: but they acted most forcibly on the

infirm minds of children and females; they were strengthened by

secret remorse, or accidental misfortune; and they might derive

some aid from the temporal considerations of vanity or interest.

It was naturally supposed, that the pious and humble monks, who

had renounced the world to accomplish the work of their

salvation, were the best qualified for the spiritual government

of the Christians. The reluctant hermit was torn from his cell,

and seated, amidst the acclamations of the people, on the

episcopal throne: the monasteries of Egypt, of Gaul, and of the

East, supplied a regular succession of saints and bishops; and

ambition soon discovered the secret road which led to the

possession of wealth and honors. 26 The popular monks, whose

reputation was connected with the fame and success of the order,

assiduously labored to multiply the number of their

fellow-captives. They insinuated themselves into noble and

opulent families; and the specious arts of flattery and seduction

were employed to secure those proselytes who might bestow wealth

or dignity on the monastic profession. The indignant father

bewailed the loss, perhaps, of an only son; 27 the credulous maid

was betrayed by vanity to violate the laws of nature; and the

matron aspired to imaginary perfection, by renouncing the virtues

of domestic life. Paula yielded to the persuasive eloquence of

Jerom; 28 and the profane title of mother-in-law of God 29

tempted that illustrious widow to consecrate the virginity of her

daughter Eustochium. By the advice, and in the company, of her

spiritual guide, Paula abandoned Rome and her infant son; retired

to the holy village of Bethlem; founded a hospital and four

monasteries; and acquired, by her alms and penance, an eminent

and conspicuous station in the Catholic church. Such rare and

illustrious penitents were celebrated as the glory and example of

their age; but the monasteries were filled by a crowd of obscure

and abject plebeians, 30 who gained in the cloister much more

than they had sacrificed in the world. Peasants, slaves, and

mechanics, might escape from poverty and contempt to a safe and

honorable profession; whose apparent hardships are mitigated by

custom, by popular applause, and by the secret relaxation of

discipline. 31 The subjects of Rome, whose persons and fortunes

were made responsible for unequal and exorbitant tributes,

retired from the oppression of the Imperial government; and the

pusillanimous youth preferred the penance of a monastic, to the

dangers of a military, life. The affrighted provincials of every

rank, who fled before the Barbarians, found shelter and

subsistence: whole legions were buried in these religious

sanctuaries; and the same cause, which relieved the distress of

individuals, impaired the strength and fortitude of the empire.

25 (return) [ Chrysostom (in the first tome of the Benedictine

edition) has consecrated three books to the praise and defence of

the monastic life. He is encouraged, by the example of the ark,

to presume that none but the elect (the monks) can possibly be

saved (l. i. p. 55, 56.) Elsewhere, indeed, he becomes more

merciful, (l. iii. p. 83, 84,) and allows different degrees of

glory, like the sun, moon, and stars. In his lively comparison of

a king and a monk, (l. iii. p. 116-121,) he supposes (what is

hardly fair) that the king will be more sparingly rewarded, and

more rigorously punished.]

26 (return) [ Thomassin (Discipline de l’Eglise tom. i. p.

1426-1469) and Mabillon, (Oeuvres Posthumes, tom. ii. p.

115-158.) The monks were gradually adopted as a part of the

ecclesiastical hierarchy.]

27 (return) [ Dr. Middleton (vol. i. p. 110) liberally censures

the conduct and writings of Chrysostom, one of the most eloquent

and successful advocates for the monastic life.]

28 (return) [ Jerom’s devout ladies form a very considerable

portion of his works: the particular treatise, which he styles

the Epitaph of Paula, (tom. i. p. 169-192,) is an elaborate and

extravagant panegyric. The exordium is ridiculously turgid: “If

all the members of my body were changed into tongues, and if all

my limbs resounded with a human voice, yet should I be

incapable,” &c.]

29 (return) [ Socrus Dei esse coepisti, (Jerom, tom. i. p. 140,

ad Eustochium.) Rufinus, (in Hieronym. Op. tom. iv. p. 223,) who

was justly scandalized, asks his adversary, from what Pagan poet

he had stolen an expression so impious and absurd.]

30 (return) [ Nunc autem veniunt plerumque ad hanc professionem

servitutis Dei, et ex conditione servili, vel etiam liberati, vel

propter hoc a Dominis liberati sive liberandi; et ex vita

rusticana et ex opificum exercitatione, et plebeio labore.

Augustin, de Oper. Monach. c. 22, ap. Thomassin, Discipline de

l’Eglise, tom. iii. p. 1094. The Egyptian, who blamed Arsenius,

owned that he led a more comfortable life as a monk than as a

shepherd. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 679.]

31 (return) [ A Dominican friar, (Voyages du P. Labat, tom. i. p.

10,) who lodged at Cadiz in a convent of his brethren, soon

understood that their repose was never interrupted by nocturnal

devotion; “quoiqu’on ne laisse pas de sonner pour l’edification

du peuple.”]

32 (return) [ See a very sensible preface of Lucas Holstenius to

the Codex Regularum. The emperors attempted to support the

obligation of public and private duties; but the feeble dikes

were swept away by the torrent of superstition; and Justinian

surpassed the most sanguine wishes of the monks, (Thomassin, tom.

i. p. 1782-1799, and Bingham, l. vii. c. iii. p. 253.) Note: The

emperor Valens, in particular, promulgates a law contra ignavise

quosdam sectatores, qui desertis civitatum muneribus, captant

solitudines secreta, et specie religionis cum coetibus monachorum

congregantur. Cad. Theod l. xii. tit. i. leg. 63.—G.]

The monastic profession of the ancients 33 was an act of

voluntary devotion. The inconstant fanatic was threatened with

the eternal vengeance of the God whom he deserted; but the doors

of the monastery were still open for repentance. Those monks,

whose conscience was fortified by reason or passion, were at

liberty to resume the character of men and citizens; and even the

spouses of Christ might accept the legal embraces of an earthly

lover. 34 The examples of scandal, and the progress of

superstition, suggested the propriety of more forcible

restraints. After a sufficient trial, the fidelity of the novice

was secured by a solemn and perpetual vow; and his irrevocable

engagement was ratified by the laws of the church and state. A

guilty fugitive was pursued, arrested, and restored to his

perpetual prison; and the interposition of the magistrate

oppressed the freedom and the merit, which had alleviated, in

some degree, the abject slavery of the monastic discipline. 35

The actions of a monk, his words, and even his thoughts, were

determined by an inflexible rule, 36 or a capricious superior:

the slightest offences were corrected by disgrace or confinement,

extraordinary fasts, or bloody flagellation; and disobedience,

murmur, or delay, were ranked in the catalogue of the most

heinous sins. 37 A blind submission to the commands of the abbot,

however absurd, or even criminal, they might seem, was the ruling

principle, the first virtue of the Egyptian monks; and their

patience was frequently exercised by the most extravagant trials.

They were directed to remove an enormous rock; assiduously to

water a barren staff, that was planted in the ground, till, at

the end of three years, it should vegetate and blossom like a

tree; to walk into a fiery furnace; or to cast their infant into

a deep pond: and several saints, or madmen, have been

immortalized in monastic story, by their thoughtless and fearless

obedience. 38 The freedom of the mind, the source of every

generous and rational sentiment, was destroyed by the habits of

credulity and submission; and the monk, contracting the vices of

a slave, devoutly followed the faith and passions of his

ecclesiastical tyrant. The peace of the Eastern church was

invaded by a swarm of fanatics, incapable of fear, or reason, or

humanity; and the Imperial troops acknowledged, without shame,

that they were much less apprehensive of an encounter with the

fiercest Barbarians. 39

33 (return) [ The monastic institutions, particularly those of

Egypt, about the year 400, are described by four curious and

devout travellers; Rufinus, (Vit. Patrum, l. ii. iii. p.

424-536,) Posthumian, (Sulp. Sever. Dialog. i.) Palladius, (Hist.

Lausiac. in Vit. Patrum, p. 709-863,) and Cassian, (see in tom.

vii. Bibliothec. Max. Patrum, his four first books of Institutes,

and the twenty-four Collations or Conferences.)]

34 (return) [ The example of Malchus, (Jerom, tom. i. p. 256,)

and the design of Cassian and his friend, (Collation. xxiv. 1,)

are incontestable proofs of their freedom; which is elegantly

described by Erasmus in his Life of St. Jerom. See Chardon, Hist.

des Sacremens, tom. vi. p. 279-300.]

35 (return) [ See the Laws of Justinian, (Novel. cxxiii. No. 42,)

and of Lewis the Pious, (in the Historians of France, tom vi. p.

427,) and the actual jurisprudence of France, in Denissart,

(Decisions, &c., tom. iv. p. 855,) &c.]

36 (return) [ The ancient Codex Regularum, collected by Benedict

Anianinus, the reformer of the monks in the beginning of the

ninth century, and published in the seventeenth, by Lucas

Holstenius, contains thirty different rules for men and women. Of

these, seven were composed in Egypt, one in the East, one in

Cappadocia, one in Italy, one in Africa, four in Spain, eight in

Gaul, or France, and one in England.]

37 (return) [ The rule of Columbanus, so prevalent in the West,

inflicts one hundred lashes for very slight offences, (Cod. Reg.

part ii. p. 174.) Before the time of Charlemagne, the abbots

indulged themselves in mutilating their monks, or putting out

their eyes; a punishment much less cruel than the tremendous vade

in pace (the subterraneous dungeon or sepulchre) which was

afterwards invented. See an admirable discourse of the learned

Mabillon, (Oeuvres Posthumes, tom. ii. p. 321-336,) who, on this

occasion, seems to be inspired by the genius of humanity. For

such an effort, I can forgive his defence of the holy tear of

Vendeme (p. 361-399.)]

38 (return) [ Sulp. Sever. Dialog. i. 12, 13, p. 532, &c.

Cassian. Institut. l. iv. c. 26, 27. “Praecipua ibi virtus et

prima est obedientia.” Among the Verba seniorum, (in Vit. Patrum,

l. v. p. 617,) the fourteenth libel or discourse is on the

subject of obedience; and the Jesuit Rosweyde, who published that

huge volume for the use of convents, has collected all the

scattered passages in his two copious indexes.]

39 (return) [ Dr. Jortin (Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol.

iv. p. 161) has observed the scandalous valor of the Cappadocian

monks, which was exemplified in the banishment of Chrysostom.]

Superstition has often framed and consecrated the fantastic

garments of the monks: 40 but their apparent singularity

sometimes proceeds from their uniform attachment to a simple and

primitive model, which the revolutions of fashion have made

ridiculous in the eyes of mankind. The father of the Benedictines

expressly disclaims all idea of choice of merit; and soberly

exhorts his disciples to adopt the coarse and convenient dress of

the countries which they may inhabit. 41 The monastic habits of

the ancients varied with the climate, and their mode of life; and

they assumed, with the same indifference, the sheep-skin of the

Egyptian peasants, or the cloak of the Grecian philosophers. They

allowed themselves the use of linen in Egypt, where it was a

cheap and domestic manufacture; but in the West they rejected

such an expensive article of foreign luxury. 42 It was the

practice of the monks either to cut or shave their hair; they

wrapped their heads in a cowl to escape the sight of profane

objects; their legs and feet were naked, except in the extreme

cold of winter; and their slow and feeble steps were supported by

a long staff. The aspect of a genuine anachoret was horrid and

disgusting: every sensation that is offensive to man was thought

acceptable to God; and the angelic rule of Tabenne condemned the

salutary custom of bathing the limbs in water, and of anointing

them with oil. 43 431 The austere monks slept on the ground, on a

hard mat, or a rough blanket; and the same bundle of palm-leaves

served them as a seat in the day, and a pillow in the night.

Their original cells were low, narrow huts, built of the

slightest materials; which formed, by the regular distribution of

the streets, a large and populous village, enclosing, within the

common wall, a church, a hospital, perhaps a library, some

necessary offices, a garden, and a fountain or reservoir of fresh

water. Thirty or forty brethren composed a family of separate

discipline and diet; and the great monasteries of Egypt consisted

of thirty or forty families.

40 (return) [ Cassian has simply, though copiously, described the

monastic habit of Egypt, (Institut. l. i.,) to which Sozomen (l.

iii. c. 14) attributes such allegorical meaning and virtue.]

41 (return) [ Regul. Benedict. No. 55, in Cod. Regul. part ii. p.

51.]

42 (return) [ See the rule of Ferreolus, bishop of Usez, (No. 31,

in Cod. Regul part ii. p. 136,) and of Isidore, bishop of

Seville, (No. 13, in Cod. Regul part ii. p. 214.)]

43 (return) [ Some partial indulgences were granted for the hands

and feet “Totum autem corpus nemo unguet nisi causa infirmitatis,

nec lavabitur aqua nudo corpore, nisi languor perspicuus sit,”

(Regul. Pachom xcii. part i. p. 78.)]

431 (return) [ Athanasius (Vit. Ant. c. 47) boasts of Antony’s

holy horror of clear water, by which his feet were uncontaminated

except under dire necessity—M.]

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.—Part II.

Pleasure and guilt are synonymous terms in the language of the

monks, and they discovered, by experience, that rigid fasts, and

abstemious diet, are the most effectual preservatives against the

impure desires of the flesh. 44 The rules of abstinence which

they imposed, or practised, were not uniform or perpetual: the

cheerful festival of the Pentecost was balanced by the

extraordinary mortification of Lent; the fervor of new

monasteries was insensibly relaxed; and the voracious appetite of

the Gauls could not imitate the patient and temperate virtue of

the Egyptians. 45 The disciples of Antony and Pachomius were

satisfied with their daily pittance, 46 of twelve ounces of

bread, or rather biscuit, 47 which they divided into two frugal

repasts, of the afternoon and of the evening. It was esteemed a

merit, and almost a duty, to abstain from the boiled vegetables

which were provided for the refectory; but the extraordinary

bounty of the abbot sometimes indulged them with the luxury of

cheese, fruit, salad, and the small dried fish of the Nile. 48 A

more ample latitude of sea and river fish was gradually allowed

or assumed; but the use of flesh was long confined to the sick or

travellers; and when it gradually prevailed in the less rigid

monasteries of Europe, a singular distinction was introduced; as

if birds, whether wild or domestic, had been less profane than

the grosser animals of the field. Water was the pure and innocent

beverage of the primitive monks; and the founder of the

Benedictines regrets the daily portion of half a pint of wine,

which had been extorted from him by the intemperance of the age.

49 Such an allowance might be easily supplied by the vineyards of

Italy; and his victorious disciples, who passed the Alps, the

Rhine, and the Baltic, required, in the place of wine, an

adequate compensation of strong beer or cider.

44 (return) [ St. Jerom, in strong, but indiscreet, language,

expresses the most important use of fasting and abstinence: “Non

quod Deus universitatis Creator et Dominus, intestinorum

nostrorum rugitu, et inanitate ventris, pulmonisque ardore

delectetur, sed quod aliter pudicitia tuta esse non possit.” (Op.

tom. i. p. 32, ad Eustochium.) See the twelfth and twenty-second

Collations of Cassian, de Castitate and de Illusionibus

Nocturnis.]

45 (return) [ Edacitas in Graecis gula est, in Gallis natura,

(Dialog. i. c. 4 p. 521.) Cassian fairly owns, that the perfect

model of abstinence cannot be imitated in Gaul, on account of the

aerum temperies, and the qualitas nostrae fragilitatis,

(Institut. iv. 11.) Among the Western rules, that of Columbanus

is the most austere; he had been educated amidst the poverty of

Ireland, as rigid, perhaps, and inflexible as the abstemious

virtue of Egypt. The rule of Isidore of Seville is the mildest;

on holidays he allows the use of flesh.]

46 (return) [ “Those who drink only water, and have no nutritious

liquor, ought, at least, to have a pound and a half (twenty-four

ounces) of bread every day.” State of Prisons, p. 40, by Mr.

Howard.]

47 (return) [ See Cassian. Collat. l. ii. 19-21. The small

loaves, or biscuit, of six ounces each, had obtained the name of

Paximacia, (Rosweyde, Onomasticon, p. 1045.) Pachomius, however,

allowed his monks some latitude in the quantity of their food;

but he made them work in proportion as they ate, (Pallad. in

Hist. Lausiac. c. 38, 39, in Vit. Patrum, l. viii. p. 736, 737.)]

48 (return) [ See the banquet to which Cassian (Collation viii.

1) was invited by Serenus, an Egyptian abbot.]

49 (return) [ See the Rule of St. Benedict, No. 39, 40, (in Cod.

Reg. part ii. p. 41, 42.) Licet legamus vinum omnino monachorum

non esse, sed quia nostris temporibus id monachis persuaderi non

potest; he allows them a Roman hemina, a measure which may be

ascertained from Arbuthnot’s Tables.]

The candidate who aspired to the virtue of evangelical poverty,

abjured, at his first entrance into a regular community, the

idea, and even the name, of all separate or exclusive

possessions. 50 The brethren were supported by their manual

labor; and the duty of labor was strenuously recommended as a

penance, as an exercise, and as the most laudable means of

securing their daily subsistence. 51 The garden and fields, which

the industry of the monks had often rescued from the forest or

the morass, were diligently cultivated by their hands. They

performed, without reluctance, the menial offices of slaves and

domestics; and the several trades that were necessary to provide

their habits, their utensils, and their lodging, were exercised

within the precincts of the great monasteries. The monastic

studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to

dispel, the cloud of superstition. Yet the curiosity or zeal of

some learned solitaries has cultivated the ecclesiastical, and

even the profane, sciences; and posterity must gratefully

acknowledge, that the monuments of Greek and Roman literature

have been preserved and multiplied by their indefatigable pens.

52 But the more humble industry of the monks, especially in

Egypt, was contented with the silent, sedentary occupation of

making wooden sandals, or of twisting the leaves of the palm-tree

into mats and baskets. The superfluous stock, which was not

consumed in domestic use, supplied, by trade, the wants of the

community: the boats of Tabenne, and the other monasteries of

Thebais, descended the Nile as far as Alexandria; and, in a

Christian market, the sanctity of the workmen might enhance the

intrinsic value of the work.

50 (return) [ Such expressions as my book, my cloak, my shoes,

(Cassian Institut. l. iv. c. 13,) were not less severely

prohibited among the Western monks, (Cod. Regul. part ii. p. 174,

235, 288;) and the rule of Columbanus punished them with six

lashes. The ironical author of the Ordres Monastiques, who laughs

at the foolish nicety of modern convents, seems ignorant that the

ancients were equally absurd.]

51 (return) [ Two great masters of ecclesiastical science, the P.

Thomassin, (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. iii. p. 1090-1139,) and

the P. Mabillon, (Etudes Monastiques, tom. i. p. 116-155,) have

seriously examined the manual labor of the monks, which the

former considers as a merit and the latter as a duty.]

52 (return) [ Mabillon (Etudes Monastiques, tom. i. p. 47-55) has

collected many curious facts to justify the literary labors of

his predecessors, both in the East and West. Books were copied in

the ancient monasteries of Egypt, (Cassian. Institut. l. iv. c.

12,) and by the disciples of St. Martin, (Sulp. Sever. in Vit.

Martin. c. 7, p. 473.) Cassiodorus has allowed an ample scope for

the studies of the monks; and we shall not be scandalized, if

their pens sometimes wandered from Chrysostom and Augustin to

Homer and Virgil. But the necessity of manual labor was

insensibly superseded.]

The novice was tempted to bestow his fortune on the saints, in

whose society he was resolved to spend the remainder of his life;

and the pernicious indulgence of the laws permitted him to

receive, for their use, any future accessions of legacy or

inheritance. 53 Melania contributed her plate, three hundred

pounds weight of silver; and Paula contracted an immense debt,

for the relief of their favorite monks; who kindly imparted the

merits of their prayers and penance to a rich and liberal sinner.

54 Time continually increased, and accidents could seldom

diminish, the estates of the popular monasteries, which spread

over the adjacent country and cities: and, in the first century

of their institution, the infidel Zosimus has maliciously

observed, that, for the benefit of the poor, the Christian monks

had reduced a great part of mankind to a state of beggary. 55 As

long as they maintained their original fervor, they approved

themselves, however, the faithful and benevolent stewards of the

charity, which was entrusted to their care. But their discipline

was corrupted by prosperity: they gradually assumed the pride of

wealth, and at last indulged the luxury of expense. Their public

luxury might be excused by the magnificence of religious worship,

and the decent motive of erecting durable habitations for an

immortal society. But every age of the church has accused the

licentiousness of the degenerate monks; who no longer remembered

the object of their institution, embraced the vain and sensual

pleasures of the world, which they had renounced, 56 and

scandalously abused the riches which had been acquired by the

austere virtues of their founders. 57 Their natural descent, from

such painful and dangerous virtue, to the common vices of

humanity, will not, perhaps, excite much grief or indignation in

the mind of a philosopher.

53 (return) [ Thomassin (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. iii. p.

118, 145, 146, 171-179) has examined the revolution of the civil,

canon, and common law. Modern France confirms the death which

monks have inflicted on themselves, and justly deprives them of

all right of inheritance.]

54 (return) [ See Jerom, (tom. i. p. 176, 183.) The monk Pambo

made a sublime answer to Melania, who wished to specify the value

of her gift: “Do you offer it to me, or to God? If to God, He who

suspends the mountain in a balance, need not be informed of the

weight of your plate.” (Pallad. Hist. Lausiac. c. 10, in the Vit.

Patrum, l. viii. p. 715.)]

55 (return) [ Zosim. l. v. p. 325. Yet the wealth of the Eastern

monks was far surpassed by the princely greatness of the

Benedictines.]

56 (return) [ The sixth general council (the Quinisext in Trullo,

Canon xlvii in Beveridge, tom. i. p. 213) restrains women from

passing the night in a male, or men in a female, monastery. The

seventh general council (the second Nicene, Canon xx. in

Beveridge, tom. i. p. 325) prohibits the erection of double or

promiscuous monasteries of both sexes; but it appears from

Balsamon, that the prohibition was not effectual. On the

irregular pleasures and expenses of the clergy and monks, see

Thomassin, tom. iii. p. 1334-1368.]

57 (return) [ I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession

of a Benedictine abbot: “My vow of poverty has given me a hundred

thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the

rank of a sovereign prince.”—I forget the consequences of his vow

of chastity.]

The lives of the primitive monks were consumed in penance and

solitude; undisturbed by the various occupations which fill the

time, and exercise the faculties, of reasonable, active, and

social beings. Whenever they were permitted to step beyond the

precincts of the monastery, two jealous companions were the

mutual guards and spies of each other’s actions; and, after their

return, they were condemned to forget, or, at least, to suppress,

whatever they had seen or heard in the world. Strangers, who

professed the orthodox faith, were hospitably entertained in a

separate apartment; but their dangerous conversation was

restricted to some chosen elders of approved discretion and

fidelity. Except in their presence, the monastic slave might not

receive the visits of his friends or kindred; and it was deemed

highly meritorious, if he afflicted a tender sister, or an aged

parent, by the obstinate refusal of a word or look. 58 The monks

themselves passed their lives, without personal attachments,

among a crowd which had been formed by accident, and was

detained, in the same prison, by force or prejudice. Recluse

fanatics have few ideas or sentiments to communicate: a special

license of the abbot regulated the time and duration of their

familiar visits; and, at their silent meals, they were enveloped

in their cowls, inaccessible, and almost invisible, to each

other. 59 Study is the resource of solitude: but education had

not prepared and qualified for any liberal studies the mechanics

and peasants who filled the monastic communities. They might

work: but the vanity of spiritual perfection was tempted to

disdain the exercise of manual labor; and the industry must be

faint and languid, which is not excited by the sense of personal

interest.

58 (return) [ Pior, an Egyptian monk, allowed his sister to see

him; but he shut his eyes during the whole visit. See Vit.

Patrum, l. iii. p. 504. Many such examples might be added.]

59 (return) [ The 7th, 8th, 29th, 30th, 31st, 34th, 57th, 60th,

86th, and 95th articles of the Rule of Pachomius, impose most

intolerable laws of silence and mortification.]

According to their faith and zeal, they might employ the day,

which they passed in their cells, either in vocal or mental

prayer: they assembled in the evening, and they were awakened in

the night, for the public worship of the monastery. The precise

moment was determined by the stars, which are seldom clouded in

the serene sky of Egypt; and a rustic horn, or trumpet, the

signal of devotion, twice interrupted the vast silence of the

desert. 60 Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was

rigorously measured: the vacant hours of the monk heavily rolled

along, without business or pleasure; and, before the close of

each day, he had repeatedly accused the tedious progress of the

sun. 61 In this comfortless state, superstition still pursued and

tormented her wretched votaries. 62 The repose which they had

sought in the cloister was disturbed by a tardy repentance,

profane doubts, and guilty desires; and, while they considered

each natural impulse as an unpardonable sin, they perpetually

trembled on the edge of a flaming and bottomless abyss. From the

painful struggles of disease and despair, these unhappy victims

were sometimes relieved by madness or death; and, in the sixth

century, a hospital was founded at Jerusalem for a small portion

of the austere penitents, who were deprived of their senses. 63

Their visions, before they attained this extreme and acknowledged

term of frenzy, have afforded ample materials of supernatural

history. It was their firm persuasion, that the air, which they

breathed, was peopled with invisible enemies; with innumerable

demons, who watched every occasion, and assumed every form, to

terrify, and above all to tempt, their unguarded virtue. The

imagination, and even the senses, were deceived by the illusions

of distempered fanaticism; and the hermit, whose midnight prayer

was oppressed by involuntary slumber, might easily confound the

phantoms of horror or delight, which had occupied his sleeping

and his waking dreams. 64

60 (return) [ The diurnal and nocturnal prayers of the monks are

copiously discussed by Cassian, in the third and fourth books of

his Institutions; and he constantly prefers the liturgy, which an

angel had dictated to the monasteries of Tebennoe.]

61 (return) [ Cassian, from his own experience, describes the

acedia, or listlessness of mind and body, to which a monk was

exposed, when he sighed to find himself alone. Saepiusque

egreditur et ingreditur cellam, et Solem velut ad occasum tardius

properantem crebrius intuetur, (Institut. x. l.)]

62 (return) [ The temptations and sufferings of Stagirius were

communicated by that unfortunate youth to his friend St.

Chrysostom. See Middleton’s Works, vol. i. p. 107-110. Something

similar introduces the life of every saint; and the famous Inigo,

or Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, (vide d’Inigo de

Guiposcoa, tom. i. p. 29-38,) may serve as a memorable example.]

63 (return) [ Fleury, Hist. Ecclesiastique, tom. vii. p. 46. I

have read somewhere, in the Vitae Patrum, but I cannot recover

the place that several, I believe many, of the monks, who did not

reveal their temptations to the abbot, became guilty of suicide.]

64 (return) [ See the seventh and eighth Collations of Cassian,

who gravely examines, why the demons were grown less active and

numerous since the time of St. Antony. Rosweyde’s copious index

to the Vitae Patrum will point out a variety of infernal scenes.

The devils were most formidable in a female shape.]

The monks were divided into two classes: the Coenobites, who

lived under a common and regular discipline; and the Anachorets,

who indulged their unsocial, independent fanaticism. 65 The most

devout, or the most ambitious, of the spiritual brethren,

renounced the convent, as they had renounced the world. The

fervent monasteries of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, were

surrounded by a Laura, 66 a distant circle of solitary cells; and

the extravagant penance of Hermits was stimulated by applause and

emulation. 67 They sunk under the painful weight of crosses and

chains; and their emaciated limbs were confined by collars,

bracelets, gauntlets, and greaves of massy and rigid iron. All

superfluous encumbrance of dress they contemptuously cast away;

and some savage saints of both sexes have been admired, whose

naked bodies were only covered by their long hair. They aspired

to reduce themselves to the rude and miserable state in which the

human brute is scarcely distinguishable above his kindred

animals; and the numerous sect of Anachorets derived their name

from their humble practice of grazing in the fields of

Mesopotamia with the common herd. 68 They often usurped the den

of some wild beast whom they affected to resemble; they buried

themselves in some gloomy cavern, which art or nature had scooped

out of the rock; and the marble quarries of Thebais are still

inscribed with the monuments of their penance. 69 The most

perfect Hermits are supposed to have passed many days without

food, many nights without sleep, and many years without speaking;

and glorious was the man ( I abuse that name) who contrived any

cell, or seat, of a peculiar construction, which might expose

him, in the most inconvenient posture, to the inclemency of the

seasons.

65 (return) [ For the distinction of the Coenobites and the

Hermits, especially in Egypt, see Jerom, (tom. i. p. 45, ad

Rusticum,) the first Dialogue of Sulpicius Severus, Rufinus, (c.

22, in Vit. Patrum, l. ii. p. 478,) Palladius, (c. 7, 69, in Vit.

Patrum, l. viii. p. 712, 758,) and, above all, the eighteenth and

nineteenth Collations of Cassian. These writers, who compare the

common and solitary life, reveal the abuse and danger of the

latter.]

66 (return) [ Suicer. Thesaur. Ecclesiast. tom. ii. p. 205, 218.

Thomassin (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p. 1501, 1502) gives a

good account of these cells. When Gerasimus founded his monastery

in the wilderness of Jordan, it was accompanied by a Laura of

seventy cells.]

67 (return) [ Theodoret, in a large volume, (the Philotheus in

Vit. Patrum, l. ix. p. 793-863,) has collected the lives and

miracles of thirty Anachorets. Evagrius (l. i. c. 12) more

briefly celebrates the monks and hermits of Palestine.]

68 (return) [ Sozomen, l. vi. c. 33. The great St. Ephrem

composed a panegyric on these or grazing monks, (Tillemont, Mem.

Eccles. tom. viii. p. 292.)]

69 (return) [ The P. Sicard (Missions du Levant, tom. ii. p.

217-233) examined the caverns of the Lower Thebais with wonder

and devotion. The inscriptions are in the old Syriac character,

which was used by the Christians of Abyssinia.]

Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and genius of

Simeon Stylites 70 have been immortalized by the singular

invention of an aerial penance. At the age of thirteen, the young

Syrian deserted the profession of a shepherd, and threw himself

into an austere monastery. After a long and painful novitiate, in

which Simeon was repeatedly saved from pious suicide, he

established his residence on a mountain, about thirty or forty

miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a mandra, or

circle of stones, to which he had attached himself by a ponderous

chain, he ascended a column, which was successively raised from

the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground. 71 In

this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the

heat of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit

and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation

without fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the

different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect

attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross,

but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre

skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator,

after numbering twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions, at

length desisted from the endless account. The progress of an

ulcer in his thigh 72 might shorten, but it could not disturb,

this celestial life; and the patient Hermit expired, without

descending from his column. A prince, who should capriciously

inflict such tortures, would be deemed a tyrant; but it would

surpass the power of a tyrant to impose a long and miserable

existence on the reluctant victims of his cruelty. This voluntary

martyrdom must have gradually destroyed the sensibility both of

the mind and body; nor can it be presumed that the fanatics, who

torment themselves, are susceptible of any lively affection for

the rest of mankind. A cruel, unfeeling temper has distinguished

the monks of every age and country: their stern indifference,

which is seldom mollified by personal friendship, is inflamed by

religious hatred; and their merciless zeal has strenuously

administered the holy office of the Inquisition.

70 (return) [ See Theodoret (in Vit. Patrum, l. ix. p. 848-854,)

Antony, (in Vit. Patrum, l. i. p. 170-177,) Cosmas, (in Asseman.

Bibliot. Oriental tom. i. p. 239-253,) Evagrius, (l. i. c. 13,

14,) and Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xv. p. 347-392.)]

71 (return) [ The narrow circumference of two cubits, or three

feet, which Evagrius assigns for the summit of the column is

inconsistent with reason, with facts, and with the rules of

architecture. The people who saw it from below might be easily

deceived.]

72 (return) [ I must not conceal a piece of ancient scandal

concerning the origin of this ulcer. It has been reported that

the Devil, assuming an angelic form, invited him to ascend, like

Elijah, into a fiery chariot. The saint too hastily raised his

foot, and Satan seized the moment of inflicting this chastisement

on his vanity.]

The monastic saints, who excite only the contempt and pity of a

philosopher, were respected, and almost adored, by the prince and

people. Successive crowds of pilgrims from Gaul and India saluted

the divine pillar of Simeon: the tribes of Saracens disputed in

arms the honor of his benediction; the queens of Arabia and

Persia gratefully confessed his supernatural virtue; and the

angelic Hermit was consulted by the younger Theodosius, in the

most important concerns of the church and state. His remains were

transported from the mountain of Telenissa, by a solemn

procession of the patriarch, the master-general of the East, six

bishops, twenty-one counts or tribunes, and six thousand

soldiers; and Antioch revered his bones, as her glorious ornament

and impregnable defence. The fame of the apostles and martyrs was

gradually eclipsed by these recent and popular Anachorets; the

Christian world fell prostrate before their shrines; and the

miracles ascribed to their relics exceeded, at least in number

and duration, the spiritual exploits of their lives. But the

golden legend of their lives 73 was embellished by the artful

credulity of their interested brethren; and a believing age was

easily persuaded, that the slightest caprice of an Egyptian or a

Syrian monk had been sufficient to interrupt the eternal laws of

the universe. The favorites of Heaven were accustomed to cure

inveterate diseases with a touch, a word, or a distant message;

and to expel the most obstinate demons from the souls or bodies

which they possessed. They familiarly accosted, or imperiously

commanded, the lions and serpents of the desert; infused

vegetation into a sapless trunk; suspended iron on the surface of

the water; passed the Nile on the back of a crocodile, and

refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace. These extravagant tales,

which display the fiction without the genius, of poetry, have

seriously affected the reason, the faith, and the morals, of the

Christians. Their credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of

the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and

superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of

philosophy and science. Every mode of religious worship which had

been practised by the saints, every mysterious doctrine which

they believed, was fortified by the sanction of divine

revelation, and all the manly virtues were oppressed by the

servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks. If it be possible

to measure the interval between the philosophic writings of

Cicero and the sacred legend of Theodoret, between the character

of Cato and that of Simeon, we may appreciate the memorable

revolution which was accomplished in the Roman empire within a

period of five hundred years.

73 (return) [ I know not how to select or specify the miracles

contained in the Vitae Patrum of Rosweyde, as the number very

much exceeds the thousand pages of that voluminous work. An

elegant specimen may be found in the dialogues of Sulpicius

Severus, and his Life of St. Martin. He reveres the monks of

Egypt; yet he insults them with the remark, that they never

raised the dead; whereas the bishop of Tours had restored three

dead men to life.]

II. The progress of Christianity has been marked by two glorious

and decisive victories: over the learned and luxurious citizens

of the Roman empire; and over the warlike Barbarians of Scythia

and Germany, who subverted the empire, and embraced the religion,

of the Romans. The Goths were the foremost of these savage

proselytes; and the nation was indebted for its conversion to a

countryman, or, at least, to a subject, worthy to be ranked among

the inventors of useful arts, who have deserved the remembrance

and gratitude of posterity. A great number of Roman provincials

had been led away into captivity by the Gothic bands, who ravaged

Asia in the time of Gallienus; and of these captives, many were

Christians, and several belonged to the ecclesiastical order.

Those involuntary missionaries, dispersed as slaves in the

villages of Dacia, successively labored for the salvation of

their masters. The seeds which they planted, of the evangelic

doctrine, were gradually propagated; and before the end of a

century, the pious work was achieved by the labors of Ulphilas,

whose ancestors had been transported beyond the Danube from a

small town of Cappadocia.

Ulphilas, the bishop and apostle of the Goths, 74 acquired their

love and reverence by his blameless life and indefatigable zeal;

and they received, with implicit confidence, the doctrines of

truth and virtue which he preached and practised. He executed the

arduous task of translating the Scriptures into their native

tongue, a dialect of the German or Teutonic language; but he

prudently suppressed the four books of Kings, as they might tend

to irritate the fierce and sanguinary spirit of the Barbarians.

The rude, imperfect idiom of soldiers and shepherds, so ill

qualified to communicate any spiritual ideas, was improved and

modulated by his genius: and Ulphilas, before he could frame his

version, was obliged to compose a new alphabet of twenty-four

letters; 741 four of which he invented, to express the peculiar

sounds that were unknown to the Greek and Latin pronunciation. 75

But the prosperous state of the Gothic church was soon afflicted

by war and intestine discord, and the chieftains were divided by

religion as well as by interest. Fritigern, the friend of the

Romans, became the proselyte of Ulphilas; while the haughty soul

of Athanaric disdained the yoke of the empire and of the gospel.

The faith of the new converts was tried by the persecution which

he excited. A wagon, bearing aloft the shapeless image of Thor,

perhaps, or of Woden, was conducted in solemn procession through

the streets of the camp; and the rebels, who refused to worship

the god of their fathers, were immediately burnt, with their

tents and families. The character of Ulphilas recommended him to

the esteem of the Eastern court, where he twice appeared as the

minister of peace; he pleaded the cause of the distressed Goths,

who implored the protection of Valens; and the name of Moses was

applied to this spiritual guide, who conducted his people through

the deep waters of the Danube to the Land of Promise. 76 The

devout shepherds, who were attached to his person, and tractable

to his voice, acquiesced in their settlement, at the foot of the

Maesian mountains, in a country of woodlands and pastures, which

supported their flocks and herds, and enabled them to purchase

the corn and wine of the more plentiful provinces. These harmless

Barbarians multiplied in obscure peace and the profession of

Christianity. 77

74 (return) [ On the subject of Ulphilas, and the conversion of

the Goths, see Sozomen, l. vi. c. 37. Socrates, l. iv. c. 33.

Theodoret, l. iv. c. 37. Philostorg. l. ii. c. 5. The heresy of

Philostorgius appears to have given him superior means of

information.]

741 (return) [ This is the Moeso-Gothic alphabet of which many of

the letters are evidently formed from the Greek and Roman. M. St.

Martin, however contends, that it is impossible but that some

written alphabet must have been known long before among the

Goths. He supposes that their former letters were those inscribed

on the runes, which, being inseparably connected with the old

idolatrous superstitions, were proscribed by the Christian

missionaries. Everywhere the runes, so common among all the

German tribes, disappear after the propagation of Christianity.

S. Martin iv. p. 97, 98.—M.]

75 (return) [ A mutilated copy of the four Gospels, in the Gothic

version, was published A.D. 1665, and is esteemed the most

ancient monument of the Teutonic language, though Wetstein

attempts, by some frivolous conjectures, to deprive Ulphilas of

the honor of the work. Two of the four additional letters express

the W, and our own Th. See Simon, Hist. Critique du Nouveau

Testament, tom ii. p. 219-223. Mill. Prolegom p. 151, edit.

Kuster. Wetstein, Prolegom. tom. i. p. 114. * Note: The Codex

Argenteus, found in the sixteenth century at Wenden, near

Cologne, and now preserved at Upsal, contains almost the entire

four Gospels. The best edition is that of J. Christ. Zahn,

Weissenfels, 1805. In 1762 Knettel discovered and published from

a Palimpsest MS. four chapters of the Epistle to the Romans: they

were reprinted at Upsal, 1763. M. Mai has since that time

discovered further fragments, and other remains of Moeso-Gothic

literature, from a Palimpsest at Milan. See Ulphilae partium

inedi arum in Ambrosianis Palimpsestis ab Ang. Maio repertarum

specimen Milan. Ito. 1819.—M.]

76 (return) [ Philostorgius erroneously places this passage under

the reign of Constantine; but I am much inclined to believe that

it preceded the great emigration.]

77 (return) [ We are obliged to Jornandes (de Reb. Get. c. 51, p.

688) for a short and lively picture of these lesser Goths. Gothi

minores, populus immensus, cum suo Pontifice ipsoque primate

Wulfila. The last words, if they are not mere tautology, imply

some temporal jurisdiction.]

Their fiercer brethren, the formidable Visigoths, universally

adopted the religion of the Romans, with whom they maintained a

perpetual intercourse, of war, of friendship, or of conquest. In

their long and victorious march from the Danube to the Atlantic

Ocean, they converted their allies; they educated the rising

generation; and the devotion which reigned in the camp of Alaric,

or the court of Thoulouse, might edify or disgrace the palaces of

Rome and Constantinople. 78 During the same period, Christianity

was embraced by almost all the Barbarians, who established their

kingdoms on the ruins of the Western empire; the Burgundians in

Gaul, the Suevi in Spain, the Vandals in Africa, the Ostrogoths

in Pannonia, and the various bands of mercenaries, that raised

Odoacer to the throne of Italy. The Franks and the Saxons still

persevered in the errors of Paganism; but the Franks obtained the

monarchy of Gaul by their submission to the example of Clovis;

and the Saxon conquerors of Britain were reclaimed from their

savage superstition by the missionaries of Rome. These Barbarian

proselytes displayed an ardent and successful zeal in the

propagation of the faith. The Merovingian kings, and their

successors, Charlemagne and the Othos, extended, by their laws

and victories, the dominion of the cross. England produced the

apostle of Germany; and the evangelic light was gradually

diffused from the neighborhood of the Rhine, to the nations of

the Elbe, the Vistula, and the Baltic. 79

78 (return) [ At non ita Gothi non ita Vandali; malis licet

doctoribus instituti meliores tamen etiam in hac parte quam

nostri. Salvian, de Gubern, Dei, l. vii. p. 243.]

79 (return) [ Mosheim has slightly sketched the progress of

Christianity in the North, from the fourth to the fourteenth

century. The subject would afford materials for an ecclesiastical

and even philosophical, history]

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.—Part III.

The different motives which influenced the reason, or the

passions, of the Barbarian converts, cannot easily be

ascertained. They were often capricious and accidental; a dream,

an omen, the report of a miracle, the example of some priest, or

hero, the charms of a believing wife, and, above all, the

fortunate event of a prayer, or vow, which, in a moment of

danger, they had addressed to the God of the Christians. 80 The

early prejudices of education were insensibly erased by the

habits of frequent and familiar society, the moral precepts of

the gospel were protected by the extravagant virtues of the

monks; and a spiritual theology was supported by the visible

power of relics, and the pomp of religious worship. But the

rational and ingenious mode of persuasion, which a Saxon bishop

81 suggested to a popular saint, might sometimes be employed by

the missionaries, who labored for the conversion of infidels.

“Admit,” says the sagacious disputant, “whatever they are pleased

to assert of the fabulous, and carnal, genealogy of their gods

and goddesses, who are propagated from each other. From this

principle deduce their imperfect nature, and human infirmities,

the assurance they were born, and the probability that they will

die. At what time, by what means, from what cause, were the

eldest of the gods or goddesses produced? Do they still continue,

or have they ceased, to propagate? If they have ceased, summon

your antagonists to declare the reason of this strange

alteration. If they still continue, the number of the gods must

become infinite; and shall we not risk, by the indiscreet worship

of some impotent deity, to excite the resentment of his jealous

superior? The visible heavens and earth, the whole system of the

universe, which may be conceived by the mind, is it created or

eternal? If created, how, or where, could the gods themselves

exist before creation? If eternal, how could they assume the

empire of an independent and preexisting world? Urge these

arguments with temper and moderation; insinuate, at seasonable

intervals, the truth and beauty of the Christian revelation; and

endeavor to make the unbelievers ashamed, without making them

angry.” This metaphysical reasoning, too refined, perhaps, for

the Barbarians of Germany, was fortified by the grosser weight of

authority and popular consent. The advantage of temporal

prosperity had deserted the Pagan cause, and passed over to the

service of Christianity. The Romans themselves, the most powerful

and enlightened nation of the globe, had renounced their ancient

superstition; and, if the ruin of their empire seemed to accuse

the efficacy of the new faith, the disgrace was already retrieved

by the conversion of the victorious Goths. The valiant and

fortunate Barbarians, who subdued the provinces of the West,

successively received, and reflected, the same edifying example.

Before the age of Charlemagne, the Christian nations of Europe

might exult in the exclusive possession of the temperate

climates, of the fertile lands, which produced corn, wine, and

oil; while the savage idolaters, and their helpless idols, were

confined to the extremities of the earth, the dark and frozen

regions of the North. 82

80 (return) [ To such a cause has Socrates (l. vii. c. 30)

ascribed the conversion of the Burgundians, whose Christian piety

is celebrated by Orosius, (l. vii. c. 19.)]

81 (return) [ See an original and curious epistle from Daniel,

the first bishop of Winchester, (Beda, Hist. Eccles. Anglorum, l.

v. c. 18, p. 203, edit Smith,) to St. Boniface, who preached the

gospel among the savages of Hesse and Thuringia. Epistol.

Bonifacii, lxvii., in the Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum, tom. xiii.

p. 93]

82 (return) [ The sword of Charlemagne added weight to the

argument; but when Daniel wrote this epistle, (A.D. 723,) the

Mahometans, who reigned from India to Spain, might have retorted

it against the Christians.]

Christianity, which opened the gates of Heaven to the Barbarians,

introduced an important change in their moral and political

condition. They received, at the same time, the use of letters,

so essential to a religion whose doctrines are contained in a

sacred book; and while they studied the divine truth, their minds

were insensibly enlarged by the distant view of history, of

nature, of the arts, and of society. The version of the

Scriptures into their native tongue, which had facilitated their

conversion, must excite among their clergy some curiosity to read

the original text, to understand the sacred liturgy of the

church, and to examine, in the writings of the fathers, the chain

of ecclesiastical tradition. These spiritual gifts were preserved

in the Greek and Latin languages, which concealed the inestimable

monuments of ancient learning. The immortal productions of

Virgil, Cicero, and Livy, which were accessible to the Christian

Barbarians, maintained a silent intercourse between the reign of

Augustus and the times of Clovis and Charlemagne. The emulation

of mankind was encouraged by the remembrance of a more perfect

state; and the flame of science was secretly kept alive, to warm

and enlighten the mature age of the Western world.

In the most corrupt state of Christianity, the Barbarians might

learn justice from the law, and mercy from the gospel; and if the

knowledge of their duty was insufficient to guide their actions,

or to regulate their passions, they were sometimes restrained by

conscience, and frequently punished by remorse. But the direct

authority of religion was less effectual than the holy communion,

which united them with their Christian brethren in spiritual

friendship. The influence of these sentiments contributed to

secure their fidelity in the service, or the alliance, of the

Romans, to alleviate the horrors of war, to moderate the

insolence of conquest, and to preserve, in the downfall of the

empire, a permanent respect for the name and institutions of

Rome. In the days of Paganism, the priests of Gaul and Germany

reigned over the people, and controlled the jurisdiction of the

magistrates; and the zealous proselytes transferred an equal, or

more ample, measure of devout obedience, to the pontiffs of the

Christian faith. The sacred character of the bishops was

supported by their temporal possessions; they obtained an

honorable seat in the legislative assemblies of soldiers and

freemen; and it was their interest, as well as their duty, to

mollify, by peaceful counsels, the fierce spirit of the

Barbarians. The perpetual correspondence of the Latin clergy, the

frequent pilgrimages to Rome and Jerusalem, and the growing

authority of the popes, cemented the union of the Christian

republic, and gradually produced the similar manners, and common

jurisprudence, which have distinguished, from the rest of

mankind, the independent, and even hostile, nations of modern

Europe.

But the operation of these causes was checked and retarded by the

unfortunate accident, which infused a deadly poison into the cup

of Salvation. Whatever might be the early sentiments of Ulphilas,

his connections with the empire and the church were formed during

the reign of Arianism. The apostle of the Goths subscribed the

creed of Rimini; professed with freedom, and perhaps with

sincerity, that the Son was not equal, or consubstantial to the

Father; 83 communicated these errors to the clergy and people;

and infected the Barbaric world with a heresy, 84 which the great

Theodosius proscribed and extinguished among the Romans. The

temper and understanding of the new proselytes were not adapted

to metaphysical subtilties; but they strenuously maintained, what

they had piously received, as the pure and genuine doctrines of

Christianity. The advantage of preaching and expounding the

Scriptures in the Teutonic language promoted the apostolic labors

of Ulphilas and his successors; and they ordained a competent

number of bishops and presbyters for the instruction of the

kindred tribes. The Ostrogoths, the Burgundians, the Suevi, and

the Vandals, who had listened to the eloquence of the Latin

clergy, 85 preferred the more intelligible lessons of their

domestic teachers; and Arianism was adopted as the national faith

of the warlike converts, who were seated on the ruins of the

Western empire. This irreconcilable difference of religion was a

perpetual source of jealousy and hatred; and the reproach of

Barbarian was imbittered by the more odious epithet of Heretic.

The heroes of the North, who had submitted, with some reluctance,

to believe that all their ancestors were in hell, 86 were

astonished and exasperated to learn, that they themselves had

only changed the mode of their eternal condemnation. Instead of

the smooth applause, which Christian kings are accustomed to

expect from their royal prelates, the orthodox bishops and their

clergy were in a state of opposition to the Arian courts; and

their indiscreet opposition frequently became criminal, and might

sometimes be dangerous. 87 The pulpit, that safe and sacred organ

of sedition, resounded with the names of Pharaoh and Holofernes;

88 the public discontent was inflamed by the hope or promise of a

glorious deliverance; and the seditious saints were tempted to

promote the accomplishment of their own predictions.

Notwithstanding these provocations, the Catholics of Gaul, Spain,

and Italy, enjoyed, under the reign of the Arians, the free and

peaceful exercise of their religion. Their haughty masters

respected the zeal of a numerous people, resolved to die at the

foot of their altars; and the example of their devout constancy

was admired and imitated by the Barbarians themselves. The

conquerors evaded, however, the disgraceful reproach, or

confession, of fear, by attributing their toleration to the

liberal motives of reason and humanity; and while they affected

the language, they imperceptiby imbibed the spirit, of genuine

Christianity.

83 (return) [ The opinions of Ulphilas and the Goths inclined to

semi-Arianism, since they would not say that the Son was a

creature, though they held communion with those who maintained

that heresy. Their apostle represented the whole controversy as a

question of trifling moment, which had been raised by the

passions of the clergy. Theodoret l. iv. c. 37.]

84 (return) [ The Arianism of the Goths has been imputed to the

emperor Valens: “Itaque justo Dei judicio ipsi eum vivum

incenderunt, qui propter eum etiam mortui, vitio erroris arsuri

sunt.” Orosius, l. vii. c. 33, p. 554. This cruel sentence is

confirmed by Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. vi. p. 604-610,) who

coolly observes, “un seul homme entraina dans l’enfer un nombre

infini de Septentrionaux, &c.” Salvian (de Gubern. Dei, l. v p.

150, 151) pities and excuses their involuntary error.]

85 (return) [ Orosius affirms, in the year 416, (l. vii. c. 41,

p. 580,) that the Churches of Christ (of the Catholics) were

filled with Huns, Suevi, Vandals, Burgundians.]

86 (return) [ Radbod, king of the Frisons, was so much

scandalized by this rash declaration of a missionary, that he

drew back his foot after he had entered the baptismal font. See

Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. ix p. 167.]

87 (return) [ The epistles of Sidonius, bishop of Clermont, under

the Visigotha, and of Avitus, bishop of Vienna, under the

Burgundians, explain sometimes in dark hints, the general

dispositions of the Catholics. The history of Clovis and

Theodoric will suggest some particular facts]

88 (return) [ Genseric confessed the resemblance, by the severity

with which he punished such indiscreet allusions. Victor

Vitensis, l. 7, p. 10.]

The peace of the church was sometimes interrupted. The Catholics

were indiscreet, the Barbarians were impatient; and the partial

acts of severity or injustice, which had been recommended by the

Arian clergy, were exaggerated by the orthodox writers. The guilt

of persecution may be imputed to Euric, king of the Visigoths;

who suspended the exercise of ecclesiastical, or, at least, of

episcopal functions; and punished the popular bishops of Aquitain

with imprisonment, exile, and confiscation. 89 But the cruel and

absurd enterprise of subduing the minds of a whole people was

undertaken by the Vandals alone. Genseric himself, in his early

youth, had renounced the orthodox communion; and the apostate

could neither grant, nor expect, a sincere forgiveness. He was

exasperated to find that the Africans, who had fled before him in

the field, still presumed to dispute his will in synods and

churches; and his ferocious mind was incapable of fear or of

compassion. His Catholic subjects were oppressed by intolerant

laws and arbitrary punishments. The language of Genseric was

furious and formidable; the knowledge of his intentions might

justify the most unfavorable interpretation of his actions; and

the Arians were reproached with the frequent executions which

stained the palace and the dominions of the tyrant. Arms and

ambition were, however, the ruling passions of the monarch of the

sea. But Hunneric, his inglorious son, who seemed to inherit only

his vices, tormented the Catholics with the same unrelenting fury

which had been fatal to his brother, his nephews, and the friends

and favorites of his father; and even to the Arian patriarch, who

was inhumanly burnt alive in the midst of Carthage. The religious

war was preceded and prepared by an insidious truce; persecution

was made the serious and important business of the Vandal court;

and the loathsome disease which hastened the death of Hunneric,

revenged the injuries, without contributing to the deliverance,

of the church. The throne of Africa was successively filled by

the two nephews of Hunneric; by Gundamund, who reigned about

twelve, and by Thrasimund, who governed the nation about

twenty-seven, years. Their administration was hostile and

oppressive to the orthodox party. Gundamund appeared to emulate,

or even to surpass, the cruelty of his uncle; and, if at length

he relented, if he recalled the bishops, and restored the freedom

of Athanasian worship, a premature death intercepted the benefits

of his tardy clemency. His brother, Thrasimund, was the greatest

and most accomplished of the Vandal kings, whom he excelled in

beauty, prudence, and magnanimity of soul. But this magnanimous

character was degraded by his intolerant zeal and deceitful

clemency. Instead of threats and tortures, he employed the

gentle, but efficacious, powers of seduction. Wealth, dignity,

and the royal favor, were the liberal rewards of apostasy; the

Catholics, who had violated the laws, might purchase their pardon

by the renunciation of their faith; and whenever Thrasimund

meditated any rigorous measure, he patiently waited till the

indiscretion of his adversaries furnished him with a specious

opportunity. Bigotry was his last sentiment in the hour of death;

and he exacted from his successor a solemn oath, that he would

never tolerate the sectaries of Athanasius. But his successor,

Hilderic, the gentle son of the savage Hunneric, preferred the

duties of humanity and justice to the vain obligation of an

impious oath; and his accession was gloriously marked by the

restoration of peace and universal freedom. The throne of that

virtuous, though feeble monarch, was usurped by his cousin

Gelimer, a zealous Arian: but the Vandal kingdom, before he could

enjoy or abuse his power, was subverted by the arms of

Belisarius; and the orthodox party retaliated the injuries which

they had endured. 90

89 (return) [ Such are the contemporary complaints of Sidonius,

bishop of Clermont (l. vii. c. 6, p. 182, &c., edit. Sirmond.)

Gregory of Tours who quotes this Epistle, (l. ii. c. 25, in tom.

ii. p. 174,) extorts an unwarrantable assertion, that of the nine

vacancies in Aquitain, some had been produced by episcopal

martyrdoms]

90 (return) [ The original monuments of the Vandal persecution

are preserved in the five books of the history of Victor

Vitensis, (de Persecutione Vandalica,) a bishop who was exiled by

Hunneric; in the life of St. Fulgentius, who was distinguished in

the persecution of Thrasimund (in Biblioth. Max. Patrum, tom. ix.

p. 4-16;) and in the first book of the Vandalic War, by the

impartial Procopius, (c. 7, 8, p. 196, 197, 198, 199.) Dom

Ruinart, the last editor of Victor, has illustrated the whole

subject with a copious and learned apparatus of notes and

supplement (Paris, 1694.)]

The passionate declamations of the Catholics, the sole historians

of this persecution, cannot afford any distinct series of causes

and events; any impartial view of the characters, or counsels;

but the most remarkable circumstances that deserve either credit

or notice, may be referred to the following heads; I. In the

original law, which is still extant, 91 Hunneric expressly

declares, (and the declaration appears to be correct,) that he

had faithfully transcribed the regulations and penalties of the

Imperial edicts, against the heretical congregations, the clergy,

and the people, who dissented from the established religion. If

the rights of conscience had been understood, the Catholics must

have condemned their past conduct or acquiesced in their actual

suffering. But they still persisted to refuse the indulgence

which they claimed. While they trembled under the lash of

persecution, they praised the laudable severity of Hunneric

himself, who burnt or banished great numbers of Manichæans; 92

and they rejected, with horror, the ignominious compromise, that

the disciples of Arius and of Athanasius should enjoy a

reciprocal and similar toleration in the territories of the

Romans, and in those of the Vandals. 93 II. The practice of a

conference, which the Catholics had so frequently used to insult

and punish their obstinate antagonists, was retorted against

themselves. 94 At the command of Hunneric, four hundred and

sixty-six orthodox bishops assembled at Carthage; but when they

were admitted into the hall of audience, they had the

mortification of beholding the Arian Cyrila exalted on the

patriarchal throne. The disputants were separated, after the

mutual and ordinary reproaches of noise and silence, of delay and

precipitation, of military force and of popular clamor. One

martyr and one confessor were selected among the Catholic

bishops; twenty-eight escaped by flight, and eighty-eight by

conformity; forty-six were sent into Corsica to cut timber for

the royal navy; and three hundred and two were banished to the

different parts of Africa, exposed to the insults of their

enemies, and carefully deprived of all the temporal and spiritual

comforts of life. 95 The hardships of ten years’ exile must have

reduced their numbers; and if they had complied with the law of

Thrasimund, which prohibited any episcopal consecrations, the

orthodox church of Africa must have expired with the lives of its

actual members. They disobeyed, and their disobedience was

punished by a second exile of two hundred and twenty bishops into

Sardinia; where they languished fifteen years, till the accession

of the gracious Hilderic. 96 The two islands were judiciously

chosen by the malice of their Arian tyrants. Seneca, from his own

experience, has deplored and exaggerated the miserable state of

Corsica, 97 and the plenty of Sardinia was overbalanced by the

unwholesome quality of the air. 98 III. The zeal of Genseric and

his successors, for the conversion of the Catholics, must have

rendered them still more jealous to guard the purity of the

Vandal faith. Before the churches were finally shut, it was a

crime to appear in a Barbarian dress; and those who presumed to

neglect the royal mandate were rudely dragged backwards by their

long hair. 99 The palatine officers, who refused to profess the

religion of their prince, were ignominiously stripped of their

honors and employments; banished to Sardinia and Sicily; or

condemned to the servile labors of slaves and peasants in the

fields of Utica. In the districts which had been peculiarly

allotted to the Vandals, the exercise of the Catholic worship was

more strictly prohibited; and severe penalties were denounced

against the guilt both of the missionary and the proselyte. By

these arts, the faith of the Barbarians was preserved, and their

zeal was inflamed: they discharged, with devout fury, the office

of spies, informers, or executioners; and whenever their cavalry

took the field, it was the favorite amusement of the march to

defile the churches, and to insult the clergy of the adverse

faction. 100 IV. The citizens who had been educated in the luxury

of the Roman province, were delivered, with exquisite cruelty, to

the Moors of the desert. A venerable train of bishops,

presbyters, and deacons, with a faithful crowd of four thousand

and ninety-six persons, whose guilt is not precisely ascertained,

were torn from their native homes, by the command of Hunneric.

During the night they were confined, like a herd of cattle,

amidst their own ordure: during the day they pursued their march

over the burning sands; and if they fainted under the heat and

fatigue, they were goaded, or dragged along, till they expired in

the hands of their tormentors. 101 These unhappy exiles, when

they reached the Moorish huts, might excite the compassion of a

people, whose native humanity was neither improved by reason, nor

corrupted by fanaticism: but if they escaped the dangers, they

were condemned to share the distress of a savage life. V. It is

incumbent on the authors of persecution previously to reflect,

whether they are determined to support it in the last extreme.

They excite the flame which they strive to extinguish; and it

soon becomes necessary to chastise the contumacy, as well as the

crime, of the offender. The fine, which he is unable or unwilling

to discharge, exposes his person to the severity of the law; and

his contempt of lighter penalties suggests the use and propriety

of capital punishment. Through the veil of fiction and

declamation we may clearly perceive, that the Catholics more

especially under the reign of Hunneric, endured the most cruel

and ignominious treatment. 102 Respectable citizens, noble

matrons, and consecrated virgins, were stripped naked, and raised

in the air by pulleys, with a weight suspended at their feet. In

this painful attitude their naked bodies were torn with scourges,

or burnt in the most tender parts with red-hot plates of iron.

The amputation of the ears the nose, the tongue, and the right

hand, was inflicted by the Arians; and although the precise

number cannot be defined, it is evident that many persons, among

whom a bishop 103 and a proconsul 104 may be named, were entitled

to the crown of martyrdom. The same honor has been ascribed to

the memory of Count Sebastian, who professed the Nicene creed

with unshaken constancy; and Genseric might detest, as a heretic,

the brave and ambitious fugitive whom he dreaded as a rival. 105

VI. A new mode of conversion, which might subdue the feeble, and

alarm the timorous, was employed by the Arian ministers. They

imposed, by fraud or violence, the rites of baptism; and punished

the apostasy of the Catholics, if they disclaimed this odious and

profane ceremony, which scandalously violated the freedom of the

will, and the unity of the sacrament. 106 The hostile sects had

formerly allowed the validity of each other’s baptism; and the

innovation, so fiercely maintained by the Vandals, can be imputed

only to the example and advice of the Donatists. VII. The Arian

clergy surpassed in religious cruelty the king and his Vandals;

but they were incapable of cultivating the spiritual vineyard,

which they were so desirous to possess. A patriarch 107 might

seat himself on the throne of Carthage; some bishops, in the

principal cities, might usurp the place of their rivals; but the

smallness of their numbers, and their ignorance of the Latin

language, 108 disqualified the Barbarians for the ecclesiastical

ministry of a great church; and the Africans, after the loss of

their orthodox pastors, were deprived of the public exercise of

Christianity. VIII. The emperors were the natural protectors of

the Homoousian doctrine; and the faithful people of Africa, both

as Romans and as Catholics, preferred their lawful sovereignty to

the usurpation of the Barbarous heretics. During an interval of

peace and friendship, Hunneric restored the cathedral of

Carthage; at the intercession of Zeno, who reigned in the East,

and of Placidia, the daughter and relict of emperors, and the

sister of the queen of the Vandals. 109 But this decent regard

was of short duration; and the haughty tyrant displayed his

contempt for the religion of the empire, by studiously arranging

the bloody images of persecution, in all the principal streets

through which the Roman ambassador must pass in his way to the

palace. 110 An oath was required from the bishops, who were

assembled at Carthage, that they would support the succession of

his son Hilderic, and that they would renounce all foreign or

transmarine correspondence. This engagement, consistent, as it

should seem, with their moral and religious duties, was refused

by the more sagacious members 111 of the assembly. Their refusal,

faintly colored by the pretence that it is unlawful for a

Christian to swear, must provoke the suspicions of a jealous

tyrant.

91 (return) [ Victor, iv. 2, p. 65. Hunneric refuses the name of

Catholics to the Homoousians. He describes, as the veri Divinae

Majestatis cultores, his own party, who professed the faith,

confirmed by more than a thousand bishops, in the synods of

Rimini and Seleucia.]

92 (return) [ Victor, ii, 1, p. 21, 22: Laudabilior... videbatur.

In the Mss which omit this word, the passage is unintelligible.

See Ruinart Not. p. 164.]

93 (return) [ Victor, ii. p. 22, 23. The clergy of Carthage

called these conditions periculosoe; and they seem, indeed, to

have been proposed as a snare to entrap the Catholic bishops.]

94 (return) [ See the narrative of this conference, and the

treatment of the bishops, in Victor, ii. 13-18, p. 35-42 and the

whole fourth book p. 63-171. The third book, p. 42-62, is

entirely filled by their apology or confession of faith.]

95 (return) [ See the list of the African bishops, in Victor, p.

117-140, and Ruinart’s notes, p. 215-397. The schismatic name of

Donatus frequently occurs, and they appear to have adopted (like

our fanatics of the last age) the pious appellations of Deodatus,

Deogratias, Quidvultdeus, Habetdeum, &c. Note: These names appear

to have been introduced by the Donatists.—M.]

96 (return) [ Fulgent. Vit. c. 16-29. Thrasimund affected the

praise of moderation and learning; and Fulgentius addressed three

books of controversy to the Arian tyrant, whom he styles piissime

Rex. Biblioth. Maxim. Patrum, tom. ix. p. 41. Only sixty bishops

are mentioned as exiles in the life of Fulgentius; they are

increased to one hundred and twenty by Victor Tunnunensis and

Isidore; but the number of two hundred and twenty is specified in

the Historia Miscella, and a short authentic chronicle of the

times. See Ruinart, p. 570, 571.]

97 (return) [ See the base and insipid epigrams of the Stoic, who

could not support exile with more fortitude than Ovid. Corsica

might not produce corn, wine, or oil; but it could not be

destitute of grass, water, and even fire.]

98 (return) [ Si ob gravitatem coeli interissent vile damnum.

Tacit. Annal. ii. 85. In this application, Thrasimund would have

adopted the reading of some critics, utile damnum.]

99 (return) [ See these preludes of a general persecution, in

Victor, ii. 3, 4, 7 and the two edicts of Hunneric, l. ii. p. 35,

l. iv. p. 64.]

100 (return) [ See Procopius de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 7, p. 197,

198. A Moorish prince endeavored to propitiate the God of the

Christians, by his diligence to erase the marks of the Vandal

sacrilege.]

101 (return) [ See this story in Victor. ii. 8-12, p. 30-34.

Victor describes the distress of these confessors as an

eye-witness.]

102 (return) [ See the fifth book of Victor. His passionate

complaints are confirmed by the sober testimony of Procopius, and

the public declaration of the emperor Justinian. Cod. l. i. tit.

xxvii.]

103 (return) [ Victor, ii. 18, p. 41.]

104 (return) [ Victor, v. 4, p. 74, 75. His name was Victorianus,

and he was a wealthy citizen of Adrumetum, who enjoyed the

confidence of the king; by whose favor he had obtained the

office, or at least the title, of proconsul of Africa.]

105 (return) [ Victor, i. 6, p. 8, 9. After relating the firm

resistance and dexterous reply of Count Sebastian, he adds, quare

alio generis argumento postea bellicosum virum eccidit.]

106 (return) [ Victor, v. 12, 13. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom.

vi. p. 609.]

107 (return) [ Primate was more properly the title of the bishop

of Carthage; but the name of patriarch was given by the sects and

nations to their principal ecclesiastic. See Thomassin,

Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p. 155, 158.]

108 (return) [ The patriarch Cyrila himself publicly declared,

that he did not understand Latin (Victor, ii. 18, p. 42:) Nescio

Latine; and he might converse with tolerable ease, without being

capable of disputing or preaching in that language. His Vandal

clergy were still more ignorant; and small confidence could be

placed in the Africans who had conformed.]

109 (return) [ Victor, ii. 1, 2, p. 22.]

110 (return) [ Victor, v. 7, p. 77. He appeals to the ambassador

himself, whose name was Uranius.]

111 (return) [ Astutiores, Victor, iv. 4, p. 70. He plainly

intimates that their quotation of the gospel “Non jurabitis in

toto,” was only meant to elude the obligation of an inconvenient

oath. The forty-six bishops who refused were banished to Corsica;

the three hundred and two who swore were distributed through the

provinces of Africa.]

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.—Part IV.

The Catholics, oppressed by royal and military force, were far

superior to their adversaries in numbers and learning. With the

same weapons which the Greek 112 and Latin fathers had already

provided for the Arian controversy, they repeatedly silenced, or

vanquished, the fierce and illiterate successors of Ulphilas. The

consciousness of their own superiority might have raised them

above the arts and passions of religious warfare. Yet, instead of

assuming such honorable pride, the orthodox theologians were

tempted, by the assurance of impunity, to compose fictions, which

must be stigmatized with the epithets of fraud and forgery. They

ascribed their own polemical works to the most venerable names of

Christian antiquity; the characters of Athanasius and Augustin

were awkwardly personated by Vigilius and his disciples; 113 and

the famous creed, which so clearly expounds the mysteries of the

Trinity and the Incarnation, is deduced, with strong probability,

from this African school. 114 Even the Scriptures themselves were

profaned by their rash and sacrilegious hands. The memorable

text, which asserts the unity of the three who bear witness in

heaven, 115 is condemned by the universal silence of the orthodox

fathers, ancient versions, and authentic manuscripts. 116 It was

first alleged by the Catholic bishops whom Hunneric summoned to

the conference of Carthage. 117 An allegorical interpretation, in

the form, perhaps, of a marginal note, invaded the text of the

Latin Bibles, which were renewed and corrected in a dark period

of ten centuries. 118 After the invention of printing, 119 the

editors of the Greek Testament yielded to their own prejudices,

or those of the times; 120 and the pious fraud, which was

embraced with equal zeal at Rome and at Geneva, has been

infinitely multiplied in every country and every language of

modern Europe.

112 (return) [ Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspae, in the Byzacene

province, was of a senatorial family, and had received a liberal

education. He could repeat all Homer and Menander before he was

allowed to study Latin his native tongue, (Vit. Fulgent. c. l.)

Many African bishops might understand Greek, and many Greek

theologians were translated into Latin.]

113 (return) [ Compare the two prefaces to the Dialogue of

Vigilius of Thapsus, (p. 118, 119, edit. Chiflet.) He might amuse

his learned reader with an innocent fiction; but the subject was

too grave, and the Africans were too ignorant.]

114 (return) [ The P. Quesnel started this opinion, which has

been favorably received. But the three following truths, however

surprising they may seem, are now universally acknowledged,

(Gerard Vossius, tom. vi. p. 516-522. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles.

tom. viii. p. 667-671.) 1. St. Athanasius is not the author of

the creed which is so frequently read in our churches. 2. It does

not appear to have existed within a century after his death. 3.

It was originally composed in the Latin tongue, and, consequently

in the Western provinces. Gennadius patriarch of Constantinople,

was so much amazed by this extraordinary composition, that he

frankly pronounced it to be the work of a drunken man. Petav.

Dogmat. Theologica, tom. ii. l. vii. c. 8, p. 687.]

115 (return) [ 1 John, v. 7. See Simon, Hist. Critique du Nouveau

Testament, part i. c. xviii. p. 203-218; and part ii. c. ix. p.

99-121; and the elaborate Prolegomena and Annotations of Dr. Mill

and Wetstein to their editions of the Greek Testament. In 1689,

the papist Simon strove to be free; in 1707, the Protestant Mill

wished to be a slave; in 1751, the Armenian Wetstein used the

liberty of his times, and of his sect. * Note: This controversy

has continued to be agitated, but with declining interest even in

the more religious part of the community; and may now be

considered to have terminated in an almost general acquiescence

of the learned to the conclusions of Porson in his Letters to

Travis. See the pamphlets of the late Bishop of Salisbury and of

Crito Cantabrigiensis, Dr. Turton of Cambridge.—M.]

116 (return) [ Of all the Mss. now extant, above fourscore in

number, some of which are more than 1200 years old, (Wetstein ad

loc.) The orthodox copies of the Vatican, of the Complutensian

editors, of Robert Stephens, are become invisible; and the two

Mss. of Dublin and Berlin are unworthy to form an exception. See

Emlyn’s Works, vol. ii. p 227-255, 269-299; and M. de Missy’s

four ingenious letters, in tom. viii. and ix. of the Journal

Britannique.]

117 (return) [ Or, more properly, by the four bishops who

composed and published the profession of faith in the name of

their brethren. They styled this text, luce clarius, (Victor

Vitensis de Persecut. Vandal. l. iii. c. 11, p. 54.) It is quoted

soon afterwards by the African polemics, Vigilius and

Fulgentius.]

118 (return) [ In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Bibles

were corrected by Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, and by

Nicholas, cardinal and librarian of the Roman church, secundum

orthodoxam fidem, (Wetstein, Prolegom. p. 84, 85.)

Notwithstanding these corrections, the passage is still wanting

in twenty-five Latin Mss., (Wetstein ad loc.,) the oldest and the

fairest; two qualities seldom united, except in manuscripts.]

119 (return) [ The art which the Germans had invented was applied

in Italy to the profane writers of Rome and Greece. The original

Greek of the New Testament was published about the same time

(A.D. 1514, 1516, 1520,) by the industry of Erasmus, and the

munificence of Cardinal Ximenes. The Complutensian Polyglot cost

the cardinal 50,000 ducats. See Mattaire, Annal. Typograph. tom.

ii. p. 2-8, 125-133; and Wetstein, Prolegomena, p. 116-127.]

120 (return) [ The three witnesses have been established in our

Greek Testaments by the prudence of Erasmus; the honest bigotry

of the Complutensian editors; the typographical fraud, or error,

of Robert Stephens, in the placing a crotchet; and the deliberate

falsehood, or strange misapprehension, of Theodore Beza.]

The example of fraud must excite suspicion: and the specious

miracles by which the African Catholics have defended the truth

and justice of their cause, may be ascribed, with more reason, to

their own industry, than to the visible protection of Heaven. Yet

the historian, who views this religious conflict with an

impartial eye, may condescend to mention one preternatural event,

which will edify the devout, and surprise the incredulous.

Tipasa, 121 a maritime colony of Mauritania, sixteen miles to the

east of Caesarea, had been distinguished, in every age, by the

orthodox zeal of its inhabitants. They had braved the fury of the

Donatists; 122 they resisted, or eluded, the tyranny of the

Arians. The town was deserted on the approach of an heretical

bishop: most of the inhabitants who could procure ships passed

over to the coast of Spain; and the unhappy remnant, refusing all

communion with the usurper, still presumed to hold their pious,

but illegal, assemblies. Their disobedience exasperated the

cruelty of Hunneric. A military count was despatched from

Carthage to Tipasa: he collected the Catholics in the Forum, and,

in the presence of the whole province, deprived the guilty of

their right hands and their tongues. But the holy confessors

continued to speak without tongues; and this miracle is attested

by Victor, an African bishop, who published a history of the

persecution within two years after the event. 123 “If any one,”

says Victor, “should doubt of the truth, let him repair to

Constantinople, and listen to the clear and perfect language of

Restitutus, the sub-deacon, one of these glorious sufferers, who

is now lodged in the palace of the emperor Zeno, and is respected

by the devout empress.” At Constantinople we are astonished to

find a cool, a learned, and unexceptionable witness, without

interest, and without passion. Aeneas of Gaza, a Platonic

philosopher, has accurately described his own observations on

these African sufferers. “I saw them myself: I heard them speak:

I diligently inquired by what means such an articulate voice

could be formed without any organ of speech: I used my eyes to

examine the report of my ears; I opened their mouth, and saw that

the whole tongue had been completely torn away by the roots; an

operation which the physicians generally suppose to be mortal.”

124 The testimony of Aeneas of Gaza might be confirmed by the

superfluous evidence of the emperor Justinian, in a perpetual

edict; of Count Marcellinus, in his Chronicle of the times; and

of Pope Gregory the First, who had resided at Constantinople, as

the minister of the Roman pontiff. 125 They all lived within the

compass of a century; and they all appeal to their personal

knowledge, or the public notoriety, for the truth of a miracle,

which was repeated in several instances, displayed on the

greatest theatre of the world, and submitted, during a series of

years, to the calm examination of the senses. This supernatural

gift of the African confessors, who spoke without tongues, will

command the assent of those, and of those only, who already

believe, that their language was pure and orthodox. But the

stubborn mind of an infidel, is guarded by secret, incurable

suspicion; and the Arian, or Socinian, who has seriously rejected

the doctrine of a Trinity, will not be shaken by the most

plausible evidence of an Athanasian miracle.

121 (return) [ Plin. Hist. Natural. v. 1. Itinerar. Wesseling, p.

15. Cellanius, Geograph. Antiq. tom. ii. part ii. p. 127. This

Tipasa (which must not be confounded with another in Numidia) was

a town of some note since Vespasian endowed it with the right of

Latium.]

122 (return) [ Optatus Milevitanus de Schism. Donatist. l. ii. p.

38.]

123 (return) [ Victor Vitensis, v. 6, p. 76. Ruinart, p.

483-487.]

124 (return) [ Aeneas Gazaeus in Theophrasto, in Biblioth.

Patrum, tom. viii. p. 664, 665. He was a Christian, and composed

this Dialogue (the Theophrastus) on the immortality of the soul,

and the resurrection of the body; besides twenty-five Epistles,

still extant. See Cave, (Hist. Litteraria, p. 297,) and

Fabricius, (Biblioth. Graec. tom. i. p. 422.)]

125 (return) [ Justinian. Codex. l. i. tit. xxvii. Marcellin. in

Chron. p. 45, in Thesaur. Temporum Scaliger. Procopius, de Bell.

Vandal. l. i. c. 7. p. 196. Gregor. Magnus, Dialog. iii. 32. None

of these witnesses have specified the number of the confessors,

which is fixed at sixty in an old menology, (apud Ruinart. p.

486.) Two of them lost their speech by fornication; but the

miracle is enhanced by the singular instance of a boy who had

never spoken before his tongue was cut out. ]

The Vandals and the Ostrogoths persevered in the profession of

Arianism till the final ruin of the kingdoms which they had

founded in Africa and Italy. The Barbarians of Gaul submitted to

the orthodox dominion of the Franks; and Spain was restored to

the Catholic church by the voluntary conversion of the Visigoths.

This salutary revolution 126 was hastened by the example of a

royal martyr, whom our calmer reason may style an ungrateful

rebel. Leovigild, the Gothic monarch of Spain, deserved the

respect of his enemies, and the love of his subjects; the

Catholics enjoyed a free toleration, and his Arian synods

attempted, without much success, to reconcile their scruples by

abolishing the unpopular rite of a second baptism. His eldest son

Hermenegild, who was invested by his father with the royal

diadem, and the fair principality of Boetica, contracted an

honorable and orthodox alliance with a Merovingian princess, the

daughter of Sigebert, king of Austrasia, and of the famous

Brunechild. The beauteous Ingundis, who was no more than thirteen

years of age, was received, beloved, and persecuted, in the Arian

court of Toledo; and her religious constancy was alternately

assaulted with blandishments and violence by Goisvintha, the

Gothic queen, who abused the double claim of maternal authority.

127 Incensed by her resistance, Goisvintha seized the Catholic

princess by her long hair, inhumanly dashed her against the

ground, kicked her till she was covered with blood, and at last

gave orders that she should be stripped, and thrown into a basin,

or fish-pond. 128 Love and honor might excite Hermenegild to

resent this injurious treatment of his bride; and he was

gradually persuaded that Ingundis suffered for the cause of

divine truth. Her tender complaints, and the weighty arguments of

Leander, archbishop of Seville, accomplished his conversion and

the heir of the Gothic monarchy was initiated in the Nicene faith

by the solemn rites of confirmation. 129 The rash youth, inflamed

by zeal, and perhaps by ambition, was tempted to violate the

duties of a son and a subject; and the Catholics of Spain,

although they could not complain of persecution, applauded his

pious rebellion against an heretical father. The civil war was

protracted by the long and obstinate sieges of Merida, Cordova,

and Seville, which had strenuously espoused the party of

Hermenegild. He invited the orthodox Barbarians, the Seuvi, and

the Franks, to the destruction of his native land; he solicited

the dangerous aid of the Romans, who possessed Africa, and a part

of the Spanish coast; and his holy ambassador, the archbishop

Leander, effectually negotiated in person with the Byzantine

court. But the hopes of the Catholics were crushed by the active

diligence of the monarch who commanded the troops and treasures

of Spain; and the guilty Hermenegild, after his vain attempts to

resist or to escape, was compelled to surrender himself into the

hands of an incensed father. Leovigild was still mindful of that

sacred character; and the rebel, despoiled of the regal

ornaments, was still permitted, in a decent exile, to profess the

Catholic religion. His repeated and unsuccessful treasons at

length provoked the indignation of the Gothic king; and the

sentence of death, which he pronounced with apparent reluctance,

was privately executed in the tower of Seville. The inflexible

constancy with which he refused to accept the Arian communion, as

the price of his safety, may excuse the honors that have been

paid to the memory of St. Hermenegild. His wife and infant son

were detained by the Romans in ignominious captivity; and this

domestic misfortune tarnished the glories of Leovigild, and

imbittered the last moments of his life.

126 (return) [ See the two general historians of Spain, Mariana

(Hist. de Rebus Hispaniae, tom. i. l. v. c. 12-15, p. 182-194)

and Ferreras, (French translation, tom. ii. p. 206-247.) Mariana

almost forgets that he is a Jesuit, to assume the style and

spirit of a Roman classic. Ferreras, an industrious compiler,

reviews his facts, and rectifies his chronology.]

127 (return) [ Goisvintha successively married two kings of the

Visigoths: Athanigild, to whom she bore Brunechild, the mother of

Ingundis; and Leovigild, whose two sons, Hermenegild and Recared,

were the issue of a former marriage.]

128 (return) [ Iracundiae furore succensa, adprehensam per comam

capitis puellam in terram conlidit, et diu calcibus verberatam,

ac sanguins cruentatam, jussit exspoliari, et piscinae immergi.

Greg. Turon. l. v. c. 39. in tom. ii. p. 255. Gregory is one of

our best originals for this portion of history.]

129 (return) [ The Catholics who admitted the baptism of heretics

repeated the rite, or, as it was afterwards styled, the

sacrament, of confirmation, to which they ascribed many mystic

and marvellous prerogatives both visible and invisible. See

Chardon. Hist. des Sacremens, tom. 1. p. 405-552.]

His son and successor, Recared, the first Catholic king of Spain,

had imbibed the faith of his unfortunate brother, which he

supported with more prudence and success. Instead of revolting

against his father, Recared patiently expected the hour of his

death. Instead of condemning his memory, he piously supposed,

that the dying monarch had abjured the errors of Arianism, and

recommended to his son the conversion of the Gothic nation. To

accomplish that salutary end, Recared convened an assembly of the

Arian clergy and nobles, declared himself a Catholic, and

exhorted them to imitate the example of their prince. The

laborious interpretation of doubtful texts, or the curious

pursuit of metaphysical arguments, would have excited an endless

controversy; and the monarch discreetly proposed to his

illiterate audience two substantial and visible arguments,—the

testimony of Earth, and of Heaven. The Earth had submitted to the

Nicene synod: the Romans, the Barbarians, and the inhabitants of

Spain, unanimously professed the same orthodox creed; and the

Visigoths resisted, almost alone, the consent of the Christian

world. A superstitious age was prepared to reverence, as the

testimony of Heaven, the preternatural cures, which were

performed by the skill or virtue of the Catholic clergy; the

baptismal fonts of Osset in Boetica, 130 which were spontaneously

replenished every year, on the vigil of Easter; 131 and the

miraculous shrine of St. Martin of Tours, which had already

converted the Suevic prince and people of Gallicia. 132 The

Catholic king encountered some difficulties on this important

change of the national religion. A conspiracy, secretly fomented

by the queen-dowager, was formed against his life; and two counts

excited a dangerous revolt in the Narbonnese Gaul. But Recared

disarmed the conspirators, defeated the rebels, and executed

severe justice; which the Arians, in their turn, might brand with

the reproach of persecution. Eight bishops, whose names betray

their Barbaric origin, abjured their errors; and all the books of

Arian theology were reduced to ashes, with the house in which

they had been purposely collected. The whole body of the

Visigoths and Suevi were allured or driven into the pale of the

Catholic communion; the faith, at least of the rising generation,

was fervent and sincere: and the devout liberality of the

Barbarians enriched the churches and monasteries of Spain.

Seventy bishops, assembled in the council of Toledo, received the

submission of their conquerors; and the zeal of the Spaniards

improved the Nicene creed, by declaring the procession of the

Holy Ghost from the Son, as well as from the Father; a weighty

point of doctrine, which produced, long afterwards, the schism of

the Greek and Latin churches. 133 The royal proselyte immediately

saluted and consulted Pope Gregory, surnamed the Great, a learned

and holy prelate, whose reign was distinguished by the conversion

of heretics and infidels. The ambassadors of Recared respectfully

offered on the threshold of the Vatican his rich presents of gold

and gems; they accepted, as a lucrative exchange, the hairs of

St. John the Baptist; a cross, which enclosed a small piece of

the true wood; and a key, that contained some particles of iron

which had been scraped from the chains of St. Peter. 134

130 (return) [ Osset, or Julia Constantia, was opposite to

Seville, on the northern side of the Boetis, (Plin. Hist. Natur.

iii. 3:) and the authentic reference of Gregory of Tours (Hist.

Francor. l. vi. c. 43, p. 288) deserves more credit than the name

of Lusitania, (de Gloria Martyr. c. 24,) which has been eagerly

embraced by the vain and superstitious Portuguese, (Ferreras,

Hist. d’Espagne, tom. ii. p. 166.)]

131 (return) [ This miracle was skilfully performed. An Arian

king sealed the doors, and dug a deep trench round the church,

without being able to intercept the Easter supply of baptismal

water.]

132 (return) [ Ferreras (tom. ii. p. 168-175, A.D. 550) has

illustrated the difficulties which regard the time and

circumstances of the conversion of the Suevi. They had been

recently united by Leovigild to the Gothic monarchy of Spain.]

133 (return) [ This addition to the Nicene, or rather the

Constantinopolitan creed, was first made in the eighth council of

Toledo, A.D. 653; but it was expressive of the popular doctrine,

(Gerard Vossius, tom. vi. p. 527, de tribus Symbolis.)]

134 (return) [ See Gregor. Magn. l. vii. epist. 126, apud

Baronium, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 559, No. 25, 26.]

The same Gregory, the spiritual conqueror of Britain, encouraged

the pious Theodelinda, queen of the Lombards, to propagate the

Nicene faith among the victorious savages, whose recent

Christianity was polluted by the Arian heresy. Her devout labors

still left room for the industry and success of future

missionaries; and many cities of Italy were still disputed by

hostile bishops. But the cause of Arianism was gradually

suppressed by the weight of truth, of interest, and of example;

and the controversy, which Egypt had derived from the Platonic

school, was terminated, after a war of three hundred years, by

the final conversion of the Lombards of Italy. 135

135 (return) [ Paul Warnefrid (de Gestis Langobard. l. iv. c. 44,

p. 153, edit Grot.) allows that Arianism still prevailed under

the reign of Rotharis, (A.D. 636-652.) The pious deacon does not

attempt to mark the precise era of the national conversion, which

was accomplished, however, before the end of the seventh

century.]

The first missionaries who preached the gospel to the Barbarians,

appealed to the evidence of reason, and claimed the benefit of

toleration. 136 But no sooner had they established their

spiritual dominion, than they exhorted the Christian kings to

extirpate, without mercy, the remains of Roman or Barbaric

superstition. The successors of Clovis inflicted one hundred

lashes on the peasants who refused to destroy their idols; the

crime of sacrificing to the demons was punished by the

Anglo-Saxon laws with the heavier penalties of imprisonment and

confiscation; and even the wise Alfred adopted, as an

indispensable duty, the extreme rigor of the Mosaic institutions.

137 But the punishment and the crime were gradually abolished

among a Christian people; the theological disputes of the schools

were suspended by propitious ignorance; and the intolerant spirit

which could find neither idolaters nor heretics, was reduced to

the persecution of the Jews. That exiled nation had founded some

synagogues in the cities of Gaul; but Spain, since the time of

Hadrian, was filled with their numerous colonies. 138 The wealth

which they accumulated by trade, and the management of the

finances, invited the pious avarice of their masters; and they

might be oppressed without danger, as they had lost the use, and

even the remembrance, of arms. Sisebut, a Gothic king, who

reigned in the beginning of the seventh century, proceeded at

once to the last extremes of persecution. 139 Ninety thousand

Jews were compelled to receive the sacrament of baptism; the

fortunes of the obstinate infidels were confiscated, their bodies

were tortured; and it seems doubtful whether they were permitted

to abandon their native country. The excessive zeal of the

Catholic king was moderated, even by the clergy of Spain, who

solemnly pronounced an inconsistent sentence: that the sacraments

should not be forcibly imposed; but that the Jews who had been

baptized should be constrained, for the honor of the church, to

persevere in the external practice of a religion which they

disbelieved and detested. Their frequent relapses provoked one of

the successors of Sisebut to banish the whole nation from his

dominions; and a council of Toledo published a decree, that every

Gothic king should swear to maintain this salutary edict. But the

tyrants were unwilling to dismiss the victims, whom they

delighted to torture, or to deprive themselves of the industrious

slaves, over whom they might exercise a lucrative oppression. The

Jews still continued in Spain, under the weight of the civil and

ecclesiastical laws, which in the same country have been

faithfully transcribed in the Code of the Inquisition. The Gothic

kings and bishops at length discovered, that injuries will

produce hatred, and that hatred will find the opportunity of

revenge. A nation, the secret or professed enemies of

Christianity, still multiplied in servitude and distress; and the

intrigues of the Jews promoted the rapid success of the Arabian

conquerors. 140

136 (return) [ Quorum fidei et conversioni ita congratulatus esse

rex perhibetur, ut nullum tamen cogeret ad Christianismum....

Didiceret enim a doctoribus auctoribusque suae salutis, servitium

Christi voluntarium non coactitium esse debere. Bedae Hist.

Ecclesiastic. l. i. c. 26, p. 62, edit. Smith.]

137 (return) [ See the Historians of France, tom. iv. p. 114; and

Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxonicae, p. 11, 31. Siquis sacrificium

immolaverit praeter Deo soli morte moriatur.]

138 (return) [ The Jews pretend that they were introduced into

Spain by the fleets of Solomon, and the arms of Nebuchadnezzar;

that Hadrian transported forty thousand families of the tribe of

Judah, and ten thousand of the tribe of Benjamin, &c. Basnage,

Hist. des Juifs, tom. vii. c. 9, p. 240-256.]

139 (return) [ Isidore, at that time archbishop of Seville,

mentions, disapproves and congratulates, the zeal of Sisebut

(Chron. Goth. p. 728.) Barosins (A.D. 614, No. 41) assigns the

number of the evidence of Almoin, (l. iv. c. 22;) but the

evidence is weak, and I have not been able to verify the

quotation, (Historians of France, tom. iii. p. 127.)]

140 (return) [ Basnage (tom. viii. c. 13, p. 388-400) faithfully

represents the state of the Jews; but he might have added from

the canons of the Spanish councils, and the laws of the

Visigoths, many curious circumstances, essential to his subject,

though they are foreign to mine. * Note: Compare Milman, Hist. of

Jews iii. 256—M]

As soon as the Barbarians withdrew their powerful support, the

unpopular heresy of Arius sunk into contempt and oblivion. But

the Greeks still retained their subtle and loquacious

disposition: the establishment of an obscure doctrine suggested

new questions, and new disputes; and it was always in the power

of an ambitious prelate, or a fanatic monk, to violate the peace

of the church, and, perhaps, of the empire. The historian of the

empire may overlook those disputes which were confined to the

obscurity of schools and synods. The Manichæans, who labored to

reconcile the religions of Christ and of Zoroaster, had secretly

introduced themselves into the provinces: but these foreign

sectaries were involved in the common disgrace of the Gnostics,

and the Imperial laws were executed by the public hatred. The

rational opinions of the Pelagians were propagated from Britain

to Rome, Africa, and Palestine, and silently expired in a

superstitious age. But the East was distracted by the Nestorian

and Eutychian controversies; which attempted to explain the

mystery of the incarnation, and hastened the ruin of Christianity

in her native land. These controversies were first agitated under

the reign of the younger Theodosius: but their important

consequences extend far beyond the limits of the present volume.

The metaphysical chain of argument, the contests of

ecclesiastical ambition, and their political influence on the

decline of the Byzantine empire, may afford an interesting and

instructive series of history, from the general councils of

Ephesus and Chalcedon, to the conquest of the East by the

successors of Mahomet.

Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis.—Part I.

Reign And Conversion Of Clovis.—His Victories Over The Alemanni,

Burgundians, And Visigoths.—Establishment Of The French Monarchy

In Gaul.—Laws Of The Barbarians.—State Of The Romans.—The

Visigoths Of Spain.—Conquest Of Britain By The Saxons.

The Gauls, 1 who impatiently supported the Roman yoke, received a

memorable lesson from one of the lieutenants of Vespasian, whose

weighty sense has been refined and expressed by the genius of

Tacitus. 2 “The protection of the republic has delivered Gaul

from internal discord and foreign invasions. By the loss of

national independence, you have acquired the name and privileges

of Roman citizens. You enjoy, in common with yourselves, the

permanent benefits of civil government; and your remote situation

is less exposed to the accidental mischiefs of tyranny. Instead

of exercising the rights of conquest, we have been contented to

impose such tributes as are requisite for your own preservation.

Peace cannot be secured without armies; and armies must be

supported at the expense of the people. It is for your sake, not

for our own, that we guard the barrier of the Rhine against the

ferocious Germans, who have so often attempted, and who will

always desire, to exchange the solitude of their woods and

morasses for the wealth and fertility of Gaul. The fall of Rome

would be fatal to the provinces; and you would be buried in the

ruins of that mighty fabric, which has been raised by the valor

and wisdom of eight hundred years. Your imaginary freedom would

be insulted and oppressed by a savage master; and the expulsion

of the Romans would be succeeded by the eternal hostilities of

the Barbarian conquerors.” 3 This salutary advice was accepted,

and this strange prediction was accomplished. In the space of

four hundred years, the hardy Gauls, who had encountered the arms

of Caesar, were imperceptibly melted into the general mass of

citizens and subjects: the Western empire was dissolved; and the

Germans, who had passed the Rhine, fiercely contended for the

possession of Gaul, and excited the contempt, or abhorrence, of

its peaceful and polished inhabitants. With that conscious pride

which the preeminence of knowledge and luxury seldom fails to

inspire, they derided the hairy and gigantic savages of the

North; their rustic manners, dissonant joy, voracious appetite,

and their horrid appearance, equally disgusting to the sight and

to the smell. The liberal studies were still cultivated in the

schools of Autun and Bordeaux; and the language of Cicero and

Virgil was familiar to the Gallic youth. Their ears were

astonished by the harsh and unknown sounds of the Germanic

dialect, and they ingeniously lamented that the trembling muses

fled from the harmony of a Burgundian lyre. The Gauls were

endowed with all the advantages of art and nature; but as they

wanted courage to defend them, they were justly condemned to

obey, and even to flatter, the victorious Barbarians, by whose

clemency they held their precarious fortunes and their lives. 4

1 (return) [ In this chapter I shall draw my quotations from the

Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, Paris,

1738-1767, in eleven volumes in folio. By the labor of Dom

Bouquet, and the other Benedictines, all the original

testimonies, as far as A.D. 1060, are disposed in chronological

order, and illustrated with learned notes. Such a national work,

which will be continued to the year 1500, might provoke our

emulation.]

2 (return) [ Tacit. Hist. iv. 73, 74, in tom. i. p. 445. To

abridge Tacitus would indeed be presumptuous; but I may select

the general ideas which he applies to the present state and

future revelations of Gaul.]

3 (return) [ Eadem semper causa Germanis transcendendi in Gallias

libido atque avaritiae et mutandae sedis amor; ut relictis

paludibus et solitudinibus, suis, fecundissimum hoc solum vosque

ipsos possiderent.... Nam pulsis Romanis quid aliud quam bella

omnium inter se gentium exsistent?]

4 (return) [ Sidonius Apollinaris ridicules, with affected wit

and pleasantry, the hardships of his situation, (Carm. xii. in

tom. i. p. 811.)]

As soon as Odoacer had extinguished the Western empire, he sought

the friendship of the most powerful of the Barbarians. The new

sovereign of Italy resigned to Euric, king of the Visigoths, all

the Roman conquests beyond the Alps, as far as the Rhine and the

Ocean: 5 and the senate might confirm this liberal gift with some

ostentation of power, and without any real loss of revenue and

dominion. The lawful pretensions of Euric were justified by

ambition and success; and the Gothic nation might aspire, under

his command, to the monarchy of Spain and Gaul. Arles and

Marseilles surrendered to his arms: he oppressed the freedom of

Auvergne; and the bishop condescended to purchase his recall from

exile by a tribute of just, but reluctant praise. Sidonius waited

before the gates of the palace among a crowd of ambassadors and

suppliants; and their various business at the court of Bordeaux

attested the power, and the renown, of the king of the Visigoths.

The Heruli of the distant ocean, who painted their naked bodies

with its coerulean color, implored his protection; and the Saxons

respected the maritime provinces of a prince, who was destitute

of any naval force. The tall Burgundians submitted to his

authority; nor did he restore the captive Franks, till he had

imposed on that fierce nation the terms of an unequal peace. The

Vandals of Africa cultivated his useful friendship; and the

Ostrogoths of Pannonia were supported by his powerful aid against

the oppression of the neighboring Huns. The North (such are the

lofty strains of the poet) was agitated or appeased by the nod of

Euric; the great king of Persia consulted the oracle of the West;

and the aged god of the Tyber was protected by the swelling

genius of the Garonne. 6 The fortune of nations has often

depended on accidents; and France may ascribe her greatness to

the premature death of the Gothic king, at a time when his son

Alaric was a helpless infant, and his adversary Clovis 7 an

ambitious and valiant youth.

5 (return) [ See Procopius de Bell. Gothico, l. i. c. 12, in tom.

ii. p. 81. The character of Grotius inclines me to believe, that

he has not substituted the Rhine for the Rhone (Hist. Gothorum,

p. 175) without the authority of some Ms.]

6 (return) [ Sidonius, l. viii. epist. 3, 9, in tom. i. p. 800.

Jornandes (de Rebus Geticis, c. 47 p. 680) justifies, in some

measure, this portrait of the Gothic hero.]

7 (return) [ I use the familiar appellation of Clovis, from the

Latin Chlodovechus, or Chlodovoeus. But the Ch expresses only the

German aspiration, and the true name is not different from Lewis,

(Mem. de ‘Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p. 68.)]

While Childeric, the father of Clovis, lived an exile in Germany,

he was hospitably entertained by the queen, as well as by the

king, of the Thuringians. After his restoration, Basina escaped

from her husband’s bed to the arms of her lover; freely

declaring, that if she had known a man wiser, stronger, or more

beautiful, than Childeric, that man should have been the object

of her preference. 8 9 Clovis was the offspring of this voluntary

union; and, when he was no more than fifteen years of age, he

succeeded, by his father’s death, to the command of the Salian

tribe. The narrow limits of his kingdom were confined to the

island of the Batavians, with the ancient dioceses of Tournay and

Arras; 10 and at the baptism of Clovis the number of his warriors

could not exceed five thousand. The kindred tribes of the Franks,

who had seated themselves along the Belgic rivers, the Scheld,

the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhine, were governed by their

independent kings, of the Merovingian race; the equals, the

allies, and sometimes the enemies of the Salic prince. But the

Germans, who obeyed, in peace, the hereditary jurisdiction of

their chiefs, were free to follow the standard of a popular and

victorious general; and the superior merit of Clovis attracted

the respect and allegiance of the national confederacy. When he

first took the field, he had neither gold and silver in his

coffers, nor wine and corn in his magazine; 11 but he imitated

the example of Caesar, who, in the same country, had acquired

wealth by the sword, and purchased soldiers with the fruits of

conquest. After each successful battle or expedition, the spoils

were accumulated in one common mass; every warrior received his

proportionable share; and the royal prerogative submitted to the

equal regulations of military law. The untamed spirit of the

Barbarians was taught to acknowledge the advantages of regular

discipline. 12 At the annual review of the month of March, their

arms were diligently inspected; and when they traversed a

peaceful territory, they were prohibited from touching a blade of

grass. The justice of Clovis was inexorable; and his careless or

disobedient soldiers were punished with instant death. It would

be superfluous to praise the valor of a Frank; but the valor of

Clovis was directed by cool and consummate prudence. 13 In all

his transactions with mankind, he calculated the weight of

interest, of passion, and of opinion; and his measures were

sometimes adapted to the sanguinary manners of the Germans, and

sometimes moderated by the milder genius of Rome, and

Christianity. He was intercepted in the career of victory, since

he died in the forty-fifth year of his age: but he had already

accomplished, in a reign of thirty years, the establishment of

the French monarchy in Gaul.

8 (return) [ Greg. l. ii. c. 12, in tom. i. p. 168. Basina speaks

the language of nature; the Franks, who had seen her in their

youth, might converse with Gregory in their old age; and the

bishop of Tours could not wish to defame the mother of the first

Christian king.]

9 (return) [ The Abbe Dubos (Hist. Critique de l’Etablissement de

la Monarchie Francoise dans les Gaules, tom. i. p. 630-650) has

the merit of defining the primitive kingdom of Clovis, and of

ascertaining the genuine number of his subjects.]

10 (return) [ Ecclesiam incultam ac negligentia civium Paganorum

praetermis sam, veprium densitate oppletam, &c. Vit. St. Vedasti,

in tom. iii. p. 372. This description supposes that Arras was

possessed by the Pagans many years before the baptism of Clovis.]

11 (return) [ Gregory of Tours (l v. c. i. tom. ii. p. 232)

contrasts the poverty of Clovis with the wealth of his grandsons.

Yet Remigius (in tom. iv. p. 52) mentions his paternas opes, as

sufficient for the redemption of captives.]

12 (return) [ See Gregory, (l. ii. c. 27, 37, in tom. ii. p. 175,

181, 182.) The famous story of the vase of Soissons explains both

the power and the character of Clovis. As a point of controversy,

it has been strangely tortured by Boulainvilliers Dubos, and the

other political antiquarians.]

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) · 第 39 / 79 章

24 (return) [ This small, though not barren, spot, Iona, Hy, or