decorated with Biblical symbols; lamps showed Noah's ark or Jonah's
whale, Jesus with his disciples in a ship or Jesus treading upon the
lion and adder, the serpent and dragon (according to Psalm 91). At the
Strassburg Museum there is a beautiful engraved glass cup made probably
in a Roman manufactory in Cologne. On one side is engraved Abraham
sacrificing Isaac, on the other side Moses striking water from the rock.
Rich people wore sumptuous garments embroidered with representations of
Biblical scenes. The preachers complain that these people wear the
miracles of Christ on their coats instead of taking them to their heart
and conscience.
The great officials of the empire used to give to their friends ivory
tablets commemorating their honours. In former times they had
represented on them the emperor, the empress, or their own portraits,
and scenes from the circus; now they chose Biblical subjects. People
liked to have long rolls exhibiting the wars and triumphs of an emperor
in a continuous series of drawings. Two gigantic rolls of this kind may
still be seen at Rome; I mean the columns of Trajan and of Marcus
Aurelius. Christian art produced rolls of the same kind, exhibiting the
story of Joshua's battles (Plate VI). Senators and noble ladies vied
with each other in arranging the history of the Bible and especially the
life of Jesus in the form of poems, each word of which was taken either
from Homer or from Vergil. It is a wonderful mixture of Bible and
classical culture.
The Bible rules not only the public and the private life, but also the
church and its organisations. At the beginning the Christians were
afraid of comparing the Old Testament rites with the ecclesiastical
institutions. The Law of the Old Testament belonged to an earlier form
of religion; it was abolished by the New Testament. Christ, according to
Saint Paul, was the end of the Law. But by and by the Old and the New
Testament were brought nearer together. An author of the first century
remarks that God by his commandments in the Old Testament has shown
himself to be a lover of order, therefore in the Christian congregation,
too, order ought to rule. He does not call the Christian communion a
sacrifice, the Christian minister a priest; but his parallelism comes
very near to this, and a century later the step is taken. It becomes
usual to speak of bishop, elders, and deacons as high-priest, priests,
and Levites. Later on, even the minor degrees were taken back to
Biblical models: the subdeacon, lector, exorcist, acolyte, janitor were
found represented in the Old Testament. The clergy formed a separate
class as distinct from other people as the tribe of Levi was among the
tribes of Israel. It was upon the authority of the Old Testament that
they claimed rights and prerogatives to be given and guaranteed by the
empire. The monks found their models in Elijah and Elisha; common life
was represented by the apostles; penitents were Job, David, and the
people of Nineveh; widows (as ecclesiastical functionaries) had their
models in Naomi, Hannah, Tabitha, etc. The church was the tabernacle of
Moses and the temple of Solomon, and each detail in the description of
these Biblical buildings was made to agree with a feature in the
Christian church by means of allegorical interpretation. The feasts of
the church correspond to the feasts of the Old Testament; Easter is
usually called Passover, and Whitsuntide Pentecost. At a rather early
date a festival of the dedication of the individual church was
introduced to correspond with the festival of the dedication of the
temple. As the Jews kept two days in the week for fasting, so did the
Christians, choosing Wednesday and Friday instead of Monday and
Thursday; and in doing so they remembered that it was on a Wednesday
that Jesus was betrayed by Judas and on a Friday that he died on the
cross. Even the usual hours for prayers were based on Old Testament
authority; David, saying in Psalm 141 : 2 "The lifting up of my hands as
the evening sacrifice," means vespers, while in the 131st Psalm he is
speaking of compline, in the 63d of matins. The vigil was observed as
well as commanded by Christ himself (Luke 6 : 12 and 12 : 37). The whole
liturgy was explained as being in every detail a representation of
the life of Christ. The sacraments, too, were prefigured in the Old
Testament. This symbolism is very old and very commonly used; it has
influenced Christian art. We see Noah's ark as a symbol of baptism
(_cf._ I Peter 3 : 20); Abel's sacrifice, and Melchisedek offering
bread and wine to Abraham, as symbols of the holy eucharist. Abraham
entertaining at his home the three angels reveals the holy Trinity. All
this is represented in splendid mosaics on the walls of the churches, as
for instance in San Vitale at Ravenna.
[Illustration: PLATE VI--JOSHUA ROLL
(At the Vatican)
Joshua is sending from Jericho (at the left, walls tumbling down)
to Ai two men to spy out the land, Joshua 7 : 2. The towns are
represented by edifices as well as by allegorical figures (Tyche
of the City).
From "Vatikanische Miniaturen," by St. Beissel. Copyright by
B. Herder, Freiburg.]
To us this system of Biblical references for everything in the Christian
service seems strange. We feel that the worship of the Christian
congregation rests on other principles than the ritual of the Old
Testament and does not gain anything by such hazardous comparisons. It
looks like comparing the stars in heaven with beasts on earth. But the
fathers thought that this was the highest achievement at which they
could arrive: to allegorise and spiritualise the Old Testament law in
order to deduce from it the Christian liturgy. That was what they called
worship in spirit and truth. It is exactly opposite to the great idea
which Jesus conveyed in those words; it is one of the greatest
confusions to which the juxtaposition of the Old and the New Testament
in one Bible was leading. Nevertheless, it was of great influence upon
civilisation for centuries.
The church and the laity were ruled by the Bible; but the real Bible
folk of this time were the monks. There had been a tendency toward
asceticism from the very beginning of Christianity. At the moment when
the church came into power this tendency increased rapidly. In Egypt as
well as in Syria, wherever there was a desert place hermits gathered and
monasteries were built. Now, in these monasteries the life was really
filled with the reading of the Bible. Even the poorest monk would have a
copy of the Gospels to read. Some of the monks, of course, were very
simple, unlearned people. They could not read, so they learned it all by
heart. And sometimes--we are told in the legendary tales of the
monks--it happened that a monk who never before had learned to read was
miraculously given the art of reading, God granting it to him as a
recompense for his zeal. The monks had their hours for common worship
and reading, but they were supposed to read each by himself as much as
possible. "The rising sun shall find the Bible in thy hands," is one of
the monastic rules, and legend illustrates how the divine grace
recompensed assiduous reading: filled with heavenly light all through
the night was the cell of a hermit as long as he was reading the Bible.
When visitors came the talk was over questions raised by the Bible. It
was with quotations from the Bible that the celebrated anchorite
entertained the people who called upon him to ask for spiritual help.
Among all Biblical books the Psalter was the one most favoured by the
monks. They knew it by heart, almost all of them, and they used to
recite it during their manual labour. The Psalter was their spiritual
weapon against the temptations of the demons; the demon liked nothing so
much as to turn a monk from reciting his Psalter. But besides the
Psalter it was the Gospel which prevailed over all other books in these
ascetic circles. Many of the hermits were induced to leave the world by
attending a Gospel lesson in their church at home. "If thou wouldest be
perfect, go, sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt
have treasure in heaven: and come follow me," or "And every one that
hath left houses or brethren or sisters or father or mother or children
or lands for my name's sake shall receive a hundredfold and shall
inherit eternal life." These are the words which occur again and again
in the lives of saints as the decisive ones for their "conversion," that
is for leaving the world and going to the desert or entering a
monastery. The first saying quoted above is referred to in the life of
Saint Anthony, the greatest of all hermits, and Saint Augustine had this
in his mind when the time came for him to change his life. The second
saying makes Saint Hypatius go away from home; his biographer, however,
is honest enough to add that the saint, a youth of eighteen, had just
received punishment from his father. An actor living luxuriously with
two concubines chances to enter a church, and hears read from the
Gospel, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand"; so he repents
and becomes a monk. I do not mean to say that these tales of the monks
are historical and trustworthy in every point, but I venture to think
that this statement about the motives for conversion is, after all, a
correct one. The gospel is what appeals to the human heart, in all
centuries and in all nations. And then the man will try to make the
gospel the rule of his life. I think it is remarkable that whereas the
church and the empire both were ruled mainly by the Old Testament, these
ascetic circles took the gospel as their main rule, that is to say, the
gospel as understood by the men of that time. It was to them a new law,
a law of asceticism, of self-denial, and they kept to it as strictly as
possible. Even if for other Christians it meant an almost inaccessible
ideal, the monastery ought to be the place to fulfil it literally.
Our picture would be inadequate, however, if we should neglect the abuse
of the Bible, the Bible showing its importance and ruling force even by
its influence upon the dark domain of human superstition. The ancient
world was full of magic. We remember the story in Acts 19 of how Saint
Paul overcame some Jewish exorcists, with the result that "not a few of
them that practised curious arts brought their books together and burned
them in the sight of all, and they counted the price of them and found
it fifty thousand pieces of silver." I suspect many a scholar or
librarian of to-day would like very much to have those books among his
treasures, but they were burned; and Christianity scored its first
triumph over superstition. Superstition, however, did not give way at
this first defeat; on the contrary, it made a strenuous effort to draw
over all the forces of Christendom to its own side. There was the name
of Jesus, frightening the demons; black magic took this name and
converted it to its detestable uses. There was the Gospel,
representative of Jesus himself in his heavenly power; superstition made
it a vehicle of its own magical rites. There was the Bible, the book of
divine oracles; human inquisitiveness turned it into a book from which
to read the dark future. The heathen had done this with the poems of
Homer and Vergil. Turning over the pages they suddenly stopped at a
verse and then tried to find in this verse the answer to their question.
The fathers of the early church detested this method as something quite
alien to a Christian mind, but as early as the end of the fourth century
people came to feel that it was all right if only they used the Bible
for the same purpose. In the sixth century even church officials kept to
this practice. When a bishop had to be elected they almost always
consulted the Psalter first on behalf of the man to be elected. Bible
verses written on parchment were attached to easy chairs in order to
keep away the evil spirits. Gospels in the smallest form were hung on
the necks of the babies. It is astonishing to see how great was the
esteem in which the Bible was held and how terribly contrary to the
spirit of the Bible this practice was, especially when the Bible was
used to do harm. Lead, by its dull lustre, always has reminded mankind
of the realm of death; so it was used in black magic for bringing upon
an enemy a curse from the gods of the underworld. A rolled sheet of
lead, inscribed with a psalm and a dreadful curse against any robber,
has been found on one of the AEgean Islands hidden in the ground of a
vineyard. Evidently the psalm was supposed to be one of the most
effective spells. Even the Lord's Prayer and other parts of the Gospels
have been abused in the same way (Plate VII). Nothing is so holy that it
cannot be turned into a crime by human sin.
It is a dark page of human civilisation. I am afraid it is a large page,
too. I could accumulate instance upon instance. But however interesting
this might be, it would give a wrong impression. The Bible was not
primarily used as a magical means in those centuries. It was
acknowledged as something superhuman, bearing supernatural powers, and
therefore ruling everything. It ruled the empire as well as the church.
It influenced law, language, art, habits, and even magic.
[Illustration: PLATE VII--THE LORD'S PRAYER
On a potsherd found at Megara, sixth century; used probably as a
spell.
From "Mitteilungen des K. Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts,"
Athen. Published by G. Reimer, Berlin.]
III
THE BIBLE TEACHES THE GERMAN NATIONS (500-800 A. D.)
From the fourth century on the Germans, tribe by tribe, crossed the
Danube and the Rhine and entered the boundaries of the Roman empire.
Here part of them settled near the frontier, part took service in the
Roman army. But the more numerous they became, the more hostile they
were. At last the Roman empire in the West broke down, German kingdoms
taking its place. It is a long and cruel history, this period of
"Voelkerwanderungen" as it is usually called in German, the period of the
great migrations. And only after some centuries did the new Roman empire
of German nationality come to be established by Charlemagne.
At first the Germans made a brilliant start in taking over Roman
civilisation. The Goths had been Christianised and civilised at an early
period. While it is true that the Visigoths under Alaric captured Rome
and did not refrain from plundering it, the behaviour of the Vandals
under Gaiseric was even worse, so that for all time to come their name
is connected with the most brutal pillage. But the noble tribe of the
Ostrogoths under their celebrated king Theodoric--called Dietrich von
Bern in the German songs--tried another plan; they adopted Roman
civilisation as far as possible and endeavoured to combine both nations
under one dominion. Theodoric had as his minister or secretary of state
a member of the Roman nobility, the most cultivated man of letters of
the time, Cassiodorus. We have his collection of reports and letters,
and we may infer from them how much, aside from his training in the
Roman law school, he was influenced by his Christian belief and Biblical
reading. Later on, when he retired into the monastery which he had
founded on his estates at Vivarium, all his devotion was given to the
study of the Bible. He is the man who inculcated on Western monasticism
that love for scholarship which has been ever since a characteristic of
the Order of Saint Benedict. Cassiodorus was a Roman, of course, but we
have ample evidence that even among the Goths the Bible was read and
studied. There was a Gothic translation of the Bible, which is supposed
to have been made in the fourth century by Ulfilas. In order not to
encourage the warlike spirit in his people he is said to have omitted
the books of the Kings, wherein so many wars and battles are described.
The educational aspect of the Bible as teaching the German nations
comes out here distinctly. We are able to trace the history of the Goths
by their Bible, which, having been translated in the East from Greek
manuscripts, shows traces of a Latin influence, evidently introduced
when the Goths settled in Italy. There still exist some copies, among
them the famous Codex Argenteus, now at Upsala, which in its silver
writing on purple ground, is a wonderful specimen of luxurious
calligraphy, giving testimony to the degree of civilisation which these
Ostrogoths had taken over from Rome (Plate VIII).
There was, however, one great difference between the Germans and the
Romans; the latter were Catholics, the former Arians. This religious
difference is responsible for many troubles and persecutions brought by
the Germans upon the population of the conquered land. The Germans had a
church organisation of their own; they had their own clergy, and this
clergy was well trained in Bible reading. We find the remarkable fact
that the German Arian bishops show an even larger knowledge of the Bible
than their Roman Catholic colleagues. The complaint was often heard that
the watchwords of Catholicism, as, for example, _homousios_, had no
Biblical foundation, while, on the other hand, the Arians were always
ready to fill their creeds with Biblical phrases. These Germans had a
profound reverence for the holy Scripture and bowed down to it. It was
only by Scriptural proofs that the Catholic clergy of Spain succeeded in
converting the Arian king to their faith.
Theodoric built at Ravenna some churches which still exist. Here we see
mosaics exhibiting the life of Jesus in a very simple way, but with that
unmistakable touch of awe which is so characteristic of German piety.
How different are the pictures which were added after Ravenna had become
Byzantine! They are highly ceremonial, representing, among others, the
emperor Justinian and the empress Theodora with all their suite.
These were the first centuries of German invasion. The ancient
civilisation, championed by the Roman church, was still strong enough to
impose itself upon these invaders. Time went on and civilisation more
and more lost its energy. Especially in Gaul, in the kingdom of the
Merovingians, intellectual darkness spread all over the country. There
was no layman who could read, hardly any member of the clergy. We hear
of great monasteries, which were rich royal foundations, where no
complete Bible was to be found. We see the troubles of a missionary like
Boniface. In order to procure the necessary books, he has to apply to
his English lady friends, who send him copies of the books he wants,
finely written by their own delicate hands. It was a time when a book, a
Bible, was a treasure, and to own one was a fact to be recorded by a
biographer. This enables us to trace the history of more than one famous
manuscript. We are surprised to find what journeys they made. One was
sent from Naples to England, and then a century later again removed to
the German shore and finally treasured among the rarities of the Fulda
library. Another manuscript, now at Florence, came originally from the
monastery of Cassiodorus in the extreme south of Italy and found its way
to the monastery of Mount Amiata, near Florence, only by a roundabout
route through the famous English monasteries, where it was copied. The
few scholars of that period had to go a long way before they could get a
copy of the Bible worth their attention, and they had to go a long way
to find a monastery with hands able to copy manuscripts.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII--GOTHIC BIBLE
Codex Argenteus, now at Upsala. Sixth century, written on purple
parchment in silver and (some words) in gold. The figures at the
bottom give Eusebius's harmony of the Gospels: this particular
scheme is found in Syrian manuscripts and in the Old Latin Codex
Rehdigerianus at Breslau.
From "Deutsche Kulturgeschichte," by O. Henne am Rhyn. Grote, Berlin,
Germany.]
A new epoch begins with Charlemagne, who has a real right to the name of
the Great. If one wants to know a great man, one has only to see what
attention he pays to minor things. It is simply wonderful how this
German king, who restored the old notion of the Roman empire, whose
dominion contained France, Germany, Spain, Italy, was taking care of
the schoolboys and fixing his eyes on the way in which the Bible was
being copied in the monasteries of his vast realm. In one of his
ordinances he complains that they use unskilled boys for copying the
most sacred book. It needs, he says, grammar--nay, good grammar--to
understand what you are copying. It is no religion to pray to God in
ungrammatical language and to have his holy Scriptures in a
grammatically incorrect text. From the fact that the monasteries in
their letters of application used a bad style he infers that Bible
reading here was being neglected. Therefore, Charlemagne tried, in the
first place, to bring the schools of his kingdom to a higher standard.
Each monastery had to have a well-conducted school for the monks and for
the young people who were sent there for education (as they are now sent
to public schools). At his own court he had the _Schola palatina_ and
the great emperor himself went there often and took lessons together
with the boys. But he did not stop here. His intention was to secure a
really good, trustworthy text of the Bible. He therefore invited
scholars from everywhere; even some Orientals are said to have shared in
the work. The leading man, the chairman of the Committee for the
revision of the Bible, as we should say at present, was Alcuin, a monk
from England, who by his great learning had won the confidence of
Charlemagne and was appointed by him abbot of the famous monastery of
Tours. Here, at the school of Tours, most of the work of revision was
done (Plate IX); through Alcuin's influence the revision was mainly
based on the text current in England. That this was the best text
available at that time is now generally acknowledged by all competent
scholars. This was not so in Charlemagne's time; other scholars,
Frankish bishops, disapproved of Alcuin's work. They thought the
revision would have come out much better if conducted according to the
text prevailing in Spain. So Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, issued a
version of his own (Plate X). It is always instructive to see how men
were the same in former times as they are now: scholars seldom agree one
with another. The result was that henceforth two forms of the Latin
Bible were used through the next centuries--in the North, Alcuin's
revision, in the South, the revision made by Theodulf.
[Illustration: PLATE IX--ALCUIN'S BIBLE
(Brit. Mus. add. 10546)
Written at Tours, soon after Alcuin's death: a very good example
of fine Carolingian minuscule. The lines are of equal length.
From F. G. Kenyon, "Fac-similes of Biblical Manuscripts." By
permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.]