and could be very severe. He had laid a tax on the people of Antioch,
which made them so angry that they rose up in a rage, knocked down the
statues of the emperor and his wife which adorned their public places,
and dragged them about the streets; but as soon as they came to their
senses, they were dreadfully alarmed, knowing that this was an act
of high treason. They, therefore, sent off messengers to entreat the
emperor's pardon; and in the meantime they met constantly in the
churches, fasting and praying that his wrath might be turned away. John,
called Chrysostom, or Golden Mouth, from his beautiful language, was a
Deacon of Antioch, and he preached to the people every day during this
time of suspense, telling them of the sins that had moved God to give
them up to their foolish passion, so as to put them in fear, and lead
them to repentance. One of these sins was vanity, and love of finery and
pleasure; and another was their irreverent behaviour at church. They did
repent heartily; and before the emperor's men had time to do more than
begin to try some of the ringleaders, there came other messengers at
full speed, bringing his promise of pardon.
Love of the sight of chariot races was a great snare to the Greeks.
At Thessalonica, one of the favourite drivers behaved ill, and was
imprisoned by the governor, upon which the people flew out in a fury,
and actually stoned the magistrate to death. In his passion at their
crime, Theodosius sent off soldiers with orders to put them all to
death; and when he grew cool, and despatched orders to stop the
execution of his terrible command, they came too late--the city was in
flames, and the unhappy people, innocent and guilty alike, all lay slain
in the streets. Theodosius was at Milan; and St. Ambrose thought it
right to shut him out from the congregation while he was so deeply
stained with blood. The emperor came to the church door and begged to
be admitted; but the Bishop met him sternly, and turned him back.
Theodosius pleaded that David had sinned, and had been forgiven. "If you
have been like him in sin, be like him in repentance!" said the Bishop;
and this great prince turned humbly away, and went weeping home. Easter
was the regular time for reconciling penitents; and at Christmas the
emperor stayed praying and weeping in his palace till a courtier advised
him to try whether the Bishop would relent. He came to the church, but
Ambrose told him that he could not transgress the laws in his behalf.
At last, however, when he saw the emperor so truly contrite and
broken-hearted, he gave him leave to come in again; and there the first
thing Theodosius did was to fall down on his face, weeping bitterly,
and crying out in David's words, "My soul cleaveth to the dust, quicken
Thou me according to Thy word!" He lay thus humbly through all the
service; nor did he once wear his crown and purple robes till after
several months of patient penitence he was admitted to the blessed Feast
of Pardon. He made a decree that no sentence of death should be executed
till thirty days after it was spoken, so that no more deeds of hasty
passion might be done.
One great happiness of St. Ambrose's life was the conversion of
Augustine. This youth was the son of a good and holy mother, St. Monica;
but he had not been baptized, and he grew up wise in his own conceit,
and loving idle follies and vicious pleasures. For many years he was
led astray by heretical and heathenish fancies; but his faithful mother
prayed for him all the time, and at last had the joy of seeing him
repent with all his heart. He was baptized at Milan; and it is said that
the glorious hymn _Te Deum_ was written by St. Ambrose, and first
sung at his baptism. The hymn, "_Veni Creator_," which is sung in the
Ordination Service, is also said to be by St. Ambrose. Monica and her
son spent a short and peaceful space together; and then she died in
great thankfulness that he had been given to her prayers. He spent many
years as Bishop of Hippo, in Africa, and wrote numerous books, which
have come down to our day. One is called the City of God, so as exactly
to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah, that the Church should so be called by
the descendants of those who had afflicted her. St. Martin, a soldier,
who once gave half his cloak to a beggar, and afterwards became a
Bishop, completed the conversion of Gaul at this time, and was buried
at Tours. St. Chrysostom likewise left many sermons and comments on the
Holy Scripture. He was made Patriarch of Constantinople, but he suffered
many things there, for the wife of the Emperor Arcadius, son of the good
Theodosius, hated him for rebuking her love of finery, and her passion
for racing shows, and persuaded her husband to send him into exile in
his old age, to a climate so cold, that he died in consequence. The
beautiful collect called by his name comes from the Liturgy which was
used in his time in his Church at Constantinople; but it is not certain
whether he actually was the author thereof.
LESSON XXVIII.
THE TEUTON NATIONS.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a leaven, which a woman took and hid
in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened."--_Matt_. xiii.
33.
The miry clay which Nebuchadnezzar saw mixed with the iron of Rome, had
by the end of the fourth century nearly overcome the strong metal, and
the time had come when the great horn of the devouring beast was to be
broken off, and give place to ten others. The Romans for the last two
hundred years had been growing more and more selfish and easy in their
habits; and instead of fighting their own battles, had called in
strangers to fight for them, till these strangers became too strong
for them. The nations to whom these hired soldiers belonged, were the
forefathers of most of the present people of Europe. They were called
Teutons altogether, and lived in the northern parts of Europe. They were
tall, fair, large people, very brave and spirited, with much honour and
truth, though apt to be savage and violent; and they showed more respect
to their women than any of the heathens did. They had many gods, of whom
Odin, who left his name to the fourth day of the week, was the chief and
father. Freya, the Earth, was his wife, and Thor was Thunder. There was
a story of Baldur, a good and perfect one, who died by the craft of
Lok the Destroyer, and yet still lived. This seemed like a copy of the
truth; and so did the story of Lok himself, the power of evil, with a
serpent on his brow, who lay chained, and yet could walk forth over the
earth, and whose pale daughter, Hela, was the gaoler of the unworthy
dead. They thought the brave who died in battle had the happiest lot
their rude fancies could devise; they lived in the Hall of Odin, hunting
all day, feasting all night, and drinking mead from the skulls of their
conquered enemies.
The tribe called Goths, who lived near the Romans, and who took their
pay and entered their armies, learnt the Christian faith readily; but
unfortunately, it was through Arians that they received it, and those
farther off continued to worship Odin. The great Theodosius left his
empire parted between his two sons, Arcadius in the east, Honorius in
the west. Both were young, weak, and foolish. They quarrelled with the
great Gothic chief, Alaric, who began to overrun their dominions, and at
last threatened Rome so much, that Honorius was forced to call home all
his soldiers to protect himself.
The first province thus left bare of troops, was Britain, which remained
a prey to the savage Scots, and then was conquered by the Saxons and
Angles, two of the heathen tribes of Teutons, who seemed for a time
quite to have put out the light of Christianity in their part of the
island. The Britons in the Welsh hills, however, still continued a free
and Christian people; and Patrick, a noble young Roman, who had once
been made captive by the wild Irish, and set to feed their sheep, no
sooner grew up than he went back to preach the Gospel to them, and
deliver them from a worse bondage than they had made him suffer. So many
did he convert, and such zealous Christians were they, that Ireland used
to be called the Isle of Saints; and it has never forgotten the trefoil,
or shamrock leaf, by which St. Patrick taught his converts to enter into
the great mystery, how Three could yet be One.
In the meantime Alaric marched against Rome. Once he was beaten back,
and Honorius celebrated the victory by the last Roman triumph ever held,
and after it, by the last of the shows of righting slaves. A monk sprung
into the amphitheatre while it was going on, and, in the name of Christ,
forbade the death of a gladiator who had been wounded, and was to have
been killed. The people, in a rage, stoned the good man; but they were
so much ashamed, that these shocking entertainments were given up for
ever. Rome never won another victory. Alaric came on again; and though
he honoured the noble city so much, that he could not bear to let loose
his wild troops on it, the false dealing of Honorius at last made him so
angry, that he led his Goths into the city; but he was very merciful,
he ordered that no one should be killed, and no church injured nor
plundered; and he led his army out again at the end of six days.
Honorius had fled to Ravenna, and though a few more weak and foolish men
called themselves Emperors of the West, the very title soon passed away,
and the chief part of Italy was held by the Goths and other Teuton
tribes; but they seldom came to Rome, where the chief power gradually
fell into the hands of the Pope.
Gaul was conquered by another Teuton race called Franks, who were very
fierce heathen at first, but were afterwards converted. Their great
leader, Clovis, married a Teuton lady named Clotilda, a Catholic
Christian. She was very anxious to lead him to the truth; and at last,
in a great battle, he called out in prayer to Clotilda's God; and when
the victory was given to him, he took it as a sign from Heaven, and on
coming home was baptized, and built the Church of Notre Dame at Paris,
which is said to be just as long as the distance to which King Clovis
could pitch an axe.
Spain was conquered by a set of Arian Goths; but a Frank princess, great
grandchild to Clotilda, brought her husband, the young prince, to a
better way of thinking; and though they were persecuted, even to the
death, their influence told upon the rest of the family; and the younger
brother, who came to the throne afterwards, brought all Spain to be
Catholic.
It was something like this with England, where Bertha, another Frank
princess, worked upon her husband, Ethelbert, King of Kent, to listen to
Augustin, whom Pope Gregory the Great had sent to preach the Word to the
Saxons, recollecting how he had once been struck by the angel faces of
the little Angle children, whom he had found waiting to be sold for
slaves in the marketplace. From Kent, the sound of the Gospel spread out
throughout England; and before one hundred years had passed, all the
Saxons and Angles were hearty Christians, and sent out the missionary,
St. Boniface, who first converted the Teutons in Germany. So, though
it would have seemed that the great rush of heathen savages must have
stifled the Christian faith, it came working up through them, till at
last it moulded their whole state and guided their laws; but this was
long in coming to pass, and for many centuries they were very savage and
fierce.
St. Gregory the Great was one of the very best of the Popes, very
self-denying, and earnestly pious, and doing his utmost to train the
Romans in self-discipline, and to soften the Teutons. He put together
a book of seven services, to be used by devout people in the course of
each day; and he arranged the chants which are still called by his name,
though both they and the services are much older. A little before his
time, St. Benedict had made rules for the persons who wished to serve
God, and to live apart from the world. They lived in buildings named
monasteries, or convents; the men, who were called monks, under the
rule of an abbot, the women, nuns, under an abbess. They took a vow of
poverty, chastity, and obedience; lived and worked as hard as possible,
and spent much time in prayer and doing good, teaching the young, giving
medicine to the sick, and feeding the poor. They would fix their home in
a waste land, and bring it into good order, and they went out preaching
and convening the heathen near. Everyone honoured them; and in the worst
times, they were left unhurt; their lands were not robbed, and in those
savage days, little that was gentle or good would have been safe but for
the honour paid to the Church.
LESSON XXIX.
MAHOMET.
"God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie."--2
_Thess_. ii. 11.
The Eastern Empire was not broken up like the Western. The emperors
reigned at Constantinople in great state and splendour, in palaces lined
with porphyry and hung with purple, and filled with gold and silver. The
Greeks of the east had faults the very contrary to those of the Teutons
of the west. Instead of being ignorant, rude, and savage, they were
learned, courtly, and keen-witted; but their sharpness was a snare to
them, for what they were afraid to do by force, they did by fraud, and
their word was not to be trusted. In matters of faith too, they were too
fond of talking philosophy, and explaining away the hidden mysteries of
God; so there sprang up sad heresies among them, chiefly respecting the
two Natures of our blessed Lord; and though there were councils of the
Church held, and the truth was plainly set forth, yet great numbers were
led away from Catholic truth.
Long ago, the Lord of the Church had warned the Churches of Asia by His
last Apostle, that if they should fall from their first faith, He would
remove their candlestick--that is, take away the light of His Gospel.
The first warning they had was, when the Persians broke out in great
force, came to the Holy Land, robbed the churches at Jerusalem, and
carried away the true Cross, which had been put in a gold case, and
buried under ground in hopes of preserving it. They afterwards went
on to the very banks of the Bosphorus, and seemed likely to take
Constantinople itself; but the emperor, Heraclius, who had hitherto been
very dull and sleepy, suddenly woke up to a sense of the danger, and
proved himself an able warrior, hunting the Persians back into their own
country, and rescuing the Cross, which he carried up the hill of Calvary
again upon his own shoulders.
But a worse foe was growing up among the wild sons of Ishmael in Arabia.
Nobody can tell what kind of religion these wandering tribes had in
the old times, except that they honoured their father, Abraham, still
circumcised their sons, and believed in one God, though they paid some
sort of worship to a black stone, which was kept at Mecca. Some bad
learnt a little Christianity, some had picked up some notions from the
Jews; but they cared for hardly anything, except their camels, horses,
and tents, and had small thought beyond this life. Among these men there
arose, about the year 600, a person named Mahomet. He had at first been
servant to a rich widow, whom he afterwards married. Either he fancied,
or persuaded others that he believed, that the angel Gabriel spoke to
him in a trance, and told him that he was chosen as a great prophet, to
announce the will of God, and restore the faith to what it had been in
Abraham's days. He caused all that he pretended to have been told by the
angel, to be set down in writings, which were called the Koran, meaning
the Book, the first sentence of which was, "There is no God but one God,
and Mahomet is His prophet." Mahomet blasphemously pretended to be as
much greater a prophet than our Lord, as our Lord was than Moses. He
ordered prayers and fastings and washings at set times, forbade the
least drop of wine to be touched, and commanded that not only no image
should be adored, but that no likeness of any created thing should
exist, promising that all who strictly obeyed all these rules, should be
led safely over a bridge, consisting of a single hair, and enter into a
delicious garden, full of fruits, flowers, and fountains, there to be
waited on by beautiful women. He gave men leave to have four wives, and
did nothing to teach them real love, purity, or devotion; and thus his
religion suited the bad side of their nature, and he persuaded great
numbers to join him. Indeed no unbeliever is so hard to convert as a
Mahometan.
Some of the Arabs being offended at the new teaching, wanted to put
him to death; and he fled from his home at Mecca. On his way he was so
closely pursued as to be forced to hide in a cave. His enemies were just
going to search the cave, when they saw a spider's web over the mouth,
and fancied this was a sign that no one could have lately entered it,
so they passed by and left him safely concealed. In his anger at this
persecution, be declared that the duty of a true Mahometan was to spread
his religion with the sword; and calling his friends round him, they
fought so bravely that he won back Mecca, and conquered the whole of
Arabia. They did not persecute Christians, but they kept them down and
despised them; and any Mahometan who changed his religion, was always
put to death. Mahomet called himself Khalif, and ruled for ten years
at Mecca, where he died and was buried. Mahometans go on pilgrimage to
Mecca, and always turn their faces thither when they pray at sunrise
or sunset, throwing water over themselves, or sand if they cannot get
water.
The Khalifs who came after Mahomet, went on conquering. The chief tribe
of the Arabs was called Saracens; and this was the name given to the
whole race whom God had sent to punish the Christian world. The Holy
City itself, and all the sacred spots, were permitted to fall into their
hands; and though they did not profane the churches, the Khalif Omar
built a great mosque, or Mahometan place of worship, where the Temple
had once been, so as quite to overshadow the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre.
They conquered Persia, and spread their religion through that country,
putting down the fire worshippers; they seized almost all Asia Minor,
where the heretical Christians too easily became Mahometans, and they
obtained possession of Egypt, and the great library at Alexandria, where
they burnt all the collection of books, because they said, "If they
taught the same as the Koran, they were useless, if otherwise, they were
mischievous." Then from Egypt they spread all along the north coast of
Africa, where the Roman dominion had once been, and were only grieved
that the waves of the Atlantic Ocean kept them from going further to the
west.
In Spain the Gothic king, Rodrigo, mortally offended one of his nobles,
who, in revenge, called in the Saracens to punish him; and the whole
kingdom fell a prey to these Mahometan conquerors, except one little
mountainous strip in the north, where the brave Christians drew
together, and fought gallantly for their Church and their freedom
through many centuries. It almost seemed as if these terrible Saracens,
who bore everything down before them, were intended to conquer all
Europe, and crush down the Church there as they had done in the east;
but God was with His people, and He raised up a great warrior among the
Christian Franks. Charles Martel, or Charles of the Hammer, so called,
because he always went into battle with a heavy iron hammer, led the
Franks against the Saracens, when they came up into the South of France;
and in the year 732 gave them at Tours the first real defeat they had
yet met with. It turned them back completely, and they never came north
of the Pyrenees again; but all over the west of Asia and north of
Africa, the first places where Christianity had spread, the heavy dark
cloud of Mahometanism settled down, and has never been removed.
LESSON XXX.
THE FIRST SCHISM.
"While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat."
--_St. Matt._ xiii. 25
Is the West there was no heresy as there was in the East. The simple
Teutons believed what they were taught, and grew softened by little and
little, as their clergy gained more influence over them. The clergy were
usually bred up in the convents, and there read the good old books which
had come down from learned times, St. Jerome's Latin Bible, and the
writings of the holy Fathers of the Church, from St. Clement, the friend
of St. Paul, down to St. Gregory the Great. Each monastery had a few
of such books, as well as of the Liturgy, or Communion Service, and
Breviary, or Daily Service; and they were worth much more than their
weight in gold. The monks used to copy them out, and adorn the borders
and first letters of the chapters with beautiful colours and gilding;
but such writing took a long time, and when it was done, few but the
clergy could read. Except the clergy, only such persons as were partly
Roman by birth had any notion of Latin, or cared to read at all; and so
changed were things now that the new race were the conquerors, that to
be a Roman was thought quite contemptible, and in France there was a
less heavy punishment for killing a Roman than for killing a Frank. The
fierce Teuton nobles thought nothing but war worth their attention, and
yet they were very devout, and would weep bitterly over their sins. They
gave richly to churches, founded convents, and paid great honour to
clergymen, and to everything belonging to religion.
Sometimes this honour began to run into idolatry. They treated relics,
that is, remains, or things that had belonged to holy persons, as having
some sacredness of their own, and fancied that they would save him who
carried them from harm. And when they glorified God for His saints in
Heaven, and thought of the Communion of saints, they began to entreat
their prayers, and the more ignorant would even pray to the saints
themselves, as if they could by their own power grant the things that
were asked. The blessed Virgin was more sought in this manner than any
other saint. The pictures and images of saints, and the crucifix
or figure of our blessed Lord on His Cross, which stood in all the
churches, often had lights burning before them, and people kneeling
round in prayer, till there was danger that, in their ignorance,
they might be bowing down to the likeness, and breaking the Second
Commandment.
One of the Greek emperors named Leo, was much displeased at this
practice, and tried to put a stop to it. There was a great uproar at
Constantinople, and many profane things were done and said, which
shocked the western branch of the Church. At last the Greeks made a rule
that there might be pictures of sacred subjects in their churches, but
no images, and to this they have kept ever since. The Latins would not
agree to this, and kept both images and pictures; and thus began a
feeling of distrust between the two branches.