and military power; though its indignation and censures were less against personal wickedness than heresy of opinion, toward which it was inexorable and remorseless, a good effect arose from these assumptions upon domestic life, particularly as regards the elevation of the female sex. The power thus arising was reinforced by a continually-increasing rigour in the application of penitential punishments. As in the course. of years the intellectual basis on which that power rested became more doubtful, and therefore more open to attack, the Roman Papacy became more sensitive and more exacting. Pushed on thropomor- by the influence of the lower population, it fell into the depths of anthropomorphism, asserting for the Virgin and the saints such attributes as omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. Everywhere present, they could always listen to prayer, and, if necessary, control or arrest the course of Nature. As it was certain that such doctrines must in the end be overthrown, the inevitable day was put off by an instant and vindictive repression of any want of conformity. Despotism in the state and despotism in the Church were upheld by despotism over thought. Church an phized, And necessarily becoming in tolerant. Origin of the alliance of the Pa pacy and France. Military results of wars. From the acts of Pope Gregory the Great, and his organization of the ideas of his age, the paganization of religion in Italy and its alliance with art, I have now to turn to the second topic to which this Chapter is devoted,—the relations assumed by the Papacy with the kings of France, by which the work of Gregory was consolidated and upheld, and diffused all over Europe. The armies of the Saracens had wrested from Christendom the Arabian the western, southern, and eastern countries of the Mediterranean; their fleets dominated in that sea. Ecclesiastical policy had undergone a revolution. Carthage, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, had disappeared from the Christian system; their bishops had passed away. Alone of the great episcopal seats, Constantinople and Rome were left. To all human appearance, their fall seemed to be only a question of time. Independence of The disputes of the Bishop of Rome with his African and the Pope. Asiatic rivals had thus come to an untimely end. With them nothing more remained to be done; his communications with the emperor at Constantinople were at the sufferance of the Mohammedan navies. The imperial power was paralysed. The Pope was forced by events into isolation; he converted it into independence. But independence! how was it to be asserted and maintained? In Italy itself the Lombards seemed to be firmly seated, but they were Arian heretics. Their presence and power were incompatible with his. Already, in a political sense, he was at their mercy. One movement alone was open to him; and, whether he rightly understood his position or not, the stress of events forced him to take it. It was an alliance with the Franks, who had successfully resisted the Mohammedan power, and who were orthodox. of his alli the Franks. An ambitious Frank officer had resolved to deprive his sove- Conditions reign of the crown if the Pope would sanctify the deed. They ance with came to an understanding. The usurpation was consummated by the one and consecrated by the other. It was then the interest of the intrusive line of monarchs to magnify their Italian confederate. In the spread of Roman principles lay the consolidation of the new Frankish power. It became desirable to compel the ignorant German tribes to acknowledge in the Pope the vicegerent of God, even though the sword must be applied to them for that purpose for thirty years. The Pope revolted against his Byzantine sovereign on the question of images; but that was a fictitious issue. He did not revolt against his new ally, who fell into the same heresy. He broke away from a weak and cruel master, and attached himself on terms of equality to a confederate. But from the first his eventual ascendency was assured. The representative of a system that is immortal must finally gain supremacy over individuals and families, who must die. sion of Though we cannot undervalue the labours of the monks, The converwho had already nominally brought many portions of Europe Europe. to Christianity, the passage of the centre of the Continent to its age of faith was, in an enlarged political sense, the true issue of the empire of the Franks. The fiat of Charlemagne VOL. I. 2 A tion. put a stamp upon it which it bears to this day. He converted an ecclesiastical fiction into a political fact. Three To understand this important event, it is necessary to depoints for considera- scribe, 1st, the psychical state of Central Europe; 2nd, the position of the pontiff and his compact with the Franks. It is also necessary to determine the actual religious value of the system he represents, and this is best done through, 3rd, the biography of the Popes. The psychical change 1st. As with the Arabs, so with the barbarians of Europe. of Europe. They pass from their age of credulity to their age of faith without dwelling long in the intermediate state of inquiry. An age of inquiry implies self-investigation, and the absence of an authoritative teacher. But the Arabs had had the Nestorians and the Jews, and to the Germans the lessons of the monks were impressively demonstrated by the convincing argument of the sword of Charlemagne. Labours and successes of the monks. devout women. The military invasions of the south by the barbarians were retaliated by missionary invasions of the north. The aim of the former was to conquer, that of their antagonists to convert, if antagonists those can be called who sought to turn them from their evil ways. The monk penetrated through their most gloomy forests unarmed and defenceless; he found his way alone to their fortresses. Nothing touches the heart of a saInfluence of vage so profoundly as the greatness of silent courage. Among the captives taken from the south in war were often high-born women of great beauty and purity of mind, and sometimes even bishops, who, true to their religious principles, did not fail to exert a happy and a holy influence on the tribes among Conversion whom their lot was cast. One after another the various naof Europe. tions submitted: the Vandals and Gepidæ, in the fourth century; the Goths, somewhat earlier; the Franks, at the end of the fifth; the Alemanni and Lombards, at the beginning of the sixth; the Bavarians, Hessians, and Thuringians, in the seventh and eighth. Of these, all embraced the Arian form except the Franks, who were converted by the Catholic clergy. In truth, however, these nations were only Christianized upon the surface, their conversion being indicated by little more than their making the sign of the cross. In all these movements women exercised an extraordinary influence: thus, Clotilda, the Queen Among such apostasies it is interesting to recall that of the Conversion of England. inhabitants of Britain, to whom Christianity was first introduced by the Roman legions, and who might boast, in Constantine the Great and his mother Helena, if they were really natives of that country, that they had exercised no little influence on the religion of the world. The biography of Pelagius shows with what acuteness theological doctrines were considered in those remote regions; but, after the decline of Roman affairs, this promising state of things was destroyed, and the clergy driven by the pagan invaders to the inaccessible parts of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The sight of some English children exposed for sale in the slave-market at Rome suggested to Gregory the Great the attempt of reconverting the island. On his assuming the pontificate, he commissioned the monk Augustine for that purpose; and after the usual exertion of female influence in the court of King Ethelbert, by Bertha, his Frankish princess, and the usual vicissitudes of backsliding, the faith gradually won its way throughout the whole country. A little opposition occurred on the part of the ancient clergy, who retained in their fastnesses the traditions of the old times, par Irish and British missionaries. ticularly in regard to Easter. But this at length disappeared; an intercourse sprang up with Rome, and it became common for the clergy and wealthy nobles to visit that city. Displaying the same noble quality which in our own times. characterizes it, British Christianity did not fail to exert a proselytizing spirit. As at the end of the sixth century, Columban, an Irish monk of Banchor, had gone forth as a missionary, passing through France, Switzerland, and beyond the confines of the ancient Roman empire, so about a century later Boniface, an Englishman of Devonshire, repaired to Germany, under a recommendation from the Pope and Charles Martel, and laboured among the Hessians and Saxons, cutting down their sacred oaks, overturning their altars, erecting churches, founding bishoprics, and gaining at last, from the hands of the savages, the crown of martyrdom. In the affinity of their language to those of the countries to which they went, these missionaries from the West found a very great advantage. It is the glory of Pope Formosus, the same whose body underwent a posthumous trial, to have converted the Bulgarians, a people who came from the banks of the Volga. The fact that this event was brought about by a picture representing the judgment-day shows on what trifling circumstances these successes turned. The Slavians were converted by Greek missionaries, and for them the monk Cyril invented an alphabet, as Ulphilas had done for the Goths. The predatory Normans, who plundered the churches in their forays, embraced Christianity on settling in Normandy, as the Goths, in like circumstances, had elsewhere done. The Scandinavians were converted by St. Anschar. Thus, partly by the preaching of missionaries, partly by the example of monks, partly by the influence of females, partly by the sword of the Frankish sovereigns, partly by the great name of Rome, Europe was at last nominally converted. The Influence so-called religious wars of Charlemagne, which lasted for more than thirty years, and which were attended by the atrocities always incident to such undertakings, were doubtless as much, so far as he was concerned, of a political as of a theological nature. They were the embodiment of the understanding that of Charle magne on these events. |