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EUKOPEAN   MORALS. 

VOL.  II. 


s& 


\&» 


HISTOKY 


OF 


EUROPEAN    MORALS 


FROM 


AUGUSTUS  TO  CHARLEMAGNE. 


BY 


WILLIAM  EDWARD  HARTPOLE  LECKY,  MA. 


IN    TWO    VOLUMES. 


YOL.  IL 


3 


A 


y 


\\y\  i 


\ 


NEW  YOEK: 
D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY, 

649    &    551    BROADWAY. 
1871. 


MICROFORMED  BY 

PRESERVATION 

SERVICES 

DATE.. 


HI 
L4- 


4 


CONTENTS 

OF 

THE     SECOND     VOLUME. 
CHAPTER  IV. 

FROM   CONSTANTINE    TO   CHARLEMAGNE. 


PAGH 


Difference  between  the  moral  teaching  of  a  philosophy  and  that 

of  a  religion      .........  1 

Moral  efficacy  of  the  Christian  sense  of  sin     .                  .         .  3 

Dark  views  of  human  nature  not  common  in  the  early  Church  5 

The  penitential  system           .......  7 

Admirable   efficacy   of  Christianity  in    eliciting  disinterested 

enthusiasm        .........  0 

Great  purity  of  the  early  Christians        .         .         .         .         .12 

The  promise  of  the  Church  for  many  centuries  falsified  .  .  13 
General  sketch  of  the  moral  condition  of  the  Byzantine  and 

Western  Empires       .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .13 

The  question  to  be  examined  in  this  chapter  is,  the  cause  of 

this  comparative  failure      .......  18 

First  Consequence  of  Christianity,  a  new  Sense  of  the  Sanctity  of 
Human  Life 
This  sense  only  very  gradually  acquired  .         .         .         .19 

Abortion. — Infanticide  ...... 

Care  of  exposed  children. — History  of  foundling  hospitals 

Suppression  of  the  gladiatorial  shows 

Aversion  to  capital  punishments     .... 

Its  effect  upon  persecutions  • 

Penal  code  not  lightened  by  Christianity 

Suicide         ........ 


22 

34 
37 
41 
43 
44 
46-G5 


Second  Consequence  of  Christianity,  to  teach  Universal  Brother- 
hood 
Laws  concerning  slavery        .        •         •         •         •         •         •       6G 


vi  CONTENTS  OF 

PAGB 

The  Church  discipline  and  services  brought  master  and  slave 

together 70 

Consecration  of  the  servile  virtues 72 

Impulse  given  to  manumission 73 

Serfdom 74 

»m  of  captives 76 

Charity. — Measures  of  the  Pagans  for  the  relief  of  the  poor     .  78 

Noble  enthusiasm  of  the  Christians  in  the  cause  of  charity        .  84 

Their  exertions  when  the  Empire  was  subverted     ...  87 

Inadequate  place  given  to  this  movement  in  history         .         .  90 

Two   Qualifications  to   our  Admiration   of  the   Charity   of  the 
C hurr  J i 
Theological  notions  concerning  insanity .         .  .         .91 

History  of  lunatic  asylums    .......       94 

Indiscriminate  almsgiving. — The  political  economy  of  charity  .       9G 

Injudicious  charity  often  beneficial  to  the  donor      .         .         .101 

ry  of  the  modifications  of  the  old  views  about  charity      .     102 

Beneficial  effect  of  the  Church  in  supplying  pure  images  to  the 
imagination       .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .105 

Summary  of  the  philanthropic  achievements  of  Christianity      .     107 


The  Growth  of  Asceticism 

Causes  of  the  ascetic  movement 108 

Its  rapid  extension 112 

The  Saints  of  the  Desert 

General  characteristics  of  their  legends  .  .  •  •  .114 
Astounding  penances  attributed  to  the  saints  .  .  .  .114 
Miseries  and  joys  of  the  hermit  life. — Dislike  to  knowledge  .     121 

Hallucinations 12 1 

The  relations  of  female  devotees  with  the  anchorites        .         .     127 
libtcy  was  made  the  primal  virtue. — Effects  of  this  upon 
moral  teaching  .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .180 

Gloomy  hue  imparted  to  religion 130 

ong  assertion  of  freewill    .         .         .         .         .         .         .131 

Depreciation  of  the  qualities  that  accompany  a  strong  physical 

iperament 131 

Destruction  of  the  domestic  virtues. — Inhumanity  of  saint3  to 

m 182 

En<  :y  hading  theologians         .....     189 

r  instances  of  the  same  kind 148 

logical  animosity 146 

Decline  of  the  Civic  Virtues 

of  Christianity  to  patriotism         .          .     149 
ence  of  the  former  to  hastening  the  fall  of  the  Empire         .     151 
i  inent  difference  between  ancient  and  modern  societies  in 
the  matter  of  patriotism 153 


THE  SECOND  VOLUME.  Tii 

PAGE 

Influence  of  this  change  on  moral  philosophy  ....  155 
Historians  exaggerate  the  importance  of  civic  virtues       .         .     156 

General  Moral  Condition  of  the  Byzantine  Empire 

Stress  laid  by  moralists  on  trivial  matters       .         .         .         .157 

Corruption  of  the  clergy 159 

Childishness  and  vice  of  the  populace  .  .  .  .  .  162 
The  better  aspects  of  the  Empire  .  163 

Distinctive  Excellencies  of  the  Ascetic  Period 

Asceticism  the  great  school  of  self-sacrifice      .         .         .         .164 

Moral  beauty  of  some  of  the  legends 166 

Legends  of  the  connection  between  men  and  animals  produced 

humanity  to  the  latter       .         .         .         .         .         .         .171 

Pagan  legends  of  the  intelligence  of  animals    .         .         .         .171 

Legal  protection  of  animals  .         .         .         .         .         .         .178 

Traces  of  humanity  to  animals  in  the  Koman  Empire        .         .     174 
Taught  by  the  Pythagoreans  and  Plutarch     .         .         .         .176 

The  first  influence  of  Christianity  not  favourable  to  it  .  .  177 
Legends  in  the  lives  of  the  saints  connected  with  animals  .     178 

Progress  in  modern  times  of  humanity  to  animals  .  .  .184 
The  ascetic  movement  in  the  West  took  practical  forms  .  .188 
Attitude  of  the  Church  to  the  barbarians. — Conversion  of  the 

latter 190 

Christianity  adulterated  by  the  barbarians. — Legends  of  the 

conflict  between  the  old  gods  and  the  new  faith  .         .         .192 

Monachism 

Causes  of  its  attraction 194 

New  value  placed  on  obedience  and  humility. — Results  of  this 
change 196 

Relation  of  Monachism  to  the  Intellectual  Virtues 

Propriety  of  the  expression  '  intellectual  virtue '      .         .         .  200 
The.  love  of  abstract  truth     .         .         ...         .         .         .200 

The   notion   of  the   guilt   of   error,  considered   abstractedly, 

absurd 202 

Some  error,  however,  due  to  indolence  or  voluntary  partiality  203 

And  some  to  the  unconscious  bias  of  a  corrupt  nature     .         .  204 

The  influence  of  scepticism  on  intellectual  progress  .  .  205 
The  Church  always  recognised  the  tendency  of  character  to 

govern  opinion           . 206 

Total  destruction  of  religious  liberty 206 

1/   The  Monasteries  the  Receptacles  of  Learning 

Preservation  of  classical  literature. — Manner  in  which  it  wras 

regarded  by  the  Church 212 

Charm  of  monkish  scholarship  .  .  -  .  .  .216 
The  monasteries  not  on  the  whole  favourable  io  knowledge      .     218 


viii  CONTENTS  OF 

FAGB 

were  rather  the  reservoirs  than  the  creators  of  literature  221 
Uniting  to  the  monasteries  the  genius  that  was 

displayed  in  theology         .......  221 

Other  fallacies  concerning  the  services  of  the  monks         .         .  222 

ine  of  the  love  of  truth  .......  225 

Value  which  the  monks  attached  to  pecuniary  compensations 

for  crime 226 

Doctriue  of  future  torment  much   elaborated  as  a  means  of 

rting  money •  232 

us  of  hell 233 

r  Lombard 240 

treme  superstition  and  terrorism         .....  241 

Purgatory    . 246 

Moral  Condition  of  Weste?m  Europe 

Scanty  historical  literature 249 

cious  crimes  ...          ......  250 

The  seventh  century  the  age  of  saints     .....  253 

Manner  in  which  characters  were  estimated  illustrated  by  the 

account  of  Clovis  in  Gregory  of  Tours         ....  254 

conferred  by  the  monasteries     .         .         .         .         .257 

ionary  labours 261 

Growth  of  a  Military  and  an  Aristocratic  Spirit 

j.athy  of  the  early  Christians  to  military  life    .         .         .  262 
The  belief  that  battle  was  the  special  sphere  of  Providential 

interposition  consecrated  it         .....  264 

Military  habits  of  the  barbarians  ......  265 

Military  triumphs  of  Mahommedanism  .....  266 

Legends  protesting  against  military  Christianity      .         .         .  268 

iew  of  the  influence  of  Christianity  upon  war    .         .         .  269 

^/Consecration  of  Secular  Ranh 

The  Pagan  Empire  became  continually  more  despotic       .         .  275 
18  taught  passive  obedience  in  temporal,  but 

indfjMndencc  in  religious  matters        .....  270 

their  policy  much  governed  by  their  interests  276 

hnrch  towards  Julian i?77 

ry  the  Great  towards  Phocas      ....  279 
i  lergy  soon  sank   into  submission  to  the  civil 

power 281 

; endence  of  the   Western  clergy. — Compact   of  Leo  and 

pin 282 

t  of  monachism  on  the  doctrine  of  bedience 

■  ' 286 

Fascination  exercised  by  Charlemagne  over  the  popular  imagi- 
nation        287 

..■!  the  ideal  of  greatness         .         .  289 

Conclusion 290 


THE  SECOND  VOLUME.  ix 

CHAPTER  V. 
THE    POSITION    OP   WOMEN. 

PAGB 

Importance  and  difficulties  of  this  branch  of  history       .         .291 
Women  in  savage  life    .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .292 

First  stage  of  progress  the  cessation  of  the  sale  of  wives. — Rise 

of  the  dowry 292 

Second  stage  the  establishment  of  monogamy  .  .  .  294 
Women  in  the  poetic  age  of  Greece  .  .  .  .  .295 
Women  in  the  historical  age  ranked  lower. — Difficulty  of  real- 
ising the  Greek  feelings  on  the  subject  ....  297 
Nature  of  the  problem  of  the  relations  of  the  sexes  .  .299 
Recognition  in  Greece  of  two  distinct  orders  of  womanhood  .  303 
Position  of  the  Greek  wives 303 

The  Courtesans 

Elevated  by  the  worship  of  Aphrodite 308 

And  by  the  aesthetic  enthusiasm     .         .         .         .         .         .309 

And  by  the  unnatural  forms  Greek  vice  assumed    .         .         .311 
General  estimate  of  Greek  public  opinion  concerning  women  .     312 

Roman  Public  Opinion  much  purer 

The  flamens  arid  the  vestals  .         .         .         .         .         .         .315 

Position  of  women  during  the  Republic          ....  31G 

Dissolution  of  manners  at  the  close  of  the  Republic          .         .  320 

Indisposition  to  marriage        .......  322 

Legal  emancipation  of  women         .         .         .         .         .  322 

Unbounded  liberty  of  divorce.  —  Its  consequences   .         .         .  324 
Amount  of  female  virtue  which  still  subsisted  in  Rome  .         .  326 
Legislative  measures  to  enforce  female  virtue          .         .         .  330 
Moralists  begin  to  enforce  the  reciprocity  of  obligation  in  mar- 
riage          330 

And  to  censure  prostitution. — Egyptian  views  of  chastity          •  334 

Christian  Influence 

Laws  of  the  Christian  emperors     ......     335 

Effects  of  the  penitential  discipline,  and  of  the  examples  of  the 

martyrs 336 

Legends       .         .         . 337 

Asceticism  greatly  degraded  marriage    .....     339 
Disapproval  of  second  marriages. — History  of  the  opinions  of 

Pagans  and  Christians  on  the  subject .....     343 
The  celibacy  of  the  clergy. — History  and  effects  of  this  doc- 
trine       .         . •         .347 

Asceticism  produced  a  very  low  view  of  the  character  of  wo- 
men.— Jewish  opinions  on  this  point  ....     357 
The    canon    law   unfavourable   to   the   proprietary  rights   of 
women     ..........     359 


>        CONTENTS  OF  THE  SECOND  VOLUME. 

FAOB 

The   barbarian   invasions   assisted   the    Church   in   purifying 

morals 360 

Barbarian  heroines         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .361 

Long  continuance  of  polygamy  among  the  Kings  of  Gaul         .  363 

Laws  of  the  barbarians ........  364 

Strong  Christian   assertion   of  the   equality  of  obligation   in 

marriage           .          ........  365 

This  doctrine  has  not  retained  its  force 366 

Condemnation  of  transitory  connections. — Roman  concubines  .  367 

A  religious  ceremony  slowly  made  an  essential  in  marriage      .  372 

Condemnation  of  divorce       .......  372 

Compulsory  marriage  abolished      ......  374 

Condemnation   of    mixed   marriages. — Domestic   unhappiness 
caused  by  theologians .374 

Relation  of  Christianity  to  the  Feminine  Virtues 

Comparison  of  male  and  female  characteristics         .         .         .379 
The  Pagan  ideal   essentially  masculine. — Its  contrast  to  the 

Christian  ideal 382 

Conspicuous  part  of  women  in  the  early  Church     .         .         .385 
Deaconesses  .........     387 

Widows 387 

Reverence  bestowed  on  the  Virgin 389 

At  the  Reformation  the  feminine  type  remained  with  Catho- 
licism  389 

The  conventual  system          .        •        •        •        .        .        .391 
Conclusion •        •        .        .        .    392 


HISTORY 

OF 


EUROPEAN     MORALS, 


CHAPTER  IV. 

FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE. 

Having  in  the  last  chapter  given  a  brief,  but  I  trust  not 
altogether  indistinct  account  of  the  causes  that  ensured 
the  triumph  of  Christianity  in  Eome,  and  of  the  character 
of  the  opposition  it  overcame,  I  proceed  to  examine  the 
nature  of  the  moral  ideal  the  new  religion  introduced,  and 
also  the  methods  by  which  it  attempted  to  realise  it. 
And  at  the  very  outset  of  this  enquiry  it  is  necessary  to 
guard  against  a  serious  error.  It  is  common  with  many 
persons  to  establish  a  comparison  between  Christianity 
and  Paganism,  by  placing  the  teaching  of  the  Christians 
in  juxtaposition  with  corresponding  passages  from  the 
writings  of  Marcus  Aurelius  or  Seneca,  and  to  regard  the 
superiority  of  the  Christian  over  the  philosophical  teach- 
ing as  a  complete  measure  of  the  moral  advance  that  was 
effected  by  Christianity.  But  a  moment's  reflection  is 
sufficient  to  display  the  injustice  of  such  a  conclusion. 
The  ethics  of  Paganism  were  part  of  a  philosophy.  The 
ethics  of  Christianity  were  part  of  a  religion.     The  first 


2  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

were  the  speculations  of  a  few  highly  cultivated  indivi- 
duals, and  neither  had  nor  could  have  had  any  direct  in- 
fluence upon  the  masses  of  mankind.  The  second  were 
indissolubly  connected  with  the  worship,  hopes,  and  fears 
of  a  vast  religious  system,  that  acts  at  least  as  powerfully 
on  the  most  ignorant  as  on  the  most  educated.  The  ob- 
jects  of  the  Pagan  systems  were  to  foretell  the  future,  to 
explain  the  universe,  to  avert  calamity,  to  obtain  the 
assistance  of  the  gods.  They  contained  no  instruments 
of  moral  teaching  analogous  to  our  institution  of  preach- 
ing, or  to  the  moral  preparation  for  the  reception  of  the 
sacrament,  or  to  confession,  or  to  the  reading  of  the  Bible, 
or  to  religious  education,  or  to  united  prayer  for  spiritual 
benefits.  To  make  men  virtuous  wras  no  more  the  function 
of  the  priest  than  of  the  physician.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
philosophic  expositions  of  duty  were  wholly  unconnected 
with  the  religious  ceremonies  of  the  temple.  To  amalga- 
mate these  two  spheres,  to  incorporate  moral  culture  with 
religion,  and  thus  to  enlist  in  its  behalf  that  desire  to 
enter,  by  means  of  ceremonial  observances,  into  direct 
communication  with  Heaven,  which  experience  has  shown 
to  be  one  of  the  most  universal  and  powerful  passions  of 
mankind,  was  among  the  most  important  achievements 
of  Christianity.  Something  had  no  doubt  been  already 
attempted  in  this  direction.  Philosophy,  in  the  hands  of 
the  rhetoricians,  had  become  more  popular.  The  Pytha- 
goreans enjoined  religious  ceremonies  for  the  purpose  of 
purifying  the  mind,  and  expiatory  rites  were  common, 
especially  in  the  Oriental  religions.  But  it  was  the  dis- 
tinguishing characteristic  of  Christianity,  that  its  moral 
influence  was  pot  indirect,  casual,  remote,  or  spasmodic. 
Unlike  all  Pagan  religions,  it  made  moral  teachings  main 
function  of  its  clergy,  moral  discipline  the  leading  object 
ie8,  moral  dispositions  the  necessary  condition 
of  the  (\ur  performance  of  it-  rites.    By  the  pulpit,  by  its 


FEOM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHAELEMAGNE.  3 

ceremonies,  by  all  the  agencies  of  power  it  possessed,  it 
laboured  systematically  and  perseveringly  for  the  regene- 
ration of  mankind.  Under  its  influence,  doctrines  con- 
cerning the  nature  of  God,  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
and  the  duties  of  men,  which  the  noblest  intellects  of 
antiquity  could  barely  grasp,  have  become  the  truisms  of 
the  village  school,  the  proverbs  of  the  cottage  and  of  the 
alley. 

But  neither  the  beauty  of  its  sacred  writings,  nor  the 
perfection  of  its  religious  services,  could  have  achieved 
this  great  result  without  the  introduction  of  new  motives 
to  virtue^  These  may  be  either  interested  or  disinterested, 
and  in  both  spheres  the  influence  of  Christianity  was 
very  great.  In  the  first,  it  effected  a  complete  revolution 
by  its  teaching  concerning  the  future  world  and  concern- 
ing the  nature  of  sin.  The  doctrine  of  a  future  life  was 
far  too  vague  among  the  Pagans  to  exercise  any  power- 
ful general  influence,  and  among  the  philosophers,  who 
clung  to  it  most  ardently,  it  was  regarded  solely  in  the 
light  of  a  consolation.  Christianity  made  it  a  deterrent 
influence  of  the  strongest  kind.  In  addition  to  the  doc- 
trines of  eternal  suffering,  and  the  lost  condition  of  the 
human  race,  the  notion  of  a  minute  personal  retribution 
must  be  regarded  as  profoundly  original.  That  the  com- 
mission of  great  crimes,  or  the  omission  of  great  duties, 
may  be  expiated  hereafter,  was  indeed  an  idea  familiar 
to  the  Pagans,  though  it  exercised  little  influence  over  their 
lives,  and  seldom  or  never  produced,  even  in  the  case  of 
the  worst  criminals,  those  scenes  of  deathbed  repentance 
which  are  so  conspicuous  in  Christian  biographies.  But 
the  Christian  notion  of  the  enormity  of  little  sins,  the 
belief  that  all  the  details  of  life  will  be  scrutinised  here- 
after, that  weaknesses  of  character  and  petty  infractions  of 


4  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

duty,  of  which  the  historian  and  the  biographer  take  no 
.  which  have  no  perceptible  influence  upon  society, 
and  which  scarcely  elicit  a  comment  among  mankind, 
may  be  made  the  grounds  of  eternal  condemnation  be- 
1  the  grave,  was  altogether  unknown  to  the  ancients, 
and  at  a  time  when  it  possessed  all  the  freshness  of  no- 
velty, it  was  well  fitted  to  transform  the  character.  The 
eye  of  the  Pagan  philosopher  was  ever  fixed  upon  virtue, 
the  eye  of  the  Christian  teacher  upon  sin.  The  first 
sought  to  amend  men  by  extolling  the  beauty  of  holiness ; 
the  second,  by  awakening  the  sentiment  of  remorse. 
Eacli  method  had  its  excellencies  and  its  defects.  Philo- 
sophy w7as  admirably  fitted  to  dignify  and  ennoble,  but 
altogether  impotent  to  regenerate  mankind.  It  did  much 
to  encourage  virtue,  but  little  or  nothing  to  restrain  vice. 
A  relish  and  taste  for  virtue  was  formed  and  cultivated, 
which  attracted  many  to  its  practice  ;  but  in  this,  as  in  the 
case  of  all  our  other  higher  tastes,  a  nature  that  was  once 
thoroughly  vitiated  became  altogether  incapable  of  ap- 
preciating it,  and  the  transformation  of  such  a  nature, 
which  was  continually  effected  by  Christianity,  wras  con- 
fessedly beyond  the  power  of  philosophy.1  Experience  has 
abundantly  shown  that  men  who  are  wholly  insensible  to 
the  beauty  and  dignity  of  virtue,  can  be  convulsed  by 
the  fear  of  judgment,  can  be  even  awakened  to  such  a 
line  remorse  for  sin,  as  to  reverse  the  current  of  their 
dispositions,  detach  them  from  the  most  inveterate  habits, 
and  renew  the  whole  tenor  of  their  lives. 

But  the  habit  of  dilating  chiefly  on  the  darker  side  ot 
human  nature,  while  it  has  contributed  much  to  the  re- 
generating efficacy  of  Christian  teaching,  has  not  been 

1  Tl).  r-   El  ■  iWBttkablfl  passage  of  Celsus,  on  the  impossibility  of  re- 
Dg  a  nature  once  thoroughly  depraved,  quoted  by  Origen  in  his  answer 
to  him 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  6 

without  its  disadvantages.  Habitually  measuring  cha- 
racter by  its  aberrations,  theologians,  in  their  estimates  of 
those  strong  and  passionate  natures  in  which  great  virtues 
are  balanced  by  great  failings,  have  usually  fallen  into  a 
signal  injustice,  which  is  the  more  inexcusable,  because  in 
their  own  writings  the  psalms  of  David  are  a  conspicuous 
proof  of  what  a  noble,  tender,  and  passionate  nature  could 
survive,  even  in  an  adulterer  and  a  murderer.  Partly, 
too,  through  this  habit  of  operating  through  the  sense  of 
sin,  and  partly  from  a  desire  to  show  that  man  is  in  an 
abnormal  and  dislocated  condition,  they  have  continually 
propounded  distorted  and  degrading  views  of  human 
nature,  have  represented  it  as  altogether  under  the  em- 
pire of  evil,  and  have  sometimes  risen  to  such  a  height  of 
extravagance  as  to  pronounce  the  very  virtues  of  the 
heathen  to  be  of  the  nature  of  sin.  But  nothing  can  be 
more  certain  than  that  that  which  is  exceptional  and  dis- 
tinctive in  human  nature  is  not  its  vice,  but  its  excellence. 
It  is  not  the  sensuality,  cruelty,  selfishness,  passion,  or 
envy,  which  are  all  displayed  in  equal  or  greater  degrees 
in  different  departments  of  the  animal  world ;  it  is  that 
moral  nature  which  enables  man  apparently,  alone  of  all 
created  beings,  to  classify  his  emotions,  to  oppose  the 
current  pf  his  desires,  and  to  aspire  after  moral  perfection. 
Nor  is  it  less  certain  that  in  civilised,  and  therefore  deve- 
loped man,  the  good  greatly  preponderates  over  the  evil. 
Benevolence  is  more  common  than  cruelty ;  the  sight  of 
suffering  more  readily  produces  pity  than  joy;  gratitude, 
not  ingratitude,  is  the  normal  result  of  a  conferred  benefit. 
The  sympathies  of  man  naturally  follow  heroism  and 
goodness,  and  vice  itself  is  usually  but  an  exaggeration 
or  distortion  of  tendencies  that  are  in  their  own  nature 
perfectly  innocent. 

But  these   exaggerations  of  human  depravity,  which 


6  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

have  attained  their  extreme  limits  in  some  Protestant 
i  not  appear  in  the  Church  of  the  first  three  cen- 
turies. The  sense  of  the  sin  was  not  yet  accompanied  by 
a  denial  of  the  goodness  that  exists  in  man.  Christianity 
was  regarded  rather  as  a  redemption  from  error  than 
from  sin,1  and  it  is  a  significant  fact  that  the  epithet '  well 
■rving,'  which  the  Pagans  usually  put  upon  their  tombs, 
was  also  the  favourite  inscription  in  the  Christian  cata- 
combs. The  Pelagian  controversy,  the  teaching  of  St. 
Augustine,  and  the  progress  of  asceticism,  gradually  in- 
troduced the  doctrine  of  the  utter  depravity  of  man,  which 
has  proved  in  later  times  the  fertile  source  of  degrading 
superstition. 

In  sustaining  and  defining  the  notion  of  sin,  the  early 
Church  employed  the  machinery  of  an  elaborate  legisla- 
tion. Constant  communion  with  the  Church  was  regarded 
as  of  the  very  highest  importance.  Participation  in  the 
Sacrament  was  believed  to  be  essential  to  eternal  life.  At 
a  very  early  period  it  was  given  to  infants,  and  at  least  as 
early  as  the  time  of  St.  Cyprian  we  find  the  practice  uni- 
versal in  the  Church,  and  pronounced  by  at  least  some  of 
the  Fathers  to  be  ordinarily  necessary  to  their  salvation.2 
Among  the  adults  it  was  customary  to  receive  the  Sacra- 
ment daily,  in  some  churches  four  times  a  week,3     Even 

1  This  is  well  shown  by  Pressense"  in  his  Hist,  des  trots  premiers  Sibcles. 

Bee  a  great  deal  of  information  on  this   subject   in   Bingham's  Anti- 

es  of  the  Christian   Church  (Oxford,  1853),  vol.  v.  pp.  870-878.     It  is 

curious  that  those  very  noisy  contemporary  divines  who  profess  to  re- 

itate  the  manners  of  the  primitive  Church,  and  who  lay  so  much  stress 

mutest  ceremonial  observances,  have  left  unpractised  what  was 

undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  universal,  and  was  believed  to  be  one  of  the 

most  important,  of  the  institutions  of  early  Christianity.    Bingham  shows 

that  the  administration  of  the  Kucharist  to  infants  continued  in  France  till 

the  twelfth  century. 

8  See  Cave's  -  tianity,  pari  i.  ch.  xi.     At  Orel  the  Sacrament 

was  h  •  [red  every  day;  but  this  custom  soon  declined  in  the  Eastern 

Church,  and  at  last  passed  away  in  the  West. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE,  7 

in  the  days  of  persecution  the  only  part  of  their  service 
Christians  consented  to  omit  was  the  half  secular 
agape.1  The  clergy  had  power  to  accord  or  withhold 
access  to  the  ceremonies,  and  the  reverence  with  which 
they  were  regarded  was  so  great  that  they  were  able  to 
dictate  their  own  conditions  of  communion. 

From  these  circumstances  there  very  naturally  arose  a 
vast  system  of  moral  discipline.  It  was  always  acknow- 
ledged that  men  could  only  rightly  approach  the  sacred 
table  in  certain  moral  dispositions,  and  it  was  very  soon 
added  that  the  commission  of  crimes  should  be  expiated 
by  a  period  of  penance,  before  access  to  the  communion 
was  granted.  A  multitude  of  offences,  of  very  various 
degrees  of  magnitude,  such  as  prolonged  abstinence  from 
religious  services,  prenuptial  unchastity,  prostitution, 
adultery,  the  adoption  of  the  profession  of  gladiator  or 
actor,  idolatry,  the  betrayal  of  Christians  to  persecutors, 
and  paideristia  or  unnatural  love,  were  specified,  to  each 
of  which  a  definite  spiritual  penalty  was  annexed.  The 
lowest  penalty  consisted  of  deprivation  of  the  Eucharist 
for  a  few  weeks.  More  serious  offenders  were  deprived 
of  it  for  a  year,  or  for  ten  years,  or  until  the  hour  of 
death,  while  in  some  cases  the  sentence  amounted  to  the 
greater  excommunication,  or  the  deprivation  of  the  Eucha- 
rist for  ever.  During  the  period  of  penance  the  penitent 
was  compelled  to  abstain  from  the  marriage  bed,  and 
from  all  other  pleasures,  and  to  spend  his  time  chiefly  in 
religious  exercises.  Before  he  was  readmitted  to  com- 
munion, he  was  accustomed  publicly,  before  the  assem- 
bled Christians,  to  appear  clad  in  sackcloth,  with  ashes 
strewn  upon  his  head,  with  his  hair  shaven  off,  and  thus 
to  throw  himself  at  the  feet  of  the  minister,  to  confess 


1  Plin.  Up.  x.  97. 
35 


8  IIISTOUY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

aloud  his  sins,  and  to  implore  the  favour  of  absolution, 
The  excommunicated  man  was  not  only  cut  off  for  ever 
from  the  Christian  rites;  he  was  severed  also  from  all 
intercourse  with  his  former  friends.  No  Christian,  on 
pain  of  being  himself  excommunicated,  might  eat  with 
him  or  speak  with  him.  He  must  live  hated  and  alone 
in  this  world,  and  be  prepared  for  damnation  in  the  next.1 
This  system  of  legislation,  resting  upon  religious  ter- 
rorism, forms  one  of  the  most  important  parts  of  early 
ecclesiastical  history,  and  a  leading  object  of  the  Councils 
was  to  develope  or  modify  it.  Although  confession  was 
not  yet  an  habitual  and  universally  obligatory  rite,  al- 
though it  was  only  exacted  in  cases  of  notorious  sins,  it 

oanifest  that  we  have  in  this  system,  not  potentially  or 
in  germ,  but  in  full  developed  activity,  an  ecclesiastical 
despotism  of  the  most  crushing  order.  But  although  this 
recognition  of  the  right  of  the  clergy  to  withhold  from 
men  what  was  believed  to  be  essential  to  their  salvation, 
laid  the  foundation  of  the  worst  superstitions  of  Borne, 
it  had,  on  the  other  hand,  a  very  valuable  moral  effect. 

•ry  system  of  law  is  a  system  of  education,  for  it  fixes 
in  the  minds  of  men  certain  conceptions  of  right  and 
wrong,  and  of  the  proportionate  enormity  of  different 
crimes  ;  and  no  legislation  was  enforced  with  more  solem- 
nity, or  appealed  more  directly  to  the  religious  feelings, 
than  the  penitential  discipline  of  the  Church.  More  than, 
perhaps,  any  other  single  agency,  it  confirmed  that  con- 
viction of  the  enormity  of  sin,  and  of  the  retribution  that 
follows  it.  which  was  one  of  the  two  great  levers  by  which 
Christianity  acted  upon  mankind. 

1  The  whole  subject  of  the  penitential  discipline  is  treated  qamutely  in 

tentud  Discipline  of  the  Primitive  Church  (first  published  in 

1711,  and  reprinted  in  die  library  of  Anglo-Catholic  Theology),  nnd  also  in 

aam,  v..l.  vii.     Tertullian  gives  a  graphic  description  of  the  public 

penances,  l)e  1'udicit.  v.  13. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  9 

But  if  Christianity  was  remarkable  for  its  appeals  to 
the  selfish  or  interested  side  of  our  nature,  it  was  far  more 
remarkable  for  the  empire  it  attained  over  disinterested 
enthusiasm.  The  Platonist  exhorted  men  to  imitate  God, 
the  Stoic,  to  follow  reason,  the  Christian,  to  the  love  of 
Christ.  The  later  Stoics  had  often  united  their  notions 
of  excellence  in  an  ideal  sage,  and  Epictetus  had  even 
urged  his  disciples  to  set  before  them  some  man  of  sur- 
passing excellence,  and  to  imagine  him  continually  near 
them ;  but  the  utmost  the  Stoic  ideal  could  become  was  a 
model  for  imitation,  and  the  admiration  it  inspired  could 
never  deepen  into  affection.  It  was  reserved  for  Chris- 
tianity to  present  to  the  world  an  ideal  character,  which 
through  all  the  changes  of  eighteen  centuries  has  inspired 
the  hearts  of  men  with  an  impassioned  love,  has  shown 
itself  capable  of  acting  on  all  ages,  nations,  temperaments, 
and  conditions,  has  been  not  only  the  highest  pattern  of 
virtue  but  the  strongest  incentive  to  its  practice,  and  has 
exercised  so  deep  an  influence  that  it  may  be  truly  said 
that  the  simple  record  of  three  short  years  of  active  life 
has  done  more  to  regenerate  and  to  soften  mankind  than 
all  the  disquisitions  of  philosophers  and  all  the  exhorta- 
tions of  moralists.  This  has  indeed  been  the  wellspring 
of  whatever  is  best  and  purest  in  the  Christian  life.  Amid 
all  the  sins  and  failings,  amid  all  the  priestcraft  and  per- 
secution and  fanaticism  that  have  defaced  the  Church,  it 
has  preserved,  in  the  character  and  example  of  its  Founder, 
an  enduring  principle  of  regeneration.  Perfect  love 
knows  no  rights.  It  creates  a  boundless,  uncalculating 
self-abnegation  that  transforms  the  character,  and  is  the 
parent  of  every  virtue.  Side  by  side  with  the  terrorism 
and  the  superstitions  of  dogmatism,  there  have  ever  existed 
in  Christianity  those  who  would  echo  the  wish  of  St. 
Theresa,  that  she  could  blot  out  both  heaven  and  hell,  to 


10  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

serve  God  for  Himself  alone  ;  and  the  power  of  the  love  of 
Christ  has  been  displayed  alike  in  the  most  heroic  pages 
of  Christian  martyrdom,  in  the  most  pathetic  pages  of 
Christian  resignation,  in  the  tehderest  pages  of  Christian 
charity.  It  was  shown  by  the  martyrs  who  sank  beneath 
the  fangs  of  wild  beasts,  extending  to  the  last  moment 
their  arms  in  the  form  of  the  cross  they  loved  ;2  who  or- 
dered their  chains  to  be  buried  with  them  as  the  insignia 
of  their  warm  re  ;2  who  looked  with  joy  upon  their  ghastly 
wounds,  Krauze  they  had  been  received  for  Christ  ;3  who 
welcomed  death  as  the  bridegroom  welcomes  the  bride, 
because  it  would  bring  them  near  to  Him.  St.  Felicitas 
was  seized  with  the  pangs  of  childbirth  as  she  lay  in 
prison  awaiting  the  hour  of  martyrdom,  and  as  her  sufTer- 
ings  extorted  from  her  a  cry,  one  who  stood  by  said,  '  If 
you  now  suffer  so  much,  what  will  it  be  when  you  are 
thrown  to  wild  beasts?'  'What  I  now  suffer,'  she  an- 
Ped,  'concerns  myself  alone;  but  then  another  will 
suffer  for  me,  for  I  will  then  suffer  for  Him.'4  When  St. 
Melania  had  lost  both  her  husband  and  her  two  sons, 
kneeling  by  the  bed  where  the  remains  of  those  she  loved 
were  laid,  the  childless  widow  exclaimed,  '  Lord,  I  shall 

\  e  thee  more  humbly  and  readily  for  being  eased  of 
the  weight  thou  hast  taken  from  me.'5 

Christian  virtue  was  described  by  St.  Augustine  as  'the 


^bius,  II.  E.  viii.  7. 

ftostom  telli  this  of  St.  Babylas.     See  Tillemont,  Mfm.  ;>fwr 
me  iii.  p.  403. 

3  In  the  preface  to  a  rery  ancieirf  Milanese  missal  it  is  said  of  St.  Agatha, 
that  as  the   lav  in   tl|6   prifOD  coll,  torn  by  the  instruments  of  torture.  St. 

bet  in  the  form  of  a  Christian  physician,  and  offered  to  dresa 

fier  wounds;  but  she  re!  ing  that  she  wished  for  no  physician  but 

Peter,  in  the  name  of  that  Celestial    Physician,  commanded 

herwoun  I  her  bod;  whole  as  before*    (Tillemont, 

L  ]'.  Hi'.) 

4  See  1-  rt.  6  St.  Jerome,  T.p.  xxxix. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  11 

order  of  love.'1  Those  who  know  how  imperfectly  the 
simple  sense  of  duty  can  with  most  men  resist  the  energy 
of  the  passions ;  who  have  observed  how  barren  Mahom- 
medanism  has  been  in  all  the  higher  and  more  tender  vir- 
tues, because  its  noble  morality  and  its  pure  theism  have 
been  united  with  no  living  example ;  who,  above  all,  have 
traced  through  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church  the  in- 
fluence of  the  love  of  Christ,  will  be  at  no  loss  to  estimate 
the  value  of  this  purest  and  most  distinctive  source  of  Chris- 
tian enthusiasm.  In  one  respect  we  can  scarcely  realise 
its  effects  upon  the  early  Church.  The  sense  of  the  fixity 
of  natural  laws  is  now  so  deeply  implanted  in  the  minds 
of  men,  that  no  truly  educated  person,  whatever  may  be 
his  religious  opinions,  seriously  believes  that  all  the  more 
startling  phenomena  around  him — storms,  earthquakes, 
invasions,  or  famines — are  results  of  isolated  acts  of  super- 
natural power,  and  are  intended  to  affect  some  human 
interest.  But  by  the  early  Christians  all  these  things 
were  directly  traced  to  the  Master  they  so  dearly  loved. 
The  result  of  this  conviction  was  a  state  of  feeling 
we  can  now  barely  understand.  A  great  poet,  in  lines 
which  are  among  the  noblest  in  English  literature,  has 
spoken  of  one  who  had  died  as  united  to  the  all-pervad- 
ing soul  of  nature,  the  grandeur  and  the  tenderness,  the 
beauty  and  the  passion  of  his  being  blending  with  the 
kindred  elements  of  the  universe,  his  voice  heard  in  all 
its  melodies,  his  spirit  a  presence  to  be  felt  and  known,  a 
part  of  the  one  plastic  energy  that  permeates  and  ani- 
mates the  globe.  Something  of  this  kind,  but  of  a  far 
more  vivid  and  real  character,  was  the  belief  of  the  early 
Christian  world.  The  universe,  to  them,  was  transfigured 
by  love.     All  its  phenomena,  all  its  catastrophes  were 

1  '  Definitio  brevis  et  vera  virtutis ;    ordo  est   amoris.' — De   Civ.   Dei, 
xv.  22. 


12  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

read  in  a  new  light,  were  endued  with  a  new  signifi- 
cance, acquired  a  religious  sanctity.  Christianity  offered 
a  deeper  consolation  than  any  prospect  of  endless  life,  or 
of  millennial  glories.  It  taught  the  weary,  the  sorrowing, 
and  the  lonely,  to  look  up  to  heaven  and  to  say,  '  Thou, 
God,  carest  for  me.' 

It  is  not  surprising  that  a  religious  system,  which  made 
it  a  main  object  to  inculcate  moral  excellence,  and  which, 
by  its  doctrine  of  future  retribution,  by  its  organisation, 
and  by  its  capacity  of  producing  a  disinterested  enthu- 
m,  acquired  an  unexampled  supremacy  over  the  human 
mind,  should  have  raised  its  disciples  to  a  very  high 
condition  of  sanctity.  There  can  indeed  be  little  doubt 
that,  for  nearly  two  hundred  years  after  its  establishment 
in  Europe,  the  Christian  community  exhibited  a  moral 
purity  which,  if  it  has  been  equalled,  has  never  for  any 
long  period  been  surpassed.  Completely  separated  from 
the  Soman  world  that  was  around  them,  abstaining  alike 
from  political  life,  from  appeals  to  the  tribunals,  and  from 
military  occupations ;  looking  forward  continually  to  the 
immediate  advent  of  their  Master,  and  the  destruction  of 
the  empire  in  which  they  dwelt,  and  animated  by  all  the 
fervour  of  a  young  religion,  the  Christians  found  within 
themselves  a  whole  order  of  ideas  and  feelings  sufficiently 
powerful  to  guard  them  from  the  contamination  of  their 
age.  In  their  general  bearing  towards  society,  and  in  the 
nature  and  minuteness  of  their  scruples,  they  probably 
bore  a  greater  resemblance  to  the  Quakers  than  to  any 
other  existing  sect.1     Some  serious  signs  of  moral  d< 

1  Besides  the  obvious  points  of  resemblance  in  the  common,  though  nol 

univer-al,  belief  that  Christian*  should  abstain  from  all  weapons  and  from 

all  oaths,  the  whole  teaehing  <>f  the  early  Christiana  about  the  duty  of 

ilicity,  and  the  wick  ornaments  in  <:  ■   -  (see   especially  the 

writi  .        '  drinus,  and   Chrysostom,  on  this 

eedingly  like  that  of  the  Quakers.     The  scruple  of  Ter- 


FROM  CONSTAKTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  x3 

dence  might  indeed  be  detected  even  before  the  Decian 
persecution  ;  and  it  was  obvious  that  the  triumph  of  the 
Church,  by  introducing  numerous  nominal  Christians  into 
its  pale,  by  exposing  it  to  the  temptations  of  wealth  and 
prosperity,  and  by  forcing  it  into  connection  with  secular 
politics,  must  have  damped  its  zeal  and  impaired  its 
purity ;  yet  few  persons,  I  think,  who  had  contemplated 
Christianity  as  it  existed  in  the  first  three  centuries  would 
have  imagined  it  possible  that  it  should  completely  super- 
sede the  Pagan  worship  around  it ;  that  its  teachers  should 
bend  the  mightiest  monarchs  to  their  will,  and  stamp  their 
influence  on  every  page  of  legislation,  and  direct  the  whole 
course  of  civilisation  for  a  thousand  years,  and  yet  that 
the  period  in  which  they  were  so  supreme  should  have 
been  one  of  the  most  contemptible  in  history. 

The  leading  features  of  that  period  may  be  shortly  told. 
From  the  death  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  about  which  time 
Christianity  assumed  an  important  influence  in  the  Eoman 
world,  the  decadence  of  the  empire  was  rapid  and  almost 
uninterrupted.  The  first  Christian  emperor  transferred 
his  capital  to  a  new  city,  uncontaminated  by  the  tradi- 
tions and  the  glories  of  Paganism  ;  and  he  there  founded 
an  empire  which  derived  all  its  ethics  from  Christian 
sources,  and  which  continued  in  existence  for  about  eleven 
hundred  years.  Of  that  Byzantine  Empire  the  universal 
verdict  of  history  is  that  it  constitutes,  without  a  single 
exception,  the  most  thoroughly  base  and  despicable  form 
that  civilisation  has  yet  assumed.  Though  very  cruel  and 
very  sensual,  there  have  been  times  when  cruelty  assumed 

tullian  (Le  Corona)  about  Christians  wearing,  in  military  festivals,  laurel 
wreaths,  because  laurel  was  called  after  Daphne,  the  lover  of  Apollo,  was 
much  of  the  same  kind  as  that  of  the  Quakers  about  recognising  the  gods 
Tuesco  or  Woden  by  speaking  of  Tuesday  or  Wednesday.  (Xi  the  other 
hand,  the  ecclesiastical  aspects  and  the  sacramental  doctrines  of  the  Church 
were  the  extreme  opposites  of*  Quakerism. 


14  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

more  ruthless,  and  sensuality  more  extravagant  aspects ; 
but  there  has  been  no  other  enduring  civilisation  so 
absolutely  destitute  of  all  the  forms  and  elements  of 
greatness,  and  none  to  which  the  epithet  mean  may  be  so 
emphatically  applied.  The  Byzantine  Empire  was  pre- 
eminently the  age  of  treachery.  Its  vices  were  the  vices 
of  men  who  had  ceased  to  be  brave  without  learning  to 
be  virtuous.  Without  patriotism,  without  the  fruition  or 
desire  of  liberty,  after  the  first  paroxysms  of  religious 
agitation,  without  genius  or  intellectual  activity ;  slaves, 
and  willing  slaves,  in  both  their  actions  and  their  thoughts 
immersed  in  sensuality  and  in  the  most  frivolous  pleasures, 
the  people  only  emerged  from  their  listlessness  when  some 
theological  subtlety,  or  some  rivalry  in  the  chariot  races, 
stimulated  them  into  frantic  riots.  They  exhibited  all  the 
externals  of  advanced  civilisation.  They  possessed  know- 
ledge ;  they  had  continually  before  them  the  noble  litera- 
ture of  ancient  Greece,  instinct  with  the  loftiest  heroism  ; 
but  that  literature,  which  afterwards  did  so  much  to 
revivify  Europe,  could  fire  the  degenerate  Greeks  with 
no  spark  or  semblance  of  nobility.  The  history  of  the 
empire  is  a  monotonous  story  of  the  intrigues  of  priests, 
eunuchs,  and  women,  of  poisonings,  of  conspiracies,  of 
uniform  ingratitude,  of  perpetual  fratricides.  After  the 
conversion  of  Constantine  there  was  no  prince  in  any 
section  of  the  Soman  Empire  altogether  so  depraved,  or 
at  least  so  shameless,  as  Nero  or  Heliogabalus  ;  but  the  By- 
zantine Empire  can  show  none  bearing  the  faintest  resem- 
blance to  Antonine  or  Marcus  Aurelius,  while  the  nearest 
approximation  to  thai  character  atEome  was  furnished  by 
the  emperor  Julian,  who  contemptuously  abandoned  the 
Christian  faith.  At  lust  the  Mahommedan  invasion  termi- 
nated the  long  decrepitude  of  the  Eastern  Empire.  Con- 
itinople  sank  beneath    the   Crescent,    its   inhabitants 


FROM   CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  15 

wrangling  about  theological  differences  to  the  very  mo- 
ment of  their  fall. 

The  Asiatic  churches  had  already  perished.  The  Chris- 
tian faith,  planted  in  the  dissolute  cities  of  Asia  Minor,  had 
produced  many  fanatical  ascetics  and  a  few  illustrious  theo- 
logians, but  it  had  no  renovating  effect  upon  the  people 
at  large.  It  introduced  among  them  a  principle  of  inter- 
minable and  implacable  dissension,  but  it  scarcely  tem- 
pered in  any  appreciable  degree  their  luxury  or  their  sen- 
suality. The  frenzy  of  pleasure  continued  unabated,  and 
in  a  great  part  of  the  empire  it  seemed  indeed  only  to 
have  attained  its  climax  after  the  triumph  of  Christianity. 

The  condition  of  the  Western  Empire  was  somewhat 
different.  Not  quite  a  century  after  the  conversion  of 
Constantine,  the  Imperial  city  was  captured  by  Alaric,  and 
a  long  series  of  barbarian  invasions  at  last  dissolved  the 
whole  framework  of  Soman  society,  while  the  barbarians 
themselves,  having  adopted  the  Christian  faith  and  sub- 
mitted absolutely  to  the  Christian  priests,  the  Church, 
which  Remained  the  guardian  of  all  the  treasures  of  an- 
tiquity, was  left  with  a  virgin  soil  to  realise  her  ideal  of 
human  excellence.  Nor  did  she  fall  short  of  what  might 
be  expected.  She  exercised  for  many  centuries  an 
almost  absolute  empire  over  the  thoughts  and  actions  of 
mankind,  and  created  a  civilisation  which  was  permeated 
in  every  part  with  ecclesiastical  influence.  And  the  dark 
ages,  as  the  period  of  Catholic  ascendancy  is  justly  called, 
do  undoubtedly  display  many  features  of  great  and 
genuine  excellence.  In  active  benevolence,  in  the  spirit 
of  reverence,  in  loyalty,  in  co-operative  habits,  they  far 
transcend  the  noblest  ages  of  Pagan  antiquity,  while  in  . 
that  humanity  which  shrinks  from  the  infliction  of  suf- 
fering, they  were  superior  to  Eoman,  and  in  their  respect 
for  chastity,  to  Greek  civilisation.     On  the  other  hand, 


16  HISTORY   OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

they  rank  immeasurably  below  the  best  Pagan  civilisations 
in  civic  and  patriotic  virtues,  in  the  love  of  liberty,  in  the 
number  and  splendour  of  the  great  characters  they  pro- 
duced, in  the  dignity  and  beauty  of  the  type  of  character 
they  formed.  They  had  their  full  share  of  tumult, 
anarchy,  injustice,  and  war,  and  they  should  probably  be 
placed,  in  all  intellectual  virtues,  lower  than  any  other 
period  in  the  history  of  mankind.  A  boundless  intole- 
rance of  all  divergence  of  opinion  was  united  with  an 
equally  boundless  toleration  of  all  falsehood  and  deliberate 
fraud  that  could  favour  received  opinions.  Credulity 
being  taught  as  a  virtue,  and  all  conclusions  dictated  by 
authority,  a  deadly  torpor  sank  upon  the  human  mind, 
which  for  many  centuries  almost  suspended  its  action, 
and  was  only  broken  by  the  scrutinising,  innovating,  and 
free-thinking  habits  that  accompanied  the  rise  of  the  in- 
dustrial republics  in  Italy.  Few  men  who  are  not  either 
priests  or  monks  would  not  have  preferred  to  live  in  the 
best  days  of  the  Athenian  or  of  the  Eoman  republics,  in 
the  age  of  Augustus  or  in  the  age  of  the  Antonines;  rather 
than  in  any  period  that  elapsed  between  the  triumph  of 
Christianity  and  the  fourteenth  century. 

It  is  indeed  difficult  to  conceive  any  clearer  proof 
than  was  furnished  by  the  history  of  the  twelve  hun- 
dred years  after  the  conversion  of  Constantino,  that  while 
theology  has  undoubtedly  introduced  into  the  world 
certain  elements  and  principles  of  good,  scarcely  if  at  all 
known  to  antiquity,  while  its  value  as  a  tincture  or 
modifying  influence  in  society  can  hardly  be  overrated, 
it  is  by  no  means  for  the  advantage  of  mankind  that  in 
the  form  which  the  Greek  and  Catholic  Churches  present, 
it  should  become  a  controlling  arbiter  of  civilisation. 
It  is  often  said  that  the  Roman  world  before  Oonstantine 
was  in  a  period  of  rapid  decay,  that  the  traditions  and 


FUOM   CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  17 

vitality  of  half-suppressed  Paganism  account  for  many  of 
the  aberrations  of  later  times ;  that  the  influence  of  the 
Church  was  often  rather  nominal  and  superficial  than 
supreme ;  and  that,  in  judging  the  ignorance  of  the  dark 
ages,  we  must  make  large  allowance  for  the  dislocations 
of  society  by  the  barbarians.     In  all  this  there  is  much 
truth  ;  but  when  we  remember  that  in  the  Byzantine 
Empire  the  renovating  power  of  theology  was  tried  in  a 
new  capital  free  from  Pagan  traditions,  and  for  more  than 
one  thousand  years  unsubdued  by  barbarians,  and  that 
in  the  West  the  Church,  for  at  least  seven  hundred  years 
after  the  shocks  of  the  invasions  had  subsided,  exercised 
a  control  more   absolute  than   any  other  moral  or  in- 
tellectual  agency  has   ever   attained,   it   will   appear,  I 
think,  that  the  experiment  was  very  sufficiently  tried. 
It  is  easy  to  make  a  catalogue  of  the  glaring  vices  of 
antiquity,  and  to  contrast  them  with  the  pure  morality 
of  Christian  writings ;  but  if  we  desire  to  form  a  just 
estimate  of  the  realised  improvement,  we  must  compare 
the  classical  and  ecclesiastical  civilisations  as  wholes,  and 
must  observe  in  each  case  not  only  the  vices  that  were 
repressed,  but   also  the  degree  and  variety  of  positive 
excellence  attained.     In  the  first  two  centuries  of  the 
Christian   Church   the   moral    elevation   was   extremely 
high,  and  was  continually  appealed  to  as  a  proof  of  the 
divinity  of  the  creed.     In  the  century  before  the  con- 
version of  Constantine,  a  marked  depression  was  already 
manifest.     The  two  centuries  after  Constantine  are  uni- 
1    formly  represented  by  the  Fathers  as  a  period  of  general 
and  scandalous  vice.     The  ecclesiastical  civilisation  that 
followed,  though  not  without  its  distinctive  merits,  as- 
suredly supplies  no  justification  of  the  common  boast 
about  the  regeneration  of  society  by  the  Church.     That 
the  civilisation  of  the  last  three  centuries  has  risen  in 


18  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

most  respects  to  a  higher  level  than  any  that  had  pre- 
ceded it,  I  at  least  firmly  believe ;  but  theological  ethics, 
though  very  important,  form  but  one  of  the  many  and 
complex  dements  of  its  excellence.  Mechanical  in- 
ventions, the  habits  of  industrialism,  the  discoveries  of 
physical  science,  the  improvements  of  government,  the 
expansion  of  literature,  the  traditions  of  Pagan  antiquity, 
have  all  a  distinguished  place,  while,  the  more  fully  its 
history  is  investigated,  the  more  clearly  two  capital  truths 
are  disclosed.  The  first  is  that  the  influence  of  theology 
having  for  centuries  numbed  and  paralysed  the  whole 
intellect  of  Christian  Europe,  the  revival,  which  forms  the 
starting-point  of  our  modern  civilisation,  was  mainly  due 
to  the  fact  that  two  spheres  of  intellect  still  remained  un- 
controlled by  the  sceptre  of  Catholicism.  The  Pagan 
literature  of  antiquity,  and  the^Mahommedan  schools  of 
science,  were  the  chief  agencies  in  resuscitating  the  dor- 
mant energies  of  Christendom.  The  second  fact,  which  I 
have  elsewhere  endeavoured  to  establish  in  detail,  is  that 
during  more  than  three  centuries  the  decadence  of  theo- 
logical influence  has  been  one  of  the  most  invariable  signs 
and  measures  of  our  progress.  In  medicine,  physical 
science,  commercial  interests,  politics,  and  even  ethics, 
the  reformer  has  been  confronted  with  theological  affirma- 
tions which  barred  his  way,  which  were  all  defended 
as  of  vital  importance,  and  were  all  in  turn  compelled 
to  yield  before  the  secularising  influence  of  civilisa- 
tion. 

We  have  here,  then,  a  problem  of  deep  interest  and  im- 
portance, which  I  propose  to  investigate  in  the  present 
chapter.  We  have  to  inquire  why  it  was  that  a  religion 
which  was  not  more  remarkable  for  the  beauty  of  its 
moral  teaching  than  for  the  power  with  which  it  acted 
upon  mankind,  and  which  during  the  last  few  centuries 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  19 

has  been  the  source  of  countless  blessings  to  the  world, 
should  have  proved  itself  for  so  long  a  period,  and  under 
such  a  variety  of  conditions,  altogether  unable  to  regene- 
rate Europe.  The  question  is  not  one  of  languid  or  im- 
perfect action,  but  of  conflicting  agencies.  In  the  vast 
and  complex  organism  of  Catholicity  there  were  some 
parts  which  acted  with  admirable  force  in  improving  and 
elevating  mankind.  There  were  others  which  had  a 
directly  opposite  effect. 

The  first  aspect  in  which  Christianity  presented  itself 
to  the  world  was  as  a  declaration  of  the  fraternity  of 
men  in  Christ.  Considered  as  immortal  beings,  destined 
for  the  extremes  of  happiness  or  of  misery,  and  united 
to  one  another  by  a  special  community  of  redemp- 
tion, the  first  and  most  manifest  duty  of  a  Christian  man 
was  to  look  upon  his  fellow-men  as  sacred  beings,  and 
from  this  notion  grew  up  the  eminently  Christian  idea 
of  the  sanctity  of  all  human  life.  I  have  already  endea- 
voured to  show — and  the  fact  is  of  such  capital  import- 
ance in  meeting  the  common  objections  to  the  reality  of 
natural  moral  perceptions,  that  I  venture,  at  the  risk  of 
tediousness,  to  recur  to  it — that  nature  does  not  tell  man 
that  it  is  wrong  to  slay  without  provocation  his  fellow- 
men.  Not  to  dwell  upon  those  early  stages  of  barbarism 
in  which  the  higher  faculties  of  human  nature  are  still 
undeveloped,  and  almost  in  the  condition  of  embryo,  it  is 
an  historical  fact,  beyond  all  dispute,  that  refined,  and 
even  moral  societies,  have  existed,  in  which  the  slaughter 
of  men  of  some  particular  class  or  nation  has  been  re- 
garded with  no  more  compunction  than  the  slaughter  of 
animals  in  the  chase.  The  early  Greeks,  in  their  dealings 
with  the  barbarians ;  the  Eomans,  in  their  dealings  witli 
gladiators,  and,  in  some  periods  of  their  history,  with 
slaves ;  the  Spaniards,  in  their   dealings  with  Indians  ; 


20  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

nearly  all  colonists  removed  from  European  supervision, 
in  their  dealings  with  an  inferior  race  ;  an  immense  pro- 

rtion  of  the  nations  of  antiquity,  in  their  dealings  with 
new-born  infants,  display  this  complete  and  absolute  cal- 
lousness, and  we  may  discover  traces  of  it  even  in  our 
own  islands  and  within  the  last  three  hundred  years.1 
And  difficult  as  it  may  be  to  realise  it  in  our  day,  when 
the  atrocity  of  all  wanton  slaughter  of  men  has  become 
an  essential  part  of  our  moral  feelings,  it  is  nevertheless 
an  incontestable  fact  that  this  callousness  has  been  con- 
tinually shown  by  good  men,  by  men  who  in  all  other 
respects  would  be  regarded  in  any  age  as  conspicuous  for 
their  humanity.  In  the  days  of  the  Tudors,  the  best 
Englishmen  delighted  in  what  we  should  now  deem  the 
nnxt  barbarous  sports,  and  it  is  absolutely  certain  that  in 
antiquity  men  of  genuine  humanity — tender  relations, 
loving  friends,  charitable  neighbours — men  in  whose  eyes 
the  murder  of  a  fellow-citizen  would  have  appeared  as 
atrocious  as  in  our  own,  frequented,  instituted,  and  ap- 
plauded gladiatorial  games,  or  counselled  without  a 
scruple  the  exposition  of  infants.  But  it  is,  as  I  conceive, 
a  complete  confusion  of  thought  to  imagine,  as  is  so 
commonly  done,  that  any  accumulation  of  facts  of  this 
nature  throws  the  smallest  doubt  upon  the  reality  of 
innate  moral  perceptions.     All  that  the  intuitive  moralist 

arts  is  that  we  know  by  nature  that  there  is  a  distinction 
between  humanity  and  cruelty,  that  the  first  belongs  to 
the  higher  or  better  part  of  our  nature,  and  that  it  is  our 
duty  to  cultivate  it.  The  standard  of  the  age,  which  is 
itself  determined  by  the  general  condition  of  society,  con- 

1  See  the  masterly  description  »>f  the  rotations  of  the  English  t<»  the 
rri-li  in  tli<-  reign  <»t  Queen  Elizabeth,  in  Froude's  Higtory  of  England,  ch. 
•  Lord  .Macnulay's  description  of  1 1 1 « -  feelings  of  the  Master 
. iir  towards  the  Highland*  t  of  England,  ch.  xviii.) 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  21 

stitutes  the  natural  line  of  duty  ;  for  he  who  falls  below  it 
contributes  to  depress  it.  Now,  there  is  no  fact  more 
absolutely  certain,  than  that  nations  and  ages  which  have 
differed  most  widely  as  to  the  standard  have  been  per- 
fectly unanimous  as  to  the  excellence  of  humanity.  Plato, 
who  recommended  infanticide  ;  Cato,  who  sold  his  aged 
slaves  ;  Pliny,  who  applauded  the  games  of  the  arena ; 
the  old  generals,  who  made  their  prisoners  slaves  or 
gladiators,  as  well  as  the  modern  generals,  who  refuse  to 
impose  upon  them  any  degrading  labour  ;  the  old  legis- 
lators, who  filled  their  codes  with  sentences  of  torture, 
mutilation,  and  hideous  forms  of  death,  as  well  as  the 
modern  legislators,  who  are  continually  seeking  to  abridge 
the  punishment  of  the  most  guilty  ;  the  old  disciplinarian, 
who  governed  by  force,  as  well  as  the  modern  education- 
alist, who  governs  by  sympathy ;  the  Spanish  girl,  whose 
dark  eye  glows  with  rapture  as  she  watches  the  frantic 
bull,  while  the  fire  streams  from  the  explosive  dart  that 
quivers  in  its  neck  ;  the  English  lady,  whose  sensitive 
humanity  shudders  at  the  chase  ;  the  reformers  we  some- 
times meet,  who  are  scandalised  by  all  field  sports,  or  by 
the  sacrifice  of  animal  life  for  food ;  or  who  will  eat  only 
the  larger  animals,  in  order  to  reduce  the  sacrifice  of  life 
to  a  minimum  ;  or  who  are  continually  inventing  new 
methods  of  quickening  animal  death — all  these  persons, 
widely  as  they  differ  in  their  acts  and  in  their  judgments 
of  what  things  should  be  called  *  brutal,'  and  what  things 
should  be  called  '  fantastic,'  agree  in  believing  humanity 
to  be  better  than  cruelty,  and  in  attaching  a  definite  con- 
demnation to  acts  that  fall  below  the  standard  of  their 
country  and  their  time.  Now,  it  was  one  of  the  most 
important  services  of  Christianity,  that  besides  quickening 
greatly  our  benevolent  affections,  it  definitely  and  dogma- 
tically asserted  the  sinfulness  of  all  destruction  of  human 


22  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

life  as  a  matter  of  amusement,  or  of  simple  convenience, 
and  thereby  formed  a  new  standard  higher  than  any 
which  then  existed  in  the  world. 

The  influence  of  Christianity  in  this  respect  began  with 
the  very  earliest  stage  of  human  life.  The  practice  of 
abortion  was  one  to  which  few  persons  in  antiquity  at- 
tached any  deep  feeling  of  condemnation.  I  have  noticed 
in  a  former  chapter  that  the  physiological  theory  that 
the  foetus  did  not  become  a  living  creature  till  the  hour 
of  birth,  had  some  influence  on  the  judgments  passed  upon 
this  practice ;  and  even  where  this  theory  was  not  gene- 
rally held,  it  is  easy  to  account  for  the  prevalence  of 
the  act.  The  death  of  an  unborn  child  does  not  appeal 
very  powerfully  to  the  feeling  of  compassion,  and  men 
who  had  not  yet  attained  any  strong  sense  of  the  sanctity 
of  human  life,  who  believed  that  they  might  regulate 
their  conduct  on  these  matters  by  utilitarian  views,  ac- 
cording to  the  general  interest  of  the  community,  might 
very  readily  conclude  that  the  prevention  of  birth  was  in 
many  cases  an  act  of  mercy.  In  Greece,  Aristotle  not 
only  countenanced  the  practice,  but  even  desired  that  it 
should  be  enforced  by  law,  when  population  had  exceeded 
certain  assigned  limits.1  No  law  in  Greece,  or  in  the  Bo- 
man  Eepublic,  or  during  the  greater  part  of  the  Empire, 
condemned  it  ;2  and  if,  as  has  been  thought,  some  measure 
was  adopted  condemnatory  of  it  in  the  latter  days  of  the 

j,m  Empire,  that  measure  was  altogether  inoperative. 
A  long  chain  of  writers,  both  Pagan  and  Christian,  repre- 
sent the  practice  as  avowed  and  almost  universal.  They 
describe  it  as  resulting,  not  simply  from  licentiousness 
or  from  poverty,  but  even  from  so  slight  a  motive  as 

1  See  on  the  views  of  Aristotle,  Labourt,  Reoherchm  historiqucs  sur  les 
fiffa  :i.s,  1848),  ] 

3  See  Gravinn,  De  Orlu  ct  Proyrcssu  Juris  Civilis,  lib.  i.  44. 


FROM  COXSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  23 

vanity,  which  made  mothers  shrink  from  the  disfigure- 
ment of  childbirth.  They  speak  of  a  mother  who  had 
never  destroyed  her  unborn  offspring  as  deserving  of 
signal  praise,  and  they  assure  us  that  the  frequency  of 
the  crime  was  such  that  it  gave  rise  to  a  regular  profes- 
sion. At  the  same  time,  while  Ovid,  Seneca,  Favorinus 
the  Stoic  of  Aries,  Plutarch,  and  Juvenal,  all  speak  of 
abortion  as  general  and  notorious,  they  all  speak  of  it  as 
unquestionably  criminal.1  It  was  probably  regarded  by 
the  average  Eomans  of  the  later  days  of  Paganism  much 
as  Englishmen  in  the  last  century  regarded  convivial 
excesses,  as  certainly  wrong,  but  so  venial  as  scarcely  to 
deserve  censure. 

The  language  of  the  Christians  from  the  very  beginning 
was  very  different.    With  unwavering  consistency  and  with 

1         -       '  Nunc  uterum  vitiat  quce  vult  formosa  vicleri, 

Raraque  in  hoc  revo  est,  quae  velit  esse  parens.' 

Ovid,  Be  Nuce,  lines  22-23. 
The  same  writer  has  devoted  one  of  his  elegies  (ii.  14)  to  reproaching 
his  mistress  Corinna  with  having  been  guilty  of  this  act.     It  was  not  with- 
out dangers,  and  Ovid  says, 

'  Ssepe  suos  utero  qua?  necat  ipsa  pent.' 
A  niece  of  Domitian  is  said  to  have,  died  in  consequence  of  having,  at  the 
command  of  the  emperor,  practised  it  (Sueton.  Domit.  xxii.).  Plutarch 
notices  the  custom  (Be  Sanitate  Tuenda),  and  Seneca  eulogises  Ilelvia 
(Ad  Ilelv.  xvi.)  for  being  exempt  from  vanity  and  having  never  destroyed 
her  unborn  offspring.  Favorinus,  in  a  remarkable  passage  (Aulus  Gellius, 
Noct.  Att.  xii.  1),  speaks  of  the  act  as  '  publica  detestatione  communique 
odio  dignum/  and  proceeds  to  argue  that  it  is  only  a  degree  less  criminal 
for  mothers  to  put  out  their  children  to  nurse.  Juvenal  has  some  well- 
known  and  emphatic  lines  on  the  subject : — 

'  Sed  jacet  aurato  vix  nulla  puerpera  lecto; 
Tantum  artes  hujus,  tantum  medicamina  possunt, 
Quae  steriles  facit,  atque  homines  in  ventre  necandos 
Conducit.'  Sat.  vi.  Iine3  592-595. 

There  are  also  many  allusions  to  it  in  the  Christian  writers.  Thus 
Minucius  Felix  (Octavius,  xxx.) :  (  Vos  enim  video  procreatos  filios  nunc 
feris  et  avibus  exponere,  nunc  adstrangulatos  misero  mortis  genere  elidere. 
Sunt  qua3  in  ipsis  visceribus  medicaminibus  epotis,  originem  futuri  hominis 
extinguant  et  parricidium  faciant  antequam  pariant.' 

3G 


94  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

the  strongest  emphasis,  they  denounced  the  practice,  not 
:ihuman,  but  as  definitely  murder.     In  the 

ttential  discipline  of  the  Church,  abortion  was  placed 
in  the  same  category  as  infanticide,  and  the  stern  sen- 
tences to  which  the  guilty  person  was  subject  imprinted 

the  minds  of  Christians,  more  deeply  than  any  mere 
exhortations,  a  sense  of  the  enormity  of  the  crime.  By , 
the  Council  of  Ancyra  the  guilty  mother  was  excluded 
from  the  Sacrament  till  the  very  hour  of  death,  and 
though  this  penalty  was  soon  reduced,  first  to  ten  and 
afterwards  to  seven  years'  penitence,1  the  offence  still 
ranked  among  the  gravest  in  the  legislation  of  the  Church. 
In  one  very  remarkable  way  the  reforms  of  Christianity 
in  this  sphere  were  powerfully  sustained  by  a  doctrine 
which  is  perhaps  the  most  revolting  in  the  whole  theo- 
logy of  the  Fathers.  To  the  Pagans,  even  when  condemn- 
ing abortion  and  infanticide,  these  crimes  appeared  com- 
paratively trivial,  because  the  victims  seemed  very  insigni- 
ficant and  their  sufferings  very  slight.  The  death  of  an 
adult  man  who  is  struck  down  in  the  midst  of  his  enter- 
prise and  his  hopes,  who  is  united  by  ties  of  love  or 
friendship  to  multitudes  around  him,  and  whose  departure 
causes  a  perturbation  and  a  pang  to  the  society  m  which 
he  has  moved,  excites  feelings  very  different  from  any 
produced  by  the  painless  extinction  of  a  new-born  infant, 
which,  having  scarcely  touched  the  earth,  has  known  none 
of  its  cares  and  very  little  of  its  love.     But  to  the  theolo- 

:i  this  infant  life  possessed  a  fearful  significance.  The 
moment,  they  taught,  the  foetus  in  the  womb  acquired 
animation,  it  became  an  immortal  being,  destined,  even  if 
it  died  unborn,  to  be  raised  again  on  the  last  day. 
sponsible  fof  the  sin  Qf  Adam,  and  doomed,  if  it  perished 
without  baptism,  to  be  excluded  for  ever  from  heaven 

1  See  Labourt,  Jbcherches  tur  Ics  Enfans  irouves,  p.  "2o. 


FROM  COXSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  25 

and  to  be  cast,  as  the  Greeks  taught,  into  a  painless  and 
joyless  limbo,  or,  as  the  Latins  taught,  into  the  abyss  of  hell. 
It  is  probably,  in  a  considerable  degree,  to  this  doctrine 
that  we  owe  in  the  first  instance  the  healthy  sense  of  the 
value  and  sanctity  of  infant  life  which  so  broadly  distin- 
guishes Christian  from  Pagan  societies,  and  which  is  now 
so  thoroughly  incorporated  with  our  moral  feelings  as  to 
be  independent  of  all  doctrinal  changes.  That  which  ap- 
pealed so  powerfully  to  the  compassion  of  the  early  and 
mediaeval  Christians,  in  the  fate  of  the  murdered  infants, 
was  not  that  they  died,  but  that  they  commonly  died  un- 
baptised ;  and  the  criminality  of  abortion  was  immeasur- 
ably aggravated  when  it  was  believed  to  involve,  not  only 
the  extinction  of  a  transient  life,  but  also  the  damnation  of 
an  immortal  soul.1     In  the  \  Lives  of  the  Saints '  there  is  a 

1  Among  the  barbarian  laws  there  is  a  very  curious  one  about  a  daily 
compensation  to  the  parents  of  children  who  had  been  killed  in  the  womb 
on  account  of  the  daily  suffering  of  those  children  in  hell.  '  Propterea 
diuturnam  judicaverunt  antecessors  nostri  compositionem  et  judices  post- 
quani  religio  Christianitatis  inolevit  in  mundo.  Quia  diuturnam  postquam 
incarnationem  suscepit  anima  quamvis  ad  nativitatis  lucem  minime  per- 
venisset,  patitur  poenam,  quia  sine  sacramento  regenerationis  abortivo  modo 
tradita  est  ad  inferos.' — Leyes  Bajuvarior  ion  }tit.vii.ca^n.xx  An  Ca.ncio.ni,  Leges 
Barbar.  vol.  ii.  p.  374.  The  first  foundling  hospital  of  which  we  have  un- 
doubted record  is  that  founded  at  Milan,  by  a  man  named  Datheus,  in  A.D. 
789.  Muratori  has  preserved  (Antich.  Ital.  Diss,  xxxvii.)  the  charter 
embodying  the  motives  of  the  founder,  in  which'  the  following  sentences 
occur : — '  Quia  frequenter  per  luxuriam  hominum  genus  decipitur,  et  exinde 
malum  homicidii  generatur,  dum  concipientes  ex  adulterio  ne  prodantur  in 
publico,  fetos  teneros  necant,  et  absque  Baptismatis  lavacro  parvidos  ad  Tar- 
tara  mittunt,  quia  nullum  reperiunt  locum,  quo  servare  vivos  valeant,'  &c. 
Henry  II.  of  France,  1556,  made  a  long  law  against  women  who.  'adve- 
nant  le  temps  de  leur  part  et  delivrance  de  leur  enfant,  occultement  s'en 
delivrent,  puis  le  snffoquent  et  autrement  suppriment  sans  leur  avoir  fait 
empartir  le  Saint  Sacrement  flu  Bapteme.1 — Labourt,  Rechcrches  sur  les  Enf. 
trouves,  p.  47.  There  is  a  story  told  of  a  Queen  of  Portugal  (sister  to  Henry  V. 
of  England,  and  mother  of  St.  Ferdinand)  that,  being  in  childbirth,  her 
life  was  despaired  of  unless  she  took  a  medicine  which  would  accelerate 
the  birth  but  probably  sacrifice  the  life  of  the  child.  She  answered  that 
1  she  would  not  purchase  her  temporal  life  by  the  eternal  salvation  of  her 
son.' — Bollandists,  Act.  Sanctor.,  June  5th. 


26  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

curious  legend  of  a  man  -who,  being  desirous  of  ascertain- 
ing the  condition  of  a  child  before  birth,  slew  a  pregnant 
woman,  committing  thereby  a  double  murder,  that  of 
the  mother  and  of  the  child  in  her  womb.  Stung  by 
remorse,  the  murderer  fled  to  the  desert,  and  passed  the 
remainder  of  his  life  in  constant  penance  and  prayer. 
At  last,  after  many  years,  the  voice  of  God  told  him  that 
he  had  been  forgiven  the  murder  of  the  woman.  But 
yet  his  end  was  a  clouded  one.  He  never  could  obtain  an 
assurance  that  he  had  been  forgiven  the  death  of  the 
child.1 

If  we  pass  to  the  next  stage  of  human  life,  that  of  the 
new-born  infant,  we  find  ourselves  in  presence  of  that 
practice  of  infanticide  which  wras  one  of  the  deepest  stains 
of  the  ancient  civilisation.  The  natural  history  of  this 
crime  is  somewhat  peculiar.2  Among  savages,  whose 
feelings  of  compassion  are  very  faint,  and  whose  warlike 
and  nomadic  habits  are  eminently  unfavourable  to  infant 
life,  it  is,  as  might  be  expected,  the  usual  custom  for  the 
parent  to  decide  whether  he  desires  to  preserve  the  child 
he  has  called  into  existence,  and  if  he  does  not,  to  expose 
or  slay  it.  In  nations  that  have  passed  out  of  the  stage 
of  barbarism,  but  are  still  rude  and  simple  in  their  habits, 
the  practice  of  infanticide  is  usually  rare;    but  unlike 

1  Tillemont,  Mcmoircs  pour  servir  a  Vllistoire  ccclesiastiquc  (Paris,  1701) 
tome  x.  p.  41.  St.  Clem.  Alexand.  says  that  infants  in  the  womb  and  ex- 
posed infants  have  guardian  angels  to  watch  over  them.  {Strom,  v.) 

2  There  is  an  extremely  large  literature  devoted  to  the  subject  of  infan- 
ticide, exposition,  foundlings,  Sec.  The  books  I  have  chiefly  followed  are 
Terme  et  Monfulcon.  '  t  En/ans  trouvSs  (Paris,  1840)  ;  Remade,  JDcs 

I  fans  trouvfo  (1838);  Labourt,  Itcchcrchcs  historiqne*  sur  Us 
1  ris,  1848) ;  Eoenigswarter,  Essai  sur  la  Legislation  des 
,'lcs  anciens  it  modcrnes  relative  aux  Enfant  ncs  hors  Manage  (J' 
1842).  There  are  also  many  details  on  the  subject  in  <  lodefroy'fi  Commentary 
to  the  laws  about  children  in  the  Theodosian  Code,  in  Malthus  On  Popula- 
tion, 0  ate  of  Slavery  in  the  Early  and  Middle 
Ages  of  Christianity,  and  in  mo?t  ecclesiastical  hit-lories. 


FEOM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  27 

other  crimes  of  violence,  it  is  not  naturally  diminished  by 
the  progress  of  civilisation,  for  after  the  period  of  savage 
life  is  passed,  its  prevalence  is  influenced  much  more  by 
the  sensuality  than  by  the  barbarity  of  a  people.1  We 
may  trace,  too,  in  many  countries  and  ages,  the  notion  that 
children,  as  the  fruit,  representatives,  and  dearest  pos- 
sessions of  their  parents,  are  acceptable  sacrifices  to  the 
gods.2  Infanticide,  as  is  well  known,  was  almost  uni- 
versally admitted  among  the  Greeks,  being  sanctioned, 
and  in  some  cases  enjoined,  upon  what  we  should  now 
call '  the  greatest  happiness  principle,'  by  the  ideal  legis- 
lations of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  and  by  the  actual  legislations 
of  Lycurgus  and  Solon.  Eegarding  the  community  as  a 
whole,  they  clearly  saw  that  it  is  in  the  highest  degree 
for  the  interests  of  society  that  the  increase  of  population 
should  be  very  jealously  restricted,  and  that  the  State 
should  be  as  far  as  possible  free  from  helpless  and  unpro- 
ductive members  ;  and  they  therefore  concluded  that  the 

1  It  must  not,  however,  "be  inferred  from  this  that  infanticide  increases  in 
direct  proportion  to  the  unchastity  of  a  nation.  Probably  the  condition  of 
civilised  society  in  which  it  is  most  common,  is  where  a  large  amount  of 
actual  unchastity  coexists  with  very  strong  social  condemnation  of  the 
sinner,  and  where,  in  consequence,  there  is  an  intense  anxiety  to  conceal  the 
fall.  A  recent  writer  on  Spain  has  noticed  the  almost  complete  absence 'of 
infanticide  in  that  country,  and  has  ascribed  it  to  the  great  leniency  of 
public  opinion  towards  female  frailty.  Foundling  hospitals,  also,  greatly 
influence  the  history  of  infanticide  ,*  but  the  mortality  in  them  was  long  so 
great  that  it  may  be  questioned  whether  they  have  diminished  the  number  of 
the  deaths,  though  they  have,  as  I  believe,  greatly  diminished  the  number  of 
the  murders  of  children.  Lord  Karnes,  writing  in  the  last  half  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  says,  '  In  Wales,  even  at  present,  and  in  the  Highlands  of 
Scotland,  it  is  scarce  a  disgrace  for  a  young  woman  to  have  a  bastard.  In  the 
country  last  mentioned,  the  first  instance  known  of  a  bastard  child  being- 
destroyed  by  its  mother  through  shame  is  a  late  one.  The  virtue  of  chastity 
appears  to  be  thus  gaining  ground,  as  the  only  temptation  a  woman  can 
have  to  destroy  her  child  is  to  conceal  her  frailty.' — Sketches  of  the  History 
of  Man — On  the  Progress  of  the  Female  Sex.  The  last  clause  is  clearly 
inaccurate,  but  there  seems  reason  for  believing  that  maternal  affection  is 
generally  stronger  than  want,  bat  weaker  than  shame. 

8  See  Warbur Ion's  Dicine  Legation,  rii.  2. 


28  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

painless  destruction  of  infant  life,  and  especially  of  those 
infants  whQ  were  so  deformed  or  diseased  that  their 
lives,  if  prolonged,  would  probably  have  been  a  burden 
to  themselves,  was   on  the  whole  a  benefit.     The  very 

sual  tone  of  Greek  life  rendered  the  modern  notion 
of  prolonged  continence  wholly  alien  to  their  thoughts, 
and  the  extremely  low  social  and  intellectual  condition  of 
Greek  mothers,  who  exercised  no  appreciable  influence 
over  the  habits  of  thought  of  the  nation  should  also,  I 
think,  be  taken  into  accoimt,  for  it  has  always  been 
observed  that  mothers  are  much  more  distinguished  than 
fathers  for  their  affection  for  infants  that  have  not  yet 
manifested  the  first  dawning  of  reason.  Even  in  Greece, 
however,  infanticide  and  exposition  were  not  universally 
permitted.  In  Thebes  these  offences  were  punished  by 
death.1 

The  power  of  life  and  death,  which  in  Eome  was 
originally  conceded  to  the  father  over  his  children, 
w<  >uld  appear  to  involve  an  unlimited  permission  of  in- 
fanticide ;  but  a  very  old  law,,  popularly  ascribed  to 
Eomulus,  in  this  respect  restricted  the  parental  rights, 
enjoining  the  father  to  bring  up  all  his  male  children, 
and  at  least  his  eldest  female  child,  forbidding  him  to 
destroy  any  well-formed  child  till  it  had  completed  its 
third  year,  when  the  affections  of  the  parent  might  be 
supposed  to  be  developed,  but  permitting  the  exposition 
of  deformed  or  maimed  children  with  the  consent  of 
their    li  relations.2     The   Eoman   policy   was 

7.   ii.   7.       Passages  from   the   Greek  imaginative 
writers,  representing  exposition  as  the  avowed  and  habitual  practice  of  \ 
parents,  are  collected  by  'I  ttonfalcon,  Hist,  des  Enfant  trbuvis,  pp. 

30-45.  Tacitus  notices  willi  praise  (Gerniania,  xix.)  that  the  Germans  did 
not  allow  infanticide.     Be  also  notices  (h  the  prohibition  of  infan- 

•  among  the  Jew.-,  and  ascribes  it  to  their  desire  to  increase  the  popu- 
lation. 3  Dion.  Halic.  ii. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  29 

always  to  encourage,  while  the  Greek  policy  was  rather 
to  restrain  population,  and  infanticide  never  appears  to 
have  been  common  in  Kome  till  the  corrupt  and  sensual 
days  of  the  Empire.  The  legislators  then  absolutely 
condemned  it,  and  it  was  indirectly  discouraged  by  laws 
which  accorded  special  privileges  to  the  fathers  of  many 
children,  exempted  poor  parents  from  most  of  the  burden 
of  taxation,  and  in  some  degree  provided  for  the  security 
of  exposed  infants.  Public  opinion  probably  differed 
little  from  that  of  our  own  day  as  to  the  fact,  though  it 
differed  from  it  much  as  to  the  degree,  of  its  criminality. 
It  was,  as  will  be  remembered,  one  of  the  charges  most 
frequently  brought  against  the  Christians,  and  it  was  one 
that  never  failed  to  arouse  popular  indignation.  Pagan 
and  Christian  authorities  are,  however,  united  in  speaking 
of  infanticide  as  a  crying  vice  of  the  Empire,  and  Ter- 
tullian  observed  that  no  laws  were  more  easily  or  more 
constantly  evaded  than  those  which  condemned  it.1  A 
broad  distinction  was  popularly  drawn  between  infanticide 
and  exposition.  The  latter,  though  probably  condemned, 
was  certainly  not  punished  by  law ; 2  it  was  practised  on  a 

1  Ad  Nat.  i.  15. 

2  The  well-known  jurisconsult  Paulus  had  laid  down  the  proposition, 
'  Necare  videtur  non  tantum  is  qui  partum  perfocat  sed  et  is  qui  abjicit 
et  qui  alimonia  denegat  et  qui  public-is  locis  misericordia3  causa  exponit 
quam  ipse  non  habet.'  {Big.  lib.  xxv.  tit.  iii.  1.  4.)  These  words  have  given 
rise  to  a  famous  controversy  between  two  Dutch  professors,  named  Noodt  and 
Bynkerskoek,  conducted  on  both  sides  with  great  learning,  and  on  the  side  of 
Noodt  with  great  passion.  Noodt  maintained  that  these  words  are  simply 
the  expression  of  a  moral  truth,  not  a  j  udicial  decision,  and  that  exposition  was 
never  illegal  in  Rome  till  some  time  after  the  establishment  of  Christianity. 
His  opponent  argued  that  exposition  was  legally  identical  with  infanticide,  and 
became,  therefore,  illegal  when  the  power  of  life  and  death  was  withdrawn 
from  the  father.  (See  the  works  of  Noodt  (Cologne,  1763)  and  of  Bynker- 
shoek  (Cologne,  1761).  It  is  at  least  certain  that  exposition  was  notorious 
and  avowed,  and  the  law  against  it,  if  it  existed,  inoperative.  Gibbon 
(Decline  and  Fall,  ch.  xliv.)  thinks  the  law  censured  but  did  not  punish  ex- 
position.    See,  too,  Troplong,  Influence  du  Christianisme  sur  le  Droit,  p  271* 


80  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN7  MORALS. 

Le  and  with  absolute  impunity, noticed  by  writers 
with  the  most  frigid  indifference,  and  at  least,  in  the  case  of 

titute  parents,  considered  a  very  venial  offence.1  Often, 
no  doubt,  the  exposed  children  perished,  but  more  fre- 
quently the  very  extent  of  the  practice  saved  the  lives  of  the 
victims.     They  were  brought  systematically  to  a  column 

;•  the  Yelabrum,  and  there  taken  by  speculators  who 
educated  them  as  slaves,  or  very  frequently  as  prostitutes.2 

1  Quintilian  speaks  in  a  tone  of  apology,  if  not  justification,  of  the  expo- 
sition of  the  children  of  destitute  parents  (Dccl.  cccvi.),  and  even  Plutarch 
speaks  of  it  without  censure.  (Be  Amor.  Prolis.)  There  are  several  curious 
illustrations  in  Latin  literature  of  the  different  feelings  of  fathers  and 
mothers  on  this  matter.  Terence  (Heauton,  Act.  iii.  Scene  5)  represents 
Chremes  as  having,  as  a  matter  of  course,  charged  his  pregnant  wife  to 
have  her  child  hilled  provided  it  was  a  girl.  The  mother,  overcome  by  pity, 
shrank  from  doing  so,  and  secretly  gave  it  to  an  old  woman  to  expose  it,  in 
hopes  that  it  might  be  preserved.  Chremes,  on  hearing  what  had  been 
done,  reproached  his  wife  for  her  womanly  pity,  and  told  her  she  had  been 
not  only  disobedient  but  irrational,  for  she  was  only  consigning  her  daughter 
to  the  life  of  a  prostitute.  In  Apuleius  (Metam.  lib.  x.)  we  have  a  similar 
picture  of  a  father  starting  for  a  journey,  leaving  his  wife  in  childbirth,  and 
r  his  parting  command  to  kill  her  child  if  it  should  be  a  girl, 
which  she  could  not  bring  herself  to  do.  The  girl  was  brought-up  secretly. 
In  the  case  of  weak  or  deformed  infants  infanticide  seems  to  have  been 
habitual.  'Portentos  foetus  extinguimus,  liberos  quoque  si  debiles  mon- 
strosique  editi  sunt,  mergimns.  Non  ira  sed  ratio  est  a  sanis  inutilia 
secernere.' — Seneca,  De  Ira,  i.  16.  Terence  has  introduced  a  picture  of  the 
exposition  of  an  infant  into  his  Andria,  Act  iv.  Scene  5.  See,  too,  Suet. 
Ai'ipist.  lxv.  According  to  Suetonius  (Caltg.  v.),  on  the  death  of  Ger- 
manicu8,  women  exposed  their  new-born  children  in  sign  of  grief.  Ovid 
had  dwelt  with  much  feeling  on  the  barbarity  of  these  practices.  It  is  a 
very  curious  fact,  which  has  been  noticed  by  Worhurton,  that  Chremes, 
•whose  sentiments  about  infants  we  have  just  seen,  is  the  very  personage 
into  whose  mouth  Terence  has  put  the  famous  sentiment.  'Homo  sum 
humani  nihil  a  me  alienum  puto.' 

re  the  usual  fates' of  exposed  infants  is  noticed  by  several 
writers.    6  .  both  Pagan  and  Christian   (Quintiiian,  Decl.  cccvi.: 

■  •. ).  Bpeak  of  the  liability  to  incestuous  mar- 
riages resulting  from  frequent  n.    In  the  Greek  poets  there 
several  al               i  rich  childless  men  adopting  foundlings,  and  Juvenal 
says  it  was  common  for  Unman  wives  to  palm  off  found,{nga  on  their  hus- 
ls  for  their  sons.    <  .w.  \i.  003.)    Th<  reis  anextremely  horrible  declama- 
lo  Seneca  I                  .ician  (Controvert,  lib.  v.  38)  ab  1  children 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  31 

On  the  whole,  what  was  demanded  on  this  subject  was 
not  any  clearer  moral  teaching,  but  rather  a  stronger 
enforcement  of  the  condemnation  long  since  passed  upon 
infanticide,  and  an  increased  protection  for  exposed 
infants.  By  the  penitential  sentences,  by  the  dogmatic 
considerations  I  have  enumerated,  and  by  the  earnest  ex- 
hortations both  of  her  preachers  and  writers,  the  Church 
laboured  to  deepen  the  sense  of  the  enormity  of  the  act, 
and  especially  to  convince  men  that  the  guilt  of  abandon- 
ing their  children  to  the  precarious  and  doubtful  mercy 
of  the  stranger  was  scarcely  less  than  that  of  simple  in- 
fanticide.1 In  the  civil  law  her  influence  was  also  dis- 
played, though  not,  I  think,  very  advantageously.  By 
the  counsel,  it  is  said,  of  Lactantius,  Constantine,  in  the 
very  year  of  his  conversion,  in  order  to  prevent  the  fre- 
quent instances  of  infanticide  by  destitute  parents,  issued 
a  decree  applicable  in  the-  first  instance  to  Italy,  but 
extended  in  a.d.  322  to  Africa,  in  which  he  ordered  that 
those  children  whom  their  parents  were  unable  to  support 
should  be  clothed  and  fed  at  the  expense  of  the  State,2  a 
policy  which  had  already  been  pursued  on  a  large  scale 
under  the  Antonines.  In  a.d.  331,  a  law  intended  to 
multiply  the  chances  of  the  exposed  child  being  taken 
charge  of  by  some  charitable  or  interested  person,  pro- 
vided that  the  foundling  should  remain  the  absolute  pro- 
perty of  its  saviour,  whether  he  adopted  it  as  a  son  or 
employed  it  as  a  slave,  and  that  the  parent  should  not 
have  power  at  any  future  time  to  reclaim  it.3    By  another 

who  -were  said  to  have  been  maimed  and  mutilated,  either  to  prevent  their 
recognition  by  their  parents,  or  that  they  might  gain  money  as  beggars  for 
their  masters. 

1  See  passages  on  this  point  cited  by  Godefroy  in  his  Commentary  to  the 
Laiv  De  Expositis,  Codex  Theod.  lib.  v.  tit.  7. 

2  Codex  Theod.  lib.  xi.  tit.  27. 

3  Ibid.  lib.  v.  tit.  7,  lex  1. 


8^  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

law,  which  had  been  issued  in  a.d.  329,  it  had  been  pro- 
vided that  children  who  had  been  not  exposed  but  sold, 
lit  be  reclaimed  upon  payment  by  the  father.1 
The  two  last  laws  cannot  be  regarded  with  unmingled 
^faction.  That  regulating  the  condition  of  exposed 
children,  though  undoubtedly  enacted  with  the  most  bene- 
volent intentions,  was  in  some  degree  a  retrograde  step, 
the  Pagan  laws  having  provided  that  the  father  might 
always  withdraw  the  child  he  had  exposed  from  servitude, 
by  payment  of  the  expenses  incurred  in  supporting  it,2 
while  Trajan  had  even  decided  that  the  exposed  child 
could  not  become  under  any  circumstance  a  slave.3  The 
law  of  Constantine,  on  the  other  hand,  doomed  it  to  an 
irrevocable  servitude,  and  this  law  continued  in  force  till 
a.d.  529,  when  Justinian,  reverting  to  the  principle  of 
Trajan,  decreed  that  not  only  the  father  lost  all  legitimat3 
authority  over  his  child  by  exposing  it,  but  also  that  the 
person  who  had  saved  it  could  not  by  that  act  deprive  it 
of  its  natural  liberty.  But  this  law  applied  only  to  the 
Eastern  Empire ;  and  in  part  at  least  of  the  West4  the 
servitude  of  exposed  infants  continued  for  centuries,  and 
appears  only  to  have  terminated  with  the  general  extinc- 
tion of  slavery  in  Europe.  The  law  of  Constantine  con- 
cerning the  sale  of  children  was  also  a  step,  though 
perhaps  a  necessary  step,  of  retrogression.  A  series  of 
emperors,  among  whom  Caracalla  was  conspicuous,  had 
denounced  and  endeavoured  to  abolish  as  '  shameful,' 
the  traffic  in  free  children,  and  Diocletian  had  expressly 
I  absolutely  condemned  it.5  The  extreme  misery,  how- 
r,  resulting  from  the  civil  wars  under  Constantine,  had 

1  Cod     r  i    /.  lib,  v.  tit.  >.  lex  1. 

3  See  (Jodefroy's  (  /  to  the  Law. 

3  In  ■  letter  to  the  younger  Pliny.    (Bp,  x.7:M 

4  See  on  this  point  ICimtori,  Antich,  Italian.  Diss,  xxxvii. 

•  See  ou  these  Uwi,  Wallon,  J  list,  de  VE*davaget  tome  iii.  pp.  52-53. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  33. 

rendered  it  necessary  to  authorise  the  old  practice  of 
selling  children  in  the  case  of  absolute  destitution,  which, 
though  it  had  been  condemned,  had  probably  never 
altogether  ceased.  Theodosius  the  Great  attempted  to 
take  a  step  in  advance,  by  decreeing  that  the  children 
thus  sold  might  regain  their  freedom  without  the  re- 
payment of  the  purchase-money,  a  temporary  service  be- 
ing a  sufficient  compensation  for  the  purchase  ; 1  but  this 
measure  was  repealed  by  Valentinian  III.  The  sale  of 
children  in  case  of  great  necessity,  though  denounced  by 
the  Fathers,2  continued  long  after  the  time  of  Theodosius, 
nor  does  any  Christian  emperor  appear  to  have  enforced 
the  humane  enactment  of  Diocletian. 

Together  with  these  measures  for  the  protection  of 
exposed  children,  there  were  laws  directly  condemnatory 
of  infanticide.  This  branch  of  the  subject  is  obscured  by 
much  ambiguity  and  controversy ;  but  it  appears  most 
probable  that  the  Pagan  legislature  reckoned  infanticide  as 
a  form  of  homicide,  though,  being  deemed  less  atrocious 
than  other  forms  of  homicide,  it  was  punished,  not  by 
death,  but  by  banishment.3  A  law  of  Constantine,  in- 
tended principally,  and  perhaps  exclusively,  for  Africa, 
where  the  sacrifices  of  children  to  Saturn  were  very  com- 
mon, assimilated  to  parricide  the  murder  of  a  child  by  its 
father  ;4  and  finally,  Valentinian,  in  a.d.  374,  made  all 
infanticide  a  capital  offence,5  and  especially  enjoined  the 

1  See  Cod.  Theod.  lib.  iii.  tit.  3,  lex  1,  and  the  Commentary. 
3  On  the  very  persistent  denunciation  of  this  practice  by  the  Fathers,  see 
many  examples  in  Terme  et  Monfalcon. 

3  This  is  a  mere  question  of  definition,  upon  which  lawyers  have  ex- 
pended much  learning  and  discussion.  Cujas  thought  the  Romans  con- 
sidered infanticide  a  crime,  but  a  crime  generically  different  from  homicide. 
Godefroy  maintains  that  it  was  classified  as  homicide,  but  that,  being  es- 
teemed less  heinous  than  the  other  forms  of  homicide,  it  was  only  punished 
by  exile.     See  the  Commentary  to  Cod.  Theod.  lib.  ix.  tit.  14, 1.  1. 

4  Cod,  Theod.  lib.  ix.  tit.  15.  5  Ibid.  lib.  ix.  tit.  14,  lex  1. 


34  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

punishment  of  exposition.1  A  law  of  the  Spanish  Visi- 
goths, in  the  seventh  century,  punished  infanticide  and 
abortion  with  death  or  blindness.2  In  the  Capitula- 
of  Charlemagne  the  former  crime  was  punished  as 
homicide.8 

It  is  not  possible  to  ascertain,  with  any  degree  of  accu- 
racy what  diminution  of  infanticide  resulted  from  these 
measures.  It  may,  however,  be  safely  asserted  that  the 
publicity  of  the  trade  in  exposed  children  became  impos- 
sible under  the  influence  of  Christianity,  and  that  the 
sense  of  the  serious  nature  of  the  crime  was  very  consi- 
derably increased.  The  extreme  destitution,  which  was 
one  of  its  most  fertile  causes,  was  met  by  Christian  charity. 
Many  exposed  children  appear  to  have  been  educated 
by  individual  Christians.4  Brephotrophia  and  Orphano- 
trophia  are  among  the  earliest  recorded  charitable  insti- 
tutions of  the  Church  ;  but  it  is  not  certain  that  exposed 
children  were  admitted  into  them,  and  we  find  no  trace 
for  several  centuries  of  Christian  foundling  hospitals. 
This  form  of  charity  grew  up  gradually  in  the  early  part 
of  the  middle  ages.  It  is  said  that  one  existed  at  Treves 
in  the  sixth,  and  at  Angers  in  the  seventh  century,  and  it 
is  certain  that  one  existed  at  Milan  in  the  eighth  century.5 
The  Council  of  Rouen,  in  the  ninth  century,  invited  women 
who  had  secretly  borne  children  to  place  them  at  the  door 
of  the  church,  and  undertook  to  provide  for  them  if  they 

1  Corp.  Juris,  lib.  viii.  tit.  52,  lex  2. 

2  Lege*  Ww'ffothonm  (lib.  vi  tit.  8,  lex  7)  and  other  laws  (lib.  iv.  tit.  4) 
condfiini'il  exposition. 

8  'Si  qui  a  necaveritut  homieida  teneatur.' — ('a/a'/,  vii.  168. 

4  It  appears  from  a  passage  of  St.  Augustine,  that  Christian  virgins  were 
accustomed  to  collect  exposed  children  and  to  have  them  brought  into  the 
church,    8  tfonfalcon,  Hist,  des  Enfant  trovxts,^.  ^ 

6  Compare  Labourt,  Reek,  tur  let  Enfant  trouve't,  pp.  82  88;  Muratori, 
litii  ItaUahe,  Dissert  rxxvii.    Muratori  has  also  briefly  noticed  the 
these  charities  in  his  CaHta  Christiana,  cap.  xxvii. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  35 

were  not  reclaimed.  It  is  probable  that  they  were 
brought  up  among  the  numerous  slaves  or  serfs  attached 
to  the  ecclesiastical  properties,  for  a  decree  of  the  Council 
of  Aries,  in  the  fifth  century,  and  afterwards  a  law  of 
Charlemagne,  had  echoed  the  enactment  of  Constantine, 
declaring  that  exposed  children  should  be  the  slaves  of 
their  protectors.  As  slavery  declined,  the  memorials  of 
many  sins,  like  many  other  of  the  discordant  elements  of 
mediaeval  society,  were  doubtless  absorbed  and  conse- 
crated in  the  monastic  societies.  The  strong  sense  alwaj^s 
evinced  in  the  Church  of  the  enormity  of  unchastity  pro- 
bably rendered  the  ecclesiastics  more  cautious  in  this  than 
in  other  forms  of  charity,  for  institutions  especially  in- 
tended for  deserted  children  advanced  but  slowly.  Even 
Borne,  the  mother  of  many  charities,  could  boast  of  none 
till  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century.1  About  the 
middle  of  the  twelfth  century  we  find  societies  at  Milan 
charged,  among  other  functions,  with  seeking  for  exposed 
children.  Towards  the  close  of  the  same  century,  a  monk 
of  Montpellier,  whose  very  name  is  doubtful,  but  who  is 
commonly  spoken  of  as  Brother  Guy,  founded  a  confra- 
ternity called  by  the  name  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  de- 
voted to  the  protection  and  education  of  children;  and 
this  society  in  the  two  following  centuries  ramified  over 
a  great  part  of  Europe.2    Though  principally,  and  at  first, 

1  The  first  seems  to  have  been  that  of  Sta.  Maria  in  Sassia — a  hospital 
which  had  existed  with  various  changes-  from  the  eighth  century,  but 
which  was  made  a  foundling  hospital  and  confided  to  the  care  of  Guy  of 
Montpellier  in  a.d.  1204.  According  to  one  tradition,  Pope  Innocent  III. 
had  been  shocked  at  hearing  of  infants  drawn  in  the  nets  of  fishermen  from 
the  Tiber.  According  to  another,  he  was  inspired  by  an  angel.  Compare 
Remade,  Hospices  (TEnfans  trouves,  pp.  36-37,  and  Amydenus,  Pittas 
Romano,  (a  book  written  a.d.  1624,  and  translated  in  part  into  English  in 
a.d.  1687),  Eng.  trans,  pp.  2-3. 

2  For  the  little  that  is  known  about  this  missionary  of  charity,  compare 
Remade,  Hosjnces  cVEnfans  trouves,  pp.  34-44,  and  Labourt,  Mecherchcs 
historians  sur  les  E/ifans  trouves,  pp.  38-41. 


J 


36  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

perhaps,  exclusively  intended  for  the  care  of  the  orphans 
of  legitimate  marriages,  though  in  the  fifteenth  century  the 
Hospital  of  the  Holy  Ghost  at  Paris  even  refused  to  admit 
I  children,  yet  the  care  of  foundlings  soon  passed 
in  a  great  measure  into  its  hands.     At  last,  after  many 

iphints  of  the  frequency  of  infanticidqhSt.  Vincent  de 
Paul  arose,  and  gave  so  great  an  impulse  to  that  branch 
Of  charity,  that  he  may  be  regarded  as  its  second  author, 
and  his  influence  was  felt  not  only  in  private  charities, 
but  in  legislative  enactments.  Into  the  effects  of  these 
measures — the  encouragement  of  the  vice  of  incontinence 
by  institutions  that  were  designed  to  suppress  the  crime 
of  infanticide,  and  the  serious  moral  controversies  sug- 
gested by  this  apparent  conflict  between  the  interests  of 
humanity  and  of  chastity — it  is  not  necessary  for  me  to 
enter.  We  are  at  present  concerned  with  the  principles 
that  actuated,  not  with  the  wisdom  of  the  organisations,  of 

istian  charity.  Whatever  mistakes  may  have  been  made, 
the  entire  movement  I  have  traced  displays  an  anxiety 
not  only  for  the  lii'e,  but  also  for  the  moral  wellbeing  of 

castaways  of  society,  such  as  the  most  humane  nati 

antiquity  had  never  reached.  This  minute  and  seru- 
pulous  care  for  human  life  and.  human  virtue  in  the 
humblest  forms,  in  the  slave,  the  gladiator,  the  savage, 
or  the  infant,  was  indeed  wholly  foreign  to  the  genius  of 

anism.     It  was  produced  by  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
the  inestimable  value  of  each  immortal  soul.     It  is  the 
distinguishing  and  transcendent  characteristic  of  every 
ity  into  which  the  spirit  of  Christianity  has  passed. 
influence  of  Christianity  in  the  protection  of  infant- 
lite,  though  very  real,  maybe,  and  I  think  often  has  been, 
1.     It  would  be  difficult  to  overrate  its  in- 
fluence in  the  Bphei  lave  next  to  examine.     There 
ely  any  other  single  reform  bo  important  in  the 
>ry   of  mankind   as   the   suppression   of  the 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  37 

gladiatorial  sliows,  and  this  feat  must  be  almost  ex- 
clusively ascribed  to  the  Christian  Church.  When  we 
remember  how  extremely  few  of  the  best  and  greatest 
men  of  the  Roman  world  had  absolutely  condemned  the 
games  of  the  amphitheatre,  it  is  impossible  to  regard, 
without  the  deepest  admiration,  the  unwavering  and  un- 
compromising consistency  of  the  patristic  denunciations. 
And  even  comparing  the  Fathers  with  the  most  en- 
lightened Pas;an  moralists  in  their  treatment  of  this 
matter,  we  shall  usually  find  one  most  significant  dif- 
ference. The  Pagan,  in  the  spirit  of  philosophy,  de- 
nounced these  games  as  inhuman,  or  demoralising,  or 
/_  degrading,  or  brutal.  The  Christian,  in  the  spirit  of  the 
Church,  represented  them  as  a  definite  sin,  the  sin  of 
murder,  for  which  the  spectators  as  well  as  the  actors 
were  directly  responsible  before  Heaven.  In  the  very 
latest  days  of  the  Pagan  Empire,  magnificent  amphi- 
theatres were  still  arising,1  and  Constantine  himself  had 
condemned  numerous  barbarian  captives  to  combat  with 
wild  beasts.2  It  was  in  a.d.  365,  immediately  after 
the  convocation  of  the  Council  of  Mce,  that  the  first 
Christian  emperor  issued  the  first  edict  in  the  Eoman 
Empire  condemnatory  of  the  gladiatorial  games.3  It  was 
issued  in  Berytus  in  Syria,  and  is  believed  by  some  to 
have  been  only  applicable  to  the  province  of  Phoenicia;4 
but  even  in  this  province  it  was  suffered  to  be  inopera- 
tive, for,  only  four  years  later,  Libanius  speaks  of  the 

1  E.g.  the  amphitheatre  of  Verona  was  only  built  under  Diocletian. 

2  'Quid  hoc  triumpho  pulchrius?  .  .  .  Tantam  captivorum  multitudinem 
bestiis  objicit  ut  ingrati  et  perfidi  non  minus  doloiis  ex  ludibrio  sui  quam  ex 
ipsa  morte  patiantur.' — Incerti  PaneyyricuB  Constant.  'Puberes  qui  in 
manus  venemnt,  quorum  nee  perfidia  erat  apta  militias,  nee  ferocia  servituti 
ad  pcenas  spectaculo  dati  ssevientes  bestia3  multitudine  sua  fatigarunt.' — 
Eumenius,  Paneg.  Constant,  xi. 

3  Cod,  Theod.  lib.  xv.  tit.  12,  lex  1.     Sozomen,  i.  8. 

4  This,  at  least,  is  the  opinion  of  GoJeTroy,  who  has  discussed  the  subject 
very  fully.     {Cod.  Theod.  lib.  xv.  tit.  12.) 


4- 


38  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

shows  as  habitually  celebrated  at  Antioch.1  In  the 
Western  Empire  their  continuance  was  fully  recognised, 
though  a  few  infinitesimal  restrictions  were  imposed 
upon  them.  Constantine,  in  a.d.  357,  forbade  the  la- 
ni-Ue,  or  purveyors  of  gladiators,  bribing  servants  of 
the  palace  to  enroll  themselves  as  combatants.2  Yalen- 
tiniau,  in  a.d.  365,  forbade  any  Christian  criminal,3  and 
in  a.d.  307,  anyone  connected  with  the  Palatine,4  being 
condemned  to  fight.  Honorius  prohibited  any  slave 
who  had  been  a  gladiator  passing  into  the  service  of  a 
senator ;  but  the  real  object  of  this  last  measure  was,  I 
imagine,  not  so  much  to  stigmatise  the  gladiator,  as  to 
guard  against  the  danger  of  an  armed  nobility.5  A  much 
more  important  fact  is,  that  the  spectacles  were  never  in- 
troduced into  the  new  capital  of  Constantine.  At  Home, 
though  they  became  less  numerous,  they  do  not  appear 
to  have   been   suspended   until   their  final   suppression. 

•  passion  for  gladiators  was  the  worst,  while  religious 
liberty  was  probably  the  best  feature  of  the  old  Pagan 
society;  and  it  is  a  melancholy  fact,  that  of  these  two 
it  was  the  nobler  part  that  in  the  Christian  Empire  was 
first  destroyed.  Theodosius  the  Great,  who  suppressed 
all  diversity  of  worship  throughout  the  empire,  and  who 
showed  himself  on  many  occasions  the  docile  slave  of  the 
clergy,  won  the  applause  of  the  Pagan  Symmachus  by 
compelling  his  barbarian  prisoners  to  fight  as  gladiators.6 
Besides  this  occasion,  we  have  special  knowledge  of  gladia- 

ial  games  that  were  celebrated  in  a.d.  385,  in  a.d.  391, 
and  afterward-  in  tin-  reign  of  Honorius,  and  the  practice 
of  condemning  criminals  to  the  arena  still  continued.7 

1  Ufcani  3  Cod,  Theod.  lib.xv.  tit.  12, 1.  2. 

i.40,1.8.  4  Ibid.  lib.  ix.  tit. -10, 1.  11. 

*  Ibid.  lib.  xv.  tit.  1l\  !  ;  imnncli.  Ep.  *.  6li 

WalluM  has  traced  these  last  shows  with  much  learning.     (Hist. 
de  FEsclaoage,  tome  iii.  pp. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHAKLEMAGNE.  39 

But  although  the  suppression  of  the  gladiatorial  shows 
was  not  effected  in  the  metropolis  of  the  empire  till 
nearly  ninety  years  after  Christianity  had  been  the  State 
religion,  the  distinction  between  the  teaching  of  the 
Christians  and  Pagans  on  the  subject  remained  unim- 
paired. To  the  last,  the  most  estimable  of  the  Pagans 
appear  to  have  regarded  them  with  favour  or  indiffer- 
ence. Julian,  it  is  true,  with  a  rare  magnanimity  worthy 
of  his  most  noble  nature,  refused  persistently,  in  his 
conflict  with  Christianity,  to  avail  himself,  as  he  might 
most  easily  have  done,  of  the  popular  passion  for  games 
which  the  Church  condemned ;  but  Libanius  has  noticed 
them  with  some  approbation,1  and  Symmachus,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  both  instituted  and  applauded  them. 
But  the  Christians  steadily  refused  to  admit  any  profes- 
sional gladiator  to  baptism  till  he  had  pledged  himself  to 
abandon  his  calling,  and  every  Christian  who  attended 
the  games  was  excluded  from  communion.  The  preachers 
and  writers  of  the  Church  denounced  them'  with  the  most 
unqualified  vehemence,  and  the  poet  Prudentius  made  a 
direct  and  earnest  appeal  to  the  emperor  to  suppress 
them.  In  the  East,  where  they  had  never  taken  very 
firm  root,  they  appear  to  have  ceased  about  the  time  of 
Theodosius,  and  a  passion  for  chariot  races,  which  rose 
to  the  most  extravagant  height  at  Constantinople  and  in 
many  other  cities,  took  their  place.  In  the  West,  the  last 
gladiatorial  show  was  celebrated  at  Rome,  under  Honorius, 
in  a.d.  404,  in  honour  of  the  triumph  of  Stilicho,  when 
an  Asiatic  monk,  named  Telemachus,  animated  by  the 
noblest  heroism  of  philanthropy,  rushed  into  the  amphi- 
theatre   and   attempted   to    part   the   combatants.      He 

1  He  wavered,  however,  on  the  subject,  and  on  one  occasion  condemned 
them.     See  Wallon,  tome  iii.  p.  423. 
37 


40  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

perished  beneath  a  shower  of  stones  flung  by  the  angry 

but  his  death  led  to  the  final  abolition  of  the 

games.4     Combats  of  men  with  wild  beasts  continued, 

however,  much  later,  and  were  especially  popular  in  the 

st.  The  difficulty  of  procuring  wild  animals,  amid  the 
general  poverty,  contributed,  with  other  causes,  to  their 
decline.  They  sank,  at  last,  into  games  of  cruelty  to 
animals,  but  of  little  danger  to  men,  and  were  finally  con- 
demned, at  the  end  of  the  seventh  century,  by  the  Council 
of  Trullo.2  In  Italy,  the  custom  of  sham  fights,  which 
continued  through  the  whole  of  the  middle  ages,  and 
which  Petrarch  declares  were  in  his  day  sometimes  at- 
tended with  considerable  bloodshed,  may  perhaps  be  traced 
in  some  degree  to  the  traditions  of  the  amphitheatre.3 

The  extinction  of  the  gladiatorial  spectacles  is,  of  all  the 
results  of  early  Christian  influence,  that  upon  which  the 
historian  can  look  with  the  deepest  and  most  unmingled 

-faction.  Horrible  as  wras  the  bloodshed  they  directly 
caused,  these  games  were  perhaps  still  more  pernicious 
on  account  of  the  callousness  of  feeling  they  diffused 
through  all  classes,  the  fatal  obstacle  they  presented  to 
any  general  elevation  of  the  standard  of  humanity.  Yet 
the  attitude  of  the  Pagans  decisively  proves  that  no  pro- 
gress of  philosophy  or  social  civilisation  was  likely,  for  a 
very  long  period,  to  have  extirpated  them,  and  it  can 
hardly  be  doubted  that,  had  they  been  flourishing  unchal- 
lenged U  in  the  days  of  Trajan,  wThen  the  rude  warriors 
of  the  North  obtained  the  empire  of  Italy,  they  would 
have  been  eagerly  adopted  by  the  conquerors,  would 
have  taken  deep  root  in  mediaeval  life,  and  have  indefi- 

1  Ti  r.  26L 

*  Mullrr,  J>>  < ,  TheodotUuti  (1  707),  vol.  ii.  p.  88  ;  Milman,  Hid. 

■';/  Christiatnfi/,  vol.  iii.  ]>]>.  848   •'•17. 

*  See  on  these  fights  Ozauam's  Civilisation  in  the  Fifth  Century  (Eiig. 
trans.),  vol.  L  p.  130. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  41 

nitely  retarded  the  progress  of  humanity.  Christianity 
alone  was  powerful  enough  to  tear  this  evil  plant  from 
the  Eoman  soil.  The  Christian  custom  of  legacies  for 
the  relief  of  the  indigent  and  suffering  replaced  the  Pagan 
custom  of  bequeathing  sums  of  money  for  games  in 
honour  of  the  dead,  and  the  month  of  December,  which 
was  looked  forward  to  with  eagerness  through  all  the 
Eoman  world,  as  the  special  season  of  the  gladiatorial 
spectacles,  was  consecrated  in  the  Church  by  another 
festival  commemorative  of  the  advent  of  Christ. 

The  notion  of  the  sanctity  of  human  life,  which  led  the 
early  Christians  to  combat  and  at  last  to  overthrow  the 
gladiatorial  games,  was  carried  by  some  of  them  to  an 
extent  altogether  irreconcilable  with  national  indepen- 
dence, and  with  the  prevailing  penal  system.  Many  of 
them  taught  that  no  Christian  might  lawfully  take  away 
life,  either  as  a  soldier  or  by  bringing  a  capital  charge,  or 
by  acting  as  an  executioner.  The  first  of  these  questions 
it  will  be  convenient  to  reserve  for  a  later  period  of  this 
chapter,  when  I  propose  to  examine  the  relations  of 
Christianity  to  the  military  spirit,  and  a  very  few  words 
will  be  sufficient  to  dispose  of  the  others.  The  notion 
that  there  is  something  impure  and  defiling,  even  in  a 
just  execution,  is  one  which  maybe  traced,  through  many 
ages,  and  executioners,  as  the  ministers  of  the  law,  have 
been  from  very  ancient  times  regarded  as  unholy.  In  both 
Greece  and  Borne  the  law  compelled  them  to  live  outside 
the  walls,  and  at  Ehodes  they  were  never  permitted  even 
to  enter  the  city.1  Notions  of  this  kind  were  very  strongly 
held  in  the  early  Church ;  and  a  decree  of  the  penitential 
discipline  which  was  enforced,  even  against  emperors  and 
generals,  forbade  anyone  whose  hands  had  been  imbrued 

1  Nieupoort,  Be  Ritibus  Hofnanonan,  p.  169. 


42  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

in  blood,  even  when  that  blood  was  shed  in  a  war  which 
was  recognised  as  righteous,  approaching  the  altar  without 

preparatory  period  of  penance.  The  opinions  of  the 
Christians  -of  the  first  three  centuries  were  usually  formed 
without  any  regard  to  the  necessities  of  civil  or  political 
life ;  but  when  the  Church  obtained  an  ascendancy,  it  was 
found  necessary  speedily  to  modify  them ;  and  although  Lac- 
tantius,  in  the  fourth  century,  maintained  the  unlawfulness 
of  all  bloodshed,1  as  strongly  as  Origen  in  the  third,  and 
Tertullian  in  the  second,  the  common  doctrine  was  simply 
that  no  priest  or  bishop  must  take  any  part  in  a  capital 
charge.  From  this  exceptional  position  of  the  clergy 
they  speedily  acquired  the  position  of  official  intercessors 
for  criminals,  ambassadors  of  mercy,  when,  from  some 
act  of  sedition  or  other  cause,  their  city  or  neighbourhood 

a  menaced  with  a  bloody  invasion.  The  right  of  sanc- 
tuary, which  was  before  possessed  by  the  Imperial  statues 
and  by  the  Pagan  temples,  was  accorded  to  the  Churches. 
During  the  holy  seasons  of  Lent  and  Easter,  no  criminal 
trials  could  be  held,  and  no  criminal  could  be  tortured  or 

cuted.2  Miracles,  it  was  said,  were  sometimes  wrought 
to  attest  the  innocence  of  accused  or  condemned  men, 
but  were  never  wrought  to  consign  criminals  to  execution 
by  the  civil  power.3 

All  this  had  an  importance  much  beyond  its  imine- 


>ee  a  very  unequivocal  passage,  Inst.  Div.  vi.  20.  Several  earlier 
testimonies  on  the  subject  are  given  by  Barbeyrac,  Morale  des  Peres,  and  in 
many  other  books. 

two  lawi  enacted  in  a.d.  380  (Cod.  Theod.  ix.  tit.  35, 1.4)  and  i.n. 
380  (Cod.  Thsod.  ix.  tit.  85,  1.  5).    Theodosiufl  the  Younger  nUtde  a  law  (ix. 

ian  robbers  from  the  privileges  ofthe.se  lawB. 

*  There  are,  of  i  nnaaftble  miracles  punishing  guilty  men,  but 

I  know  none  assisting  the  civil  power  in  doing  so.     As  an  example  of  the 

miracles  in  del.  the  innocent,  I  may  cite  one  by  St.  Macarius.     An 

innocent  mon,  accused  of  a  murder,  fled  to  him.    He  brought  both  th< 

and  accusers  to  the  tomb  of  Ihe  muni  ired  man.  and  asked  him  whether 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  43 

diate  effect,  in  tempering  the  administration  of  the  law. 
It  contributed  largely  to.  associate  in  the  popular  imagi- 
nation the  ideas  of  sanctity  and  of  mercy,  and  to  increase 
the  reverence  for  human  life.  It  had  also  another  remark- 
able effect,  to  which  I  have  adverted  in  another  work.  The 
belief  that  it  was  wrong  for  a  priest  to  bring  any  charge 
that  could  give  rise  to  a  capital  sentence,  caused  the 
leading  clergy  to  shrink  from  persecuting  heresy  to  death, 
at  a  time  when  in  all  other  respects  the  theory  of  perse- 
cution had  been  fully  matured.  When  it  was  readily 
admitted  that  heresy  was  in  the  highest  degree  criminal, 
and  ought  to  be  made  penal,  when  laws  banishing,  fining, 
or  imprisoning  heretics  filled  the  statute-book,  and  when 
every  vestige  of  religious  liberty  was  suppressed  at  the 
instigation  of  the  clergy,  these  still  shrank  from  the  last 
and  inevitable  step,  not  because  it  was  an  atrocious  viola- 
tion of  the  rights  of  conscience,  but  because  it  was  con- 
trary to  the  ecclesiastical  discipline  for  a  bishop,  under 
any  circumstances,  to  countenance  bloodshed.  It  was  on 
this  ground  that  St.  Augustine,  while  eagerly  advocating 
the  persecution  of  the  Donatists,  more  than  once  expressed 
a  wish  that  they  should  not  be  punished  with  death,  and 
that  St.  Ambrose,  and  St.  Martin  of  Tours,  who  were  both 
energetic  persecutors,  expressed  their  abhorrence  of  the 
Spanish  bishops,  who  had  caused  some  Priscillianists  to 
be  executed.  I  have  elsewhere  noticed  the  odious  evasion 
of  the  later  inquisitors,  who  relegated  the  execution  of 
the  sentence  to  the  civil  power,  with  a  prayer  that  the 
heretics  should  be  punished  without  the  'effusion  of 
blood,'  *  or,  in  other  words,  by  the  death  of  fire ;  but  I 


the  prisoner  was  the  murderer.     The  corpse  answered  in  the  negative  ;  the 
bystanders  implored  St.  Macarius  to  ask  it  to  reveal  the  real  culprit,  but 
St.  Macarius  refused  to  do  so.    (Vitai  Patrum,  lib.  ii.  cap.  xxviii.) 
1  '  Ut  quam  cleinenlissime  et  ultra  sanguinis  effusionem  puniretur.' 


H  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

may  here  add,  that  this  hideous  mockery  is  not  unique  in 
the  history  of  religion.  Plutarch  suggests,  that  one  of  the 
reasons  for  burying  unchaste  vestals  alive,  was  that  they 

re  so  sacred  that  it  was  unlawful  to  lay  violent  hands 
upon  them,1  and  among  the  Donatists  the  Circumcelliones 
were  for  a  time  accustomed  to  abstain,  in  obedience  to 
the  evangelical  command,  from  the  use  of  the  sword,  while 
they  beat  to  death  those  who  differed  from  their  theolo- 
gical opinions  with  massive  clubs,  to  which  they  gave 
the  very  significant  name  of  Israelites.2  ' 

The  time  came  when  the  Christian  priests  shed  blood 

i  >ugh.  The  extreme  scrupulosity,  however,  which  they 
at  first  displayed,  is  not  only  exceedingly  curious  when 
contracted  with  their  later  history;  it  was  also,  by  the 

i  >riati<  >n  of  ideas  which  it  promoted,  very  favourable  to 
humanity.  It  is  remarkable,  however,  that  while  some  of 
the  early  Fathers  were  the  undoubted  precursors  of  Bec- 
caria,  their  teaching,  unlike  that  of  the  philosophers  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  had  little  or  no  appreciable  influence 
in  mitigating  the  severity  of  the  penal  code.  Indeed,  the 
more  carefully  the  Christian  legislation  of  the  empire  is 

amined,  and  the  more  fully  it  is  compared  with  what  had 
been  done  under  the  influence  of  Stoicism  by  the  Pagan 
legislators,  the  more  evident,  I  think,  it  will  appear  that 
the  golden  age  of  Eoman  law  was  not  Christian,  but 
Pagan.  Great  works  of  codification  were  accomplished 
under  the  younger  Theodosius,  and  under  Justinian,  but 
it  was  in  the  reign  of  Pagan  emperors,  and  especially 
of  Hadrian  and  Alexander  Severus,  that  nearly  all  the 
moet  important  measure*  were  taken  redressing  injustice, 


1    (in fist,    i  ,\i. 

•TBI       ■  '  ■  -]l  9.  tome  vi.  pp.  88-98.   The  Donatists  after 

a  time,  however,  are  said  to  have   overcome  their  scruples,  and   08*d 
•words. 


1 

FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  46 

elevating  oppressed  classes,  and  making  the  doctrine  of 
the  natural  equality  and  fraternity  of  mankind  the  basis 
of  legal  enactments.  Receiving  the  heritage  of  these 
laws,  the  Christians  no  doubt  added  something  ;  but  a 
careful  examination  will  show  that  it  was  surprisingly 
little.  In  no  respect  is  the  greatness  of  the  Stoic  philo- 
sophers more  conspicuous  than  in  the  contrast  between 
the  gigantic  steps  of  legal  reform  made  in  a  few  years 
under  their  influence,  and  the  almost  insignificant  steps 
taken  when  Christianity  had  obtained  an  ascendancy  in 
the  empire,  not  to  speak  of  the  long  period  of  decrepitude 
that  followed.  In  the  way  of  mitigating  the  severity  of 
punishments,  Constantine  made,  it  is  true,  three  important 
laws  prohibiting  the  custom  of  branding  criminals  upon 
the  face,  the  condemnation  of  criminals  as  gladiators, 
and  the  continuance  of  the  once  degrading  but  now 
sacred  punishment  of  crucifixion,  which  had  been  very 
commonly  employed ;  but  these  measures  were  more 
than  counterbalanced  by  the  extreme  severity  with 
which  the  Christian  emperors  punished  infanticide,  adul- 
tery, seduction,  rape,  and  several  other  crimes,  and  the 
number  of  capital  offences  became  considerably  greater 
than  before.1  The  most  prominent  evidence,  indeed,  of 
ecclesiastical  influence  in  the  Theodosian  code,  is  that 
which  must  be  most  lamented.     It  is  in  the  immense 

1  Under  the  Christian  kings,  the  barbarians  multiplied  the  number  of 
capital  offences,  but  this  has  usually  been  regarded  as  an  improvement. 
The  Abbe  Mably  says :  l  Quoiqu'il  nous  reste  peu  d'ordonnances  faites  sous 
les  premiers  Merovingiens,  nous  voyons  qu'avant  la  tin  du  sixieme  siecle, 
les  Francois  avoient  deja  adopte  la  doctrine  salutaire  des  Romains  au  sujet 
de  la  prescription ;  et  que  renoncant  a  cette  humanite  cruelle  qui  les  en- 
hardissoit  au  mal,  ils  infiigerent  peine  de  mort  coutre  l'inceste,  ie  vol  et  le 
meurtre  qui  jusques-la  n'avoient  ete  punis  que  par  l'exil,  ou  dont  on  se 
rachetoit  par  une  composition.  Les  Francois,  en  reformant  quelques-unes 
de  leurs  lois  civiles,  porterent  la  severite  aussi  loin  que  leurs  peres  avoient 
pousse  l'indulgence.' — Mably,  Obscrv.  snr  VJIist.  des  Francois,  liv.  i.  ch.  iii. 
See,  too,  Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall,  ch.  xxxviii. 


46  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

mass  of  legislation,  intended  on  the  one  hand  to  elevate 
the  clergy  into  a  separate  and  sacred  caste,  and  on  the 
other  to  persecute  in  every  form,  and  with  every  degree 
of  \  .  all  who  deviated  from  the  fine  line  of  Catholic 

orthodoxy.1 

The  last  consequence  of  the  Christian  estimate  of 
human  life  was  a  very  emphatic  condemnation  of  swicide. 
We  have  already  seen  that  the  arguments  of  the  Pagan 
moralists,  who  were  opposed  to  this  act,  were  of  four 
kinds.  The  religious  argument  of  Pythagoras  and  Plato 
was,  that  we  are  all  soldiers  of  God,  placed  in  an  ap- 
pointed post  of  duty,  which  it  is  a  rebellion  against  our 
1  laker  to  desert.  The  civic  argument  of  Aristotle  and  the 
ek  legislators  was  that  we  owe  our  services  to  the 
State,  and  that  therefore  voluntarily  to  abandon  life  is 
to  abandon  our  duty  to  our  country.  The  argument 
which  Plutarch  and  other  writers  derived  from  human 
dignity  was  that  true  courage  is  shown  in  the  manful 

lurance  of  suffering,  while  suicide,  being  an  act  of 
act  of  cowardice,  and  therefore  unworthy  of 
man.  The  mystical  or  Quietist  argument  of  the  Neo- 
platonists  was  that  all  perturbation  is  a  pollution  of  the 
&  ml ;  that  the  act  of  suicide  is  accompanied  by  and  springs 
fr<  >m  perturbation,  and  that  therefore  the  perpetrator  ends 
his  days  by  a  crime.  Of  these  four  arguments,  the  last 
cannot,  I  think,  be  said  to  have  had  any  place  among  the 
Christian  dissuasives  from  suicide,  and  the  influence  of 
the  second  was  almost  imperceptible.  The  notion  of 
patriotism  being  a  moral  duty  was  habitually  discouraged 
in  the  early  Church,  and  it  Avas  impossible  to  urge  the 
civic  argument  against  Kulckle  without  at  the  same  time 
condemning  the  hermit  life,  which  in  the  third  century 

1  Th-  whole  of  tli-  sixth  volume  of  Godefroy'e  edition  (folio)  of  the 
TheodoeJan  Code  is  taken  uj>  with  laws  of  these  kinds. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  47 

became  the  ideal  of  the  Church.  The  duty  a  man  owes 
to  his  family,  which  a  modern  moralist  would  deem  the 
most  obvious  and  perhaps  the  most  conclusive  proof  of 
the  general  criminality  of  suicide,  and  which  may  be 
said  to  have  replaced  the  civic  argument,  was  scarcely 
noticed  either  by  the  Pagans  or  the  early  Christians.  The 
first'  were  accustomed  to  lay  so  much  stress  upon  the 
authority,  that  they  scarcely  recognised  the  duties  of  the 
father,  and  the  latter  were  too  anxious  to  attach  all  their 
ethics  to  the  interests  of  another  world,  to  do  much  to  sup- 
ply the  omission.  The  Christian  estimate  of  the  duty  of 
humility;  and  of  the  degradation  of  man,  rendered  appeals 
to  human  dignity  somewhat  uncongenial  to  the  patristic 
writers,  yet  these  writers  frequently  dilated  upon  the 
true  courage  of  patience,  in  language  to  which  their 
own  heroism  under  persecution  gave  a  noble  emphasis. 
To  the  example  of  Cato  they  opposed  those  of  Eegulus  and 
Job,  the  courage  that  endures  suffering  to  the  courage 
that  confronts  death.  The  Platonic  doctrine,  that  we  are 
servants  of  the  Deity,  placed  upon  earth  to  perform  our 
allotted  task  in  His  sight,  wilh  His  assistance,  and  by  His 
will,  they  continually  enforced  and  most  deeply  realised ; 
and  this  doctrine  was  in  itself  in  most  cases  a  sufficient 
preventive  ;  for,  as  a  great  writer  lias  said,  '  Though  there 
are  many  crimes  of  a  deeper  dye  than  suicide,  there  is 
no  other  by  which  men  appear  so  formally  to  renounce 
the  protection  of  God.' 1 

But  in  addition  to  this  general  teaching,  the  Christian 
theologians  introduced  into  the  sphere  we  are  considering 
new  elements  both  of  terrorism  and  of  persuasion,  which 
have  had  a  decisive  influence  upon  the  judgments  of 
mankind.     They  carried  their  doctrine  of  the  sanctity  of 

1  Mine,  de  Stael,  Reflexions  sur  le  Suicide. 


48  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

human  life  to  such  a  point  that  they  maintained  dog- 
matically that  a  man  who  destroys  his  own  life  has 
commit  ted  a  crime  similar  both  in  kind  and  magnitude 
to  that  of  an  ordinary  murderer,1  and  they  at  the  same 
tim  i  new  character  to  death  by  their  doctrines 

concerning  its  penal  nature  and  concerning  the  future 
destinies  of  the  soul.     On  the  other  hand,  the  high  position 

■:gned  to  resignation  in  the  moral  scale,  the  hope  of 
future  happiness,  which  casts  a  ray  of  light  upon  the 
darkest  calamities  of  life,  the  deeper  and  more  subtle 
consolations  arising  from  the  feeling  of  trust  and  from  the 
outpouring  of  prayer,  and  above  all,  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  the  remedial  and  providential  character  of  suffering, 
have  proved  sufficient  protection  against  despair.  The 
Christian  doctrine  that  pain  is  a  good,  had  in  this  respect 
an  influence  that  was  never  attained  by  the  Pagan  doc- 
trine, that  pain  is  not  an  evil. 

There  were,  however,  two  forms  of  suicide  which  were 
regarded  in  the  early  Church  with  some  tolerance  or 
hesitation.  During  the  frenzy  excited  by  persecution, 
and  under  the  influence  of  the  belief  that  martyrdom 
effaced  in  a  moment  the  sins  of  a  life,  and  introduced 
the  sufferer  at  once  into  celestial  joys,  it  was  not  un- 
common for  men,  in  a  transport  of  enthusiasm,  to  rush 
before  the  Pagan  judges,  imploring  or  provoking  martyr- 
dom, and  some  of  the  ecclesiastical  writers  have  spoken 
of  them  with  considerable  admiration,2  though  the  general 

1  The  following  became  the  theological  doctrine  on  the  subject :— '  E^t 
rere  h"iiiici(lii  et  ran*  hoiui<  idiiquiseinterficiendo  innocentem  hominem  in- 
— Lisle,  J:  p.  400.    St.  Augustine  lias  much  in  this  strain. 

Lucretia,  he  says,  either  consented  to  the  act  of  Sextius,  or  she  did  not. 
In  the  first  case  she  was  an  adulteress,  and  should  therefore  not  be  admired. 
In  the  second  case  she  wns  a  murderess,  because  in  killing  herself  she  killed 
an  innocent  and  virtuous  woman.     (Be  Civ.  Dei,  i.  10.) 

8  Justin  Martyr,  Tertullian,  nnd  Cyprian,  ar<;  especially  ardent  in  this 
reaped;  but  their  language  is,  I  think,  in  their  circumstances,  extremely 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  Id 

tone  of  the  patristic  writings  and  the  councils  of  the  Church 
condemned  them.  A  more  serious  difficulty  arose  about 
Christian  women  who  committed  suicide  to  guard  their 
chastity  when  menaced  by  the  infamous  sentences  of  their 
persecutors,  or  more  frequently  by  the  lust  of  emperors, 
or  by  barbarian  invaders.  St.  Pelagia,  a  girl  of  only  fifteen, 
who  has  been  canonised  by  the  Church,  and  who  was 
warmly  eulogised  by  St.  Ambrose  and  St.  Chrysostom, 
having  been  captured  by  the  soldiery,  obtained  permission 
to  retire  to  her  room  for  the  purpose  of  robing  herself, 
mounted  to  the  roof  of  the  house,  and,  flinging  herself 
down,  perished  by  the  fall.1  A  Christian  lady  of  Antioch, 
named  Domnina,  had  two  daughters  renowned  alike  for 
their  beauty  and  their  piety.  Being  captured  during  the 
Diocletian  persecution,  and  fearing  the  loss  of  their  chas- 
tity, they  agreed  by  one  bold  act  to  free  themselves  from 
the  danger,  and,  casting  themselves  into  a  river  by  the 
way,  mother  and  daughters  sank  unsullied  in  the  wave.2 
The  tyrant  Maxentius  was  fascinated  by  the  beauty  of  a 
Christian  lady,  the  wife  of  the  Prefect  of  Eome.  Hav- 
ing sought  in  vain  to  elude  his  addresses,  having  been 
dragged  from  her  house  by  the  minions  of  the  tyrant, 
the  faithful  wife  obtained  permission,  before  yielding  to 
her  master's  embraces,  to  retire  for  a  moment  into  her 
chamber,  and  she  there,  with  true  Eoman  courage,  stabbed 
herself  to  the  heart.3     Some  Protestant  controversialists 

excusable.  Compare  Barbeyrac,  Morale  des  Peres,  cli.  ii.  §  8  ;  ch.  viii.  §§  34- 
89.  Donne's  Biathanatos  (ed.  1644),  pp.  58-67.  Cromaziano,  Isioria  critica 
e  jilosojica  del  Suicidio  ragionalo  (Venezia,  1788),  pp.  135-140.  The  true 
name  of  the  author  of  this  last  book  (which  was  first  published  at  Lucca 
in  1761,  and  is  still,  perhaps,  the  best  history  of  suicide)  was  Buonafede. 
He  was  a  Celestine  monk,  and  died  at  Rome  in  1793.  His  book  on  suicide 
was  translated  into  French  in  1841. 

1  Ambrose,  Be  Virginibus,  iii.  7.  a  Eusebius,  Eccles.  Hist.  viii.  12. 

8  Eusebius,  Eccles.  Hist.  viii.  14.       Bayle,  in  his  article  upon  Sophronia, 


50  HISTORY  OF  EUROrEAN  MORALS. 

have  been  scandalised,1  and  some  Catholic  controver- 
sialists perplexed,  by  the  undisguised  admiration  with 
which  the  early  ecclesiastical  writers  narrate  these  his- 
tories. To  those  who  have  not  suffered  theological 
opinions  to  destroy  all  their  natural  sense  of  nobility  it 
will  need  no  defence. 

This  was  the  only  form  of  avowed  suicide  which  was  in 
any  degree  permitted  in  the  early  Church.  St.  Ambrose 
rather  timidly,  and  St.  Jerome  more  strongly,  commended 
it ;  but  at  the  time  when  the  capture  of  Eome  by  the  sol- 
diers of  Attila  made  the  question  one  of  pressing  interest, 
St.  Augustine  devoted  an  elaborate  examination  to  the 
subject,  and  while  expressing  his  pitying  admiration  for 
the  virgin  suicides,  decidedly  condemned  their  act.2  His 
opinion  of  the  absolute  sinfulness  of  suicide  has  since 
been  generally  adopted  by  the  Catholic  theologians,  who 
pretend  that  Pelagia  and  Domnina  acted  under  the  im- 
pulse of  a  special  revelation.3     At  the  same  time,  by  a 

appears  to  be  greatly  scandalised  at  this  act,  and  it  seems  that  among  the 
.<>lics  it  is  not  considered  right  to  admire  this  poor  lady  as  much  as 
her  >  ides.     Tillemont  remarks,  '  Comme  on  ue  voit  pas  que  l'eglise 

romaine  l'ait  jamais  honored,  nous  n'avon3  pas  le  mesme  droit  dejustifier 
son  action.' — Hist,  cedes,  tome  v.  pp.  404-405. 

|  ecially  Barbeyrac,  in  his  Morale  des  Peres.     He  was  answered  by 
Ceillier,  Cromaziano,  and  others.    Mathew  of  Westminster  relates  of  Ebba, 
the  abbess  of  a  Yorkshire  convent  which  was  besieged  by  the  Danes,  that 
she  and  all   the  otlnr  nuns,  t)  save  their  chastity,  deformed  themselves 
bv  cutting  oft'  their  noses  and  upper  lips.     (a.d.  870.) 
-27. 
3  This  had  been  suggested  by  St.  Augustine.     In  the  case  of  Pelagia, 
•  Buds  u  strong  argument  in  support  of  this  view  in  the  astounding, 
if  not  miraculous  fact,  that  having  thrown    herself  from  the  top  of 
house,  she  was  actually  killed  by  tli<>  fall !    '  Estant  montee  tout  an  haut  de 
samaison.  pel  1"  moaYement  que  J.-C.  formoit  dans  son  coeur  et 

par  le  courage  qu'il  luv  inspiroit,  elle  se  precipita  de  la  du  haut  en  ba 

•  tous  les  pit'ges  do  ses  ennemis.     Son  corps  en  tombant  a  terr  i 
frapa,  dit  S.  Chrysostome,  les  yeux  du  de'mon  plus  riyement  qu'un  eclair 

Ce  qui  marque  encore  que  Dieu  agissoH  an  tout  ceci  c 

qu'au  lieu  que  ces  chutes  ne  sont  pas  tonjoun  mortelles,  ou  que  sou  vent 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  51 

glaring  though  very  natural  inconsistency,  no  characters 
were  more  enthusiastically  extolled  than  those  anchorites 
who  habitually  deprived  their  bodies  of  the  sustenance 
that  was  absolutely  necessary  to  health,  and  thus  mani- 
festly abridged  their  lives.  St.  Jerome  has  preserved  a 
curious  illustration  of  the  feeling  with  which  these  slow 
suicides  were  regarded  by  the  outer  world,  in  his  account 
of  the  life  and  death  of  a  young  nun  named  Blesilla. 
This  lady  had  been  guilty  of  what,  according  to  the  reli- 
gious notions  of  the  fourth  century,  was,  at  least,  the 
frivolity  of  marrying,  but  was  left  a  widow  seven  months 
after,  having  thus  c  lost  at  once  the  crown  of  virginity  and 
the  pleasure  of  marriage.'1  An  attack  of  illness  inspired 
her  with  strong  religious  feelings.  At  the  age  of  twenty 
she  retired  to  a  convent.  She  attained  such  a  height  of 
devotion,  that,  according  to  the  very  characteristic  eulogy 
of  her  biographer,  '  she  was  more  sorry  for  the  loss  of  her 
virginity  than  for  the  decease  of  her  husband ;' 2  and  a 
long,  succession  of  atrocious  penances  preceded,  if  they  did 
not  produce,  her  death.3  The  conviction  that  she  had 
been  killed  by  fasting,  and  the  spectacle  of  the  uncon- 
trollable grief  of  her  mother,  filled  the  populace  with 
indignation,  and  the  funeral  was  disturbed  by  tumultuous 
cries,  that  the  '  accursed  race  of  monks  should  be  ban- 
ished from  the  city,  stoned,  or  drowned.' 4  In  the  Church 
itself,  however,  we  find  very  few  traces  of  any  condem- 

ne  brisant  que  quelques  niembres,  elles  n'ostent  la  vie  que  longtemps  apres, 
ni  l'un  ni  l'autre  n'arriva  en  cette  rencontre ;  mais  Dieu  retira  aussitost 
Tame  de  la  sainte,  en  sorte  que  sa  mort  parut  autaut  1'eff'et  de  la  volonte 
divine  que  de  sa  chute.' — Hist,  eccles.  tome  v.  pp.  401-402. 

1  '  Et  virginitatis  coronam  et  nuptiarum  perdidit  voluptatem.' — Ep.  xxii. 

2  '  Quia  enim  siccis  oculis  recordetur  viginti  aimorum  adolescentulam  tarn 
ardenti  fide  crucis  levasse  vexillum  ut  raagis  amissam  virginitatem  quam 
mariti  doleret  interitum  ?  ' — Ep.  xxxix. 

3  For  a  description  of  these  penances,  see  Ep.  xxxviii. 

4  Ep.  xxxix. 


52  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

nation  of  the  custom  of  undermining  the  constitution  by 
.    and  if  we   may  believe  but  a  small  part  of 
what  is  related  of  the  habits  of  the  early  and  medieval 
mo;  at  numbers  must  have  thus  shortened  their 

day-.     There  is  a  touching  story  told  by  St.  Bonaventura, 
of  St.  Francis  Assisi,  who  was  one  of  these  victims  to  asce- 

-111.  As  the  dying  saint  sank  back  exhausted  with  spit- 
ting blood,  he  avowed,  as  he  looked  upon  his  emaciated 
body,  that  'he  had  sinned  against  his  brother,  the  ass;' 
and  then  the  feeling  of  his  mind  taking,  as  was  usual  with 
him,  the  form  of  an  hallucination,  he  imagined  that  when 
at  prayer  during  the  night,  he  heard  a  voice  saying, 
•  Francis,  there  is  no  sinner  in  the  world  whom,  if  he  be 
converted,  God  will  not  pardon ;  but  he  who  kills  himself 
by  hard  penances  will  find  no  mercy  in  eternity.'  He 
attributed  the  voice  to  the  devil.2 

Direct  and  deliberate  suicide,  which  occupies  so  pro- 
minent a  place  in  the  moral  history  of  antiquity,  almost 

►lutely  disappeared  within  the  Church  ;  but  beyond  its 
pale  the  Circumcelliones,  in  the  fourth  century,  constituted 
themselves  the  apostles  of  death,  and  not  only  carried  to 
the  highest  point  the  custom  of  provoking  martyrdom,  by 
challenging  and  insulting  the  assemblies  of  the  Pagans, 
but  even  killed  themselves  in  great  numbers,  imagining, 
it  would  seem,  that  this  was  a  form  of  martyrdom,  and 
would  secure  for  them  eternal  salvation.  Assembling  in 
hundreds,  St.  Augustine  says  even   in   thousands,  they 

ped  with  paroxysms  of  frantic  joy  from  the  brows  of 
overhanging  cliffs,  till  the  rocks  below  were  reddened  with 
their  blood.8     At  a  much  later  period,  we  find  among  the 

3fc  Jerome  gave  some  sensible  advice  on  this  point  to  one  of  hit 
ndmirera. 

*  Hase,  .V.  Fmucnis  (TAm*c,  pp.  137-138.     St.  Palflefottl  is  said  to  have 
bii  wsteritie*.     (  \'it.  s.  Packormk') 

Ingtlgtiiie  tad  Bt  Optafeu  have  given  accounts  of  these  suicides  in 
works  against  the  Donathsts. 


FROM  COXSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  63 

Albigenses  a  practice,  known  by  the  name  of  Endura, 
of  accelerating  death,  in  the  case  of  dangerous  illness,  by 
fasting,  and  sometimes  by  bleeding.1  The  wretched  Jews, 
stung  to  madness  by  the  persecutions  of  the  Catholics, 
furnish  the  most  numerous  examples  of  suicide  during  the 
middle  ages.  A  multitude  perished  by  their  own  hands, 
to  avoid  torture,  in  France,  in  1095 ;  five  hundred,  it  is  said, 
on  a  single  occasion  at  York;  five  hundred  in  1320,  when 
besieged  by  the  Shepherds.  The  old  Pagan  legislation  on 
this  subject  remained  unaltered  in  the  Theodosian  and  Jus- 
tinian codes,  but  a  Council  of  Aries,  in  the  fifth  century, 
having  pronounced  suicide  to  be  the  effect  of  diabolical 
inspiration,  a  Council  of  Bragues,  in  the  following  century, 
ordained  that  no  religious  rites  should  be  celebrated  at  the 
tomb  of  the  culprit,  and  that  no  masses  should  be  said  for 
his  soul ;  and  these  provisions,  which  were  repeated  by 
later  Councils,  were  gradually  introduced  into  the  laws  of 
the  barbarians  and  of  Charlemagne.  St.  Lewis  originated 
the  custom  of  confiscating  the  property  of  the  dead  man, 
and  the  corpse  was  soon  subjected  to  gross  and  various 
outrages.  In  some  countries  it  could  only  be  removed 
from  the  house  through  a  perforation  specially  made  for 
the  occasion  in  the  wall ;  it  was  dragged  upon  a  hurdle 
through  the  streets,  hung  up  with  the  head  downwards, 
and  at  last  thrown  into  the  public  sewer,  or  burnt,  or 
buried  in  the  sand  below  high-water  mark,  or  transfixed 
by  a  stake  on  the  public  highway.2 

1  See  Todd's  Life  of  St.  Patrick,  p.  4G2. 

2  The  whole  history  of  suicide  in  the  dark  ages  has  been  most  minutely 
and  carefully  examined  by  M.  Bourquelot,  in  a  very  interesting  series  of 
memoirs  in  the  third  and  fourth  volume  of  the  Bibliotlieque  de  VEcole  des 
Charles.  I  am  much  indebted  to  these  memoirs  in  the  following  pages. 
See,  too,  Lisle,  Du  Suicide,  Statistique,  Medecine,  Jlistoire  et  Legislation. 
(Paris,  1856.)  The  ferocious  laws  here  recounted  contrast  remarkably  with 
a  law  in  the  Capitularies  (lib.  vi.  lex  70),  which  provides  that  though  mass 
may  not  bo  celebrated  for  a  suicide,  any  private  person  may,  through  charity, 


04  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

These  singularly  hideous  and  at  the  same  time  gro- 
tesque customs,  and  also  the  extreme  injustice  of  reducing 
to  beggary  the  unhappy  relations  of  the  dead,  had  the 
wry  natural  effect  of  exciting,  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
rong  spirit  of  reaction.  Suicide  is  indeed  one  of  those 
acts  which  may  be  condemned  by  moralists  as  a  sin,  but 
which,  in  modern  times  at  least,  cannot  be  regarded  as 
within  the  legitimate  sphere  of  law;  for  a  society  which 
<>rds  to  its  members  perfect  liberty  of  emigration,  can- 
not reasonably  pronounce  the  simple  renunciation  of 
life  to  be  an  offence  against  itself.  When,  however,  Bec- 
raria  and  his  followers  went  further,  and  maintained  that 
the  mediaeval  laws  on  the  subject  were  as  useless  as  they 
were  revolting,  they  fell,  I  think,  into  a  serious  error.  The 
outrages  lavished  upon  the  corpse  of  the  suicide,  though 
in  the  first  instance  an  expression  of  the  popular  horror 
of  his  act,  contributed  by  the  associations  they  formed,  to 
strengthen  the  feeling  that  produced  them,  and  they  were 
also  peculiarly  fitted  to  scare  the  diseased,  excited,  and 
over  sensitive  imaginations  that  are  most  prone  to  suicide. 
In  the  rare  occasions  when  the  act  was  deliberately  con- 
templated, the  knowledge  that  religious,  legislative,  and 
social  influences  would  combine  to  aggravate  to  the  ut- 

CO 

most  the  agony  of  the  surviving  relatives,  must  have  had 
great  weight.  The  activity  of  the  legislature  shows  the 
continuance  of  the  act ;  but  we  have  every  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  within  the  pale  of  Catholicism  it  was  for 
many  centuries  extremely  rare.  It  is  said  to  have  been 
somewhat  prevalent  in  Spain  in  the  last  and  most  cor- 
rupt period  of  the  Gothic  kingdom,1  and  many  instances 
occurred  during  a  great  pestilence  which  raged  in  England 

cause  pra  e  to  be  offered  up  for  h's  soul.  '  Quia  incomprehensibilin  sunt 
judie'm  Dei,  et  profunditatem  conailii  ejus  nemo  potest  invearturare.' 

1  See  the  very  interesting  work  of  the  Abbe1  Bourret,  VEcole  ohritienns 
de  Seville  sous  la  monarchic  des  Visiyoths  (Paris,  L856  i,  p.  lt>0. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  55 

during  the  seventh  century,1  and  also  during  the  Black 
Death  of  the  fourteenth  century.2  When  the  wives  of 
priests  were  separated  in  vast  numbers  from  their  hus- 
bands by  Hildebrand,  and  driven  into  the  world  blasted, 
heart-broken,  and  hopeless,  not  a  few  of  them  shortened 
their  agony  by  suicide.3  Among  women  it  was  in  gene- 
ral especially  rare,  and  a  learned  historian  of  suicide  has 
even  asserted  that  a  Spanish  lady,  who,  being  separated 
from  her  husband,  and  finding  herself  unable  to  resist  the 
energy  of  her  passions,  killed  herself  to  preserve  her 
chastity,  is  the  only  instance  of  female  suicide  during 
several  centuries.4  In  the  romances  of  chivalry,  however, 
this  mode  of  death  is  frequently  pourtrayed  without 
horror,5  and  its  criminality  was  discussed  at  considerable 
length  by  Abelard  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  while  Dante- 
has  devoted  some  fine  lines  to  painting  the  condition  of 
suicides  in  hell,  where  they  are  also  frequently  represented 
on  the  bas-reliefs  of  cathedrals.  A  melancholy  leading 
to  desperation,  and  known  to  theologians  under  the  name 
of  '  acedia,'  was  not  uncommon  in  monasteries,  and  most 
of  the  recorded  instances  of  mediaeval  suicides  in  Catho- 
licism were  by  monks.  The  frequent  suicides  of  monks, 
sometimes  to  escape  the  world,  sometimes  through  de- 
spair at  their  inability  to  quell  the  propensities  of  the  flesh, 

1  Roger  of  Wendover,  a.d.  685. 

2  Esquirol,  Maladies  mentales,  tome  i.  p.  591. 

3  Lea's  History  of  Sacerdotal  Celibacy  (Philadelphia,  1867),  p.  248. 

4  '  Per  lo  corso  di  niolti  secoli  abbiamo  questo  solo  suicidio  donnesco,  e 
buona  cosa  e  non  averne  piii  d'  uno  ,•  perche  io  non  credo  che  la  impudicizia 
istessa  sia  peggiore  di  questa  disperata  castita.' — Cromaziano,  1st.  del  Sui- 
cidio, p.  126.  Mariana,  who,  under  the  frock  of  a  Jesuit,  oore  the  heart  of 
au  ancient  Roman,  treats  the  case  in  a  very  different  manner.  'Ejus  uxor 
Maria  Coronelia  cum  mariti  absentiam  non  ferret,  ne  pravis  cupiditatibus 
cederet,  vitam  posuit,  ardentem  forte  libidinem  igne  extinguens  adacto  per 
muliebria  titione ;  dignam  meliori  seculo  fceminam,  insigne  studium  casti- 
tatis.' — Be  Rebus  Jlispan.  xvi.  17. 

5  A  number  of  passages  are  cited  by  Bourquelot. 

38 


66  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

sometimes  through  insanity  produced  by  their  mode  of 
life,  and  by  their  dread  of  surrounding  dsernons,  were 
noticed  id  the  early  Church,1  and  a  few  examples  have 
been  gleaned  from  the  mediaeval  chronicles  2  of  suicides 

luced  by  the  bitterness  of  hopeless  love,  or  by  the 
derangement  that  follows  extreme  austerity.  These  are, 
however,  but  few,  and  it  is  probable  that  the  monasteries, 
by  providing  a  refuge  for  the  disappointed  and  the 
broken-hearted,  have  prevented  more  suicides  than  they 
have  caused,  and  that,  during  the  whole  period  of  Catholic 

ndancy,  the  act  was  more  rare  than  before  or  after. 
The  influence  of  Catholicism  was  seconded  by  Mahommed- 
anism,  which  on  this  as  on  many  other  points  borrowed  its 
teaching  from  the  Christian  Church,  and  even  intensified 
it ;  for  suicide,  which  is  never  expressly  condemned  in  the 
Bible,  is  more  than  once  forbidden  in  the  Koran,  and  the 

istian  duty  of  resignation  was  exaggerated  by  the 
Moslem  into  a  complete  fatalism.     Under  the  empire  of 

holicism  and  Mahommedanism,  suicide,  during  many 
centuries,  almost  absolutely  ceased  in  all  the  civilised, 
active,  and  progressive  part  of  mankind.  When  we  recol- 
lect how  warmly  it  was  applauded,  or  how  faintly  it  was 
condemned  in  the  civilisations  of  Greece  and  Borne  ;  when 
we  remember,  too,  that  there  was  scarcely  a  barbarous 
tribe,  from  Denmark  to  Spain,  who  did  not  habitually 


1  This  is  noticed  by  St.  Gregory  Nazianzen  in  a  little  poem  which  is  given 

■,••'■*  edition  of  The  Greek  Fathers,  tome  xxxvii.  p.  1459.    St.  Nilus 

and  the  biographer  of  St.  Pachomius  speak  of  these  suicides,  and  St.  Chrvs- 

ostom  wrote  a  letter  of  consolation  to  a  young  monk,  named  Stagirius, 

which  It  f-till  extant,  encouraging  him  to  resist  the  temptation.  See  Neander, 

I  list.  vol.  iii.  pp.  319-320. 

nqneloC     Pine]  noticed  ( TraiU  midico-philotophique  tur  PAUenatton 

.  pp,   I  I    10)  the  numerous  cases  of  insanity  still  produced 

by  strong  religious  feeling,  and  the  history  of  the  movements  called  (  revi- 

'  i  the  present  century,  supplies  much  evidence  to  the,  same  efiect. 

I'inel  says,  religious  insanity  tends  peculiarly  to  suicide  (p.  266). 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  67 

practise  it,1  we  may  realise  the  complete  revolution  which 
was  effected  in  this  sphere  by  the  influence  of  Christianity. 
A  few  words  may  be  added  on  the  later  phases  of  this 
mournful  history.  The  Eeformation  does  not  seem  to 
have  had  any  immediate  effect  in  multiplying  suicide,  for 
Protestants  and  Catholics  held  with  equal  intensity  the 
religious  sentiments  which  are  most  fitted  to  prevent  it, 
and  in  none  of  the  persecutions  was  impatience  of  life 
largely  displayed.  The  history  at  this  period  passes 
chiefly  into  the  new  world,  where  the  unhappy  Indians, 
reduced  to  slavery,  and  treated  with  atrocious  cruelty  by 
their  conquerors,  killed  themselves  in  great  numbers,  till 
the  Spaniards,  it  is  said,  discovered  an  ingenious  method 
of  deterring  them,  by  declaring  that  the  master  also 
would  commit  suicide,  and  would  pursue  his  victims  into 
the  world  of  spirits.2  In  Europe  the  act  was  very  com- 
mon among  the  witches,  who  underwent  all  the  sufferings 
with  none  of  the  consolations  of  martyrdom.  Without 
enthusiasm,  without  hope,  without  even  the  consciousness 
of  innocence,  decrepit  in  body,  and  distracted  in  mind, 


1  Orosius  notices  (Hist.  v.  14)  that  of  all  the  Gauls  conquered  by  Q. 
Marcius  there  were  none  who  did  not  prefer  death  to  slavery.  The 
Spaniards  were  famous  for  their  suicides,  to  avoid  old  age  as  well  as  slavery. 
Odin,  who,  under  different  names,  was  the  supreme  divinity  of  most  of  the 
Northern  tribes,  is  said  to  have  ended  his  earthly  life  by  suicide.  Boadicea, 
the  grandest  figure  of  early  British  history,  and  Cordeilla,  or  Cordelia,  the 
most  pathetic  figure  of  early  British  romance,  were  both  suicides.  (See  on 
the  first,  Tacitus,  Ann.  xiv.  35-37,  and  on  the  second  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth, 
ii.  15 — a  version  from  which  Shakspeare  has  considerably  diverged,  but 
which  is  faithfully  followed  by  Spenser.     (Faery  Queen,  book  ii.  canto  10.) 

2  '  In  pur  age,  when  the  Spaniards  extended  that  law  which  was  made 
only  against  the  cannibals,  that  they  who  would  not  accept  Christian  religion 
should  incur  bondage,  the  Indians  in  infinite  numbers  escaped  this  by  kill- 
ing themselves,  and  never  ceased  till  the  Spaniards,  by  some  counterfeit- 
ings,  made  them  think  that  they  also  would  kill  themselves,  and  follow  them 
with  the  same  severity  into  the  next  life.' — Donne's  Biathanatos,  p.  56  (ed. 
1644).  On  the  evidence  of  the  early  travellers  on  this  point,  see  the  essay 
*n  '  England's  Forgotten  Worthies,'  in  Mr.  Froude's  Short  Studies. 


68  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

compelled  in  this  world  to  endure  tortures,  before  which 
the  most  impassioned  heroism  might  quail,  and  doomed, 
as  they  often  believed,  to  eternal  damnation  in  the  next, 
they  not  unfrequently  killed  themselves  in  the  agony  of 
their  despair.  A  French  judge  named  Eemy  tells  us  that 
he  knew  no  less  than  fifteen  witches  commit  suicide  in  a 
single  year.1  In  these  cases,  fear  and  madness  combined 
in  urging  the  victims  to  the  deed.  Epidemics  of  purely 
insane  suicide  have  also  not  unfrequently  occurred.  Both 
the  women  of  Marseilles  and  the  women  of  Lyons  were 
afflicted  with  an  epidemic  not  unlike  that  which,  in 
antiquity,  had  been  noticed  among  the  girls  of  Miletus.2 
In  that  strange  mania  which  raged  in  the  Neapolitan 
districts  from  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  to  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  which  was  attributed  to  the  bite 
of  the  tarantula,  the  patients  thronged  in  multitudes  to- 
wards the  sea,  and  often,  as  the  blue  waters  opened  to 
ir  view,  they  chaunted  a  wild  hymn  of  welcome,  and 
rushed  with  passion  into  the  waves.3  But  together  with 
these  cases,  which  belong  rather  to  the  history  of  medicine 
than  to  that  of  morals,  we  find  many  facts  exhibiting  a 
startling  increase  of  deliberate  suicide,  and  a  no  less  start- 
ling modification  of  the  sentiments  with  which  it  was 

1  Lisle,  pp.  427-434.  Sprenger  has  noticed  the  same  tendency  among 
the  witches  he  tried.  See  Calmeil,  Do  la  Folie  (Paris,  1845),  tome  i.  pp. 
101,303-; 

2  On  modern  suicides  the  reader  may  consult  "Winslow's  Anatomy  of 

<le\   as  well  as  the  work  of  M.  Lisle,   and  also  Esquirol,  Maladies 
'ties  (Taris,  1838),  tome  i.  pp.  52G-G7G. 

3  Ilecker's  Epidemics  of  the  Middle  Ages  (London,  1844),  p.  121.  Hecker, 
in  his  very  curious  essay  on  this  mania,  has  preserved  a  verse  of  their 
song:— 

4  A 11  ii  niari  mi  portati 
Be  vuleti  che  mi  sanari, 
A 11  u  mari,  alia  via, 
Cosi  m'  ama  la  donna  mia, 
Allu  nuiri,  allu  m 
Mentr-.-  campo,  t'  aggio  amari.' 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  59 

regarded.  The  revival  of  classical  learning,  and  the 
growing  custom  of  regarding  Greek  and  Eoman  heroes 
as  ideals,  necessarily  brought  the  subject  into  prominence. 
The  Catholic  casusists,  and  at  a  later  period  philosophers 
of  the  school  of  Grotius  and  Puffendorf,  began  to  distin- 
guish certain  cases  of  legitimate  suicide,  such  as  that  com- 
mitted to  avoid  dishonour  or  probable  sin,  or  that  of  the 
soldier  who  fires  a  mine,  knowing  he  must  inevitably 
perish  by  the  explosion,  or  that  of  a  condemned  person 
who  saves  himself  from  torture  by  anticipating  an  inevi- 
table fate,  or  that  of  a  man  who  offers  himself  to  death 
for  his  friend.1  The  effect  of  the  Pagan  examples  may 
frequently  be  detected  in  the  last  words  or  writings  of  the 
suicides.  Philip  Strozzi,  when  accused  of  the  assassination 
of  Alexander  I.  of  Tuscany,  killed  himself  through  fear 
that  torture  might  extort  from  hirn  revelations  injurious 
to  his  friends,  and  he  left  behind  him  a  paper  in  which, 
among  other  things,  he  commended  his  soul  to  God, 
with  the  prayer  that  if  no  higher  boon  could  be  granted, 
he  might  at  least  be  permitted  to  have  his  place  with 
Cato  of  Utica  and  the  other  great  suicides  of  antiquity.2 
In  England,  the  act  appears  in  the  seventeenth  and  in  the 
first  half  of  the  eighteenth  centuries  to  have  been  more 
common  than  upon  the  Continent,3  and  several  partial 
or  even  unqualified  apologies  for  it  were  written.  Sir 
Thomas  More,  in  his  'Utopia,'  represented  the  priests  and 
magistrates    of  his   ideal   republic   permitting   or  even 


1  Crornaziano,  1st.  del  Suicidio,  caps.  viii.  ix. 
8  Ibid.,  pp.  92-93. 


3  Montesquieu,  and  many  continental  writers,  have  noticed  tliis,  and  most 
English  writers  of  the  eighteenth  century  seem  to  admit  the  charge.  There 
do  not  appear, ,  however,  to  have  been  any  accurate  statistics,  and  the 
general  statements  are  very  untrustworthy.  Suicides  were  supposed  to  be 
especially  numerous  under  the  depressing  influence  of  English  winter  fogs. 
The  statistics  made  in  the  present  century  prove  beyond  question  that  they 
are  most  numerous  in  summer. 


00  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

enjoining  those  who  were  afflicted  with  incurable  disease 
to  kill  themselves,  but  depriving  of  burial  those  who  had 
done  so  without  authorisation.1  Dr.  Donne,  the  learned 
and  pious  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  had  in  his  youth  written  an 
remely  curious,  subtle,  and  learned,  but  at  the  same 
time  feeble  and  involved  work,  in  defence  of  suicide, 
which  on  his  deathbed  he  commanded  his  son  neither  to 
publish  nor  destroy,  and  which  his  son  published  in  1644. 
Two  or  three  English  suicides  left  behind  them  elabo- 
rate defences,  as  did  also  a  Swede  named  Eobeck,  who 
drowned  himself  in  1735,  and  whose  treatise,  published 
in  the  following  year,  acquired  considerable  celebrity.2 
But  the  most  influential  writings  about  suicide  were  those 
of  the  French  philosophers  and  revolutionists.  Mon- 
taigne, without  discussing  its  abstract  lawfulness,  recounts 
with  much  admiration  many  of  the  instances  in  antiquity.3 
Montesquieu,  in  a  youthful  work,  defended  it  with  ar- 
dent enthusiasm.4  Eousseau  devoted  to  the  subject  two 
letters  of  a  burning  and  passionate  eloquence,5  in  the 
first  of  which  he   presented  with  matchless  power  the 

1  Utopia,  book  ii.  ch.  vi. 

2  A  sketch  of  his  life,  which  was  rather  curious,  is  given  by  Cromaziano, 
pp.  148-151.  There  is  a  long  note  on  the  early  literature  in  defence  of 
suicide,  in  Dumas,  Trade  clu  Suicide  (Amsterdam,  1723),  pp.  148-149. 
Dumas  was  a  Protestant  minister  who  wrote  against  suicide.  Amongst 
the  English  apologists  for  suicide  (which  he  himself  committed)  was 
Blount,  the  translator  of  the  Life  of  ApolUmius  of  Tyana,  and  Creech,  an 
editor  of  Lucretius.  Concerning  the  former  there  is  a  note  in  Bayle's  Diet, 
art.  '  Apollunius.'     The  latter  is  noticed  by  Voltaire  in  his  Lett res  jrfiilos. 

vrote  as  a  memorandum  on  the  margin  of  his  '  Lucretius,'  'N.B.  "When 
•  •  linished  my  Commentary  I  must  kill  myself; '  which  he  accordingly 
did — Voltaire  says,  to  imitate  his  favourite  author.     (Voltaire,  Lid.  phil. 
art.  '  Caton.') 

MM,  liv.  ii.  ch.  xiii.  .  *  Lettrcs  pcrsancs,  lxxvi. 

*  Hon  II-  >i*e,  partie  iii.  let.  21-22.  Esquirol  gives  a  curious  illus- 
tration of  the  way  th"  influence  <>f  llousseau  penetrated  through  all  classes. 
A  little  child  of  thirteen  committed  suicide,  leaving  a  writing  beginning, 
'  Je  legue  mon  lime  a  Kousseau,  mon  corps  a  la  terro.'— Maladies  modules, 
tome  i.  p.  088. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  61 

arguments  in  its  favour,  while  in  the  second  he  denounced 
those  arguments  as  sophistical,  dilated  upon  the  impiety 
of  abandoning  the  post  of  duty,  and  upon  the  cowardice 
of  despair,  and  with  a  deep  knowledge  of  the  human 
heart  revealed  the  selfishness  that  lies  at  the  root  of  most 
suicide,  exhorting  all  who  felt  impelled  to  it  to  set  about 
some  work  for  the  good  of  others,  in  which  they  would 
assuredly  find  relief.  Voltaire,  in  the  best  known  couplet 
he  ever  wrote,  defends  the  act  on  occasions  of  extreme 
necessity.1  Among  the  atheistical  party  it  was  warmly 
eulogised,  and  Holbach  and  Deslandes  were  prominent  as 
its  defenders.  The  rapid  decomposition  of  religious 
opinions  weakened  the  popular  sense  of  its  enormity,  and 
at  the  same  time  the  humanity  of  the  age,  and  also  a 
clearer  sense  of  the  true  limits  of  legislation,  produced  a 
reaction  against  the  horrible  laws  on  the  subject.  Grotius 
had  defended  them.  Montesquieu  at  first  denounced  them 
with  unqualified  energy,  but  in  his  later  years  in  some 
degree  modified  his  opinions.  Beccaria,  who  was,  more 
than  any  other  writer,  the  representative  of  the  opinions 
of  the  French  school  on  such  matters,  condemned  them 
partly  as  unjust  to  the  innocent  survivors,  partly  as  in- 
capable of  deterring  any  man  who  was  resolved  upon  the 
act.  Even  in  1749,  in  the  full  blaze  of  the  philosophic 
movement,  we  find  a  suicide  named  Portier  dragged 
through  the  streets  of  Paris  with  his  face  to  the  ground, 
hung  from  a  gallows  by  his  feet,  and  then  thrown  into 
the  sewers ; 2  and  the  laws  were  not  abrogated  till  the 
Ee volution,  which,  having  founded  so  many  other  forms 
of  freedom,  accorded  the  liberty  of  death.  Amid  the 
dramatic  vicissitudes,  and  the  fierce  enthusiasm  of  that 

1  In  general,  however,  Voltaire  was  extremely  opposed  to  the  philosophy 
of  despair,  but  he  certainly  approved  of  some  forms  of  suicide.  See  the 
articles  '  Caton '  and  l  Suicide,'  in  his  Diet.  pJtilos. 

2  Lisle,  Du  Suicide,  pp.  411-412. 


G2  HISTORY  OF  ELTvOrEAN  MORALS. 

period  of  convulsions,  suicides  immediately  multiplied. 
'The  world/  it  was  said,  had  been  'empty  since  the 
Komans.'1  For  a  brief  period,  and  in  this  one  country,  the 
action  of  Christianity  appeared  suspended.  Men  seemed 
to  be  transported  again  into  the  age  of  Paganism,  and 
the  suicides,  though  more  theatrical,  were  perpetrated 
with  no  less  deliberation,  and  eulogised  with  no  less 
enthusiasm  than  among  the  Stoics.  But  the  tide  of  re- 
volution passed  away,  and  with  some  qualifications  the 
old  opinions  resumed  their  authority.  The  laws  against 
suicide  were,  indeed,  for  the  most  part  abolished.  In 
Fiance  and  several  other  lands  there  exists  no  legislation 
on  the  subject.  In  other  countries  the  law  simply  enjoins 
burial  without  religious  ceremonies.  In  England,  the 
burial  in  a  highway  and  the  mutilation  by  a.  stake  were 
abolished  under  George  IV. ;  but  the  monstrous  injustice 
of  confiscating  to  the  Crown  the  entire  property  of  the 
deliberate  suicide  still  disgraces  the  statute-book,  though 
the  force  of  public  opinion  and  the  charitable  perjury  of 
juries  render  it  inoperative.  The  common  sentiment  of 
Christendom  has,  however,  ratified  the  judgment  which 
the  Christian  teachers  pronounced  upon  the  act,  though 
it  has  somewhat  modified  the  severity  of  the  old  censure, 
and  has  abandoned  some  of  the  old  arguments.  It  was 
reserved  for  Madame  de  Stael,  who,  in  a  youthful  work 
upon  the  Passions,  had  commended  suicide,  to  reconstruct 
department  of  ethics,  which  had  been  somewhat 
disturbed  by  the  Revolution,  and  she  did  so  in  a  little 
treatise  which  is  a  model  of  calm,  candid,  and  philosophic 
piety.  Frankly  abandoning  the  old  theological  notions 
that  the  deed  was  of  the  nature  of  murder,  that  it  was  the 
worst  of  crimes,  and  that  it  was  always,  <>i*  even  gene- 
rally, the  offspring  of  cowardice;  abandoning,  too,  all 

1  'Le  monde  est  vide  depui>  lei  Romains.'— St.-Just,  Frocks  de  Dantoti, 


FROM  CONSTANTINE   TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  63 

attempts  to  scare  men  by  religious  terrorism,  she  pro- 
ceeded, not  so  much  to  meet  in  detail  the  isolated  argu- 
ments of  its  defenders,  as  to  sketch  the  ideal  of  a  truly 
virtuous  man,  and  to  show  how  such  a  character  would 
secure  men  against  all  temptation  to  suicide.  In  pages  of 
the  most  tender  beauty,  she  traced  the  influence  of  suffering 
in  softening,  purifying,  and  deepening  the  character,  and 
showed  how  a  frame  of  habitual  and  submissive  resig- 
nation  was  not  only  the  highest  duty,  but  also  the  source 
of  the  purest  consolation,  and  at  the  same  time  the  ap- 
pointed condition  of  moral  amelioration.  Having  examined 
in  detail  the  Biblical  aspect  of  the  question,  she  proceeded 
to  show  how  the  true  measure  of  the  dignity  of  man  is 
his  unselfishness.  She  contrasted  the  martyr  with  the 
suicide — the  death  which  springs  from  devotion  to  duty 
with  the  death  that  springs  from  rebellion  against  cir- 
cumstances. The  suicide  of  Cato,  which  had  been  ab- 
surdly denounced  by  a  crowd  of  ecclesiastics  as  an  act 
of  cowardice,  and  as  absurdly  alleged  by  many  suicides 
as  a  justification  for  flying  from  pain  or  poverty,  she  re- 
presented as  an  act  of  martyrdom — a  death  like  that  of 
Curtius,  accepted  nobly  for  the  benefit  of  Borne.  The  eye 
of  the  good  man  should  be  for  ever  fixed  upon  the  inte- 
rest of  others.  For  them  he  should  be  prepared  to  relin- 
quish life  with  all  its  blessings.  For  them  he  should  be 
prepared  to  tolerate  life,  even  when  it  seemed  to  him  a 
curse. 

Sentiments  of  this  kind  have,  through  the  influence 
of  Christianity,  thoroughly  pervaded  European  society, 
and  suicide,  in  modern  times,  is  almost  always  found 
to  have  sprung  either  from  absolute  insanity,  from 
diseases  which,  though  not  amounting  to  insanity,  are 
yet  sufficient  to  discolour  our  judgments,  or  from  that 
last  excess   of  sorrow,  when  resignation  and  hope  are 


(A  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

both   extinct.      Considering    it    in    this  light,   I    know 
few  tilings  more  fitted  to  qualify  the  optimism  we  so 
often  hear,  than  the  fact  that  statistics  show  it  to  be 
rapidly   increasing,   and   to   be   peculiarly  characteristic 
of  those  nations  which  rank  most  high  in  intellectual 
development  and  in  general   civilisation.1      In   one   or 
two    countries,    strong    religious    feeling    has    counter- 
acted the  tendency,  but   the   comparison  of  town  and 
country,  of  different  countries,  of  different  provinces  of 
the  same  country,  and  of  different   periods  in  history, 
proves   conclusively  its  reality.     Many  reasons  may  be 
alleged  to  explain  it.     Mental  occupations  are  peculiarly 
fitted  to  produce  insanity,2  and  the  blaze  of  publicity, 
which  in  modern  times  encircles  an  act  of  suicide,  to 
draw  weak  minds  to  its  imitation.     It  is  probable,  too,  if 
put  aside  the  condition  of  absolutely  savage  life,  a 
highly  developed  civilisation,  while  it  raises  the  average 
of  well-being,  is  accompanied  by  more  extreme  misery 
and  acute  sufferings  than  the  simpler  stages  that  had  pre- 
ceded it.     Nomadic  habits,  the   vast   agglomeration  of 
men  in  cities,  the  pressure  of  a  fierce  competition,  and  the 
Midden  fluctuations  to  which  manufactures  are  peculiarly 
liable,  are  the  conditions  of  great  prosperity,  but  also  the 
causes  of  the  most  profound  misery.     Civilisation  makes 
many   of  what   once   were   superfluities,  necessaries   of 
life,  so  that  their  loss  inflicts  a  pang  long  after  their 
possession  had  ceased  to   be   a  pleasure.     It   also,  by 
softening  the  character,  renders  it  peculiarly  sensitive  to 

1  This  fact  has  been  often  noticed.  The  reader  may  find  man}r  statistics 
on  the  subject  in  Lisle,  l)u  Suicide,  and  Window's  Anatomy  of  Suicide. 

2  '  There  seems  good  reason  to  believe,  that  with  the  progress  of  mental 
development  through  the  ages,  there  is,  as  in  the  case  with  other  forms 
of  organic  development,  a  correlative  degeneration  going  on,  and  that  an 
increase  of  insanity  U  a  penalty  which  an  increase  of  our  present  civilisa- 
tion necessarily  pays.' — Maudsley'.s  Physiology  of  Mind,  p.  201. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  65 

pain,  and  it  brings  with  it  a  long  train  of  antipathies, 
passions,  and  diseased  imaginations,  which  rarely  or  never 
cross  the  thoughts  or  torture  the  nerves  of  the  simple 
peasant.  The  advance  of  religious  scepticism,  and  the 
relaxation  of  religious  discipline,  have  weakened  and 
sometimes  destroyed  the  horror  of  suicide  and  the  habits 
of  self-assertion  ;  the  eager  and  restless  ambitions  which 
political  liberty,  intellectual  activity,  and  "manufacturing 
enterprise,  all  in  their  different  ways,  conspire  to  foster, 
while  they  are  the  very  principles  and  conditions  of  the 
progress  of  our  age,  render  the  virtue  of  content  in  all  its 
forms  extremely  rare,  and  are  peculiarly  unpropitious  to 
the  formation  of  that  spirit  of  humble  and  submissive  re- 
signation which  alone  can  mitigate  the  agony  of  hopeless 
suffering. 

From  examining  the  effect  of  Christianity  in  promoting 
a  sense  of  the  sanctity  of  human  life,  we  may  now 
pass  to  an  adjoining  field,  and  examine  its  influence  in 
promoting  a  fraternal  and  philanthropic  sentiment  among 
mankind.  And  first  of  all  we  may  notice  its  effects  upon 
slavery. 

The  reader  will  remember  the  general  position  this 
institution  occupied  in  the  eyes  of  the  Stoic  moralists,  and 
under  the  legislation  which  they  had  in  a  great  measure 
inspired.  The  legitimacy  of  slavery  was  fully  recognised  ; 
but  Seneca  and  other  moralists  had  asserted,  in  the  very 
strongest  terms,  the  natural  equality  of  mankind,  the 
superficial  character  of  the  differences  between  the  slave 
and  his  master,  and  the  duty  of  the  most  scrupulous 
humanity  to  the  former.  Instances  of  a  very  warm 
sympathy  between  master  and  slave  were  of  frequent 
occurrence ;  but  they  may  unfortunately  be  paralleled  by 
not  a  few  examples  of  the  most  atrocious  cruelty.  To 
guard  against  such  cruelty,  a  long  series  of  enactments, 


G8  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

based  avowedly  upon  the  Stoical  principle  of  the  essential 
lality  of  mankind,  had  been  made  under  Hadrian,  the 
Antonines,  and  Alexander  Severus.  Not  to  recapitulate  at 
length  what  has  been  mentioned  in  a  former  chapter,  it  is 
sufficient  to  remind  the  reader  that  the  right  of  life  and 
;h  had  been  definitely  withdrawn  from  the  master, 
and  that  the  murder  of  a  slave  was  stigmatised  and 
punished  by  the  law.  It  had,  however,  been  laid  down 
by  the  great  lawyer  Paul,  that  homicide  implies  an  in- 
tention to  kill,  and  that  therefore  the  master  was  not 
guilty  of  that  crime  if  his  slave  died  under  chastisement 
which  was  not  administered  with  this  intention.  But  the 
licence  of  punishment  which  this  decision  might  give 
was  checked  by  laws  which  forbade  excessive  cruelty  to 
-laves,  provided  that,  when  it  was  proved,  they  should 
be  sold  to  another  master,  suppressed  the  private  prisons 
in  which  they  had  been  immured,  and  appointed  special 
officers  to  receive  their  complaints. 

In  the  field  of  legislation,  for  about  two  hundred  years 
after  the  conversion  of  Constantine,  the  progress  was 
extremely  slight.  The  Christian  emperors,  in  a.d.  319  and 
326,  adverted  in  two  elaborate  laws  to  the  subject  of  the 
murder  of  slaves,1  but  beyond  reiterating  in  very  emphatic 
terms  the  previous  enactments,  it  is  not  easy  to  see  in 
what  way  they  improved  the  condition  of  the  class.2 
They  provided  that  any  master  who  applied  to  his  slave 
certain  atrocious  tortures,  that  are  enumerated,  with  the 
object  of  killing  him,  should  be  deemed  a  homicide,  but 

1  Cod.  T/icod.  lib.  ix.  tit.  12. 

3  Some  commentators  imagine  (see  Muratori,  Antich.  Hal.  Diss,  xiv.) 
lhat  among  the  Pagans  the  murder  of  a  man's  own  slave  was  only  assimi- 
lated to  the  crime  of  murdering  the  slave  of  another  man,  while  in  the 
Christian  law  it  was  defined  as  homicide,  equivalent  to  the  murder  of  a 
freeman.  I  confess,  however,  this  point  does  not  appear  to  me  at  all 
clear. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  67 

if  the  slave  died  under  moderate  punishment,  or  under 
any  punishment  not  intended  to  kill  him,  the  master 
should  be  blameless;  no  charge  whatever,  it  was  em- 
phatically said,  should  be  brought  against  him.  It  has 
been  supposed,  though  I  think  without  evidence,  by 
commentators l  that  this  law  accorded  immunity  to  the 
master  only  when  the  slave  perished  under  the  application 
of  '  appropriate '  or  servile  punishments — that  is  to  say, 
scourging,  irons,  or  imprisonment ;  but  the  use  of  torture 
not  intended  to  kill  was  in  no  degree  restricted,  nor  is  there 
anything  in  the  law  to  make  it  appear  either  that  the  master 
was  liable  to  punishment,  if  contrary  to  his  intention  his 
slave  succumbed  beneath  torture,  or  that  Constantine  pro- 
posed any  penalty  for  excessive  cruelty  short  of  death.  It 
is  perhaps  not  out  of  place  to  remark,  that  this  law  was  in 
remarkable  harmony  with  the  well-known  article  of  the 
Jewish  code,  which  provided  that  if  a  slave,  wounded  to 
death  by  his  master,  linger  for  a  day  or  two,  the  master 
should  not  be  punished,  for  the  slave  was  his  money.2 

The  two  features  that  were  most  revolting  in  the  slave 
system,  as  it  passed  from  the  Pagan  to  the  Christian  em- 
perors, were  the  absolute  want  of  legal  recognition  of 
slave  marriage,  and  the  licence  for  torturing  still  conceded 
to  the  master.  The  Christian  emperors  before  Justinian 
took  no  serious  steps  to  remedy  either  of  these  evils, 
and  the  measures  that  were  taken  against  adultery  still 
continued  inapplicable  to  slave  unions,  because*  'the 
vileness  of  their  condition  makes  them  unworthy  of  the 
observation  of  the  law.'3    The  abolition  of  the  punish- 

1  See  Godefroy's  Commentary  on  these  laws.  2  Exodus  xxi.  21. 

3  'Quas  vilitates  vitae  dignas  legum  observatione  non  credidit.' — Cod. 
Theod.  lib.  ix.  tit.  7.    See  on  this  law,  Wallon,  tome  iii.  pp.  417,  418. 

Dean  Milman  observes,  '  In  the  old  Roman  society  in  the  Eastern  em- 
pire this  distinction  between  the  marriage  of  the  freeman  and  the  con- 


(58  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

ment  of  crucifixion  had,  however,  a  special  value  to  the 
>la\v  class,  and  a  very  merciful  law  of  Constantine  for- 
le  the  separation  of  the  families  of  the  slaves.1 
Another  law,  which  in  its  effects  was  perhaps  still  more 
important,  imparted  a  sacred  character  to  manumission, 
ordaining  that  the  ceremony  should  be  celebrated  in  the 
Church,1  and  permitted  it  on  Sundays.  Some  measures 
were  also  taken,  providing  for  the  freedom  of  the  Chris- 
tian slaves  of  Jewish  masters,  and,  in  two  or  three  cases, 
freedom  was  offered  as  a  bribe  to  slaves,  to  induce  them 
to  inform  against  criminals.  Intermarriage  between  the 
free  and  slave  classes  was  still  strictly  forbidden,  and  if  a 
free  woman  had  improper  intercourse  with  her  slave, 
Constantine  ordered  that  the  woman  should  be  executed 
and  the  slave  burnt  alive.3  By  the  Pagan  law,  the  woman 
had  been  simply  reduced  to  slavery.  The  laws  against 
fugitive  slaves  were  also  rendered  more  severe.4 

This  legislation  may  on  the  whole  be  looked  upon  as  a 
progress,  but  it  certainly  does  not  deserve  the  enthusiasm 
which  ecclesiastical  writers  have  sometimes  bestowed 
upon  it.  For  about  two  hundred  years,  there  was  an 
almost  absolute  pause  in  the  legislation  on  this  subject. 
Some  slight  restrictions  were,  however,  imposed  upon  the 
use  of  torture  in  trials ;  some  slight  additional  facilities  of 
manumission  were  given,  and  some  very  atrocious  enact- 
ments made  to  prevent  slaves  accusing  their  masters, 
ording  to  that  of  Gratian,  any  slave  who  accused  his 


mbma^e  of  tlio  slave  was  long  recognised  by  Christianity  itself.     These 
union  tot    blessed,   as  the  marriages  of  their  superiors  had  soon 

D   to  1..,  l,v  the  Ohurch.     Basil  the  Macedonian  (a.d.  8G7-886)  first 
j   benediction  should  hallow  the  marriage  of  the 
:  hut   the  authority  of  the  emperor  wos  counteracted  by  the  (hep- 
rooted  prejudices  of  cvnturies.'— Sid.  «f  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  ii.  p.  15. 
1  Cod.  'tfieod.  lih.  ii.  tit.  25.  2  Ibid.  lib.  iv.  tit.  7. 

3  Ibid.  lib.  ix.  tit.  0.  *  Corpus  Jut-in,  vl.  1. 


FHOM  CONSTANTINE  TO   OHARLEMaGNE.  69 

master  of  any  offence,  except  high  treason,  should  im- 
mediately be  burnt  alive,  without  any  investigation  of  the 
justice  of  the  charge.1 

Under  Justinian,  however,  new  and  very  important 
measures  were  taken.  In  no  other  sphere  were  the  laws 
of  this  emperor  so  indisputably  an  advance  upon  those  of 
his  predecessors.  The  measures  of  Justinian  may  be 
comprised  under  three  heads.  In  the  first  place,  all  the 
restrictions  upon  enfranchisement  which  had  accumulated 
under  the  Pagan  legislation  were  abolished ;  the  legislator 
proclaimed  in  emphatic  language,  and  by  the  provisions  of 
many  laws,  his  desire  to  encourage  manumission,  and  free 
scope  was  thus  given  to  the  action  of  the  Church.  In 
the  second  place,  the  freedmen,  or  intermediate  class  be- 
tween the  slave  and  the  citizen,  were  virtually  abolished, 
all  or  nearly  all  the  privileges  accorded  to  the  citizen 
being  granted  to  the  emancipated  slave.  This  was  the 
most  important  contribution  of  the  Christian  emperors  to 
that  great  amalgamation  of  nations  and  classes  which 
had  been  advancing  since  the  days  of  Augustus,  and  one 
of  its  effects  was,  that  any  person,  even  of  senatorial  rank, 
might  marry  a  slave  when  he  had  first  emancipated  her. 
In  the  third  place,  a  slave  was  permitted  to  marry  a  free 
woman  with  the  authorisation  of  the  master  of  the  former, 
and  children  born  in  slavery  became  the  legal  heirs  of  their 
emancipated  father.  The  rape  of  a  slave  woman  was  also  in 
this  reign  punished  like  that  of  a  free  woman,  by  death.2 

But,  important  as  wTere  these  measures,  it  is  not  in  the 
field  of  legislation  that  we  must  chiefly  look  for  the  in- 
fluence of  Christianity  upon  slavery.  This  influence  was 
indeed  very  great,  but  it  is  necessary  carefully  to  define 
its  nature.     The  prohibition  of  all  slavery,  which  was  one 

1  Cod.  Theod.  lib.  vi.  tit.  2. 

2  See  on  all  this  legislation,  Wallon,  tome   iii. ;    Ckainpagny,  Charite 
cfa-ctienne,  pp.  214-224. 


70  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

of  the  peculiarities  of  the  Jewish  Essenes,  and  the  elli- 
imacy  of  hereditary  slavery,  which  was  one  of  the  spe- 
culations of  the  Stoic  Dion  Chrysostom,  had  no  place  in 
the   ecclesiastical  teaching.      Slavery  was  distinctly  and 
Mially  recognised  by  Christianity,1  and  no  religion  ever 
laboured   more  to   encourage   a   habit   of  docility  and 
passive  obedience.     Much  was  indeed  said  by  the  Fathers 
about  the  natural  equality  of  mankind,  about  the  duty  of 
regarding  slaves  as  brothers  or  companions,  and  about  the 
heinousness  of  cruelty  to  them ;  but  all  this  had  been 
said  with  at  least  equal  force,  though  it  had  not  been 
disseminated  over  an  equally  wide  area,  by  Seneca  and 
Epictetus,  and  the  principle  of  the  original  freedom  of 
all  men  was  repeatedly  averred  by  the  Pagan  lawyers. 
The  services  of  Christianity  in  this  sphere  were  of  three 
kinds.     It  supplied  a  new  order  of  relations,  in  which  the 
inction  of  classes  was  unknown.     It  imparted  a  moral 
dignity  to  the  servile  classes,  and  it  gave  an  unexampled 
impetus  to  the  movement  of  enfranchisement. 

The  first  of  these  services  was  effected  by  the  Church 
ceremonies  and  the  penitential  discipline.  In  these 
spheres,  from  which  the  Christian  mind  derived  its  ear- 
it,  its  deepest,  and  its  most  enduring  impressions,  the 
difference  between  the  master  and  his  slave  was  unknown. 
They  received  the  sacred  elements  together,  they  sat  side 
by  side  at  the  agape,  they  mingled  in  the  public  prayers. 
In  the  penal  system  of  the  Church,  the  distinction  between 
wrongs  done  to  a  freeman,  and  wrongs  done  to  a  slave, 
which  lay  at  the  very  root  of  the  whole  civil  legisla- 
tion, was  repudiated.     At  a  time  when,  by  the  civil  law. 


1  It  is  worthy  of  notice,  too,  that  the  justice  of  slavery  was  frequently 
based  by  the  Fathers,  as  by  modern  defenders  of  slavery,  on  the  curse  of 
Ham.  See  a  number  of  passages  noticed  by  Moehler,  Le  Chridianitme  ct 
TEtdavage  (trad,  franc.),  pp.  101-152. 


FHOM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHAELEMAGNE.  71 

a  master,  whose  slave  died  as  a  consequence  of  exces- 
sive scourging,  was  absolutely  unpunished,  the  Council 
of  Illiberis  excluded  that  master  for  ever  from  the  com- 
munion.1 The  chastity  of  female  slaves,  for  the  pro- 
tection of  which  the  civil  law  made  but  little  provision, 
was  sedulously  guarded  by  the  legislation  of  the  Church. 
Slave  birth,  moreover,  was  no  disqualification  for  entering 
into  the  priesthood,  and  an  emancipated  slave,  regarded 
as  the  dispenser  of  spiritual  life  and  death,  often  saw  the 
greatest  and  the  most  wealthy  kneeling  humbly  at  his 
feet,  imploring  his  absolution  or  his  benediction.2 

In  the  next  place,  Christianity  imparted  a  moral  dignity 
to  the  servile  class.  It  did  this  not  only  by  associating 
poverty  and  labour  with  that  monastic  life  which  was  so 
profoundly  revered,  but  also  by  introducing  new  modifi- 
cations into  the  ideal  type  of  morals.  There  is  no  fact 
more  prominent  in  the  Eoman  writers  than  the  profound 
contempt  with  which  they  regarded  slaves,  not  so  much 
on  account  of  their  position,  as  on  account  of  the  cha- 
racter which  that  position  had  formed.  A  servile  cha- 
racter was  a  synonym  for  vice.  Cicero  had  declared 
that  nothing  great  or  noble  could  exist  in  a  slave,  and  the 
plays  of  Plautus  exhibit  the  same  estimate  in  every  scene. 
There  were,  it  is  true,  some  exceptions.     Epictetus  had 

1  The  penalty,  however,  appears  to  have  been  reduced  to  two  years'  ex- 
clusion from  communion.  Muratori  says,  'In  piu  consili  si  truova  de- 
cretato,  "  excommunicatione  vel  pcenitentise  biennii  esse  subjiciendum  qui 
servum  proprium  sine  conscientia  judicis  Occident."' — Antich.  Ital.  Diss, 
xiv. 

Besides  the  works  which  treat  generally  of  the  penitential  discipline, 
the  reader  may  consult  with  fruit  Wright's  letter  On  the  Political  Condition 
of  the  English  Peasantry,  and  Moehler,  p.  186. 

2  On  the  great  multitude  of  emancipated  slaves  who  entered,  and  at  one 
time  almost  monopolised,  the  ecclesiastical  offices,  compare  Moehler,  Le 
Christianisme  et  VEsclavage,  pp.  177-178.  Leo  the  Great  tried  to  prevent 
slaves  being  raised  to  the  priestly  office,  because  it  would  degrade  the 
latter. 


72  HISTORY   OF   EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

n«>t  only  been,  but  had  been  recognised  as  one  of  the 
noblest  characters  of  Eome.  The  fidelity  of  slaves  to 
their  masters  had  been  frequently  extolled,  and  Seneca  in 
this,  as  in  other  respects,  had  been  the  defender  of  the 
( >ppres8  •>  1.  Still,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  contempt 
was  general,  and  also  that  in  the  Pagan  world  it  was  to 
a  great  extent  just.  Every  age  has  its  own  moral  ideal, 
to  which  all  virtuous  men  aspire.  Every  sphere  of  life 
has  also  a  tendency  to  produce  a  distinctive  type  being 
specially  favourable  to  some  particular  class  of  virtues, 
and  specially  unfavourable  to  others.  The  popular  esti- 
mate, and  even  the  real  moral  condition,  of  each  class 
depends  chiefly  upon  the  degree  in  which  the  type  of 
character  its  position  naturally  developes  coincides  with 
the  ideal  type  of  the  age.  Now,  if  we  remember  that 
magnanimity,  self-reliance,  dignity,  independence,  and,  in 
a  word,  elevation  of  character,  constituted  the  Eoman  ideal 
of  perfection,  it  will  appear  evident  that  this  was  pre- 
eminently the  type  of  freemen,  and  that  the  condition  of 
slavery  was  in  the  very  highest  degree  unfavourable  to  its 
development.  Christianity  for  the  first  time  gave  the 
civile  virtues  the  foremost  place  in  the  moral  type.  Hu- 
mility, obedience,  gentleness,  patience,  resignation,  are  all 
cardinal  or  rudimentary  virtues  in  the  Christian  character ; 
they  were  all  neglected  or  underrated  by  the  Pagans,  they 
can  all  expand  and  flourish  in  a  servile  position. 

The  influence  of  Christianity  upon  slavery,  by  in- 
elining  the  moral  type  to  the  servile  classes,  though  less 
ions  and  less  discussed  than  some  others,  is,  I  be- 
lieve, in  the  very  highest  degree  important.  There  b, 
1  imagine,  scarcely   any  other  single  circumstance  thai 

ercises  so  profound  an  influence  upon  the  social  and 
political  relation>  of  a  religion,  as  the  class  type  With 
which  it  can  most  readily  assimilate  ;  or,  in  other  words, 


FROM  CONSTANTTNE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  73 

the  group  or  variety  of  virtues  to  which  it  gives  the  fore- 
most place.  The  virtues  that  are  most  suited  to  the 
servile  position  were  in  general  so  little  honoured  by 
antiquity,  that  they  were  not  even  cultivated  in  their 
appropriate  sphere.  The  aspirations  of  good  men  were 
in  a  different  direction.  The  virtue  of  the  Stoic,  which 
rose  triumphantly  under  adversity,  nearly  always  withered 
under  degradation.  For  the  first  time,  under  the  influence 
of  Christianity,  a  great  moral  movement  passed  through 
the  servile  class.  The  multitude  of  slaves  who  embraced 
the  new  faith  was  one  of  the  reproaches  of  the  Pagans, 
and  the  names  of  Blandina,  Potamiama,  Eutyches,  Yic- 
torinus,  and  Nereus  show  how  fully  they  shared  in  the 
sufferings  and  in  the  glory  of  martyrdom.1  The  first  and 
grandest  edifice  of  Byzantine  architecture  in  Italy — the 
noble  church  of  St.  Vital,  at  Eavenna — was  dedicated 
by  Justinian  to  the  memory  of  a  martyred  slave. 

While  Christianity  thus  broke  clown  the  contempt  with 
which  the  master  had  regarded  his  slaves,  and  planted 
among  the  latter  a  principle  of  moral  regeneration  which 
expanded  in  no  other  sphere  with  an  equal  perfection,  its 
action  in  procuring  the  freedom  of  the  slave  was  unceas- 
ing. The  law  of  Constantine,  which  placed  the  ceremony 
under  the  superintendence  of  the  clergy,  and  the  many 
laws  that  gave  special  facilities  of  manumission  to  those 
who  desired  to  enter  the  monasteries  or  the  priesthood, 
symbolised  the  religious  character  the  act  had  assumed. 
It  was  celebrated  on  Church  festivals,  especially  on 
Easter,  and  although  it  was  not  proclaimed  a  matter  of 
duty  or  necessity,  it  was  always  regarded  as  one  of  the  most 
acceptable  modes  of  expiating  past  sins.     St.  Melania  was 

1  See  a  most  admirable  dissertation  on  this  subject  in  Le  Blant,  Inscrip- 
tions chretiennes  dela  Gaule,  tomeii.  pp.  284-299 ;  Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall, 
ch.  xxxviii. 


74  fflSTUKY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

said  to  have  emancipated  8,000  sk  j,  St  Ovidius,  a  rich 
martyr  of  Gaul,  5,000,  Chromatid,  a  Eoman  prefect  under 
Diocletian,  1,400,  Hermes,  a  prefect  in  the  reign  of  Tra- 
jan, 1,250/  Pope  St.  Gregory,  and  many  of  the  clergy  at 
Hippo,  under  the  rule  of  St.  Augustine,  and  great  num- 
bers of  private  individuals,  freed  their  slaves  as  an  act  of 
piety.2  It  became  customary  to  do  so  on  occasions  of  na- 
tional or  personal  thanskgiving,  on  recovery  from  sick- 
ness, on  the  birth  of  a  child,  at  the  hour  of  death,  and 
above  all,  in  testamentary  bequests.3  Xumerous  charters 
and  epitaphs  still  record  the  gift  of  liberty  to  ah 
throughout  the  middle  ages,  '  for  the  benefit  of  the  soul ' 
of  the  donor  or  testator.  In  the  thirteenth  century, 
when  there  were  no  slaves  to  emancipate  in  France,  it  was 
usual  in  many  churches  to  release  caged  pigeons  on  the 
ecclesiastical  festivals,  in  memory  of  the  ancient  charity. 
and  that  prisoners  might  still  be  freed  in  the  name  of 
Christ.4 

Slavery,  however,  lasted  in  Europe  for  about  800  years 
after  Constantine,  and  during  the  period  with  which  alone 
this  volume  is  concerned,  although  its  character  was  miti- 
gated, the  number  of  men  who  were  subject  to  it  was  pro- 
bably greater  than  in  the  Pagan  Empire.  In  the  West  the 
barbarian  conquests  modified  the  conditions  of  labour  in 


r,  Ckaritt  chretirnw.  p.  210.    These  numbers  are  no  doubt 
;  fee  WaEon,  Hist,  de  TBsdavage,  tome  iiL  j 
'  See  Schmidt,  La  SoeUte  civile  dam  le  Monde  remain,  pp.  240 
*  Muratori  has  deroted  two  valuable  dissertations  (Antich.  ltd.  xiv.  it.) 
to  mediaeval  slavery. 

4  Gamma's  HkL  of CitOUation  in  tne  Fiflk  Century  (Eng.  trans.),  toL 
iL  p.  43.  St.  Adelbert,  Archbishop  of  Prague  at  the  end  of  the  tenth 
century,  was  especially  famous  for  his  opposition  to  the  slave  trade.  In 
Sweden,  the  aboKtios)  of  slavery  in  the  thirteenth  century  was  avowedly 
accomplished  in  obedience  to  Christian  principles,  (Moehler,  Le  Christian^ 
wmeetlExUtmge,?*  1»4-196;  ^ij^' i  History  of  the  EffecU  of  Beliffion  upon 
'  pp.  142-143.) 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  7n 

two  directions.  The  cessation  of  the  stream  of  barbarian 
captives,  the  empoverishment  of  great  families,  who  had 
been  surrounded  by  vast  retinues  of  slaves,  the  general 
diminution  of  town  life,  and  the  barbarian  habits  of  per- 
sonal independence,  checked  the  old  form  of  slavery, 
while  the  misery  and  the  precarious  condition  of  the  free 
peasants  induced  them  in  great  numbers  to  barter  their 
liberty  for  protection  to  the  neighbouring  lord.1  In  the 
East,  the  destruction  of  great  fortunes  through  excessive 
taxation  diminished  the  number  of  superfluous  slaves, 
and  the  fiscal  system  of  the  Byzantine  Empire,  by 
which  agricultural  slaves  were  taxed  according  to  their 
employments,2  as  well  as  the  desire  of  emperors  to  en- 
courage agriculture,  led  the  legislators  to  attach  the  slaves 
permanently  to  the  soil.  In  the  course  of  time,  almost 
the  entire  free  peasantry,  and  the  greater  number  of  the 
old  slaves,  had  sunk  or  risen  into  the  qualified  slavery 
called  serfdom,  which  formed  the  basis  of  the  great 
edifice  of  feudalism.  Towards  the  end  of  the  eighth 
century,  the  sale  of  slaves  beyond  their  native  provinces 
was  in  most  countries  prohibited.3  The  creation  of  the 
free  cities  of  Italy,  the  custom  of  emancipating  slaves  who 
were  enrolled  in  the  army,  and  economical  changes  which 
made  free  labour  more  profitable  than  slave  labour,  con- 
spired with  religious  motives  in  effecting  the  ultimate 
freedom  of  labour.     The  practice  of  manumitting,  as  an 


1  Salvian,  in  a  famous  passage  (De  Gubernatione  Dei,  lib.  v.),  notices 
the  multitudes  of  poor  who  voluntarily  became  '  coloni '  for  the  sake  of 
protection  and  a  livelihood.  The  coloni  who  were  attached  to  the  soil 
were  much  the  same  as  the  niedia?val  serfs.  We  have  already  noticed 
them  coming:  into  being  apparently  when  the  Roman  emperors  settled 
barbarian  prisoners  to  cultivate  the  desert  lands  of  Italy ;  and  before  the 
barbarian  invasions  their  numbers  seem  to  have  much  increased.  M.  Guizot 
has  devoted  two  chapters  to  this  subject.  (Hist,  de  la  Civilisation  en  Trance, 
rii.  viii.)  See  Finlav's  Hist,  of  Greece,  toL  i.  p.  241. 

■  Moehler,  p.  LSI. 


78  HISTORY   OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

act  of  devotion,  continued  to  the  end  ;  but  the  eccle- 
probably  through  the  feeling  that*  they  had  no 
Hgbt  to  ftlienate  corporate  property,  in  which  they  had 
only  a  life  interest,  were  among  the  last  to  follow  the  coun- 
sels they  bo  liberally  befetoWed  upon  the  laity.1  In  the 
twelfth  ivntury.  however,  slaves  in  Europe  were  very  rare. 
In  the  fourteenth  century,  slavery  was  almost  unknown.2 
Closely  connected  with  the  influence  of  the  Church  in 
dying  hereditary  slavery,  was  its  influence  in  redeem-  Y 
ing  captives  from  servitude.  In  no  other  form  of  charity 
was  its  beneficial  character  more  continually  and  more 
splendidly  displayed.  During  the  long  and  dreary  trials 
of  the  barbarian  invasions,  when  the  whole  structure- of 
society  was  dislocated,  when  vast  districts  and  mighty 
cities  were  in  a  few  months  almost  depopulated,  and 
when  the  1  lower  of  the  youth  of  Italy  were  mowed  down 
by  the  sword  or  carried  away  into  captivity,  the  bishops 

ted  from  their  efforts  to'  alleviate  the  sufferings  * 
of  the  prisoners.  St.  Ambrose,  disregarding  the  outcries  of  "^ 
the  Aliana,  who  denounce^  his  act  as  atrocious  sacrilege, 
sold  the  rich  church  ornaments  of  Milan  to  rescue  some 
ives  who  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  Goths,  and 
this  practice — which  was  afterwards  formally  sanctioned 
by  St.  Gregory  the  Great — became  speedily  general. 
When  the  Roman  army  had  captured,  but  refused  to  sup- 


era  nnticamente  signor  secolare,  vescovo,  abbate,  capitolo  di 
canonici  e  monastero  clie  non  avesse  al  suo  servigio  molti  servi.  Molto 
frcquentemente  solevano  i  secolari  manometterli.  Non  cosi  le  chiese,  e  i  mo- 
nastery non  per  altra  cngione,  a  mio  credere,  se  non  perche  la  manumissione 
e  una  spezie  di  alienazione,  ed  era  dai  canoni  proibito  1'  alienare  i  beni 
delle  chiese.'—  I  Vmert.  w.     Some  Councils,  however,  recognised 

the  right'  ancipate  church  slaves.    Moehler,  Le  Chrittumisme 

.  ]>.  187.  Man;  peasant*  placed  themselves  under  the  do- 
minion of  the  moiil  Dg  tin-  best  masters,  and  also  to  obtain  the 
benefit  of  theii  prayi 

*  Muratori :  llallam's  Middle  Ayes,  ch.  ii.  part  ii. 


FROM  COXSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  77 

port,  seven  thousand  Persian  prisoners,  Acacius,  Bishop 
of  Amida,  undeterred  by  the  bitter  hostility  of  the 
Persians  to  Christianity,  and  declaring  that  '  God  had  no 
need  of  plates  or  dishes,'  sold  all  the  rich  church  orna- 
ments of  his  diocese,  rescued  the  unbelieving  prisoners, 
and  sent  them  back  unharmed  to  their  king.  During  the 
horrors  of  the  Yandal  invasion,  Deogratias,  Bishop  of 
Carthage,  took  a  similar  step  to  ransom  the  Eoman 
prisoners.  St.  Augustine,  St.  Gregory  the  Great,  St. 
Cassarius  of  Aries,  St.  Exuperius  of  Toulouse,  St.  Hilary, 
St.  Eemi,  all  melted  clown  or  sold  their  church  vases  to 
free  prisoners.  St.  Cyprian  sent  a  large  sum  for  the 
same  purpose  to  the  Bishop  of  Nicomedia.  St.  Epiphanius 
and  St.  Avitus,  in  conjunction  with  a  rich  Gaulish  lady 
named  Syagria,  are  said  to  have  rescued  thousands.  St. 
Eloi  devoted  to  this  object  his  entire  fortune.  St.  Paulinus 
of  Nola  displayed  a  similar  generosity,  and  the  legends 
even  assert,  though  untruly,  that  he,  like  St.  Peter  Teleo- 
narius  and  St.  Serapion,  having  exhausted  all  other 
forms  of  charity,  as  a  last  gift  sold  himself  for  slavery. 
When,  long  afterwards,  the  Mahommedan  conquests  in  a 
measure  reproduced  the  calamities  of  the  barbarian  in- 
vasions, the  same  unwearied  charity  was  displayed.  The 
Trinitarian  monks,  founded  by  John  of  Matha  in  the 
twelfth  century,  were  devoted  to  the  release  of  Christian 
captives,  and  another  society  was  founded  with  the  same 
object  by  Peter  Nolasco,  in  the  following  century.1 

The  different  branches  of  the  subject  I  am  examining 
are  so  closely  intertwined,  that  it  is  difficult  to  investigate 
one  without  in  a  measure  anticipating  the  others.  While 
discussing   the   influence   of   the    Church  in   protecting 

1  See  on  this  subject,  Ryan,  pp.  151-152 ;  Cibrario,  Economica  politica 
del  Medio  Evo,  lib.  iii.  cap.  ii.,  and  especially  Le  Blant,  Inscriptions  chre- 
tiennes  de  la  Gaule,  tome  ii.  dp.  284-299. 


73  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

infancy,  in  raising  the  estimate  of  human  life,  and  in  al- 
leviating slavery.  I  have  trenched  largely  upon  the  last 
application  of  the  doctrine  of  Christian  fraternity  I  must 
I  mean  the  foundation  of  charity.  The  differ- 
ence between  Pagan  and  Christian  societies  in  this  matter 
.Is  very  profound  ;  but  a  great  part  of  it  must  be  ascribed 
to  causes  other  than  religious  opinions.  Charity  finds  an 
extended  scope  for  action  only  where  there  exists  a  large 
class  of  men  at  once  independent  and  impoverished.  In 
the  ancient  societies  slavery  in  a  great  measure  replaced 
pauperism,  and  by  securing  the  subsistence  of  a  very  large 
proportion  of  the  poor,  contracted  the  sphere  of  charity. 
And  what  slavery  did  at  Eome  for  the  very  poor,  the  sys- 
tem of  clientage  did  for  those  of  a  somewhat  higher  rank. 

!  existence  of  these  two  institutions  is  sufficient  to  show 
the  injustice  of  judging  the  two  societies  by  a  simple  com- 
parison of  their  charitable  institutions,  and  we  must  also 
remember  that  among  the  ancients  the  relief  of  the  in- 
digent was  one  of  the  most  important  functions  of  the 
State.  Not  to  dwell  upon  the  many  measures  taken  with 
this  object  in  ancient  Greece,  in  considering  the  condition 
of  the  Eoman  poor,  we  are  at  once  met  by  the  simple 
fact  that  for  several  centuries  the  immense  majority  of 
these  were  habitually  supported  by  gratuitous  distributions 
of  corn.  In  a  very  early  period  of  Eoman  history  we 
find  occasional  instances  of  distribution  ;  but  it  was  not 
till  a.u.c.  630,  that  Caius  Gracchus  caused  a  law  to  be 
made,  supplying  the  poorer  classes  with  corn  at  a  price 
that  was  little  more  than  nominal;   and  although  two 

re  after  the  Patricians  succeeded  in  revoking  this  law, 

it  v.  era]  fluctuations  finally  re-enacted  in  a.u.c. 

The  Terentia  law,  as  it  was  called,  from 

the  <•< m^iils  under  whom   it  was  at  last  established,  was 

largely  extended  in  its  operation,  or,  as  some  think,  re- 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  79 

vived  from  neglect  in  A.u.c.  691,  by  Cato  of  Utica,  who 
desired  by  this  means  to  divert  popularity  from  the  cause 
of  Caesar,  under  whom  multitudes  of  the  poor  were  en- 
rolling themselves.  Four  years  later,  Clodius  Pulcher, 
abolishing  the  small  payment  which  had  been  demanded, 
made  the  distribution  entirely  gratuitous.  It  took  place 
once  a  month,  and  consisted  of  five  moclii1  a  head. 
In  the  time  of  Julius  Caesar  no  less  than  320,000  per- 
sons were  inscribed  as  recipients ;  but  Caesar  reduced 
the  number  by  one  half.  Under  Augustus  it  had  risen 
to  200,000.  This  emperor  desired  to  restrict  the  distri- 
bution of  corn  to  three  or  four  times  a  year,  but,  yielding 
to  the  popular  wish,  he  at  last  consented  that  it  should 
continue  monthly.  It  soon  became  the  leading  fact  of 
Eoman  life.  Numerous  officers  were  appointed  to  provide 
for  it.  A  severe  legislation  controlled  their  acts,  and,  to 
secure  a  regular  and  abundant  supply  of  corn  for  the 
capital  became  the  principal  object  of  the  provincial  go- 
vernors. Under  the  Antonines  the  number  of  the  recipients 
had  considerably  increased,  having  sometimes,  it  is  said, 
exceeded  500,000.  Septimus  Severus  added  to  the  corn 
a  ration  of  oil.  Aurelian  replaced  the  monthly  distribu- 
tion of  unground  corn  by  a  daily  distribution  of  bread, 
and  added,  moreover,  a  portion  of  pork.  Gratuitous  dis- 
tributions were  afterwards  extended  to  Constantinople, 
Alexandria,  and  Antioch,  and  were  probably  not  alto- 
gether unknown  in  smaller  towns.2 

We  have  already  seen  that  this  gratuitous  distribu- 

1  About  gtlis  of  a  bushel.  See  Hume's  Essay  on  the  Pojjidousness  of  An- 
cient Nations. 

2  The  history  of  these  distributions  is  traced  with  admirable  learning1  by 
M.  Naudet  in  his  Memoire  stir  les  Secotirs publics  dans  TAntiquite  {Mem.  de 
i'Academie  des  Inscrip.  et  BeUcs-leUres,  tome  xiii.),  an  essay  to  which  I  am 
much  indebted.  See,  too,  Monnier,  Hist.  deV Assistance  pnblique ;  B.  Dumas, 
Des  Secows  publics  chez  k>s  Ancicns;  and  Schmidt,  Essai  snr  Ja  Societe  civile 
duns  le  Monde  romain  et  sur  sa  Transformation  par  le  Christianisme. 


80  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

don  of  corn  ranked,  with  the  institution  of  slavery 
ami  the  gladiatorial  exhibitions,  as  one  of  the  chief  de- 
moralising influences  of  the  empire.  The  most  inju- 
dicioua  charily,  however  pernicious  to  the  classes  it  is 
intended  to  relieve,  has  commonly  a  beneficial  and  soften- 
ing influence  upon  the  donor,  and  through  him  upon 
societv  at  large.  But  the  Eomau  distribution  of  corn 
■Iy  a  political  device,  had  no  humanising  in- 
fluence upon  the  people,  while,  being  regulated  simply  by 
the  indigence,  and  not  at  all  by  the  infirmities  or  character 
of  tlir  recipient,  it  was  a  direct  and  overwhelming  encou- 
niriit  to  idleness.  With  a  provision  of  the  necessities 
q£' life,  and  with  an  abundant  supply  of  amusements,  the 
poor  Eomans  readily  gave  up  honourable  labour,  all  trades 
in  the  city  languished,  every  interruption  in  the  distri- 
bution of  corn  was  followed  by  fearful  sufferings,  free 
gifts  of  land  were  often  insufficient  to  divert  the  citizens 
to  honest  labour,  and  the  multiplication  of  children,  which 
rendered  the  public  relief  inadequate,  was  checked  by 
abortion,  exposition,  or  infanticide. 

When  we   remember   that   the   population   of  Borne 
probably  never  exceeded  a  million  and  a  half,  that  a  large 
proportion  of  indigent  were  provided  for  as  slaves,  and 
that  more  than  200,000  freemen  were  habitually  sup- 
plied with  the  first  necessary  of  life,  we  cannot,  I  think, 
rge  the  Pagan  society  of  the  metropolis,  at  least,  with 
an  excessive  parsimony  in  relieving  poverty.     But  besides 
the  distribution  of  corn,  several  other  measures    were 
!i.     Bait,  which  was  very  largely  used  by  the  Roman 
or,  had  during  the  republic  been  made  a  monopoly  of 
the  inikwas  sold  by  it  at  a  price  that  was  little 

more  than  nbn^al.1     The  distribution  of  land,  which 
was  the  subject  or  tin-  agrarian  laws,  was  under  anew 

1  Liv\    i  .  '.';  Pliny,  Hid.  Nat.  xxxi.  41. 


FEOM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  81 

form  practised  by  Julius  Crcsar,1  JSTerva,2  and  Septimus 
Severus,3  who  bought  land  to  divide  it  among  the  poor 
citizens.  Large  legacies  were  left  to  the  people  by  Julius 
Caesar,  Augustus,  and  others,  and  considerable,  though 
irregular,  donations  made  on  occasions  of  great  rejoicings. 
Numerous  public  baths  were  established,  to  which,  when 
they  were  not  absolutely  gratuitous,  the  smallest  coin  in 
use  gave  admission,  and  which  were  in  consequence  habi- 
tually employed  by  the  poor.  Vespasian  instituted,  and 
the  Antonines  extended,  a  system  of  popular  education, 
and  the  movement  I  have  already  noticed,  for  the  support 
of  the  children  of  poor  parents,  acquired  very  considerable 
dimensions.  The  first  trace  of  it  at  Borne  may  be  found 
under  Augustus,  who  gave  money  and  corn  for  the  sup- 
port of  young  children,  who  had  previously  not  been 
included  in  the  public  distributions.4  This  appears,  how- 
ever, to  have  been  but  an  act  of  isolated  benevolence, 
and  the  honour  of  first  instituting  a  systematic  effort  in 
this  direction  belongs  to  Nerva,  who  enjoined  the  support 
of  poor  children,  not  only  in  Borne,  but  in  all  the  cities 
of  Italy.5  Trajan  greatly  extended  the  system.  In  his 
reign  5,000  poor  children  were  supported  by  the  Govern- 
ment in  Borne  alone,6  and  similar  measures,  though  we 
know  not  on  what  scale,  were  taken  in  the  other  Italian 
and  even  African  cities.  At  the  little  town  of  Velleia, 
we  find  a  charity  instituted  by  Trajan,  for  the  partial 

1  Dion  Cassius,  xxxviii.  1-7. 

2  Xiphilin,  lxviii.  2  ;    Pliny,  Up.  vii.  31. 

3  Spartian.  Sept.  Severus. 

4  Suet.  August.  41 ;   Dion  Cassius,  li.  21. 

5  'Afflictos  civitatis  relevavit ;  puellas  puerosque  natos  parentibus  egestosis 
sumptu  publico  per  Italise  oppida  alijussit.' — Sext.  Aureus  Victor,  Epitome. 
1  Nerya.'  This  measure  of  Nerva,  though  not  meapBed  by  any  ether 
writer,  is  confirmed  by  the  evidence  of  medals.     (Nlraaet,  p.  76.) 

6  Plin.  Panegyr.  xxvi.  xxviii. 


82  HISTORY  OF  EUROrEAN  MORALS. 

support  of  270  children.1  Private  benevolence  followed 
in  the  same  direction,  and  several  inscriptions  which  still 
remain,  though  they  do  not  enable  us  to  write  its  history, 
sufficiently  attest  its  activity.  The  younger  Pliny,  be- 
-  warmly  encouraging  schools,  devoted  a  small  pro- 
perty to  the  support  of  poor  children  in  his  native  city  of 
Como.2  The  name  of  Cselia  Macrina  is  preserved  as  the 
foundress  of  a  charity  for  100  children  at  Terracina.3 
Hadrian  increased  the  supplies  of  corn  allotted  to  these 
charities,  and  he  was  also  distinguished  for  his  bounty  to 
poor  women.4  Antoninus  was  accustomed  to  lend  money 
to  the  poor  at  four  per  cent.,  which  was  much  below  the 
normal  rate  of  interest,5  and  both  he  and  Marcus  Aurelius 
dedicated  to  the  memory  of  their  wives  institutions  for 
the  support  of  girls.6  Alexander  Severus  in  like  manner 
dedicated  an  institution  for  the  support  of  children  to  the 
memory  of  his  mother.7  Public  hospitals  were  probably 
unknown  before  Christianity ;  but  there  were  private  in- 
firmaries for  slaves,  and  also,  it  is  believed,  military  hos- 
pitals.8 Provincial  towns  were  occasionally  assisted  by 
the  Government  in  seasons  of  great  distress,  and  there 
are  some  recorded  instances  of  private  legacies  for  their 
benefit.9 

These  various  measures  are  by  no  means  inconsiderable, 
and  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  many  similar 


1  WIe  know  of  this  charity  from  an  extant  bronze  tablet.     See  Schmidt, 
Esmi  historian  c  tttr  In  Society  romaine,  p.  428. 

*  Plin.  Ep.  i.  8  :  iv.  IS.  3  Schmidt,  p.  428. 

4  Spartianu-,  Hadrian,  5  Capitolinus,  Antoninus. 

6  Capitolinus,  Anion,,  Man:  AurcL        7  Lampridius,  A.  Severut, 

8  Sen*    i  |  De  Ira,  lib.  l,cap.  10)  speaks  of  institutions  called  viiletudinariii, 

which  most  writers  think   were  private  infirmaries  in  rich  men's  house?. 

opinion  tip  mans  had  public  hospitals  is  maintained  in  a  very 

learned  and  valuable,  but  little-known  work,  called   Collation*  relative  to 

theft,,  l:*ll<f ,./  the  l'nor.    (London,  1815.) 

See  Tacit.  Amtal  xii.  ffS  ;  Pliny,  v.  7;  x.  79. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  83 

steps  were  taken,  of  which  all  record  has  been  lost.  The 
history  of  charity  presents  so  few  salient  features,  so 
little  that  can  strike  the  imagination  or  arrest  the  at- 
tention, that  it  is  usually  almost  wholly  neglected  by 
historians  ;  and  it  is  easy  to  conceive  what  inadequate 
notions  of  our  existing  charities  could  be  gleaned  from 
the  casual  allusions  in  plays  or  poems,  in  political  his- 
tories or  court  memoirs.  There  can,  however,  be  no 
question  that  neither  in  practice  nor  in  theory,  neither  in 
the  institutions  that  were  founded  nor  in  the  place  that 
was  assigned  to  it  in  the  scale  of  duties,  did  charity  in 
antiquity  occupy  a  position  at  all  comparable  to  that 
which  it  has  obtained  by  Christianity.  Nearly  all  relief 
was  a  State  measure,  dictated  much  more  by  policy  than 
by  benevolence,  and  the  habit  of  selling  young  children, 
the  innumerable  expositions,  the  readiness  of  the  poor  to 
enroll  themselves  as  gladiators,  and  the  frequent  famines, 
show  how  large  was  the  measure  of  unrelieved  distress. 
A  very  few  Pagan  examples  of  charity  have,  indeed, 
descended  to  us.  Among  the  Greeks,  Epaminondas  was 
accustomed  to  ransom  captives  and  collect  dowers  for 
poor  girls  ;  *  Cimon,  to  feed  the  hungry  and  clothe  the 
naked  ; 2  Bias,  to  purchase,  emancipate,  and  furnish  with 
dowers  the  captive  girls  of  Messina.3  Tacitus  has  de- 
scribed with  enthusiasm  how,  after  a  catastrophe  near 
Eome,  the  rich  threw  open  their  houses-  and  taxed  all 
their  resources  to  relieve  the  sufferers.4  There  existed, 
too,  among  the  poor,  both  of  Greece  and  Eome,  mutual 
insurance  societies,  which  undertook  to  provide  for  their 
sick  and  infirm  members.5     The  very  frequent  reference 

1  Cornelius  Nepos,  Epaminondas,  cap.  8. 

2  Lactantius,  Div.  Inst,  vi  9.  3  Diog.  Laert.  Bias, 

4  Tac.  Annal.  ir.  63. 

5  See  Pliny,  Ep.  x.  94,  and  the  remarks  of.Naudet;  pp.  38-39. 


84  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

to  mendicancy  in  the  Latin  writers  show  that  beggars,  and 
therefore  those  who  relieved  beggars,  were  numerous. 
The  duty  of  hospitality  was  also  strongly  enjoined, 
and  was  placed  under  the  special  protection  of  the 
supreme  Deity.  But  the  active,  habitual,  and  detailed 
charity  of  private  persons,  which  is  so  conspicuous  a 
feature  in  all  Christian  societies,  was  scarcely  known  in 
antiquity,  and  there  are  not  more  than  two  or  three 
moralists  who  have  even  noticed  it.  Of  these,  the  chief 
rank  belongs  to  Cicero,  who  devoted  two  very  judicious 
but  somewhat  cold  chapters  to  the  subject.  Nothing,  he 
-aid,  is  more  suitable  to  the  nature  of  man  than  benefi- 
cence and  liberality,  but  there  are  many  cautions  to  be 
urged  in  practising  it.  We  must  take  care  that  our 
bounty  is  a  real  blessing  to  the  person  we  relieve ;  that  it 
does  not  exceed  our  own  means  ;  that  it  is  not,  as  was  the 
case  with  Sylla  and  Caisar,  derived  from  the  spoliation  of 
others;  that  it  springs  from  the  heart  and  not  from  os- 
tentation ;  that  the  claims  of  gratitude  are  preferred  to 
the  mere  impulses  of  compassion,  and  that  due  regard  is 
paid  both  to  the  character  and  to  the  wants  of  the 
recipient.1 

Christianity  for  the  first  time  made  charity  a  rudi- 
mentary virtue,  giving  it  the  foremost  place  in  the  moral 
type,  and  in  the  exhortations  of  its  teachers.     Besides  its 

.'•ral  influence  in  stimulating  the  affections,  it  effected  a 
complete  revolution  in  this  sphere,  by  representing  the 
poor  as  the  special  representatives  of  the  Christian 
Founder,  and  thus  making  the  love  of  Christ  rather  than 
the  love  of  man  the  principle  of  charity.  Even  in  the 
days  of  persecution,  collections  for  the  relief  of  the  poor 

«  made  at  the  Sunday  meetings.  The  Agapffi  or 
feasts  of  love  were  intended  mainly  for  the  poor,  and  food 

1  De  Offic.  i.  14-15. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  85 

that  was  saved  by  the  fasts  was  devoted  to  their  benefit. 
A  vast  organisation  of  charity,  presided  over  by  the 
bishops,  and  actively  directed  by  the  deacons,  soon  ra- 
mified over  Christendom,  till  the  bond  of  charity  became 
the  bond  of  unity,  and  the  most  distant  sections  of  the 
Christian  Church  corresponded  by  the  interchange  of 
mercy.  Long  before  the  era  of  Constantine,  it  was  ob- 
served that  the  charities  of  the  Christians  were  so  exten- 
sive— it  may,  perhaps,  be  said  so  excessive — that  they 
drew  very  many  impostors  to  the  Church,1  and  when  the 
victory  of  Christianity  was  achieved,  the  enthusiasm  for 
charity  displayed  itself  in  the  erection  of  numerous  in- 
stitutions that  were  altogether  unknown  to  the  Pagan 
world. 

A  Eoman  lady,  named  Fabiola,  in  the  fourth  century, 
founded  at  Rome,  as  an  act  of  penance,  the  first  public  hos- 
pital, and  the  charity  planted  by  that  woman's  hand  over- 
spread the  world,  and  will  alleviate,  to  the  end  of  time, 
the  darkest  anguish  of  humanity.  Another  hospital  was 
soon  after  founded  by  St.  Pammachus ;  another  of  great 
celebrity  by  St.  Basil,  at  Coesarea.  St.  Basil  also  erected  at 
Ccesarea  what  was  probably  the  first  asylum  for  lepers. 
Xenodochia,  or  refuges  for  strangers,  speedily  rose;  es- 
pecially along  the  paths  of  the  pilgrims.  St.  Pammachus 
founded  one  at  Ostia  ;  Paula  and  Melania  founded  others 
at  Jerusalem.  The  Council  of  Nice  ordered  that  one  should 


1  Lucian  describes  this  in  his  famous  picture  of  Peregrinus,  and  Julian, 
much  later,  accused  the  Christians  of  drawing  men  into  the  Church  by  their 
charities.  Socrates  {Hid.  Eccl.  vii.  17)  tells  a  story  of  a  Jew  who,  pre- 
tending to  be  a  convert  to  Christianity,  had  been  often  baptised  in  different 
sects,  and  who  had  amassed  a  considerable  fortune  by  the  gifts  he  received 
on  those  occasions.  He  was  at  last  miraculously  detected  by  the  Novatian 
bishop  Paul.  There  are  several  instances  in  the  Lives  of  the  Saints  of  judg- 
ments falling  on  those  who  duped  benevolent  Christians. 


86  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

be  erected  in  every  city.  In  the  time  of  St.  Chrysostom  the 
church  of  Antioch  supported  3,000  widows  and  virgins, 
bes;  Dgers  and  sick.     Legacies  for  the  poor  became 

common,  and  it  was  not  unfrequent  for  men  and  women 
who  desired  to  live  a  life  of  peculiar  sanctity,  and  especially 
for  priests  who  attained  the  episcopacy,  as  a  first  act  to 
bestow  their  entire  properties  in  charity.  Even  the  early 
Oriental  monks,  who  for  the  most  part  were  extremely 
removed  from  the  active  and  social  virtues,  supplied 
many  noble  examples  of  charity.  St.  Ephrem,  in  a  time 
of  pestilence,  emerged  from  his  solitude  to  found  and 
superintend  a  hospital  at  Edessa.  A  monk  named  Tha- 
lasius  collected  blind  beggars  in  an  asylum  on  the  banks 
of  the  Euphrates.  A  merchant  named  Apollonius  founded 
on  Mount  Nitria  a  gratuitous  dispensary  for  the  monks. 
The  monks  often  assisted  by  their  labours  provinces  that 
\\t  re  suffering  from  pestilence  or  famine.  We  may  trace 
the  remains  of  the  pure  socialism  that  marked  the  first 
phase  of  the  Christian  community  in  the  emphatic  lan- 
guage witli  which  some  of  the  Fathers  proclaimed  charity 
to  be  a  matter  not  of  mercy  but  of  justice,  maintaining 
that  all  property  is  based  on  usurpation,  that  the  earth 
by  right  is  common  to  all  men,  and  that  no  man  can 
claim  a  superabundant  supply  of  its  goods  except  as  an 
administrator  for  others.  A  Christian,  it  was  maintained, 
should  devote  at  least  one-tenth  of  his  profits  to  the 
poor.1 


1  See  on  this  subject  Chastel,  Etudes  historiques  sur  la  CharitS  (Paris, 

1853)  :  Martin  Doisy,  1 1  id.  tie  la  Charitr  pendant  les  qttaf re  premiers  S&des 

if,  1848);  Champagny,  Ohariti  clireticnne;  Tollemer,  Origin*  <!<■  hi  Cha- 

L'vnn,  History  of  the  Effects  of  BeUgton  upon 

>'/oI  ll)\\},.  ;  and  the  works  of  Bingham  and  of  Cave.     I  am 

also  indebted,  in    this  part  of  my  subject,   to   Dean  Milnum's   histories, 

Neander's  Ecclesiastical  History,  and  Private  Life  of  the  Early  Christians, 

and  to  Migne's  Encyclop6die. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  87 

The  enthusiasm  of  charity,  thus  manifested  in  the 
Church,  speedily  attracted  the  attention  of  the  Pagans. 
The  ridicule  of  Lucian,  and  the  vain  efforts  of  Julian,  to 
produce  a  rival  system  of  charity  within  the  limits  of 
Paganism,1  emphatically  attested  both  its  pre-eminence 
and  its  catholicity.  During  the  pestilences  that  desolated 
Carthage  in  a.d.  326,  and  Alexandria  in  the  reigns  o(. 
Gallienus  and  of  Maximian,  while  the  Pagans  fled  panic- 
stricken  from  the  contagion,  the  Christians  extorted  the 
admiration  of  their  fellow-countrymen  by  the  courage 
with  which  they  rallied  around  their  bishops,  consoled 
the  last  hours  of  the  sufferers,  and  buried  the  abandoned 
dead.2  In  the  rapid  increase  of  pauperism  arising  fron? 
the  emancipation  of  numerous  slaves,  their  charity  found 
free  scope  for  action,  and  its  resources  were  soon  taxed 
to  the  utmost  by  the  horrors  of  the  barbarian  invasions. 
The  conquest  of  Africa  by  Genseric,  deprived  Italy  of  the 
supply  of  corn  upon  which  it  almost  wholly  depended, 
arrested  the  gratuitous  distribution  by  which  the  Eoman 
poor  were  mainly  supported,  and  produced  all  over  the 
land  the  most  appalling  calamities.3  The  history  of  Italy 
became  one  monotonous  tale  of  famine  and  pestilence,  of 
starving  populations  and  ruined  cities.     But  everywhere 

1  See  the  famous  epistle  of  Julian  to  Arsacius,  where  he  declares  that  it 
is  shameful  that  '  the  Galileans  should  support  not  only  their  own,  but  also 
the  heathen  poor.  Sozomen  {Hist.  eccl.  v.  16),  and  the  comments  of  the 
historian. 

*  The  conduct  of  the  Christians,  on  the  first  of  these  occasions,  is  described 
by  Pontius,  Vit.  Cypriani,  ix.  19.  St.  Cyprian  organised  their  efforts.  On  the 
Alexandrian  famines  and  pestilences,  see  Eusebius,  II.  E.  vii.  22  ;  ix.  8. 

3  The  effects  of  this  conquest  have  been  well  described  by  Sismondi,  Hist, 
de  la  Chute  de  V Empire  romain,  tome  i.  pp.  258-260.  Theodoric  afterwards 
made  some  efforts  to  re-establish  the  distribution,  but  it  never  regained  its 
former  proportions.  The  pictures  of  the  starvation  and  depopulation  of 
Italy  at  this  time  are  appalling.  Some  fearfu  facts  on  the  subject  are  col- 
lected by  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall,  ch.  xxxvi. ;  Chateaubriand,  vime  Disc. 
2de  partie.  ^ 


g6  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

amid  this  chaos  of  dissolution  we  may  detect  the  ma- 
jestic "form  of  the  Christian  priest  mediating  between  the 
hostile  fore*  i  ing  every  nerve  to  lighten  the  calami- 

-  around  him.  When  the  Imperial  city  was  captured 
and  plundered  by  the  hosts  of  Alaric,  a  Christian  church 
remained  a  secure  sanctuary,  which  neither  the  passions 
nor  the  avarice  of  the  Goths  transgressed.  When  a 
fiercer  than  Alaric  had  marked  out  Borne  for  his  prey, 
the  Pope  St.  Leo,  arrayed  in  his  sacerdotal  robes,  con- 
fronted the  victorious  Hun,  as  the  ambassador  of  his 
fellow-countrymen,  and  Attila,  overpowered  by  religious 
awe,  turned  aside  in  his  course.  When,  twelve  years 
later,  Eome  lay  at  the  mercy  of  Genseric,  the  same  Pope 
interposed  with  the  Vandal  conqueror,  and  obtained  from 
him  a  partial  cessation  of  the  massacre.  The  Archdeacon 
tgius  interceded  •  with  similar  humanity  and  similar 
success,  when  Eome  had  been  captured  by  Totila.  In 
Gaul,  Troycs  is  said  to  have  been  saved  from  destruction 
by  the  influence  of  St.  Lupus,  and  Orleans  by  the  in- 
fluence of  St.  Agnan.     In  Britain  an  invasion  of  the  Picts 

3  averted  by  St.  Germain  of  Auxerrois.  The  relations 
of  rulers  to  their  subjects,  and  of  tribunals  to  the  poor, 
were  modified  by  the  same  intervention.     When  Antioch 

!  threatened  with  destruction  on  account  of  its  rebellion 
against  Theodosius,  the  anchorites  poured  forth  from  the 

ighbouring  deserts  to  intercede  with  the  ministers  of 
the  emperor,  while  the  Archbishop  Flavian  went  himself 
as  a  suppliant  to  Piome.  St.  Ambrose  imposed  public 
penance  on  Theodosius,  on  account  of  the  massacre  of 
Thessalonic  sins  excommunicated  for  his  oppres- 

sions a  governor  named  Andronicus,  and  two  French 
Councils,  in  the  sixth  century  imposed  the  same  penalty 
on  all  great  men  who  arbitrarily  ejected  the  poor. 
:ial  laws  were  found  necessary  to  restrain  the  turbu- 


FROM  COXSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  89 

lent  charity  of  some  priests  and  monks,  who  impeded  the 
course  of  justice,  and  even  snatched  criminals  from  the 
hands  of  the  law.1  St.  Abraham,  St.  Epiphanius,  and  St. 
Basil  are  all  said  to  have  obtained  the  remission  or  reduc- 
tion of  oppressive  imposts.  To  provide  for  the  interests  of 
widows  and  orphans  was  part  of  the  official  ecclesiastical 
duty,  and  a  Council  of  Macon  anathematised  any  ruler 
who  brought  them  to  trial  without  first  apprising  the 
bishop  of  the  diocese.  A  Council  of  Toledo,  in  the  fifth 
century,  threatened  with  excommunication  all  who  robbed 
priests,  monks,  or  poor  men,  or  refused  to  listen  to  their 
expostulations.  One  of  the  chief  causes  of  the  inordinate 
power  acquired  by  the  clergy  was  their  mediatorial  office, 
and  their  gigantic  wealth  wras  in  a  great  degree  due  to  the 
legacies  of  those  who  regarded  them  as  the  trustees  of  the 
poor.  As  time  rolled  on,  charity  assumed  many  forms, 
and  every  monastery  became  a  centre  from  which  it 
radiated.  By  the  monks  the  nobles  were  overawed,  the 
poor  protected,  the  sick  tended,  travellers  sheltered, 
prisoners  ransomed,  the  remotest  spheres  of  suffering  ex- 
plored. During  the  darkest  period  of  the  middle  ages, 
monks  founded  a  refuge  for  pilgrims  amid  the  horrors  of 
the  Alpine  snows.  A  solitary  hermit  often  planted  him- 
self, with  his  little  boat,  by  a  bridgeless  stream,  and  the 
charity  of  his  life  was  to  ferry  over  the  traveller.2  When 
the   hideous   disease   of    leprosy   extended    its    ravages 

1  Cod.  Theod.  ix.  xl.  15-16.  The  first  of  fiese  laws  was  made  by  Theo- 
dosius,  a.d.  392  ;  the  second  by  Ilonorius,  a.d.  398. 

2  Cibrario,  Economica  jjolitica  del  Medio  Evo,  lib.  ii.  cap.  iii.  The  most 
remarkable  of  these  saints  was  St.  Julien  1'IIospitalier,  who,  having-  under  a 
mistake,  killed  his  father  and  mother,  as  a  penance  became  a  ferryman  of 
a  great  river,  and,  having  embarked  on  a  very  stormy  and  dangerous  night, 
at  the  voice  of  a  traveller  in  distress,  received  Christ  into  his  boat. 
His  story  is  painted  in  a  window  of  the  thirteenth  century,  in  Rouen 
Cathedral.  See  Langlois,  Essai  historique  sur  la  Peinture  sur  vcrre,  pp, 
32-37. 


90  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

over  Europe,  when  the  minds  of  men  were  filled  with 
terror,  not  only  by  its  loathsomeness  and  its  contagion, 
but  also  by  the  notion  that  it  wras  in  a  peculiar  sense 

►ernatural,1  new  hospitals  and  refuges  overspread 
Europe,  and  monks  flocked  in  multitudes  to  serve  in 
them.2  Sometimes,  the  legends  say,  the  leper's  form  was 
in  a  moment  transfigured,  and  he  who  came  to  tend  the 
most  loathsome  of  mankind  received  his  reward,  for  he 
found  himself  in  the  presence  of  his  Lord. 

There  is  no  fact  of  which  an  historian  becomes  more 
speedily  or  more  painfully  conscious  than  the  great  differ- 
ence between  the  importance  and  the  dramatic  interest 
of  the  subjects  he  treats.  Wars  or  massacres,  the  horrors 
of  martyrdom  or  the  splendours  of  individual  prowess,  are 
susceptible  of  such  brilliant  colouring,  that  with  but  little 
literary  skill  they  can  be  so  pourtrayed .  that  their  impor- 
tance is  adequately  realised,  and  they  appeal  powerfully 
to  the  emotions  of  the  reader.  But  this  vast  and  unosten- 
tatious movement  of  charity,  operating  in  the  village 
hamlet  and  in  the  lonely  hospital,  staunching  the  widow's 
tears  and  following  all  the  windings  of  the  poor  man's 
griefs,  presents  few  features  the  imagination  can  grasp,  and 
leaves  no  deep  impression  upon  the  mind.  The  greatest 
things  are  often  those  which  are  most  imperfectly  realised ; 
and  surely  no  achievements  of  the  Christian  Church  are 
more  truly  great  than  those  which  it  has  effected  in  the 
sphere  of  charity.  For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
mankind,  it  has  inspired  many  thousands  of  men  and 
women,  at  the  sacrifice  of  all  worldly  interests,  and  often 

1  The  fact  of  leprosy  being  taken  as  the  imago  of  sin  gave  rise  to  some 
curious  notions  of  its  supernatural  character,  and  to  many  legends  of  saints 
curing  leprosy  bv  baptism.  Bee  Maurv,  LeyeruJcspieuscs  du  Moyen  Aye,  pp. 
64-65. 

*  See  on  these  hospitals  Cibrario,  Econ.  politic,  del  Medio  Evot  lib.  iii. 
cap.  ii. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  91 

under  circumstances  of  extreme  discomfort  or  danger,  to 
devote  their  entire  lives  to  the  single  object  of  assuaging 
the  sufferings  of  humanity.  It  has  covered  the  globe 
with  countless  institutions  of  mercy,  absolutely  unknown 
to  the  whole  Pagan  world.  It  has  indissolubly  united, 
in  the  minds  of  men,  the  idea  of  supreme  goodness  with 
that  of  active  and  constant  benevolence.  It  has  placed 
in  every  parish  a  religious  minister,  who,  whatever  may 
be  his  other  functions,  has  at  least  been  officially  charged 
with  the  superintendence  of  an  organisation  of  charity, 
and  who  finds  in  this  office  one  of  the  most  important  as 
well  as  one  of  the  most  legitimate  sources  of  his  power. 

There  are,  however,  two  important  qualifications  to 
the  admiration  with  which  we  regard  the  history  of 
Christian  charity — one  relating  to  a  particular  form  of 
suffering,  and  the  other  of  a  more  general  kind.  A 
strong,  ill-defined  notion  of  the  supernatural  character  of 
insanity  had  existed  from  the  earliest  times ;  but  there 
were  special  circumstances  which  rendered  the  action  of 
the  Church  peculiarly  unfavourable  to  those  who  were 
either  predisposed  to  or  afflicted  with  this  calamity.  The 
reality,  both  of  witchcraft  and  diabolical  possession,  had 
been  distinctly  recognised  in  the  Jewish  writings.  The 
received  opinions  about  eternal  torture,  and  ever-present 
daemons,  and  the  continued  strain  upon  the  imagination, 
in  dwelling  upon  an  unseen  world,  were  pre-eminently 
fitted  to  produce  madness  in  those  who  were  at  all 
predisposed  to  it,  and,  where  insanity  had  actually  ap- 
peared, to  determine  the  form  and  complexion  of  the 
hallucinations    of    the    maniac.1      Theology    supplying 

1  Calmeil  observes,  '  On  a  souvent  constate  depuis  un  demi-siecle  que  la 
folie  est  sujette  a  prendre  la  teinte  des  croyances  religieuses,  des  idees  phi- 
losophiques  ou  superstitieuses,  des  prejuges  sociaux  qui  ont  cours,  qui  sont 
actuellement  en  vogue  parmi  les  peuples  ou  les  nations ;  que  cette  teinte 
vTarie  dans  un  menie  pays  suivant  le  caractere  des  evenements  relatifs  a  la 


92  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

all  the  images  that  acted  most  powerfully  upon  the 
imagination,  most  madness,  for  many  centuries,  took  a 
theological  oist.  One  important  department  of  it  appears 
chiefly  in  the  lives  of  the  saints.  Men  of  lively  imagina- 
tions and  absolute  ignorance,  living  apart  from  all  their 
fellows,  amid  the  horrors  of  a  savage  wilderness,  practis- 
ing austerities  by  which  their  physical  system  was 
thoroughly  deranged,  and  firmly  persuaded  that  innu- 
merable devils  were  continually  hovering  about  their 
cells  and  interfering  with  their  devotions,  speedily  and 
very  naturally  became  subject  to  constant  hallucinations, 
which  probably  form  the  nucleus  of  truth  in  the  legends 
of  their  lives.  But  it  was  impossible  that  insanity  should 
confine  itself  to  the  orthodox  forms  of  celestial  visions, 
or  of  the  apparitions  and  the  defeats  of  devils.  Very  fre- 
quently it  led  the  unhappy  maniac  to  some  delusion, 
which  called  down  upon  him  the  speedy  sentence  of  the 
Church.  Sometimes  he  imagined  he  was  himself  identi- 
fied with  the  objects  of  his  devotion.  Thus,  in  the  year 
1300,  a  beautiful  English  girl  appeared  at  Milan,  who 
imagined  herself  to  be  the  Holy  Ghost,  incarnate  for  the 
redemption  of  women,  and  who  accordingly  was  put  to 
death.1  In  the  year  1359,  a  Spaniard  declared  himself 
to  be  the  brother  of  the  archangel  Michael,  and  to  be 
destined  for  the  place  in  heaven  which  Satan  had  lost ; 
and  he  added  that  he  was  accustomed  every  day  both  to 
mount  into  heaven  and  descend  into  hell,  that  the  end 

politique  exte*rieure,  le  caractere  des  erenements  civiles,  la  nature  des  pro- 
ductions litteraires,  des  representations  theatrales,  suivant  la  tournure,  la 
direction,  le  genre  d'dlan  qu'y  prennent  Tindustrie,  le3  arts  et  les  sciences.' 
I)e  la  Folie,  tome  i.  pp.  122-123. 

1  '  Yenit  de  Anglia  virgo  decora  valde,  pariterque  facunda,  dicens,  Spiri- 
cum  Sanctum  incnrnatum  in  vedemptionem  mulierum,  el  baptisavit  mulieres 
in  nomino  Paint,  I  ilii  <-t  mi.  Qure  mortua  ductafuit  in  Mediolanum,  i1>i  et 
CTemata.' — Annate*  I)ominkanurum  Colmaricndum  (in  the  'Rerum.' Ger- 
manic Scriptores), 


FROM  CONSTANTIXE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  93 

of  the  world  was  at  hand,  and  that  it  was  reserved  for 
him  to  enter  into  single  combat  with  Antichrist.  The 
poor  lunatic  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Archbishop  of 
Toledo,  and  was  burnt  alive.1  In  other  cases  the  hallu- 
cination took  the  form  of  an  irregular  inspiration.  On 
this  charge,  Joan  of  Arc,  and  another  girl  who  had  been 
fired  by  her  example,  and  had  endeavoured,  apparently 
under  a  genuine  hallucination,  to  follow  her  career,2  were 
burnt  alive.  A  famous  Spanish  physician  and  scholar, 
named  Torralba,  who  lived  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
who  imagined  that  he  had  an  attendant  angel  continually 
about  him,  escaped  with  public  penance  and  confession ; 3 
but  a  professor  of  theology  in  Lima,  who  laboured  under 
the  same  delusion,  and  added  to  it  some  wild  notions 
about  his  spiritual  dignities,  was  less  fortunate.  He  was 
burnt  by  the  Inquisition  of  Peru.4  Most  commonly, 
however,  the  theological  notions  about  witchcraft  either 
produced  madness  or  determined  its  form,  and,  through 
the  influence  of  the  clergy  of  the  different  sections  of  the 
Christian  Church,  many  thousands  of  unhappy 'women, 
who,  from  their  age,  their  loneliness,  and  their  infirmity, 
were  most  deserving  of  pity,  were  devoted  to  the  hatred 
of  mankind,  and,  having  been  tortured  with  horrible  and 
ingenious  cruelty,  were  at  last  burnt  alive. 

The  existence,  however,  of  some  forms  of  natural  mad- 

1  Martin  Goncalez,  du  diocese  de  Cuenca,  disoit  qu'il  etoit  frere  de 
l'arehang-e  S.  Michel,  la  premiere  verite  et  l'echelledu  ciel;  que  c'etoit  pour 
lui  que  Dieu  reservoit  la  place  que  Lucifer  avoit  perdue  ;  que  tons  les  jours 
il  s'elevoit  au  plus  haut  de  l'Empiree  et  descendoit  ensuite  au  plus  profond 
des  enfers;  qu'a  la  fin  du  monde,  qui  etoit  proche,  il  iroit  au  devant  de 
1' Antichrist  et  qu'il  le  terrasseroit,  ayant  a  sa  main  la  croix  de  Jesus-Christ 
et  sa  couronne  d'epines.  L'archeTeque  de  Tolede,  n'ayant  pu  convertir  ce 
fanatique  obstine",  ni  l'empecher  de  dogmatiser,  l'avoit  enfin  livre  au  bras 
seculier.' — Touron,  Hist,  ties  Homme*  ilhistres  de  I'ordre  de  St.  Dominique, 
Paris,  1745  {Vie  d 'Eymtricus) ,  tomeii.  p.  635. 

2  Calmeil,  Le  la  Folie,  tome  i.  p.  134.         3  Ibid,  tome  i.  pp.  242-247. 
4  Ibid,  tome  i.  p.  247. 


<M  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

ness  was  generally  admitted ;  but  the  measures  for  the 
relief  of  the  unhappy  victims  were  very  few,  and  very  ill 
judged.  Among  the  ancients,  they  were  brought  to  the 
id  subjected  to  imposing  ceremonies,  Which 
Were  believed  supernaturally  to  relieve  them,  and  which 
probably  had  a  favourable  influence  through  their  action 
upon  the  imagination.  The  great  Greek  physicians  had 
devoted  considerable  attention  to  this  malady,  and  some 
of  their  precepts  anticipated  modern  discoveries  ;  but  no 
lunatic  asylum  appears  to  have  existed  in  antiquity.1  In 
the  first  period  of  the  hermit  life,  when  many  anchorites 
became  insane  through  their  penances,  a  refuge  is  said  to 
have  been  opened  for  them  at  Jerusalem.2  This  appears, 
however,  to  be  a  solitary  instance,  arising  from  the  exi- 
gencies of  a  single  class,  and  no  lunatic  asylum  existed 
in  Christian  Europe  till  the  fifteenth  century.  The  Ma- 
hommedans,  in  this  form  of  charity,  preceded  the  Chris- 
tians. A  writer  of  the  seventh  century  notices  the 
existence  of  several  of  these  institutions  at  Fez,  and 
mentions  that  the  patients  were  restrained  by  chains.3 
The  asylum  of  Cairo  is  said  to  have  been  founded  in  a.d. 
1304,4  and  it  is  probable  that  the  care  of  the  insane  was 
a  general  form  of  charity  in  Mahommeclan  countries. 
Among  the  Christians  it  first  appeared  in  quarters  con- 

ious  to  the  Mahommedans ;  but  there  is,  I  think,  no 
real  evidence  that  it  was  derived  from  Mahommeclan 

unple.  The  Knights  of  Malta  were  famous  as  the  one 
order  who  admitted  lunatics  into  their  hospitals;  but 
no  Christian  asylum  expressly  for  their  benefit  existed 
till  1400.  The  honour  of  instituting  this  form  of  charity  in 
Christendom  belongs  to  Spain.  A  monk  named  Juan  Gila- 

1  See  Eaqnirci],  Mala&im  mentales. 

•  Gibbon,  ])rcliiir  (tiid  Fall,  eh.  xxxvii. 

5  Leo  Ai'rirunii.-,  quoted  bt  Etaquirol 

4  Deanmisons.  \  en  Espagn?,  p.  53. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  95 

berto  Joffre,  filled  with  compassion  at  the  sight  of  the 
maniacs  who  were  hooted  by  crowds  through"  the  streets 
of  Valencia,  founded  an  asylum  in  that  city,  and  his  ex- 
ample was  speedily  followed  in  other  provinces.  In  a.d. 
1425,  an  asylum  was  erected  at  Saragossa.  In  a.d.  1436, 
both  Seville  and  Valladolid  followed  the  example,  as 
did  also  Toledo,  in  a.d.  1483.  All  these  institutions  ex- 
isted before  a  single  lunatic  asylum  had  been  founded  in 
any  other  part  of  Christendom.1  Two  other  very  honour 
able  facts  may  be  mentioned,  establishing  the  pre-eminence 
of  Spanish  charity  in  this  field.  The  first  is,  that  the 
oldest  lunatic  asylum  in  the  metropolis  of  Catholicism 
was  that  erected  by  Spaniards,  in  a.d.  1548.2  The  second 
is,  that,  when  at  the  close  of  the  last  century,  Pinel  began 
his  great  labours  in  this  sphere,  he  pronounced  Spain  to 
be  the  country  in  which  lunatics  were  treated  with  most 
wisdom  and  most  humanity.3 

In  most  countries  their  condition  was  indeed  truly 
deplorable.  While  many  thousands  were  burnt  as  witches, 
those  who  were  recognised  as  insane  were  compelled  to  en- 
dure all  the  horrors  of  the  harshest  imprisonment.  Blows, 
bleeding,  and  chains  were  their  usual  treatment,  and  most 
horrible  accounts  were  given  of  madmen  who  had  spent 
decades  bound  in  dark  cells.4  The  treatment  naturally 
aggravated  their  malady,  and  that  malady  in  many  cases 
rendered  impossible  the  resignation  and  ultimate  torpor 

1  I  have  taken  these  facts  from  a  very  interesting  little  work,  Desmaisons, 
Des  Asiles  d Aliencs  en  Espagne ;  Mecherches  historiques  et  medicates  (Paris, 
1859).  Dr.  Desmaisons  conjectures  that  the  Spaniards  took  their  a?ylums 
from  the  Mahommedans  ;  but,  as  it  seems  to  me,  he  altogether  fails  to  prove 
his  point.  His  work,  however,  contains  much  curious  information  on  the 
history  of  lunatic  asylums. 

8  Amydemus,  Pietas  Romana  (Oxford,  1G87),  p.  21;  Desmaisons,  p.  108. 

3  Pinel,  Traite  medico-philosophique,  pp.  241-242. 

4  See  the  dreadful  description  in  Pinel,  Traite  medico-pliilosopTiique  mr 
"Alienation  mcntale  (2nd  ed.).  pp.  200-202. 


96  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

which  alleviate  the  suffering  of  ordinary  prisoners.  Not 
until  the  eighteenth  century  was  the  condition  of  this 
unhappy  class  seriously  improved.  The  combined  pro- 
gress of  theological  scepticism  and  scientific  knowledge, 
relegated  witchcraft  to  the  world  of  phantoms,  and  the 
rtions  of  Morgagni  in  Italy,  of  Cullen  in  Scotland, 
and  of  Tinel  in  France,  renovated  the  whole  treatment  of 
acknowledged  lunatics. 

The  second  qualification  to  the  admiration  with  which 
we  regard  the  history  of  Christian  charity  arises  from  the 
imdoubted  fact  that  a  large  proportion  of  charitable 
institutions  have  directly  increased  the  poverty  they  were 
intended  to  relieve.  The  question  of  the  utility  and 
nature  of  charity  is  one  which,  since  the  modern  dis- 
coveries of  political  economy,  has  elicited  much  discussion, 
and  in  many  cases,  I  think,  much  exaggeration.  What 
political  economy  has  effected  on  the  subject  may  be 
comprised  under  two  heads.  It  has  elucidated  more 
clearly,  and  in  greater  detail  than  had  before  been  done, 
the  effect  of  provident  self-interest  in  determining  the 
welfare  of  societies,  and  it  has  established  a  broad  distinc- 
tion between  productive  and  unproductive  expenditure. 
It  has  shown  that,  where  idleness  is  supported,  idleness 
will  become  common  ;  that,  where  systematic  public  pro- 
vision is  made  for  old  age,  the  parsimony  of  foresight  will 
be  neglected ;  and  that  therefore  these  forms  of  charity, 
by  encouraging  habits  of  idleness  and  improvidence, 
ultimately  increase  the  wretchedness  they  were  intended 
to  alleviate.  It  has  also  shown  that,  while  expenditure 
in  amusements  or  luxury,  or  others  of  what  are  called 
unproductive  forms,  is  undoubtedly  beneficial  to  those 
who  provide  them,  the  fruit  perishes  in  the  usage,  while 
the  result  of  productive  expenditure,  such  as  that  which 
is  devoted  to  the  manufacture  of  machines,  or  the  improve" 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  97 

ment  of  the  soil,  or  the  extension  of  commercial  enter- 
prise, give  a  new  impulse  to  the  creation  of  wealth;  that 
the  first  condition  of  the  rapid  accumulation  of  capital  is 
the  diversion  of  money  from  unproductive  to  productive 
channels,  and  that  the  amount  of  the  accumulated  capital 
is  one  of  the  two  regulating  influences  of  the  wages  of  the 
labourer.  From  these  positions  some  persons  have  in- 
ferred that  charity  should  be  condemned  as  a  form  of 
unproductive  expenditure.  But  in  the  first  place,  all 
charities  that  foster  habits  of  forethought  and  develope 
new  capacities  in  the  poorer  classes,  such  as  popular 
education,  or  the  formation  of  savings  banks,  or  insurance 
companies,  or,  in  many  cases,  small  and  discriminating 
loans,  or  measures  directed  to  the  suppression  of  dissipa- 
tion, are  in  the  strictest  sense  productive  ;  and  the  same 
may  be  said  of  many  forms  of  employment,  given  in 
exceptional  crises  through  charitable  motives ;  and  in  the 
next  place,  it  is  only  necessary  to  remember  that  the  hap- 
piness of  mankind,  to  which  the  accumulation  of  wealth 
should  only  be  regarded  as  a  means,  is  the  real  object 
of  charity,  and  it  will  appear  that  many  forms  which 
are  not  strictly  productive,  in  the  commercial  sense,  are  in 
the  highest  degree  conducive  to  this  end,  and  have  no 
serious  counteracting  evil.  In  the  alleviation  of  those 
sufferings  that  do  not  spring  either  from  improvidence  or 
from  vice,  the  warmest  as  well  as  the  most  enlightened 
charity  will  find  an  ample  sphere  for  its  exertions,1 
Blindness,  and  other  exceptional  calamities,  against  the 
effects  of  which  prudence  does  not  and  cannot  provide, 


1  Malthus,  who  is  sometimes,  though  most  unjustly,  described  as  an 
enemy  to"  all  charity,  has  devoted  an  admirable  chapter  ( On  Population, 
book  iv.  ch.  ix.)  to  the  '  direction  of  our  charity ; '  but  the  fullest  examina- 
tion of  this  subject  with  which  I  am  acquainted  is  the  very  interesting 
work  of  Duchatel,  Sur  la  Charite. 


m  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

the  miseries  resulting  from  epidemics,  from  war,  from 
famine,  from  the  first  sudden  collapse  of  industry,  pro- 
duced by  new  inventions  or  changes  in  the  channels  of 
nnerce ;  hospitals,  which,  besides  other  advantages,  are 
the  greatest  schools  of  medical  science,  and  withdraw 
from  the  crowded  alley  multitudes  who  would  otherwise 
form  centres  of  contagion — these,  and  such  as  these,  will 
long  tax  to  the  utmost  the  generosity  of  the  wealthy ; 
while,  even  in  the  spheres  upon  which  the  political 
economist  looks  with  the  most  unfavourable  eye,  excep- 
tional cases  will  justify  exceptional  assistance.  The 
charity  which  is  pernicious  is  commonly  not  the  highest 
but  the  lowest  kind.  The  rich  man,  prodigal  of  money, 
which  is  to  him  of  little  value,  but  altogether  incapable 
of  devoting  any  personal  attention  to  the  object  of  his 
alms,  often  injures  society  by  his  donations ;  but  this  is 
rarely  the  case  with  that  far  nobler  charity  which  makes 
men  familiar  with  the  haunts  of  wretchedness,  and  follows 
the  object  of  its  care  through  all  the  phases  of  his  life. 
The  question  of  the  utility  of  charity  is  simply  a  question 
of  ultimate  consequences.  Political  economy  has  no  doubt 
laid  down  some  general  rules  of  great  value  on  the  sub- 
ject ;  but  yet,  the  pages  which  Cicero  devoted  to  it  nearly 
two  thousand  years  ago  might  have  been  written  by  the 
most  enlightened  modern  economist;  and  it  will  be  con- 
tinually found  that  the  Protestant  lady,  working  in  her 
parish,  by  the  simple  force  of  common  sense  and  by  a 
scrupulous  and  minute  attention  to  the  condition  and 
character  of  those  whom  she  relieves,  is  unconsciously 
illustrating  with  perfect  accuracy  the  enlightened  charity 
of  Malthus. 

But  in  order  that  charity  should  be  useful,  it  is  essential 
that  the  benefit  of  the  sufferer  should  be  a  real  object 
to  the  donor ;  and  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  evils 
that   have  arisen  from   catholic   charity  may  be   traced 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  09 

to  the  absence  of  this  condition.  The  first  substitution 
of  devotion  for  philanthropy,  as  the  motive  of  benevo- 
lence, gave  so  powerful  a  stimulus  to  the  affections, 
that  it  may  on  the  whole  be  regarded  as  a  benefit, 
though,  by  making  compassion  operate  solely  through  a 
theological  medium,  it  often  produced  among  theologians 
a  more  than  common  indifference  to  the  sufferings  of  all 
who  were  external  to  their  religious  community.  But 
the  new  principle  speedily  degenerated  into  a  belief  in 
the  expiatory  nature  of  the  gifts.  A  form  of  what  may 
be  termed  selfish  charity  arose,  which  acquired  at  last 
gigantic  proportions,  and  exercised  a  most  pernicious 
influence  upon  Christendom.  Men  gave  money  to  the 
poor,  simply  and  exclusively  for  their  own  spiritual 
benefit,  and  the  welfare  of  the  sufferer  was  altogether 
foreign  to  their  thoughts.1 

The  evil  which  thus  arose  from  some  forms  of  catho- 
lic charity,  may  be  traced  from  a  very  early  period,  but 
it  only  acquired  its  full  magnitude  after  some  centuries. 
The  Eoman  system  of  gratuitous  distribution  was,  in  the 
eyes  of  the  political  economist,  about  the  worst  that  could 
be  conceived,  and  the  charity  of  the  Church  being,  in  at 
least  a  measure,  discriminating,  was  at  first  a  very  great, 
though  even  then  not  an  unmingled  good.  Labour  was 
also  not  unfrequently  enjoined  as  a  duty  by  the  Fathers, 
and  at  a  later  period  the  services  of  the  Benedictine  monks, 
in  destroying  by  their  example  the  stigma  which  slavery 
had  attached  to  it,  were  very  great.  Still,  one  of  the  first 
consequences  of  the  exuberant  charity  of  the  Church  was 


1  This  is  very  tersely  expressed  by  a  great  Protestant  writer :  *  I  give 
no  alms  to  satisfy  the  hunger  of  my  brother,  but  to  fulfil  and  accomplish 
the  will  and  command  of  my  God.' — Sir  T.  Brown,  Religio  Medici,  part  ii. 
§  2.  A  saying  almost  exactly  similar  is,  if  I  remember  right,  ascribed  to 
St.  Elizabeth  of  Hungary. 


100  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

to  multiply  impostors  and  mendicants,  and  the  idleness  of 
the  monks  was  one  of  the  earliest  complaints.  Valen- 
tinian  made  a  severe  law,  condemning  robust  beggars  to 
perpetual  slavery.  As  the  monastic  system  was  increased, 
and  especially  after  the  mendicant  orders  had  consecrated 
mendicancy,  the  evil  assumed  gigantic  dimensions.  Many 
thousands  of  strong  men,  absolutely  without  private 
means,  were  in  every  country  withdrawn  from  produc- 
tive labour,  and  supported  by  charity.  The  notion  of  the 
meritorious  nature  of  simple  almsgiving  immeasurably 
multiplied  beggars.  The  stigma,  which  it  is  the  highest 
interest  of  society  to  attach  to  mendicancy,  it  became  a 
main  object  of  theologians  to  remove.  Saints  wandered 
through  the  world  begging  money,  that  they  might  give 
to  beggars,  or  depriving  themselves  of  their  garments,  that 
they  might  clothe  the  naked,  and  the  result  of  their 
iring  was  speedily  apparent.  In  all  Catholic  countries 
where  ecclesiastical  influences  have  been  permitted  to 
develope  unmolested,  the  monastic  organisations  have 
proved  a  deadly  canker,  corroding  the  prosperity  of  the 
nation.  Withdrawing  multitudes  from  all  production, 
encouraging  a  blind  and  pernicious  almsgiving,  diffusing 
habits  of  improvidence  through  the  poorer  classes,  foster- 
ing an  ignorant  admiration  for  saintly  poverty,  and  an 
equally  ignorant  antipathy  to  the  habits  and  aims  of  an 
industrial  civilisation,  they  have  paralysed  all  energy  and 
proved  an  insuperable  barrier  to  material  progress.  The 
poverty  they  have  relieved  has  been  insignificant  com- 
pared with  the  poverty  they  have  caused.  In  no  case 
-  the  abolition  of  monasteries  effected  in  a  more  inde- 
dble  manner  than  in  England  ;  but  the  transfer  of  pro- 
perty that  was  once  employed,  in  a  great  measure  in 
charity,  to  the  courtiers  of  King  Henry,  was  ultimately  a 
vast  benefit  to  the  English  poor ;  for  no  misapplication 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  101 

of  this  property  by  private  persons  could  produce  as  much 
evil  as  an  unrestrained  monasticism.  The  value  of  Catho- 
lic services  in  alleviating  pain  and  sickness,  and  the  more 
exceptional  forms  of  suffering,  can  never  be  overrated. 
The  noble  heroism  of  her  servants,  who  have  devoted 
themselves  to  charity,  has  never  been  surpassed,  and  the 
perfection  of  their  organisation  has,  I  think,  never  been 
equalled ;  but  in  the  sphere  of  simple  poverty  it  can 
hardly  be  doubted  that  the  Catholic  Church  has  created 
more  misery  than  it  has  cured. 

Still,  even  in  this  field,  we  must  not  forget  the  benefits 
resulting,  if  not  to  the  sufferer,  at  least  to  the  donor. 
Charitable  habits,  even  when  formed  in  the  first  instance 
from  selfish  motives,  even  when  so  misdirected  as  to 
be  positively  injurious  to  the  recipient,  rarely  fail  to  exer- 
cise a  softening  and  purifying  influence  on  the  charac- 
ter. All  through  the  darkest  period  of  the  middle  ages, 
amid  ferocity  and  fanaticism  and  brutality,  we  may  trace 
the  subduing  influence  of  Catholic  charity,  blending 
strangely  with  every  excess  of  violence  and  every  out- 
burst of  persecution.  It  would  be  difficult  to  conceive  a 
more  frightful  picture  of  society  than  is  presented  by 
the  history  of  Gregory  of  Tours ;  but  that  long  series  of 
atrocious  crimes,  narrated  with  an  almost  appalling  tran- 
quillity, is  continually  interspersed  with  accounts  of  kings, 
queens,  or  prelates,  who,  in  the  midst  of  the  disorganised 
society,  made  the  relief  of  the  poor  the  main  object  of 
their  lives.  No  period  of  history  exhibits  a  larger  amount 
of  cruelty,  licentiousness,  and  fanaticism.than  the  Crusades ; 
but  side  by  side  with  the  military  enthusiasm,  and  with 
the  almost  universal  corruption,  there  expanded  a  vast 
movement  of '  charity,  which  covered  Christendom  with 
hospitals  for  the  relief  of  leprosy,  and  which  grappled 
nobly,   though   ineffectually,   with   the   many  forms   of 


102  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

goffering  that  were  generated.  St.  Peter  Nolasco,  whose 
great  labours  in  ransoming  captive  Christians  I  have 
already  noticed,  was  an  active  participator  in  the  atro- 
cious massacre  of  the  Albigenses.1  Of  Shane  O'Neale,  one 
of  the  ablest,  but  also  one  of  the  most  ferocious  Irish 
chieftains  who  ever  defied  the  English  power,  it  is  related, 
amid  a -crowd  of  horrible  crimes,  that,  'sitting  at  meat, 
before  he  put  one  morsel  into  his  mouth  he  used  to  slice 
a  portion  above  the  daily  alms,  and  send  it  to  some 
beggar  at  his  gate,  saying  it  was  meet  to  serve  Christ 
first.'2 

The  great  evils  produced  by  the  encouragement  of 
mendicants,  which  have  always  accompanied  the  uncon- 
trolled development  of  Catholicity,  have  naturally  given 
rise  to  much  discussion  and  legislation.  William  de  St. 
Amour  denounced  the  mendicant  orders  at  Paris  in  the 
thirteenth  century,3  and  one  of  the  disciples  of  Wycliffe, 
named  Nicholas  of  Hereford,  was  conspicuous  for  his  oppo- 
sition to  indiscriminate  gifts  to  beggars;4  but  few  measures 
of  an  extended  order  appear  to  have  been  taken  till  the 
Eeformation.5  In  England,  laws  of  the  most  savage  cruelty 
were  passed,  in  hopes  of  eradicating  mendicancy.  A  par- 
liament of  Henry  VIII.,  before  the  suppression  of  the 
monasteries,  issued  a  law  providing  a  system  of  organised 

1  See  Butler's  Lives  of  the  Saints. 

2  Campion's  Ilistorie  of  Ireland,  book  ii.  chap.  x. 

3  Fkmy,  Hist.  cccl.  lib.  lxxxiv.  67.     It  does  not  appear,  however,  that 
the  indiscriminate  charity  they  encouraged  had  any  part  in  his  invective.% 
II     a  rote  his  Perils  of  the  Last  Times  in  the  interest  of  the  University  of 
Paris,  of  which  be  wai  a.  Professor,  and  which  was  at  war  with  the  men- 
dicant orders.     See  Milman's  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  vi.  pp.  348-35G. 

4  Il.-nry  de  Knyghton,  De  Ecentihu*  Anylicc. 

*  There  was  some  severe  legislation  in  England  on  the  subject  after  the 
Black  Death.  Eden's  History  of  the  Working  Classes,  'vol.  i.  p.  34.  In 
France,  too,  a  royal  ordinance  of  1350  ordered  men  who  had  been  con- 
victed of  begging  three  times  to  be  branded  with  a  hot  iron.  Monteil, 
Hid.  dei  Francois,  tome  i.  p.  484 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  103 

charity,  and  imposing  on  anyone  who  gave  anything  to 
a  beggar  a  line  of  ten  times  the  value  of  his  gift.  A 
sturdy  beggar  was  to  be  punished  with  whipping  for  the 
first  offence,  with  whipping  and  the  loss  of  the  tip  of  his 
ear  for  the  second,  and  with  death  for  the  third.1  Under 
Edward  VI.,  an  atrocious  law,  which,  however,  was  re- 
pealed in  the  same  reign,  enacted  that  every  sturdy 
beggar  who  refused  to  work  should  be  branded,  and 
adjudged  for  two  years  as  a  slave  to  the  person  who  gave 
information  against  him ;  and  if  he  took  flight  during  his 
period  of  servitude,  for  the  first  offence  he  was  condemned 
to  perpetual  slavery,  and  for  the  second  to  death.  The 
master  was  authorised  to  put  a  ring  of  iron  round  the 
neck  of  his  slave,  to  chain  him  and  to  scourge  him.  Any- 
one might  take  the  children  of  a  sturdy  beggar  for 
apprentices,  till  the  boys  were  twenty-four  and  the  girls 
twenty.2  Another  law,  made  under  Elizabeth,  punished 
with  death  any  strong  man  under  the  age  of  eighteen 
who  was  convicted  for  the  third  time  of  begging ;  but  the 
penalty  in  this  reign  was  afterwards  reduced  to  a  life-long 
service  in  the  galleys,  or  to  banishment,  with  a  penalty  of 
death  to  the  returned  convict.3  Under  the  same  queen 
the  poor-law  system  was  elaborated,  and  Malthus  long 
afterwards  showed  that  its  effects  in  discouraging  par- 
simony rendered  it  scarcely  less  pernicious  than  the 
monastic  system  that  had  preceded  it.  .In  many  Catholic 
countries,  severe,  though  less  atrocious  measures,  were 
taken  to  grapple  with  the  evil  of  mendicancy.  That 
shrewd  and  sagacious  pontiff,  Sixtus  V.,  who,  though  not 
the  greatest  man,  was  by  far  the  greatest  statesman  who 
has  ever  sat  on  the  papal  throne,  made  praiseworthy  efforts 
to  check  it  at  Borne,  where  ecclesiastical  influence  had 

1  Eden,  vol.  i.  pp.  83-87.  8  Ibid.  pp.  101-103. 

8  Ibid.  pp.  127-130. 
41 


104  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

always  made  it  peculiarly  prevalent.1  Charles  V.,  in 
1531.  issued  a  Bercero  enactment  against  beggars  in  the 
Netherlands*  but  excepted  from  its  operation  mendicant 
friars  and  pilgrims.2  Under  Lewis  XIV.,  equally  severe 
measures  wire  taken  in  France.  But  though  the  practical 
evil  was  fully  felt,  there  was  little  or  no  philosophical  in- 
vi-ti gation  of  its  causes  before  the  eighteenth  century. 
Locke  in  England,3  and  Berkeley  ill  Ireland,4  briefly 
glanced  at  the  subject,  and  in  1704  Defoe  published  a 
very  remarkable  tract,  called,  '  Giving  Alms  no  Charity,' 
in  which  he  noticed  the  extent  to  which  mendicancy 
existed  in  England,  though  wages  were  higher  than  in 
any  continental  country.5  A  still  more  remarkable  book, 
written  by  an  author  named  Eicci,  appeared  at  Modena 
in  1787,  and  excited  considerable  attention.  The  author 
pointed  out  with  much  force  the  gigantic  development  of 
mendicancy  in  Italy,  traced  it  to  the  excessive  charity  of 
the  people,  and  appears  to  have  regarded  as  an  evil  all 
charity  which  sprang  from  religious  motives,  and  wis 
greater  than  would  spring  from  the  unaided  instincts  of 
men.6   The  freethinker  Mandeville  assailed  charity  schools, 

1  Morighini,  Institutions  pieuses  de  Rome. 

2  Eden,  Hist,  of  the  Labouring  Classes,  vol.  i.  p.  83. 

3  Locke  discussed  the  great  increase  of  poverty,  and  a  bill  -was  brought 
in  suggesting  some  remedies,  but  did  not  pass.     (Eden,  vol.  i.  pp.  243-248.) 

4  In  a  very  forcible  letter  addressed  to  the  Irish  Catholic  clergy. 

6  Thjs  tract,  which  is  extremely  valuable  for  the  light  it  throws  Upon 
the  social  condition  of  England  at  the  time,  was  written  in  opposition  to  a 
Bill  providing  that  the  poor  in  the  poor-houses  should  do  wool,  hemp,  iron, 
and  otli'-r  works.  Defoe  says  that  wages  in  England  were  higher  than 
anywhere  on  the  Continent,  though  the  amount  of  mendicancy  was  enor- 
mous 'Tin'  reason  why  BO  many  pretend  to  want  work  is,  that  they 
can  live  so  well  with  the  pretence  of  wanting  work.  ...  I  affirm  of  my 
own  knowledge,  when  I  have  wanted  a  man  for  labouring  work,  and  offered 
nine  shillings  per  week  to  strolling  fellows  at  my  door,  they  have  frequently 
t  '1  1  me  to  my  face  they  could  get  more  a-begging.' 

■' ■nnn  d \gf  Imtituti  pii  di  Modena  (published  first  anonymously  at 
Modena).     It  has  been  reprinted  in  the  library  of  the  Italian  economists. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  105 

and  the  whole  system  of  endeavouring  to  elevate  the 
poor,1  and  Magdalen  asylums  and  foundling  hospitals 
have  had  fierce,  though  I  believe  much  mistaken,  adver- 
saries.2 The  reforms  of  the  poor-laws,  and  the  writings  of 
Malthus,  gave  a  new  impulse  to  discussion  on  the  subject; 
but  with  the  qualifications  I  have  stated,  no  new  dis- 
coveries have,  I  conceive,  thrown  any  just  cloud  upon 
Christian  charity ;  and  though  its  administration  is  often 
extremely  injudicious,  the  principles  that  regulate  it,  in 
Protestant  countries  at  least,  require  but  little  reform. 

The  last  method  by  which  Christianity  has  laboured  to 
soften  the  characters  of  men  has  been  by  accustoming  the 
imagination  to  expatiate  continually  upon  images  of  ten- 
derness and  of  pathos.  Our  imaginations,  though  less 
influential  than  our  occupations,  probably  affect  our  moral 
characters  more  deeply  than  our  judgments,  and,  in 
the  case  of  the  poorer  classes  especially,  the  cultivation 
of  this  part  of  our  nature  is  of  inestimable  importance. 
Eooted,  for  the  most  part,  during  their  entire  lives,  to  a 
single  spot,  excluded  by  their  ignorance  and  their  circum- 
stances from  most  of  the  varieties  of  interest  that  animate 
the  minds  of  other  men,  condemned  to  constant  and  plod- 
ding labour,  and  engrossed  for  ever  with  the  minute  cares 
of  an  immediate  and  an  anxious  present,  their  whole 
natures   would   have   been   hopelessly  contracted,  were 


1  Essay  on  Charity  Schools. 

2  Magdalen  Asylums  have  been  very  vehemently  assailed  by  M.  Charles 
Comte,  in  his  Traite  de  Legislation.  On  the  subject  of  Foundling  Hospitals 
there  is  a  whole  literature.  They  were  vehemently  attacked  by,  I  believe, 
Lord  Brougham,  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  in  the  early  part  of  this  century. 
"Writers  of  this  stamp,  and  indeed  most  political  economists,  greatly  exagge- 
rate the  forethought  of  men  and  women,  especially  in  matters  where  the 
passions  are  concerned.  It  may  be  questioned  whether  one  woman  in  a 
hundred,  who  plunges  into  a  career  of  vice,  is  in  the  smallest  degree  influ- 
enced by  a  consideration  of  whether  or  not  charitable  institutions  are  pro- 
vided for  the  support  of  aged  penitents. 


10(5  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

there  no  sphere  in  which  their  imaginations  could  expand. 
Religion  is  the  one  romance  of  the  poor.  It  alone  extends 
the  narrow  horizon  of  their  thoughts,  supplies  the  images 
of  their  dreams,  allures  them  to  the  supersensual  and  the 
il.  The  graceful  beings  with  which  the  creative  fancy 
of  Paganism  peopled  the  universe  shed  a  poetic  glow  on 
the  peasants'  toil.  Every  stage  of  agriculture  was  pre- 
sided over  by  a  divinity,  and  the  world  grew  bright  by 
the  companionship  of  the  gods.  But  it  is  the  peculiarity 
of  the  Christian  types,  that  while  they  have  fascinated 
the  imagination,  they  have  also  purified  the  heart.  The 
tender,  winning,  and  almost  feminine  beauty  of  the 
Christian  Founder,  the  Virgin  mother,  the  agonies  of  Geth- 
semane  or  of  Calvary,  the  many  scenes  of  compassion 
and  suffering  that  fill  the  sacred  writings,  are  the  pictures 
which,  for  eighteen  hundred  years,  have  governed  the 
imaginations  of  the  rudest  and  most  ignorant  of  mankind. 
Associated  with  the  fondest  recollections  of  childhood, 
with  the  music  of  the  church  bells,  with  the  clustered 
lights  and  the  tinsel  splendour,  that  seem  to  the  peasant 
the  very  ideal  of  majesty  ;  painted  over  the  altar  where  he 
received  the  companion  of  his  life,  around  the  cemetery 
where  so  many  whom  he  had  loved  were  laid,  on  the 
stations  of  the  mountain,  on  the  portal  of  the  vineyard, 
on  the  chapel  where  the  storm-tossed  mariner  fulfils  his 
grateful  vow;  keeping  guard  over  his  cottage  door,  and 
looking  down  upon  his  humble  bed,  forms  of  tender 
beauty  and  gentle  pathos  for  ever  haunt  the  poor  man's 
fancy,  and  silently  win  their  way  into  the  very  depths  of 
his  being.  More  than  any  spoken  eloquence,  more  than 
any  dogmatic  teaching,  they  transform  and  subdue  his 
character,  till  he  learns  to  realise  the  sanctity  of  weakness 
and  Buffering,  the  supreme  majesty  of  compassion  and 
gentleness. 


FEOM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  107 

Imperfect  and  inadequate  as  is  the  sketch  I  have 
drawn,  it  will  be  sufficient  to  show  how  great  and  multi- 
form have  been  the  influences  of  Christian  philanthropy. 
The  shadows  that  rest  upon  the  picture  I  have  not  con- 
cealed ;  but  when  all  due  allowance  has  been  made  for 
them,  enough  will  remain  to  claim  our  deepest  admiration. 
The  high  conception  that  has  been  formed  of  the  sanctity 
of  human  life,  the  protection  of  infancy,  the  elevation 
and  final  emancipation  of  the  slave  classes,  the  suppression 
of  barbarous  games,  the  creation  of  a  vast  and  multifarious 
organisation  of  charity,  and  the  education  of  the  imagi- 
nation by  the  Christian  type,  constitute  together  a  move- 
ment of  philanthropy  which  has  never  been  paralleled 
or  approached  in  the  Pagan  world.  The  effects  of  this 
movement  in  promoting  happiness  have  been  very  great. 
Its  effect  in  determining  character  has  probably  been  still 
greater.  In  that  proportion  or  disposition  of  qualities 
which  constitutes  the  ideal  character,  the  gentler  and 
more  benevolent  virtues  have  obtained,  through  Chris- 
tianity, the  foremost  place.  In  the  first  and  purest  period 
they  were  especially  supreme,  but  in  the  third  century  a 
great  ascetic  movement  arose,  which  gradually  brought  a 
new  type  of  character  into  the  ascendant,  and  diverted 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  Church  into  new  channels. 

Tertullian,  writing  in  the  second  century,  in  a  passage 
which  has  been  very  frequently  quoted,  contrasts  the 
Christians  of  his  day  with  the  gynmosophists  or  hermits 
of  India,  declaring  that,  unlike  these,  the  Christians  did 
not  fly  from  the  world,  but  mixed  with  the  Pagans  in  the 
forum,  in  the  market-places,  in  the  public  baths,  in  the 
ordinary  business  of  life.1     But  although  the  life  of  the 

1  Apol  eh.  xlii. 


108  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

hermit  or  tlio  monk  was  unknown  in  the  Church  for  more 
than  two  hundred  years  after  its  foundation,  we  may  detect, 
almost  from  the  earliest  time,  a  tone  of  feeling  which  pro- 
duces  it.  The  central  conceptions  of  the  monastic  system 
are  the  meritoriousness  of  complete  abstinence  from  all 

ual  intercourse,  and  of  complete  renunciation  of  the 
world  The  first  of  these  notions  appeared  in  the  very 
earliest  period,  in  the  respect  attached  to  the  condition  of 
virginity,  which  was  always  regarded  as  sacred,  and  es- 
pecially esteemed  in  the  clergy,  though  for  a  long  time 
it  was  not  imposed  as  an  obligation.  The  second  was 
shown  in  the  numerous  efforts  that  were  made  to  separate 
the  Christian  community  as  far  as  possible  from  the 
society  in  which  it  existed.  Nothing  could  be  more 
natural  than  that,  when  the  increase  and  afterwards  the 
triumph  of  the  Church  had  thrown  the  bulk  of  the 
Christians  into  active  political  or  military  labour,  some 
should,  as  an  exercise  of  piety,  have  endeavoured  to 
imitate  the  separation  from  the  world  which  was  once 
the  common  condition  of  all.  Besides  tins,  a  movement 
of  asceticism  had  long  been  raging  like  a  mental  epidemic 
through  the  world.  Among  the  Jews — whose  law,  from 
the  great  stress  it  laid  upon  marriage,  the  excellence  of 
the  rapid  multiplication  of  population,  and  the  hope  of 
being  the  ancestor  of  the  Messiah,  was  peculiarly  repug- 
nant to  monastic  conceptions — the  Essenes  had  consti- 
tuted a  complete  monastic  society,  abstaining  from 
marriage  and  separating  themselves  wholly  from  the 
world.     In  Rome,  whose  practical  genius  was,  if  possible, 

ii  more  opposed  than  that  of  the  Jews  to  an  inactive 
monasticism,  and  even  among  those  philosophers  who 
most  represented  its  active  and  practical  spirit,  the  same 
tendency  was  shown.  The  Cynics  of  the  later  empire 
recommended  a  complete  renunciation  of  civic  and  do- 


FROM   COXSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  109 

mestic  ties,  and  a  life  spent  wholly  in  the  contemplation 
of  wisdom.  The  Egyptian  philosophy,  that  soon  after 
acquired  an  ascendency  in  Europe,  anticipated  still  more 
closely  the  monastic  ideal.  On  the  outskirts  of  the 
Church,  the  many  sects  of  Gnostics  and  Manicheans  all 
held  under  different  forms  the  essential  evil  of  matter. 
The  Docetas,  following  the  same  notion,  denied  the  reality 
of  the  body  of  Christ.  The  Montanists  and  the  Novatians 
surpassed  and  stimulated  the  private  penances  of  the 
orthodox.1  The  soil  was  thus  thoroughly  prepared  for  a 
great  outburst  of  asceticism,  whenever  the  first  seed  was 
sown.  This  was  done  during  the  Decian  persecution. 
Paul,  the  hermit,  who  fled  to  the  desert  during  that  per- 
secution, is  said  to  have  been  the  first  of  the  tribe.2 
Antony,  who  speedily  followed,  greatly  extended  the 
movement,  and  in  a  few  years  the  hermits  had  become  a 
mighty  nation.  Persecution,  which  in  the  first  instance 
drove  great  numbers  as  fugitives  to  the  deserts,  soon 
aroused  a  passionate  religious  enthusiasm  that  showed 
itself  in  an  ardent  desire  for  those  sufferings  which  were 
believed  to  lead  directly  to  heaven,  and  this  enthusiasm, 
after  the  peace  of  Constantine,  found  its  natural  vent  and 
sphere  in  the  macerations  of  the  desert  life.  The  imagina- 
tions of  men  were  fascinated  by  the  poetic  circumstances 
of  that  life  which  St.  Jerome  most  eloquently  embellished. 
Women  were  pre-eminent  in  recruiting  for  it.     The  same 

1  On  these  penances,  see  Bingham,  Antiq,  book  vii.  Bingham,  I  think, 
justly  divides  the  history  of  asceticism  into  three  periods.  During  the 
first,  which  extends  from  the  foundation  of  the  Church  to  A.D.  250,  there 
were  men  and  women  who,  with  a  view  of  spiritual  perfection,  abstained 
from  marriage,  relinquished  amusements,  accustomed  themselves  to  severe 
fasts,  and  gave  up  their  property  to  works  of  charity ;  but  did  this  in  the 
middle  of  society  and  without  lending  the  life  of  either  a  hermit  or  a  monk. 
During  the  second  period,  which  extended  from  the  Decian  persecution, 
anchorites  were  numerous,  but  the  custom  of  a  common  or  ccenobitic  life 
was  unknown,    It  was  originated  in  the  time  of  Constantine  by  rachomius. 

2  This  is  expressly  stated  by  St.  Jerome  {Vit.  Pauli). 


110  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

spirit  that  had  formerly  led  the  wife  of  the  Pagan  official 
to  entertain  secret  relations  with  the  Christian  priests, 
now  led  the  wife  of  the  Christian  to  become  the  active 
agent  of  the  monks.  While  the  father  designed  his  son 
for  the  army,  or  for  some  civil  post,  the  mother  was  often 
straining  every  nerve  to  induce  him  to  become  a  hermit ; 
the  monks  secretly  corresponded  with  her,  they  skilfully 
assumed  the  functions  of  education,  in  order  that  they 
might  influence  the  young ;  and  sometimes,  to  evade  the 
precautions  or  the  anger  of  the  father,  they  concealed 
their  profession,  and  assumed  the  garb  of  lay  pedagogues.1 
The  pulpit,  which  had  almost  superseded,  and  immea- 
surably transcended  in  influence,  the  chairs  of  the  rheto- 
ricians, and  which  was  filled  by  such  men  as  Ambrose, 
Augustine,  Chrysostom,  Basil,  and  the  Gregories,  was 
continually  exerted  in  the  same  cause,  and  the  extreme 
luxury  of  the  great  cities  produced  a  violent,  but  not 
unnatural,  reaction  of  asceticism.  The  dignity  of  the 
monastic  position,  which  sometimes  brought  men  who 
had  been  simple  peasants  into  connection  with  the  empe- 
rors, the  security  it  furnished  to  fugitive  slaves  and  cri- 
minals, the  desire  of  escaping  from  those  fiscal  burdens 
which,  in  the  corrupt  and  oppressive  administration  of  the 
empire,  had  acquired  an  intolerable  weight,  and  espe- 
cially the  barbarian  invasions,  which  produced  every 
variety  of  panic  and  wretchedness,  conspired  with  the 
Dew  religious  teaching  in  peopling  the  desert.  A  theology 
of  asceticism  was  speedily  formed.  The  examples  of 
Elijah  and  Elisha,  to  the  first  of  whom,  by  a  bold  flight 
of  the  imagination,  some  later  Carmelites  ascribed  the 
origin  of  their  order,  and  the  more  recent  instance  of  the 

1  See  on  this  subject  some  curious  evidence  in  Noander's  Life  cf  Chn/- 
sodont.  St.  Cbryaoftom  wrote  a  long  work  to  console  fathers  whose  sons 
were  thus  seduced  to  the  desert.. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  Ill 

Baptist  were  at  once  adduced.  To  an  ordinary  layman 
the  life  of  the  anchorite  might  appear  in  the  highest 
degree  opposed  to  that  of  the  Teacher  who  began  His 
mission  in  a  marriage  feast ;  who  was  continually  re- 
proached by  His  enemies  for  the  readiness  with  which 
He  mixed  with  the  world,  and  who  selected  from  the 
female  sex  some  of  His  purest  and  most  devoted  fol- 
lowers ;  but  the  monkish  theologians  avoiding,  for  the 
most  part,  these  topics,  dilated  chiefly  on  His  immaculate 
birth,  His  virgin  mother,  His  life  of  celibacy,  His  ex- 
hortation to  the  rich  young  man.  The  fact  that  St.  Peter, 
to  whom  a  general  primacy  was  already  ascribed,  was 
unquestionably  married,  was  a  difficulty  which  was  in  a 
measure  met  by  a  tradition  that  he,  as  well  as  the  other 
married  apostles,  abstained  from  intercourse  with  their 
wives  after  their  conversion.1  St.  Paul,  however,  was 
probably  unmarried,  and  his  writings  showed  a  decided 
preference  for  the  unmarried  state,  which  the  ingenuity 
of  theologians  also  discovered  in  some  quarters  where  it 
might  be  least  expected.  Thus,  St.  Jerome  assures  us 
that  when  the  clean  animals  entered  the  ark  by  sevens, 
and  the  unclean  ones  by  pairs,  the  odd  number  typified 
the  celibate,  and  the  even  the  married  condition.  Even 
of  the  unclean  animals  but  one  pair  of  each  kind  was 
admitted,  lest  they  should  perpetrate  the  enormity  of 
second  marriage.2  Ecclesiastical  tradition  sustained  the 
tendency,  and  the  apostle  James,  as  he  has  been  portrayed 
by  Hegesippus,  became  a  kind  of  ideal  saint,  a  faithful 
picture  of  what,  according  to  the  notions  of  theologians, 
was  the  true  type  of  human  nobility.  He  '  was  converted,' 
it  was  said,  '  from  his  mother's  womb.'  He  drank  neither 
wine  nor  fermented  liquors,  and  abstained  from  animal 

1  On  this  tradition  see  Champagny,  Les  Antonins,  tome  i.  p.  193. 
8  Up.  cxxiii. 


\U  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

food.  A  razor  never  came  upon  his  head.  He  never 
anointed  with  oil,  or  used  a  bath.  He  alone  was  allowed 
to  enter  the  sanctuary.  He  never  wore  woollen,  but  linen 
garment*.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  entering  the  temple 
alone,  and  was  often  found  upon  his  bended  knees,  and. 
interceding  for  the  forgiveness  of  the  people,  so  that  his 
knees  became  as  hard  as  a  camel's.1 

The  progress  of  the  monastic  movement,  as  has  been 
truly  said,  *  was  not  less  rapid  or  universal  than  that  of 
Christianity  itself.2  Of  the  actual  number  of  the  anchorites, 
those  who  are  acquainted  with  the  extreme  unveracity 
of  the  first  historians  of  the  movement  will  hesitate  to 
speak  with  confidence.  It  is  said  that  St.  Pachomius,  who 
early  in  the  fourth  century  founded  the  coenobitic  mode 
of  life,  enlisted  under  his  jurisdiction  7,000  monks ; 3  that 
in  the  days  of  St.  Jerome  nearly  50,000  monks  were 
sometimes  assembled  at  the  Easter  festivals  ;4  that  in  the 
dt^ert  of  Nitria  alone  there  wTere,  in  the  fourth  century. 
5,000  monks  under  a  single  abbot ; 5  that  an  Egyptian 
city  named  Oxyrinchus  devoted  itself  almost  exclusively 
to  the  ascetic  life,  and  included  20,000  virgins  and  10,000 
monks;6  that  St.  Serapion  presided  over  10,000  monks,7 
and  that,  towards  the  close  of  the  fourth  century,  the 
monastic  population  in  that  country  was  nearly  equal  to 
the  population  of  the  cities:8  Egypt  was  the  parent  of 
monachism,  and  it  was  there  that  it  attained  both  its 
extreme  development  and  its  most  austere  severity  ;  but 
there  was  very  soon  scarcely  any  Christian  country  in 

1  Euseb.  Feci.  Hist.  ii.  28, 

2  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Full,  ch.  xxxvii. ;  &  brief  but  masterly  sketch  of 
the  progress  of  the  movement. 

8  Palladium  J  1 1st.  La  us.  xxxviii. 

4  Jerome,  Preface  to  the  Bole  of  St.  Pachomius,  §  7. 

8  Cassian,  De  Coenob.  Inst.  iv.  1. 

9  Rul'mii.-.  ///-'.  Mn/turli.  ch.  v.     Rufinus  visited  it  himself. 

7  l'alladius,  lli*t.  Lai/s.  lxxvi.  8  Rufinus,  Hist.  Man.  vii. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  113 

which  a  similar  movement  was  not  ardently  propagated. 
St.  Athanasius  and  St.  Zeno  are  said  to  have  introduced  it 
into  Italy,1  where  it  soon  afterwards  received  a  great  stim- 
ulus from  St.  Jerome.  St.  Hilarion  instituted  the  first 
monks  in  Palestine,  and  he  lived  to  see  many  thousands 
subject  to  his  rule,  and  towards  the  close  of  his  life  to 
plant  monachism  in  Cyprus.'  Eustathius,  Bishop  of 
Sebastia,  spread  it  through  Armenia,  Paphlagonia,  and 
Pontus.  St.  Basil  laboured  along  the  wild  shores  of  the 
Euxine.  St.  Martin  of  Tours  founded  the  first  monastery 
in  Gaul,  and  2,000  monks  attended  his  funeral.  Unre- 
corded missionaries  planted  the  new  institution  in  the 
heart  of  .^Ethiopia,  amid  the  little  islands  that  stud  the 
Mediterranean,  in  the  secluded  valleys  of  Wales  and 
Ireland.2  But  even  more  wonderful  than  the  many 
thousands  who  thus  abandoned  the  world,  is  the  reverence 
with  which  they  were  regarded  by  those  who,  by  their 
attainments  or  their  character,  would  seem  most  opposed 
to  the  monastic  ideal.  No  one  had  more  reason  than 
Augustine  to  know  the  danger  of  enforced  celibacy,  but 
St.  Augustine  exerted  all  his  energies  to  spread  monasticism 
through  his  diocese.  St.  Ambrose,  who  was  by  nature 
an  acute  statesman ;  St.  Jerome  and  St.  Basil,  who  were 
ambitious  scholars  ;  St.  Chrysostom,  who  was  pre-emi- 
nently formed  to  sway  the  refined  throngs  of  a  metro- 
polis, all  exerted  their  powers  in  favour  of  the  life  of 

1  There  is  a  good  deal  of  doubt  and  controversy  about  this.  See  a  note 
in  Mosheim's  Eccl.  Hist.  (Soame's  edition),  vol.  i.  p.  354. 

3  Most  of  the  passages  remaining  on  the  subject  of  the  foundation  of 
monachism  are  given  by  Thomassin,  Discipline  de  VEglise,  part  i.  livre  iii. 
ch.  xii.  This  work  contains  also  much  general  information  about  mona- 
chism. A  curious  collection  of  statistics  of  the  numbers  of  the  monks  in 
different  localities,  additional  to  those  I  have  given  and  gleaned  from  the 
Lives  of  the  Saints,  may  be  found  in  Pitra  {Vie  de  S.  Leger,  Introd.  p.  lix.)  ; 
2,100,  or,  according  to  another  account,  3,000  monks,  lived  in  the  monastery 
of  Banchor. 


114  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

solitude,  and  the  three  last  practised  it  themselves.  St. 
Arsenius,  who  was  surpassed  by  no  one  in  the  extrava- 
gance of  his  penances,  had  held  a  high  office  at  the  court 
of  the  Emperor  Arcadius.  Pilgrims  wandered  among 
the  deserts,  collecting  accounts  of  the  miracles  and  the 
austerities  of  the  saints,  which  filled  Christendom  with 
admiration  ;  and  the  strange  biographies  which  were  thus 
formed,  wild  and  grotesque  as  they  are,  enable  us  to 
realise  very  vividly  the  general  features  of  the  anchorite 
life,  which  became  the  new  ideal  of  the  Christian  world.1 
There  is,  perhaps,  no  phase  in  the  moral  history  of 
mankind,  of  a  deeper  or  more  painful  interest  than  this 
ascetic  epidemic.  A  hideous,  sordid,  and  emaciated 
maniac,  without  knowledge,  without  patriotism,  without 
natural  affection,  passing  his  life  in  a  long  routine  of  use- 
less and  atrocious  self-torture,  and  quailing  before  the 
ghastly  phantoms  of  his  delirious  brain,  had  become  the 
ideal  of  the  nations  which  had  known  the  writings  of 
Plato  and  Cicero  and  the  lives  of  Socrates  or  Cato.  For 
about  two  centuries,  the  hideous  maceration  of  the  body 
was  regarded  as  the  highest  proof  of  excellence.  St. 
Jerome  declares,  with  a  thrill  of  admiration,  how  he  had 
seen  a  monk,  who  for  thirty  years  had  lived  exclusively 

1  The  three  principal  are  the  Historia  Monachornm  of  Rufinus,  who 
fifittd  Egypt  a.d.  373,  about  seventeen  years  after  the  death  of  St.  Antony  ; 
the  Indttutiones  of  Cassian,  who,  having  visited  the  Eastern  monks  about 
a.d.  394,  founded  vast  monasteries  containing-,  it  is  said,  5,000  monks,  at 
,  nnd  died  at  a  great  age  about  a.d.  448 ;  and  the  Historia  Lau- 
siaca  (so  called  from  Lausus,  Governor  of  Cappadocia)  of  Palladius,  who  was 
bimtelf  B  hermit  on  Mount  Nitria,  in  a.d.  388.  The  first  and  last,  as  well 
as  many  minor  world  of  the  same  period,  arc  given  in  Rosweyde's  invaluable 
collection  of  the  lives  of  the  Fathers;  one  of  the  most  fascinating  volumes  in 
the  whok  range  of  literature. 

The  hospitality  of  the  monks  was  not  without  drawbacks.  In  a  church  on 
Mount  Nitria  three  whips  were  hung  on  a  palm-tree — one  for  chastising 
monks,  another  for  chastising  thieves,  and  a  third  for  chastising  guests. 
(Falladius,  JIu<t.  Lam.  \\\. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  115 

on  a  small  portion  of  barley  bread  and  of  muddy  water ; 
another,  who  lived  in  a  hole  and  never  eat  more  than  live 
figs  for  his  daily  repast ; x  a  third,  who  cut  his  hair  only 
on  Easter  Sunday,  who  never  washed  his  clothes,  who 
never  changed  his  tunic  till  it  fell  to  pieces,  who  starved 
himself  till  his  eyes  grew  dim,  and  his  skin  'like  a  pumice 
stone/  and  whose  merits,  shown  by  these  austerities,  Homer 
himself  would  be  unable  to  recount.2  For  six  months,  it 
is  said,  St.  Macarius  of  Alexandria  slept  in  a  marsh,  and 
exposed  his  body  naked  to  the  stings  of  venomous  flies. 
He  was  accustomed  to  carry  about  with  him  eighty  pounds 
of  iron.  His  disciple,  St.  Eusebius,  carried  one  hundred 
and  fifty  pounds  of  iron,  and  lived  for  three  years  in  a 
dried-up  well.  St.  Sabinus  would  only  eat  corn  that  had 
become  rotten  by  remaining  for  a  month  in  water.  St. 
Besarion  spent  forty  days  and  nights  in  the  middle  of 
thorn-bushes,  and  for  forty  years  never  lay  down  when  he 
slept,3  which  last  penance  was  also  during  fifteen  years 
practised  by  St.  Pachomius.4  Some  saints,  like  St.  Marcian, 
restricted  themselves  to  one  meal  a  day,  so  small  that 
they  continually  suffered  the  pangs  of  hunger.5  Of  one  of 
them  it  is  related  that  his  daily  food  was  six  ounces  of 
bread  and  a  few  herbs ;  that  he  was  never  seen  to  recline 
on  a  mat  or  bed,  or  even  to  place  his  limbs  easily  for  sleep ; 
but  that  sometimes,  from  excess  of  weariness,  his  eyes 
would  close  at  his  meals,  and  the  food  would  drop  from 
his  mouth.6    Other  saints,  however,  eat  only  every  second 

1  Vita  Pauli.  St.-  Jerome  adds,  that  some  will  not  "believe  this,  be- 
cause they  have  no  faith,  but  that  all  things  are  possible  for  those  that 
believe. 

2  Vita  St.  miarion. 

3  See  a  long  list  of  these  penances  in  Tillemont,  M4m.  pour  servir  a 
THist  eccles.  tome  viii. 

4  Vita  Patrum  (Pachomius).  He  used  to  lean  against  a  wall  when  over- 
come by  drowsiness. 

b   Vita  Patrum,  ix.  3.  6  Sozomen,  vi.  29. 


116  I1IST011Y  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

day ; '  while  many,  if  we  could  believe  the  monkish 
historian,  abstained  far  whole  weeks  from  all  nourish- 
ment8   St.  Macarius  of  Alexandria  is  said  during  an  entire 

k  to  have  never  lain  down,  or  eaten  anything  but  a 
hw  uncooked  herbs  on  Sunday.3  Of  another  famous 
saiilt,  named  John,  it  is  asserted  that  for  three  whole  years 
he  stood  in  prayer,  leaning  upon  a  rock;  that  during  all 
that  time  he  never  sat  or  lay  down,  and  that  his  only 
nourishment  was  the  Sacrament,  which  was  brought  him 
on  Sundays.4  Some  of  the  hermits  lived  in  deserted  dens 
of  wild  beasts,  others  in  dried-.up  wells,  while  others 
found  a  congenial  resting-place  among  the  tombs.5  Some 
disdained  all  clothes,  and  crawled  abroad  like  the  wild 
!x  asts,  covered  only  by  their  matted  hair.  In  Meso- 
potamia, and  part  of  Syria,  there  existed  a  sect  known  by 
the  name  of  'Grazers,'  who  never  lived  under  a  roof,  who 

-  i  ither  flesh  nor  bread,  but  who  spent  their  time  for 
ever  on  the  mountain  side,  and  eat  grass  like  cattle.6    The 


1  E.g.  St.  Antony,  according  to  his  biographer  St.  Athanasius. 

2  'ily  eut  dans  le  desert  de  Sce'te*  des  solitaires  d'une  tuninente  perfection. 
...  On  pretend  que  pour  l'ordinaire  ils  passoient  des  semaines  entieres  sans 
manger,  mais  apparemment  cela  ne  se  faisoit  que  dans  des  occasions  parti- 
culieres.' — Tillemont,  Mem.  pour  scrvir  a  Vllist.  eccl.  tome  viii.  p.  580.    Even 

however,  was  admirable ! 

3  Palladius,  Hist.  Lam.  cap.  xx. 

4  '  Primum  cum  acce.ssisset  ad  eremum  tribus  continnis  annis  sub  cujus- 
dam  saxi  rupe  •tans,  semper  oravit,  ita  ut  nunquam  omnino  resederit  neqite 

it.     Sonini  iiutt'iii  tantum  caperet,  quantum  stans  capere  potuit ;  cibiun 
nunquam  sumpserat  nisi  die  Dominica.     Presbyter  enim  tunc  veniebat 
•  liat  pro  60  sacrilicium  idque  ei  solum  sacramentum  erat  et 
^••hi*.' — Itufinua,  KUt,  Monach. cap. xv. 

ini  St.  Antony  used  to  live  in  a  tomb,  where  he  was  beaten  by  the 
il-vil.  (St.  Athana>ius,  Life  of  Antony.) 
6  \liikoi.  See  M  these  monks  Sozomen,  vi.  33 ;  Evagrius,  i.  21.  It  is 
!  of  a  certain  St.  .Marc  of  Athens,  that  having  lived  for  thirty 
years  naked  in  the  desert,  nil  body  Wis  covered  with  hair  like  that  of  a  wild 
beast.  d3ollan<li-ts  March  29.)  St.  Mary  of  Egypt,  during  part  of  her 
period  of  penam  ••,  Ured  Qpon  grass.     (Vita  Patrum.) 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  117 

cleanliness  of  the  body  was  regarded  as  a  pollution  of  the 
soul,  and  the  saints  who  were  most  admired  had  become 
one  hideous  mass  of  clotted  filth.  St.  Athanasius  relates 
with  enthusiasm  how  St.  Antony,  the  patriarch  of  mona- 
chism,  had  never,  in  extreme  old  age,  been  guilty  of  wash- 
ing his  feet.1  The  less  constant  St.  Poemen  fell  into  this 
habit  for  the  first  time  when  a  very  old  man,  and,  with 
a  glimmering  of  common  sense,  defended  himself  against 
the  astonished  monks  by  saying  that  he  had  '  learnt  to 
kill  not  his  body,  but  his  passions.'2  St.  Abraham  the 
hermit,  however,  who  lived  for  fifty  years  after  his  con- 
version, rigidly  refused  from  that  date  to  wash  either  his 
face  or  his  feet.3  He  was,  it  is  said,  a  person  of  singular 
beauty,  and  his  biographer  somewhat  strangely  remarks, 
that '  his  face  reflected  the  purity  of  his  soul.' 4  St.  Am- 
nion had  never  seen  himself  naked.5  A  famous  virgin 
named  Silvia,  though  she  was  sixty  years  old,  and  though 
bodily  sickness  was  a  consequence  of  her  habits,  reso- 
lutely refused,  on  religious  principles,  to  wash  any  part  of 
her  body  except  her  fingers.6  St.  Euphraxia  joined  a  con- 
vent of  one  hundred  and  thirty  nuns,  who  never  washed 
their  feet,  and  who  shuddered  at  the  mention  of  a  bath.7 
An  anchorite  once  imagined  that  he  was  mocked  by  an 
illusion  of  the  devil,  as  he  saw  gliding  before  him  through 

1  Life  of  Antony. 

3  l  II  ne  faisoit  pas  aussi  difficult^  dans  sa  vieillesse  de  se  laver  quelque- 
fois  les  piez.  Et  comme  on  temoignoit  s'en  e*tonner  et  trouver  que  cela  ne 
repondoit  pas  a  la  vie  austere  des  anciens,  il  se  justifioit  par  ces  paroles: 
Nous  avons  appris  a  tuer,  non  pas  notre  corps  mais  nos  passions.' — Tillemont, 
Mem.  Hist.  eccl.  tome  xv.  p.  148.  This  saint  was  so  very  virtuous,  that 
he  sometimes  remained  without  eating  for  whole  weeks. 

3  'Non  appropinquavit  oleum  eorpusculo  ejus.  Facies  vel  etiam  pedes 
a  die  conversionis  sute  nunquam  diluti  sunt.'—  Vitce  Patrum,  c.  xvii. 

4  '  In  facie  ejus  puritas  animi  noscebatur.' — Ibid.  c.  xviii. 

5  Socrates,  iv.  23.  6  Ileraclidis  Paradisus  (Rosweyde),  c.  xlii. 

7  'Nulla  earum  pedes  suos  abluebat ;  aliquantie  vero  audientes  de 
balneo  loqui,  irridentes,  confusionem  et  maguam  abcminationem  se  audire 


118  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

the  desert  a  naked  creature  black  with  -filth  and  years  of 
exposure,  and  with  white  hair  floating  to  the  wind.  It  was 
a  once  beautiful  woman,  St.  Mary  of  Egypt,  who  had 
thus,  during  forty-seven  years,  been  expiating  her  sins.1 
The  occasional  decadence  of  the  monks  into  habits  of 
deceacy  was  a  subject  of  much  reproach.  '  Our  fathers,' 
>aid  the  abbot  Alexander,  looking  mournfully  back  to 
the  past,  'never  washed  their  faces,  but  we  frequent  the 
public  baths.'2  It  was  related  of  one  monastery  in  the 
desert,  that  the  monks  suffered  greatly  from  want  of  water 
to  drink  ;  but  at  the  prayer  of  the  abbot  Theodosius,  a 
copious  stream  was  produced.  But  soon  some  monks, 
tempted  by  the  abundant  supply,  diverged  from  their  old 
austerity,  and  persuaded  the  abbot  to  avail  himself  of  the 
stream  for  the  construction  of  the  bath.  The  bath  was 
made.  Once,  and  once  only,  did  the  monks  enjoy  their 
ablutions,  when  the  stream  ceased  to  flow.  Prayers, 
tears,  and  fastings  were  in  vain.  A  whole  year  passed.  At 
last  the  abbot  destroyed  the  bath,  which  was  the  object 
of  the  Divine  displeasure,  and  the  waters  flowed  afresh.3 
But  of  all  the  evidences  of  the  loathsome  excesses  to 

judicabanr,  quae  neque  auditum  siuim  hoc  audire  patiebantur.' — Vit.  S. 
Euphra.v.  c.  vi.    (Rosweyde.) 

1  See  her  acts,  Bollandists,  April  2,  and  in  the  Vitce  Ptitntm. 

2  '  Fatres  nostri  nunquam  facies  suas  lavabant,  nos  autem  lavacra  publica 
btfaieaqae  frequentamus.1 — Moschus,  Pratum  Spiritaale,  clxviii. 

3  l'raium  .Sjiirituale,  lxxx. 

An  IrUh  stint,  mimed  Coemgenus,  is  said  to  have  shown  his  devotion  in  a 
way  which  was  directly  opposite  to  that  of  the  other  ssints  I  have  men- 
tioned—by  liis  special  use  of  cold  water— but  the  principle  in  each  case 
was  the  same — to  mortify  nature.  St.  Coemgenus  was  accustomed  to  pray 
for  an  hour  every  night  in  a  pool  of  cold  water,  while  the  devil  sent  a 
horrible  beast  to  swim  round  him.  An  angel,  however,  was  sent  to  him 
for  three  purposes.  'Tribus  de  causis  a  Domino  missus  est  angelus  ibi  ad 
8.  Coemgenum.  Prima  ut  a  diversis  suis  gravibus  laboribus  levius  viveret 
paulisper ;  secunda  ut  horridam  bestiam  sancto  infestam  repelleret ;  tertia, 
ut  frigiditatem  «'/i/«-  oalifaoeret.' — Bollandists,  June  3.  The  editors  say 
these  acta  are  of  doubtful  authenticity. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  119 

which  this  spirit  was  carried,  the  life  of  St.  Simeon  Stylites 
is  probably  the  most  remarkable.  It  would  be  difficult 
to  conceive  a  more  horrible  or  disgusting  picture  than  is 
given  of  the  penances  by  which  that  saint  commenced 
his  ascetic  career.  He  had  bound  a  rope  around  him  so 
that  it  became  imbedded  in  his  flesh,  which  putrefied 
around  it.  'A  horrible  stench,  intolerable  to  the  by- 
standers, exhaled  from  his  body,  and  worms  dropped  from 
him  whenever  he  moved,  and  they  filled  his  bed.'  Some- 
times he  left  the  monastery  and  slept  in  a  dry  well,  in- 
habited, it  is  said,  by  daemons.  He  built  successively 
three  pillars,  the  last  being  sixty  feet  high,  and  scarcely 
two  cubits  in  circumference,  and  on  this  pillar,  during 
thirty  years,  he  remained  exposed  to  every  change  of 
climate,  ceaselessly  and  rapidly  bending  his  body  in  prayer 
almost  to  the  level  of  his  feet.  A  spectator  attempted  to 
number  these  rapid  motions,  but  desisted  from  weariness 
when  he  had  counted  1,244.  For  a  whole  year,  we  are 
told,  St.  Simeon  stood  upon  one  leg,  the  other  being  co- 
vered with  hideous  ulcers,  while  his  biographer  was  com- 
missioned to  stand  by  his  side,  to  pick  up  the  worms  that 
fell  from  his  body,  and  to  replace  them  in  the  sores,  the 
saint  saying  to  the  worm,  '  Eat  what  God  has  given  you.' 
From  every  quarter  pilgrims  of  every  degree  thronged 
to  do  him  homage.  A  crowd  of  prelates  followed  him 
to  the  grave.  A  brilliant  star  is  said  to  have  shone 
miraculously  over  his  pillar  ;  the  general  voice  of  man- 
kind pronounced  him  to  be  the  highest  model  of  a  Chris- 
tian saint,  and  several  other  anchorites  imitated  or  emu- 
lated his  penances.1 

There  is,  if  I  mistake  not,  no  department  of  literature 
the  importance  of  which  is  more  inadequately  realised 

1  See  his  Life  by  his  disciple  Antony,  in  the  Vitce  Patrum,  Evagrius, 
i.  13-14.     Theodoret,  Philotheus,  cap.  xxvi. 

42 


120  HISTORY  OF  EUROrEAN  MORALS. 

than  the  lives  of  the  saints.  Even  where  they  have  no 
direct  historical  value,  they  have  a  moral  value  of  the 
wry  highest  order.  They  may  not  tell  ns  with  accuracy 
what  men  did  at  particular  epochs,  but  they  display 
with  the  utmost  vividness  what  they  thought  and  felt, 
their  measure  of  probability,  and  their  ideal  of  excellence. 
Decrees  of  councils,  elaborate  treatises  of  theologians, 
Greeds,  liturgies,  and  canons,  are  all  but  the  husks  of 
religious  history.  They  reveal  what  was  professed  and 
argued  before  the  world,  but  not  that  which  was  realised 
in  the  imagination  or  enshrined  in  the  heart.  The  history 
of  art,  which  in  its  ruder  day  reflected  with  delicate 
fidelity  the  fleeting  images  of  an  anthropomorphic  age,  is 
in  this  respect  invaluable ;  but  still  more  important  is 
that  vast  Christian  mythology,  which  grew  up  spon- 
taneously from  the  intellectual  condition  of  the  time, 
included  all  its  dearest  hopes,  wishes,  ideals,  and  imagin- 
ings, and  constituted,  during  many  centuries,  the  popular 
literature  of  Christendom.  In  the  case  of  the  saints  of  the 
deserts,  there  can  be  no  question  that  the  picture — which 
is  drawn  chiefly  by  eye-witnesses — however  grotesque 
may  be  some  of  its  details,  is  in  its  leading  features  his- 
torically true.  It  is  true  that  self-torture  was  for  some 
centuries  regarded  as  the  chief  measure  of  human  ex- 
cellence, that  tens  of  thousands  of  the  most  devoted  men 
lied  to  the  desert  to  reduce  themselves  by  maceration 
nearly  to  the  condition  of  the  brute,  and  that  this  odious 
.-uperstition  had  acquired  an  almost  absolute  ascendency 
in  the  ethics  of  the  age.  The  examples  of  asceticism  I 
have  cited  are  but  a  few  out  of  many  hundreds,  and 
volumes  might  be  written,  and  have  been  written,  detail- 
ing them.  Till  the  reform  of  St.  Benedict,  the  ideal  was 
on  the  whole  unchanged.  The  Western  monks,  from 
the  conditions  of  their  climate,  were  constitutionally  in- 


FROM  CONST ANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  121 

capable  of  rivalling  the  abstinence  of  the  Egyptian  an- 
chorites, but  their  conception  of  supreme  excellence  was 
much  the  same,  and  they  laboured  to  compensate  for 
their  inferiority  in  penances  by  claiming  some  superiority 
in  miracles.  From  the  time  of  St.  Pachomius,  the  coeno- 
bitic  life  was  adopted  by  most  monks ;  but  the  Eastern 
monasteries,  with  the  important  exception  of  a  vow  of 
obedience,  differed  little  from  a  collection  of  hermitages. 
They  were  in  the  deserts  ;  the  monks  commonly  lived  in 
separate  cells ;  they  kept  silence  at  their  repasts  ;  they  ri- 
valled one  another  in  the  extravagance  of  their  penances. 
A  few  feeble  efforts  were  indeed  made  by  St.  Jerome  and 
others  to  moderate  austerities  which  frequently  led  to 
insanity  and  suicide,  to  check  the  turbulence  of  certain 
wandering  monks,  who  were  accustomed  to  defy  the  eccle- 
siastical authorities,  and  especially  to  suppress  monastic 
mendicancy,  which  had  appeared  prominently  among 
some  heretical  sects.  The  orthodox  monks  commonly 
employed  themselves  in  weaving  mats  of  palm-leaves; 
but,  living  in  the  deserts,  with  no  wants,  they  speedily 
sank  into  a  listless  apathy;  and  those  who  were  most 
admired  were  those  who,  like  Simeon  Stylites  and  the 
hermit  John,  of  whom  I  have  already  spoken,  were  most 
exclusively  devoted  to  their  superstition.  Diversities  of 
individual  character  were,  however,  vividly  displayed. 
Many  anchorites,  without  knowledge,  passions,  or  imagi- 
nation, having  fled  from  servile  toil 'to  the  calm  of  the 
wilderness,  passed  the  long  hours  in  sleep  or  in  a  me- 
chanical routine  of  prayer,  and  their  inert  and  languid 
existences,  prolonged  to  the  extreme  of  old  age,  closed  at 
last  by  a  tranquil  and  almost  animal  death.  Others  made 
their  cells  by  the  clear  fountains  and  clustering  palm-trees 
of  some  oasis  in  the  desert,  and  a  blooming  garden  arose 
beneath  their  toil.     The  numerous  monks  who  followed 


122  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

St.  Serapion  devoted  themselves  largely  to  agriculture,  and 
sent  shiploads  of  corn  for  the  benefit  of  the  poor.1  Of 
one  old  hermit  it  is  related,  that  such  was  the  cheer- 
fulness of  his  mind,  that  every  sorrow  was  dispelled 
by  his  presence,  and  the  weary  and  the  heartbroken 
were  consoled  by  a  few  words  from  his  lips.2  More 
commonly,  however,  the  hermit's  cell  was  the  scene  of 
perpetual  mournings.  Tears  and  sobs,  and  frantic 
strugglings  with  imaginary  daemons,  and  paroxysms  of 
religious  despair,  were  the  texture  of  his  life,  and  the 
dread  of  spiritual  enemies,  and  of  that  death  which  his 
superstition  had  rendered  so  terrible,  embittered  every 
hour  of  his  existence.3  The  solace  of  intellectual  occu- 
pations was  rarely  resorted  to.  'The  duty,'  said  St. 
Jerome,  '  of  a  monk  is  not  to  teach,  but  to  weep.'4  A 
cultivated  and  disciplined  mind  was  the  least  subject  to 
those  hallucinations,  which  were  regarded  as  the  highest 
evidence  of  Divine  favour,5  and  although  in  an  age  when 

1  Falladius,  Hid.  Lans.  Ixxvi.         2  Rufiniis,  Hist.  Monach.  xxxiii. 

3  "We  have  a  striking  illustration  of  this  in  St.  Arsenius.  His  eyelashes 
are  said  to  have  fallen  off  through  continual  weeping,  and  he  had  always, 
when  at  work,  to  put  a  cloth  on  his  breast  to  receive  his  tears.  As  he  felt 
his  death  approaching,  his  terror  rose  to  the  point  of  agony.  The  monks 
who  were  about  him  said, '  "  Quid  fles,  pater  ?  numquid  et  tu  times  ?  "  Ille 
respondit,  u  In  veritate  timeo  et  iste  timor  qui  nunc  mecum  est,  semper  in 
me  fuit,  ex  quo  factus  sum  monach  us."  ' — Verba  Senionnn,  Prol.  §  103.  It 
was  said  of  St.  Abraham  that  no  day  passed  after  his  conversion  without 
his  shedding  tears.  (VU,  Pat  nan.)  St.  John  the  dwarf  once  saw  a  monk 
laughing  immoderately  at  dinner,  and  was  so  horrified  that  he  at  once 
began  to  cry.     (Tillemont,  Mini,  de  HI  id.  cedes,  tome  x.  p.  430.)     St.  Basil 

interrog.  xvii.)  gives  a  remarkable  disquisition  on  the  wickedness 
of  laughing,  and  he  observes  that  this  was  the  one  bodily  affection  which 
Christ  does  not  seem  to  have  known.  Mr.  Buckle  has  collected  a  series  of 
passages  to  precisely  the  same  effect  from  the  writings  of  the  Scotch 
divines.     <  Hid.  of  Cio&bation,  vol.  ii.  pp.  385-386.) 

4  'Monuchus  autcm  non  doctoris  habet  sed  plangentis  officium.'  — 
Contr.  Viyilant. 

*  As  Tillemont  puts  it :  '  II  Be  trouva  tres-peu  de  saints  en  qui  Dieu  ait 
joint  les  talens  exterieurs  de  lV'loqucnco  et  de  la  science  avec  la  gr&ce  de 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  123 

the  passion  for  asceticism  was  general,  many  scholars 
became  ascetics,  the  great  majority  of  the  early  monks 
appear  to  have  been  men  who  were  not  only  absolutely 
ignorant  themselves,  but  who  also  looked  upon  learning 
with  positive  disfavour.  St.  Antony,  the  true  founder  of 
monachism,  refused  when  a  boy  to  learn  letters,  because 
it  would  bring  him  into  too  great  intercourse  with  other 
boys.1  At  a  time  when  St.  Jerome  had  suffered  himself 
to  feel  a  deep  admiration  for  the  genius  of  Cicero,  he 
was,  as  he  himself  tells  us,  borne  in  the  night  before  the 
tribunal  of  Christ,  accused  of  being  rather  a  Ciceronian 
than  a  Christian,  and  severely  flagellated  by  the  angels.'2 
This  saint,  however,  afterwards  modified  his  opinions 
about  the  Pagan  writings,  and  he  was  compelled  to  de- 
fend himself  at  length  against  his  more  jealous  brethren, 
who  accused  him  of  defiling  his  writings  with  quotations 
from  Pagan  authors,  and  of  employing  some  monks  in 
copying  Cicero,  and  of  explaining  Virgil  to  some  children 
at  Bethlehem.3  Of  one  monk  it  is  related,  that  being 
especially  famous  as  a  linguist,  he  made  it  his  penance  to 
remain  perfectly  silent  for  thirty  years.4  Of  another,  that 
having  discovered  a  few  books  in  the  cell  of  a  brother 

la  prophetie  et  des  miracles.  Ce  sont  des  dons  que  sa  Providence  a  presque 
toivjours  separez.' — Mem.  Hist,  eccles.  tome  iv.  p.  315. 

1  St.  Athanasius,  Vit.  Anton. 

2  Ep.  xxii.    He  says  his  shoulders  were  bruised  when  he  awoke. 

3  Ep.  lxx. ;  Adv.  livjinum,  lib.  i.  ch.  xxx.  He  there  speaks  of  his  vision 
as  a  mere  dream,  not  binding.  He  elsewhere  {Ep.  cxxv.)  speaks  very 
sensibly  of  the  advantage  of  hermits  occupying  themselves,  and  says  he 
learnt  Hebrew  to  keep  away  unholy  thoughts. 

4  Sozomen,  vi.  28 ;  Rufinus,  Hist.  Monaeh.  ch.  vi.  Socrates  tells  rather 
a  touching  story  of  one  of  these  illiterate  saints,  named  Pambos.  Being 
unable  to  read,  he  came  to  some  one  to  be  taught  a  psalm.  Having  learnt 
the  single  verse,  '  I  said  I  will  take  heed  to  my  ways,  that  I  offend  not  with 
my  tongue/  he  went  away,  saying  that  was  enough  if  it  were  practically 
acquired.  When  asked  six  months,  and  again  many  years  after,  why  he 
did  not  come  to  learn  another  verse,  he  answered  that  he  had  never  been 
able  truly  to  master  this.     (H.  E.  iv.  23.) 


124     *  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

hermit,  lie  reproached  the  student  with  having  thus  de- 
frauded of  their  property  the  widow  and  the  orphan  ;* 
of  others,  that  their  only  books  were  copies  of  the  New 
ment,  which  they  sold  to  relieve  the  poor.2 
With  such  men,  living  such  a  life,  visions  and  miracles 
were  necessarily  habitual.  All  the  elements  of  halluci- 
nation were  there.  Ignorant  and  superstitious,  believing 
as  a  matter  of  religious  conviction  that  countless  daemons 
filled  the  air,  attributing  every  fluctuation  of  his  own  tem- 
perament, and  every  exceptional  phenomenon  in  surround- 
ing nature  to  spiritual  agency ;  delirious,  too,  from  solitude 
and  long-continued  austerities,  the  hermit  soon  mistook 
for  palpable  realities  the  phantoms  of  his  brain.  In  the 
ghastly  gloom  of  the  sepulchre,  where,  amid  mouldering 
corpses,  he  took  up  his  abode ;  in  the  long  hours  of  the 
night  of  penance,  when  the  desert  wind  sobbed  around 
his  lonely  cell,  and  the  cries  of  wild  beasts  were  borne 
upon  his  ear,  visible  forms  of  lust  or  terror  appeared  to 
haunt  him,  and  strange  dramas  were  enacted  by  those  who 
were  contending  for  his  soul.  An  imagination  strained 
to  the  utmost  limit,  acting  upon  a  frame  attenuated  and 
diseased  by  macerations,  produced  bewildering  psycho- 
logical phenomena,  paroxysms  of  conflicting  passions, 
sudden  alternations  of  joy  and  anguish,  which  he  regarded 
as  manifestly  supernatural.  Sometimes,  in  the  very  ecstasy 
of  his  devotion,  the  memory  of  old  scenes  would  crowd 
upon  his  mind.  The  shady  groves  and  soft  voluptuous 
gardens  of  his  native  city  would  arise,  and,  kneeling  alone 
upon  the  burning  sand,  he  seemed  to  see  around  him  the 
feir  groups  of  dancing-girls,  on  whose  warm,  undulating 
limbs  and  wanton  smiles  his  youthful  eyes  had  too  fondly 
dwelt.     Sometimes  his  temptation  sprang  from  remem- 

■  Tillcmont,  x.  p.  61.  a  Ibid.  viii.  490  ;  Socrates,  //.  &  iv.  23. 


FROM  COXSTANTTNE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  125 

bered  sounds.  The  sweet,  licentious  songs  of  other  days 
came  floating  on  his  ear,  and  his  heart  was  thrilled  with 
the  passions  of  the  past.  And  then  the  scene  would 
change.  As  his  lips  were  murmuring  the  psalter,  his 
imagination,  fired  perhaps  by  the  music  of  some  martial 
psalm,  depicted  the  crowded  amphitheatre.  The  throng, 
and  passion,  and  mingled  cries  of  eager  thousands  were 
present  to  his  mind,  and  the  fierce  joy  of  the  gladiators 
passed  through  the  tumult  of  his  dream.1  The  simplest 
incident  came  at  last  to  suggest  diabolical  influence.  An 
old  hermit,  weary  and  fainting  upon  his  journey,  once 
thought  how  refreshing  would  be  a  draught  of  the  honey 
of  wild  bees  of  the  desert.  At  that  moment  his  eye  fell 
upon  a  rock  on  which  they  had  built  a  hive.  He  passed 
on  with  a  shudder  and  an  exorcism,  for  he  believed  it  to 
be  a  temptation  of  the  devil.2  But  most  terrible  of  all 
were  the  struggles  of  young  and  ardent  men,  through 
whose  veins  the  hot  blood  of  passion  continually  flowed, 
physically  incapable  of  a  life  of  celibacy,  and  with  all  that 
proneness  to  hallucination  which  a  southern  sun  engenders, 
who  were  borne  on  the  wave  of  enthusiasm  to  the  desert 
life.  In  the  arms  of  Syrian  or  African  brides,  whose  soft 
eyes  answered  love  with  love,  they  might  have  sunk 
to  rest,  but  in  the  lonely  wilderness  no  peace  could  ever 
visit  their  souls.     The.  lives  of  the  saints  paint  with  an 


1  I  have  combined  in  this  passage  incidents  from  three  distinct  lives.  St. 
Jerome,  in  a  very  famous  and  very  beautiful  passage  of  his  letter  to  Eusto- 
chium  {Ep.  xxii.),  describes  the  manner  in  which  the  forms  of  dancing-girls 
appeared  to  surround  him  as  he  knelt  upon  the  desert  sands.  St.  Mary  of 
Egypt  (  Vitce  Patrum,  ch.  xix.)  was  especially  tortured  by  the  recollection 
of  the  songs  she  had  sung  when  young,  which  continually  haunted  her 
mind.  St.  Hilarion  (see  his  Life  by  St.  Jerome)  thought  he  saw  a  gladia- 
torial show  while  he  was  repeating  the  psalms.  The  manner  in  which  the 
different  visions  faded  into  one  another  like  dissolving  views  is  repeatedly 
described  in  the  biographies. 

3  Rufinus,  Hist.  Monach.  ch.  xi.     This  sfvint  was  St.  Ilelenus. 


1l6  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

appalling  vividness  the  agonies  of  their  struggle.  Multi- 
plying with  frantic  energy  the  macerations  of  the  body, 
beating  their  breasts  with  anguish,  the  tears  for  ever 
streaming  from  their  eyes,  imagining  themselves  conti- 
nually haunted  by  ever-changing  forms  of  deadly  beauty, 
which  acquired  a  greater  vividness  from  the  very  passion 
with  which  they  resisted  them,  their  struggles  not  unfre- 
quently  ended  in  insanity  and  in  suicide.  It  is  related 
that  when  St.  Pachomius  and  St.  Pakemon  were  conversing 
together  in  the  desert,  a  young  monk,  with  his  counte- 
nance distracted,  with  madness,  rushed  into  their  presence, 
and,  with  a  voice  broken  with  convulsive  sobs,  poured  out 
liis  tale  of  sorrows.  A  woman,  he  said,  had  entered  Lis 
cell,  had  seduced  him  by  her  artifices,  and  then  vanished 
miraculously  in  the  air,  leaving  him  half  dead  upon  the 
ground ; — and  then  with  a  wild  shriek  the  monk  broke 
away  from  the  saintly  listeners.  Impelled*  as  they  ima- 
gined, by  an  evil  spirit,  he  rushed  across  the  desert,  till 
he  arrived  at  the  next  village,  and  there,  leaping  into  the 
open  furnace  of  the  public  baths,  he  perished  in  the 
flames.1  Strange  stories  were  told  among  the  monks  of 
revulsions  of  passion  even  in  the  most  advanced.  Of  one 
monk  especially,  who  had  long  been  regarded  as  a  pattern 
of  asceticism,  but  who  had  suffered  himself  to  fall  into 
that  self-complacency  wrhich  was  very  common  among 
the  anchorites,  it  was  told  that  one  evening  a  fainting 
woman  appeared  at  the  door  of  his  cell,  and  implored 
him  to  give  her  shelter,  and  not  permit  her  to  be  devoured 
by  the  wild  beasts.  In  an  evil  hour  he  yielded  to  her 
prayer.  With  all  the  aspect  of  profound  reverence  she 
won  his  regards,  and  at  last  ventured  to  lay  her  hand 
upon  him.     But  that  touch  convulsed  his  frame.  Passions 

1  Life  of  St.  Pnchomius  ( Vit.  Putrum),  cap.  ix. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  127 

long  slumbering  and  forgotten  rushed  with  an  impetuous 
fury  through  his  veins.  In  a  paroxysm  of  fierce  love, 
he  sought  to  clasp  the  woman  to  his  heart,  but  she 
vanished  from  his  sight,  and  a  chorus  of  daemons,  with 
peals  of  laughter,  exulted  over  his  fall.  The  sequel  of 
the  story,  as  it  is  told  by  the  monkish  writer,  is,  I  think, 
of  a  very  high  order  of  artistic  merit.  The  fallen  hermit 
did  not  seek,  as  might  have  been  expected,  by  penance 
and  prayers  to  renew  his  purity.  That  moment  of  passion 
and  of  shame  had  revealed  in  him  a  new  nature,  and 
severed  him  irrevocably  from  the  hopes  and  feelings  of 
the  ascetic  life.  The  fair  form  that  had  arisen  upon  his 
dream,  though  he  knew  it  to  be  a  deception  luring  him 
to  destruction,  still  governed  his  heart.  He  fled  from  the 
desert,  plunged  anew  into  the  world,  avoided  all  in- 
tercourse with  the  monks,  and  followed  the  light  of  that 
ideal  beauty  even  into  the  jaws  of  hell.1 

Anecdotes  of  this  kind,  circulated  among  the  monks, 
contributed  to  heighten  the  feelings  of  terror  with  which 
they  regarded  all  communication  with  the  other  sex. 
But  to  avoid  such  communication  was  sometimes  very 
difficult.  Few  things  are  more  striking  in  the  early  his- 
torians of  the  movement  we  are  considering,  than  the 
manner  in  which  narratives  of  the  deepest  tragical  in- 
terest alternate  with  extremely  whimsical  accounts  of  the 
profound  admiration    with  which   the  female    devotees 

1  Rufinus,  Hist.  Monach.  cap.  i.  This  story  was  told  to  Rufinus  by  St. 
John  the  hermit.  The  same  saint  described  his  own  visions  very  graphi- 
cally. * Denique  etiam  me  frequenter  dsemones  noctibus  seduxerunt,  et 
neque  orare  neque  requiescere  permiserunt,  phantasias  quasdam  per  noctem 
totam  sensibus  meis  et  cogitationes  suggerentes.  Mane  vero  velut  cum 
quad  am  illusions  prosternebant  se  ante  me  dicentes,  Indulge  nobis,  abbas, 
quia  laborem  tibi  incussimus  tota  nocte.' — Ibid.  St.  Benedict  in  the  desert 
is  said  to  have  been  tortured  by  the  recollection  of  a  beautiful  girl  he  had 
once  seen,  and  only  regained  his  composure  by  rolling  in  thorns.  (St.  Greg. 
Dial.  ii.  2.) 


128  HISTORY  OF  EUROrEAN   MORALS. 

regarded  the  most  austere  anchorites,  and  the  unwearied 
perseverance  with  "which  they  endeavoured  to  force  them- 
selves upon  their  notice.  Some  women  seem  in  this  re- 
spect to  have  been  peculiarly  fortunate.  St.  Melania, 
who  devoted  a  great  portion  of  her  fortune  to  the  monks, 
accompanied  by  the  historian  Rufinus,  made  near  the 
end  of  the  fourth  century  a  long  pilgrimage  through  the 
Syrian  and  Egyptian  hermitages.1  13ut  with  many  of  the 
hermits  it  was  a  rule  never  to  look  upon  the  face  of  any 
woman,  and  the  number  of  years  they  had  escaped  this 
contamination  was  commonly  stated  as  a  conspicuous 
proof  of  their  excellence.  St.  Basil  would  only  speak  to 
a  Avoman  under  extreme  necessity.2  St.  John  of  Lycopolis 
had  not  seen  a  woman  for  forty-eight  years.3  A  tribune 
was  sent  by  his  wife  on  a  pilgrimage  to  St.  John  the 
hermit  to  implore  him  to  allow  her  to  visit  him,  her 
desire  being  so  intense  that  she  would  probably,  in  the 
opinion  of  her  husband,  die  if  it  was  ungratified.  At  last 
the  hermit  told  his  suppliant  that  he  would  that  night 
visit  his  wife  when  she  was  in  bed  in  her  house.  The 
tribune  brought  this  strange  message  to  his  wife,  who 
that  night  saw  the  hermit  in  a  dream.4  A  young  Roman 
girl  made  a  pilgrimage  from  Italy  to  Alexandria,  to  look 
upon  the  face,  and  obtain  the  prayers  of  St.  Arsenius, 
into  whose  presence  she  forced  herself.  Quailing  beneath 
his  rebuffs,  she  flung  herself  at  his  feet,  imploring  him 
with  tears  to  grant  her  only  request — to  remember  her, 
and  to  pray  for  her.    ;  Remember  you,'  cried  the  indignant 

1  She  lived  also  for  some  time  in  a  convent  at  Jerusalem  which  she  had 
founded.  Melania  (who  was  one  of  St.  Jerome's  friends)  was  a  lady  of 
rank  and  fortune,  who  devoted  her  property  to  the  monks.  See  her  journey 
in  Rosweyde,  lib.  ii. 

3  See  his  life  in  Tillemont. 

*  Ibid.  x.  p.  14.  A  certain  Didymus  lived  entirely  alone  till  his  death, 
which  fool  pitta  When  he  was  ninety.     (Socrates,  II.  E.  iv.  23.) 

4  ltufinus,  Hist.  Monaahunim,  cap.  i. 


FROM  CONSTANTTNE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  120 

saint,  c  It  shall  be  the  prayer  of  my  life  that  I  may 
forget  you.'  The  poor  girl  sought  consolation  from  the 
Archbishop  of  Alexandria,  who  comforted  her  by  assur- 
ing her  that  though  she  belonged  to  the  sex  by  which 
daemons  commonly  tempt  saints,  he  doubted  not  the 
hermit  would  pray  for  her  soul,  though  he  would  try  to 
forget  her  face.1  Sometimes  this  female  enthusiasm  took 
another  and  a  more  subtle  form,  and  on  more  than  one 
occasion  women  were  known  to  attire  themselves  as  men, 
and  to  pass  their  lives  undisturbed  as  anchorites.  Among 
others,  St.  Pelagia,  who  had  been  the  most  beautiful, 
and  one  of  the  most  dangerously  seductive  actresses  of 
Antioch,  having  been  somewhat  strangely  converted, 
was  appointed  by  the  bishops  to  live  in  penance  with  an 
elderly  virgin  of  irreproachable  piety ;  but  impelled,  we 
are  told,  by  her  desire  for  a  more  austere  life,  she  fled 
from  her  companion,  assumed  a  male  attire,  took  refuge 
among  the  monks  on  the  Mount  of  Olives,  and,  with 
something  of  the  skill  of  her  old  profession,  supported  her 
feigned  character  so  consistently,  that  she  acquired  great 
renown,  and  it  was  only  (it  is  said)  after  her  death  that 
the  saints  discovered  who  had  been  living  among  them.2 

1   Verba  Senioru?7i,  §  65. 

9-  Pelagia  was  very  pretty,  and,  according  to  her  own  account,  '  her  sins 
were  heavier  than  the  sand.'  The  people  of  Antioch,  who  were  very  fond 
of  her,  called  her  Marguerita,  or  the  pearl.  'II  arriva  un  jour  que  divers 
evesques,  appelez  par  celui  d'Antioche  pour  quelques  aftaires,  estant  ensemble 
a  la  porte  de  Teglise  de  S.-Julien,  Pelagie  passa  devant  eux  dans  tout  l'eclat 
des  pompes  du  diable,  n'ayant  pas  seulement  une  coeffe  sur  sa  teste  ni  un 
mouchoir  sur  ses  epaules,  ce  qu'on  remarque  comme  le  comble  de  son  im- 
pudence. Tous  les  evesques  baisserent  les  yeux  en  geinissant  pour  ne  pas  voir 
ce  dangereux  objet  de  peche,  hors  Nonne,  tres-saint  evesque  d'Heliople, 
qui  la  regarda  avec  une  attention  qui  fit  peine  aux  autres.'  However,  this 
bishop  immediately  began  crying  a  great  deal,  and  reassured  his  brethren, 
and  a  sermon  which  he  preached  led  to  the  conversion  of  the  actress. 
(Tillemont,  Mem.  d'Hist.  eccles.  tome  xii.  pp.  378-380.)  See,  too,  on 
women,  '  under  pretence  of  religion,'  attiring  themselves  as  men,  Sozomen, 
iii.  14.) 


130  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

The  foregoing  anecdotes  and  observations  will,  I  hope, 
have  given  a  sufficiently  clear  idea  of  the  general  nature 
of  the  monastic  life  in  its  earliest  phase,  and  also  of  the 
writings  it  produced.  We  may  now  proceed  to  examine 
the  ways  in  which  this  mode  of  life  affected  both  the 
ideal  type  and  the  realised  condition  of  Christian  morals. 
And  in  the  first  place,  it  is  manifest  that  the  proportion 
of  virtues  was  altered.  If  an  impartial  person  were  to 
glance  over  the  ethics  of  the  New  Testament,  and  were 
asked  what  was  the  central  and  distinctive  virtue  to  which 
the  sacred  writers  most  continually  referred,  he  would 
doubtless  answer,  that  it  was  that  which  is  described  as 
love,  charity,  or  philanthropy.  If  he  were  to  apply  a 
similar  scrutiny  to  the  writings  of  the  fourth  and  fifth 
centuries,  he  would  answer  that  the  cardinal  virtue  of 
the  religious  type  was  not  love,  but  chastity.  And  this 
chastity,  which  was  regarded  as  the  ideal  state,  was  not 
the  purity  of  an  undefiled  marriage.  It  was  the  abso- 
lute suppression  of  the  whole  sensual  side  of  our  nature. 
The  chief  form  of  virtue,  the  central  conception  of  the 
saintly  life,  was  a  perpetual  struggle  against  all  unchaste 
impulses,  by  men  who  altogether  refused  the  compromise 
of  marriage.  From  this  fact,  if  I  mistake  not,  some  in- 
teresting and  important  consequences  may  be  deduced. 

In  the  first  place,  religion  gradually  assumed  a  very 
sombre  hue.  The  business  of  the  saint  was  to  eradicate 
a  natural  appetite,  to  attain  a  condition  which  was  em- 
phatically abnormal.  The  depravity  of  human  nature, 
and  especially  the  essential  evil  of  the  body,  were  felt  with 
a  degree  of  intensity  that  could  never  have  been  attained 
by  moralists  who  were  occupied  mainly  with  transient 
or  exceptional  vices,  such  as  envy,  anger,  or  cruelty. 
And  in  addition  to  the  extreme  inveteracy  of  the  appetite 
which  it  was  desired  to  eradicate,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered that  a  somewhat  luxurious  and  indulgent  fife,  even 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  101 

when  that  indulgence  is  not  itself  distinctly  evil,  even 
when  it  has  a  tendency  to  mollify  the  character,  has 
naturally  the  effect  of  strengthening  the  animal  passions, 
and  is  therefore  directly  opposed  to  the  ascetic  ideal. 
The  consequence  of  this  was  first  of  all  a  very  deep  sense 
of  the  habitual  and  innate  depravity  of  human  nature, 
and  in  the  next  place,  a  very  strong  association  of  the 
idea  of  pleasure  with  that  of  vice.  All  this  was  the 
necessary  consequence  of  the  supreme  value  placed  upon 
virginity.  The  tone  of  calm  and  joyousness  that  charac- 
terises Greek  philosophy,  the  almost  complete  absence  of 
all  sense  of  struggle  and  innate  sin  that  it  displays,  is 
probably  in  a  very  large  degree  to  be  ascribed  to  the  fact 
that,  in  the  department  of  morals  we  are  considering, 
Greek  moralists  made  no  serious  efforts  to  improve  our 
nature,  and  Greek  public  opinion  acquiesced,  without 
scandal,  in  an  almost  boundless  indulgence  of  illicit 
pleasures. 

But  while  the  great  prominence  at  this  time  given  to 
the  conflicts  of  the  ascetic  life  threw  a  dark  shade  upon 
the  popular  estimate  of  human  nature,  it  contributed,  I 
think,  very  largely  to  sustain  and  deepen  that  strong  con- 
viction of  the  freedom  of  the  human  will  which  the 
Catholic  Church  has  always  so  strenuously  upheld ;  for 
there  is,  probably,  no  other  form  of  moral  conflict  in 
which  men  are  so  habitually  and  so  keenly  sensible  of 
that  distinction  between  our  will  and  our  desires,  upon 
the  reality  of  which  all  moral  freedom  ultimately  depends. 
It  had  also,  I  imagine,  another  result,  which  it  is  difficult 
to  describe  with  the  same  precision.  What  may  be  called 
a  strong  animal  nature — a  nature,  that  is,  in  which  the 
passions  are  in  vigorous,  and  at  the  same  time  healthy 
action,  is  that  in  which  we  should  most  naturally  expect 
to  find  several  moral  qualities.     Good  humour,  frankness, 


132  HISTOKY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

generosity,  active  courage,  sanguine  energy,  buoyancy  of 
temper,  are  the  usual  and  appropriate  accompaniments  of 
I  vigorous  animal  temperament,  and  they  are  much  more 
rarclv  found  either  in  natures  that  are  essentially  feeble 
and  effeminate,  or  in  natures  which  have  been  artificially 
emasculated  by  penances,  distorted  from  their  original 
tendency,  and  habitually  held  under  severe  control.  The 
ideal  type  of  Catholicism  being,  on  account  of  the  supreme 
value  placed  upon  virginity,  of  the  latter  kind,  the  quali- 
ties I  have  mentioned  have  always  ranked  very  low  in 
the  Catholic  conceptions  of  excellence,  and  the  steady 
tendency  of  Protestant  and  industrial  civilisation  has  been 
to  elevate  them. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  reader  will  regard  these 
speculations — which  I  advance  with  some  diffidence — as 
far-fetched  and  fanciful.  Our  knowledge  of  the  physical 
antecedents  of  different  moral  qualities  is  so  scanty,  that 
it  is  difficult  to  speak  on  these  matters  with  much  con- 
fidence ;  but  few  persons,  I  think,  can  have  failed  to 
observe  that  the  physical  temperaments  I  have  described, 
differ  not  simply  in  the  one  great  fact  of  the  intensity  of 
the  animal  passions,  but  also  in  the  aptitude  of  each  to 
produce  a  distinct  moral  type,- or,  in  other  words,  in  the 
harmony  of  each  with  several  qualities,  both  good  and 
evil.  A  doctrine,  therefore,  which  connects  one  of  ti 
two  temperaments  indissolubly  with  the  moral  ideal, 
affects  the  appreciation  of  a  large  number  of  moral 
qualities.  But  whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  moral 
Its  springing  from  the  physical  temperament  which 
asceticism  produced,  there  can  be  little  contr- 
the  effects  springing  from  the  condition  of  life  which  it 
enjoined.  Severance  from  the  interests  and  affections  of 
all  around  him,  was  the  chief  object  of  the  anclm 
and  the  first   consequence  of  the  prominence   of  asce- 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  133 

ticism  was  a  profound  discredit  thrown  upon  the  domestic 
virtues.  S 

The  extent  to  which  this  discredit  was  carried,  the 
intense  hardness  of  heart  and  ingratitude  manifested  by 
the  saints  towards  those  who  were  bound  to  them  by  the 
closest  of  earthly  ties,  is  known  to  few  who  have  not 
studied  the  original  literature  on  the  subject.  These  things 
are  commonly  thrown  into  the  shade  by  those  modern 
sentimentalists  who  delight  in  idealising  the  devotees  of 
the  past.  To  break  by  his  ingratitude  the  heart  of  the 
mother  who  had  borne  him,  to  persuade  the  wife  who 
adored  him  that  it  was  her  duty  to  separate  from  him  for 
ever,  to  abandon  his  children,  uncared  for  and  beggars,  to 
the  mercies  of  the  world,  was  regarded  by  the  true  hermit 
as  the  most  acceptable  offering  he  could  make  to  his  God.  , 
His  business  was  to  save  his  own  soul.  The  serenity  of 
his  devotion  would  be  impaired  by  the  discharge  of  the 
simplest  duties  to  his  family.  Evagrius,  when  a  hermit  in 
the  desert,  received,  after  a  long  interval,  letters  from  his 
father  and  mother.  He  could  not  bear  that  the  equable 
tenor  of  his  thoughts  should  be  disturbed  by  the  recol- 
lection of  those  who  loved  him,  so  he  cast  the  letters 
unread  into  the  fire.1  A  man  named  Mutius,  accom- 
panied b}7  his  only  child,  a  little  boy  of  eight  years  old, 
once  abandoned  his  possessions  and  demanded  admission 
in  a  monastery.  The  monks  received  him,  but  they  pro- 
ceeded to  discipline  his  heart.  '  He  had  already  forgotten 
that  he  was  rich ;  he  must  next  be  taught  to  forget  that 

1  Tillemont,  tome  x.  pp.  370-377.  Apart  from  family  affections,  there  are 
some  curious  instances  recorded  of  the  anxiety  of  the  saints  to  avoid  distrac- 
tions. One  monk  used  to  cover  his  face  when  lie  went  into  his  garden,  lest 
the  sight  of  the  trees  should  disturb  his  mind.  (Verb.  Seniorum.)  St.  Ar- 
senius  could  not  bear  the  rustling  of  the  reeds  (Ibid.) :  and  a  saint  named 
Boniface  struck  dead  a  man  who  went  about  with  an  ape  and  a  cymbal, 
because  he  had  (apparently  quite  unintentionally)  disturbed  him  at  his 
prayers.     (St.  Greg.  Dial  i.  9.) 


134  HISTORY   OF   EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

he  was  a  father.'1  His  little  child  was  separated  from 
him,  clothed  in  dirty  rags,  subjected  to  every  form  of 
gross  and  wanton  hardship,  beaten,  spurned,  and  ill  treated. 
Day  after  day  the  father  was  compelled  to  look  upon  his 
boy  wasting  away  with  sorrow,  his  once  happy  counte- 
nance for  ever  stained  with  tears,  distorted  by  sobs  of 
anguish.  But  yet,  says  the  admiring  biographer,  '  though 
he  saw  this  day  by  day.  such  was  his  love  for  Christ,  and 
for  the  virtue  of  obedience,  that  the  father's  heart  was 
rigid  and  unmoved.'  '  He  thought  little  of  the  tears  of 
his  child.  He  was  anxious  only  for  his  own  humility  and 
perfection  in  virtue.' 2  At  last  the  abbot  told  him  to  take 
his  child  and  throw  it  into  the  river.  He  proceeded, 
without  a  murmur  or  apparent  pang,  to  obey,  and  it  was 
only  at  the  last  moment  that  the  monks  interposed,  and 
on  the  very  brink  of  the  river  saved  the  child.  Mutius 
iwards  rose  to  a  high  position  among  the  ascetics,  and 
justly  regarded  as  having  displayed  in  great  per- 
fection the  temper  of  a  saint.3  An  inhabitant  of  Thebes 
once  came  to  the  abbot  Sisoes,  and  asked  to  be  made  a 
monk.  The  abbot  asked  if  he  had  anvone  belonging  to 
him.  He  answered, '  A  son.'  '  Take  your  son,'  rejoined 
the  old  man,  'and  throw  him  into  the  river,  and  then 
you  may  become  a  monk.'  The  father  hastened  to  fulfil 
the  command,  and  the  deed  was  almost  consummated 
when  a  messenger  sent  by  Sisoes  revoked  the  order.4 

Sometimes  the  same  lesson  was  taught  under  the  form 
of  a  miracle.    A  man  had  once  deserted  his  three  children 


1  *  Quemadmodum  se  jam  divitem  non  esse  sciebat,  ita  etiam  patrem  se 
erne  nesciret' — Cassian,  De  CcmMorum  Institute,  iv.  27. 

*  'Cumque  talker  infans  sub  oculis  ejus  per  dies  singulos  ageretur,  pro 
amort-  nihilominus  Cbristi  et  obediential  virtute,  rigida  semper  atque  im- 
mobilia  patris  viscera  permanserunt.  .  .  .  parum  cogitans  de  lacrymis  ejus, 
aed  de  propria  humilitate  ac  perfectione  sollicitus.' — Ibid. 

*  Ibid.  *  Bollandists,  July  Q;   Verba  Seniorum, 


FROM   COXSTAXTIXE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  135 

to  become  a  monk.  Three  years  after,  lie  determined  to 
bring  them  into  the  monastery,  but,  on  returning  to  his 
home, found  that  the  two  eldest  had  died  during  his  absence. 
He  came  to  his  abbot,  bearing  in  his  arms  his  youn_ 
child,  who  was  still  little  more  than  an  infant.  The  abbot 
turned  to  him,  and  said,  '  Do  you  love  this  child?'  The 
father  answered,  'Yes.'  Again  the  abbot  said,  'Do  you 
love  it  dearly  ? '  The  father  answered  as  before.  '  Then 
take  the  child,'  said  the  abbot,  '  and  throw  it  into  the  fire 
upon  yonder  hearth.'  The  father  did  as  he  was  com- 
manded, and  the  child  remained  unharmed  amid  the 
flames.1  But  it  was  especially  in  their  dealings  with  their 
female  relations  that  this  aspect  of  the  monastic  character 
was  vividly  displayed.  In  this  case  the  motive  was  not 
simply  to  mortify  family  affections — it  was  also  to  guard 
against  the  possible  danger  resulting  from  the  presence  of 
a  woman.  The  fine  flower  of  that  saintly  purity  might 
have  been  disturbed  by  the  sight  of  a  mother's  or  a  sister's 
face.  The  ideal  of  one  age  appears  sometimes  too  gro- 
[ue  for  the  caricature  of  another;  and  it  is  curious  to 
observe  how  pale  and  weak  is  the  picture  which  Moliere 
drew  of  the  affected  prudery  of  Tartufle,2  when  compared 
with  the  narratives  that  are  gravely  propounded  in  the 
lives  of  the  saints.  When  the  abbot  Sisoes  had  become  a 
very  old,  feeble,  and  decrepit  man,  his  disciples  exhorted 

1   T'erba  Seniorum,  xiv. 

*  Tartuffe  (tirant  tin  mouchoir  de  sa  ]X>che). 

1  Ah,  mon  Dieu,  je  vous  prie, 
Arant  que  de  parler,  pienez-moi  ce  mouchoir. 

Doris  e. 
Comment ! 

Tartuffe. 
Couvrez  ce  sein  que  je  ne  saurois  voir; 
Par  de  pareils  oljets  des  anies  sent  "blessed?, 
Et  cela  lait  venir  de  coupables  pensees.' 

Tartu fc,  Acte  iii.  scene  2. 
43 


136  HISTORY  OF  EUROrEAX  MORALS. 

him  to  leave  the  desert  for  an  inhabited  country.  Sisoes 
Died  to  yield ;  but  he  stipulated  as  a  necessary  condition, 
that  in  his  new  abode  he  should  never  be  compelled  to 
encounter  the  peril  and  perturbation  of  looking  on  a 
woman's  face.  To  such  a  nature  of  course  the  desert 
alone  was  suitable,  and  the  old  man  was  suffered  to  die 
in  peace.1  A  monk  was  once  travelling  with  his  mother 
— in  itself  a  most  unusual  circumstance — and,  having  ar- 
rived at  a  bridgeless  stream,  it  became  necessary  for  him 
to  cany  her  across.  To  her  surprise,  he  began  carefully 
wrapping  up  his  hands  in  cloths ;  and  upon  her  asking 
the  reason,  he  explained  that  he  was  alarmed  lest  he 
should  be  unfortunate  enough  to  touch  her,  and  thereby 
disturb  the  equilibrium  of  his  nature.2  The  sister  of  St. 
John  of  Calama  loved  him  dearly,  and  earnestly  implored 
him  that  she  might  look  upon  his  face  once  more  before 
she  died.  On  his  persistent  refusal,  she  at  last  declared 
that  she  would  make  a  pilgrimage  to  him  in  the  desert. 
The  alarmed  and  perplexed  saint  at  last  wrote  to  her, 
promising  to  visit  her  if  she  would  engage  to  relinquish 
her  design.  He  went  to  her  in  disguise,  received  a  cup 
of  water  from  her  hands,  and  came  away  without  being 
discovered.  She  wrote  to  him,  reproaching  him  with  not 
having  fulfilled  his  promise.  He  answered  her,  that  he 
had  indeed  visited  her,  that  '  by  the  mercy  of  Jesus 
Christ  he  had  not  been  recognised/  and  that  she  must 
never  see  him  again.3  The  mother  of  St.  Theodorus  came 
armed  with  letters  from  the  bishops  to  see  her  son,  but 
he  implored  his  abbot,  St.  Pachomius,  to  permit  him  to 

1  IJollandists,  July  6. 

'/  Sniionun,  iv.  The  poor  woman,  bein<i  startled  and  perplexed  at 
th-  proceedings  of  her  son,  said,  '  Quid  sic  operuisti  inanus  tuas,  iili  ?  Ille 
autem  dixit:  Quia  corpus  mulieris  ignis  est,  et  ex  eo  ipso  quo  te  contin^e- 
bam  veniebat  mild  commemoiatio  aliftnim  fominarum  in  animo.' 

J  Tillemont,  Mem.  dc  Mid.  cedes,  tome  x.  pp.  444-1  15. 


FROM   CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  137 

decline  the  interview ;  and,  finding  all  her  efforts  in  vain, 
the  poor  woman  retired  into  a  convent,  together  with  her 
daughter,  who  had  made  a  similar  expedition  with  similar 
results.1  The  mother  of  St.  Marcus  persuaded  his  abbot 
to  command  the  saint  to  go  out  to  her.  Placed  in  a 
dilemma  between  the  sin  of  disobedience  and  the  perils 
of  seeing  his  mother,  St.  Marcus  extricated  himself  by 
an  ingenious  device.  He  went  to  his  mother  with  his 
face  disguised  and  his  eyes  shut.  The  mother  did  not 
recognise  her  son.  The  son  did  not  see  his  mother.2 
The  sister  of  St.  Pior  in  like  manner  induced  the  abbot  of 
that  saint  to  command  him  to  admit  her  to  his  presence. 
The  command  was  obeyed,  but  St.  Pior  resolutely  kept 
his  eyes  shut  daring  the  interview.3  St.  Poemen  and  his 
six  brothers  had  all  deserted  their  mother  to  cultivate 
the  perfections  of  an  ascetic  life.  But  ingratitude  can 
seldom  quench  the  love  of  a  mother's  heart,  and  the  old 
woman,  now  bent  by  infirmities,  went  alone  into  the 
Egyptian  desert  to  see  once  more  the  children  she  had 
so  dearly  loved.  She  caught  sight  of  them  as  they  were 
about  leaving  their  cell  for  the  church,  but  they  im- 
mediately ran  back  into  the  cell,  and  before  her  tottering 
steps  could  reach  it,  one  of  her  sons  rushed  forward  and 
flung  the  door  to  in  her  face.  She  remained  outside 
weeping  bitterly.  St.  Poemen  then,  coming  to  the  door, 
but  without  opening  it,  said,  4  Why  do  you,  who  are 
already  stricken  with  age,  pour  forth  such  cries  and  la- 
mentations? '  But  she,  recognising  the  voice  of  her  son, 
answered,  'It  is  because  I  long  to  see  you,  my  sons. 
What  harm  could  it  do  you  that  I  should  see  you  ?  Am 
I  not  your  mother  ?  did  I  not  give  you  suck  ?  I  am  now 
an  old  and  wrinkled  woman,  and  my  heart  is  troubled  at 

1  Vit.  S.  Pachomius,  ch.  xxxi.  ;    Verba  Seniorum. 

2  Verba  Seniorum,  xiv.  3  PaUadiiiB,  Hist.  Laus.  cap.  lxxxvii, 


138  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

the  sound  of  your  voices.'1  The  saintly  brothers,  how- 
ever, refused  to  open  their  door.  They  told  their  mother 
that  she  would  see  them  after  death  ;  and  the  biographer 
a  she  at  last  went  away  contented  with  the  prospect. 
St.  Simeon  Stylites,  in  this  as  in  other  respects,  stands  in 
the  first  line.  He  had  been  passionately  loved  by  his 
parents,  and,  if  we  may  believe  his  eulogist  and  bio- 
grapher, he  began  his  saintly  career  by  breaking  the 
heart  of  his  father,  who  died  of  grief  at  his  flight.  His 
mother,  however,  lingered  on.  Twenty-seven  years  after 
his  disappearance,  at  a  period  when  his  austerities  had 
made  him  famous,  she  heard  for  the  first  time  where  he 
was,  and  hastened  to  visit  him.  But  all  her  labour  was 
in  vain.  No  woman  was  admitted  within  the  precincts 
of  his  dwelling,  and  he  refused  to  permit  her  even  to 
look  upon  his  face.  Her  entreaties  and  tears  were 
mingled  with  words  of  bitter  and  eloquent  reproach.2 


1  Boll  and  ist?,  June  G.  I  avail  myself  again  of  the  version  of  Tillemont. 
'  Lorsque  S.  Pemen  demeuroit  en  Egypte  avec  ses  freres,  leur  mere,  qui  avoit 
un  extreme  d&ir  de  les  voir,  venoit  souvent  au  lieu  ou  ils  estoient,  sans 
pouvoir  jamais  avoir  cette  satisfaction.  Une  fois  enfin  elle  prit  si  bien  son 
temps  qu'elle  les  rencontra  qui  alloient  a  l'eglise,  mais  des  qu'ils  la  virent 
ils  s'en  retoumererit  en  haste  dans  leur  cellule  et  fermerent  la  porte  sur  eux. 
Elle  les  suivit,  et  trouvant  la  porte,  elle  les  appeloit  avec  des  larmes 
et  des  cris  capables  de  les  toucher  de  compassion.  .  .  .  Pemen  s'y  leva  et 
s'y  en  alia,  et  l'entendant  pleurer  il  luy  dit,  tenant  toujours  la  porte  fermee, 
"  Pourquoi  vous  lassez-vous  inutilement  a  pleurer  et  crier  ?  N'etes-vous  pas 
deja  assez  abattue  par  la  vieillesse  ?  "  Elle  reconnut  la  voix  de  Pemen,  et 
s'effbrcant  encore  davantage,  elle  s'ecria,  "lie",  mes  enfans,  c'est  que  je  vou- 
drois  bien  vous  voir :  et  quel  mal  y  a-t-il  que  je  vous  voie  ?  Ne  suis-je 
pas  votre  mere,  et  ne  vous  ai-je  pas  nourri  du  lait  de  mes  mammelles? 
Je  suis  deja,  toute  pleine  de  rides,  et  lorsque  je  vous  ay  entendu,  l'extreme 

•  que  j'ay  de  vous  voir  m'atellement  &nue  que  je  suis  presque  tombee 
en  dt'faillance."  '—Memoires  de  VJlkt.  eccles.  tome  xv.  pp.  157-158. 

2  The  original  is  much  more  eloquent  than  my  translation.  *Fili,  quare 
hoc  fecisli  ?  Pro  utero.  quo  te  portavi,  satiasti  me  luctu,  pro  lactatione  qua 
te  lactavi  dedisti  mihi  lacrymas,  pro  o?culo  quo  te  osculata  sum,  dedisti  mihi 
amaras  cordis  angustias ;  pro  dolore  et  labore  quem  passa  sum,  imposuisti 
mihi  saevissimas  plagos.'—  Vila  Simrotrit  (in  Uosweyde). 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  139 

*  My  son,'  she  is  represented  as  having  said,  ;  Why  have 
you  done  this  ?  I  bore  you  in  my  womb,  and  you  have 
wrung  my  soul  with  grief.  I  gave  you  milk  from  my 
breast,  you  have  filled  my  eyes  with  tears.  For  the 
kisses  I  gave  you,  you  have  given  me  the  anguish  of  a 
broken  heart ;  for  all  that  I  have  done  and  suffered  for 
you,  you  have  repaid  me  by  the  most  bitter  wrongs.' 
At  last  the  saint  sent  a  message  to  tell  her  that  she  would 
soon  see  him.  Three  days  and  three  nights  she  had  wept 
arr1  entreated  in  vain,  and  now,  exhausted  with  grief  and 
age  and  privation,  she  sank  feebly  to  the  ground  and 
breathed  her  last  sigh  before  that  inhospitable  door. 
Then  for  the  first  time  the  saint,  accompanied  by  his 
followers,  came  out.  He  shed  some  pious  tears  over  the 
corpse  of  his  murdered  mother,  and  offered  up  a  prayer 
consigning  her  soul  to  heaven.  Perhaps  it  was  but  fancy, 
perhaps  life  was  not  yet  wholly  extinct,  perhaps  the  story 
is  but  the  invention  of  the  biographer  ;  but  a  faint  mo- 
tion— which  appears  to  have  been  regarded  as  miracu- 
lous— is  said  to  have  passed  over  her  prostrate  form. 
Simeon  once  more  commended  her  soul  to  heaven,  and 
then,  amid  the  admiring  murmurs  of  his  disciples,  the 
saintly  matricide  returned  to  his  devotions. 

The  glaring  mendacity  that  characterises  the  lives  of 
the  Catholic  saints,  probably  to  a  greater  extent  than  any 
other  important  branch  of  existing  literature,  makes  it 
not  unreasonable  to  hope  that  many  of  the  foregoing 
anecdotes  represent  much  less  events  that  actually  took 
place  than  ideal  pictures  generated  by  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  chroniclers.  They  are  not,  however,  on  that  account 
the  less  significant  of  the  moral  conceptions  which  the 
ascetic  period  had  created.  The  ablest  men  in  the 
Christian  community  vied  with  one  another  in  inculcating 
as  the  highest  form  of  duty  the  abandonment  of  social 


140  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

tics  and  the  mortification  of  domestic  affections.  A  few 
faint  restrictions  were  indeed  occasionally  made.  Much — 
on  which  I  shall  hereafter  touch — was  written  on  the 
liberty  of  husbands  and  wives  desqrting  one  another;  and' 
something  was  written  on  the  cases  of  children  forsaking 
&r  abandoning  their  parents.  At  first,  those  who,  when 
children,  were  devoted  to  the  monasteries  by  their  parents, 
without  their  own  consent,  were  permitted,  when  of 
mature  age,  to  return  to  the  world  ;  and  this  liberty  waa 
taken  from  them  for  the  first  time  by  the  fourth  Council 
of  Toledo,  in  a.d.  633.1  The  Council  of  Gangra  con- 
demned the  heretic  Eustathius  for  teaching  that  children 
might  through  religious  motives  forsake  their  parents, 
and  St.  Basil  wrote  in  the  same  strain ; 2  but  cases  of  this 
kind  of  rebellion  against  parental  authority  were  con- 
tinually recounted  with  admiration  in  the  lives  of  the 
saints,  applauded  by  some  of  the  leading  Fathers,  and  vir- 
tually sanctioned  by  a  law  of  Justinian,  which  prohibited 
parents  either  from  restraining  their  children  from  en- 
tering monasteries,  or  disinheriting  them  if  they  had  done 
so  without  their  consent.3  St.  Chrysostom  relates  with 
enthusiasm  the  case  of  a  young  man  who  had  been  de- 
signed by  his  father  for  the  army,  and  who  was  lured 
away  into  a  monastery.4  The  eloquence  of  St.  Ambrose 
is  said  to  have  been  so  seductive,  that  mothers  were  ac- 
customed to  shut  up  their  daughters  to  guard  them  against 
hi-  fasci nations.5  The  position  of  affectionate  parents  was 
at  this  time  extremely  painful.  The  touching  language 
is  still  preserved,  in  which  the  mother  of  St.  Chrysostom 
— who  had  a  distinguished  part  in  the  conversion  of  her 
son — implored  him,  if  he  thought  it  his  duty  to  fly  to  the 
desert  life,  at  least  to  postpone  the  act  till  she  had  died.0 

1  Bingbti  ■ '•<,  book  vii.  cli.  iii.  2  Ibid.  s  Ibid. 

4  Miltu;m\s  Early  Okridiauity  (ed.  18J7),  vol.  iii.  p.  122. 

»  Ibi-1.  vol.  iii.  p.  163.  «  lhh\.  roi  iii.  p.  120. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  141 

St.  Ambrose  devoted  a  chapter  to  proving  that,  while  those 
are  worthy  of  commendation  who  entered  the  monasteries 
with  the  approbation,  those  are  still  more  worthy  of  praise 
who  do  so  against  the  wishes,  of  their  parents ;  and  he  pro- 
ceeded to  show  how  small  were  the  penalties  the  latter 
could  inflict  when  compared  with  the  blessings  asceticism 
could  bestow.1  Even  before  the  law  of  Justinian,  the  invec- 
tives of  the  clergy  were  directed  against  those  who  endea- 
voured to  prevent  their  children  flying  to  the  desert.  St. 
Chrysostom  explained  to  them  that  they  would  certainly 
be  damned.2  St,  Ambrose  showed,  that  even  in  this  world 
they  might  not  be  unpunished.  A  girl,  he  tells  us,  had 
resolved  to  enter  into  a  convent,  and  as  her  relations  were 
expostulating  with  her  on  her  intention,  one  of  those 
present  tried  to  move  her  by  the  memory  of  her  dead 
father,  asking  whether,  if  he  were  still  alive,  he  would 
have  suffered  her  to  remain  unmarried.  '  Perhaps,'  she 
calmly  answered,  '  it  was  for  this  very  purpose  he  died, 
that  he  should  not  throw  any  obstacle  in  my  way.'  Her 
words  were  more  than  an  answer,  they  were  an  oracle. 
The  indiscreet  questioner  almost  immediately  died,  and 
the  relations,  shocked  by  the  manifest  providence,  desisted 
from  their  opposition,  and  even  implored  the  young 
saint  to  accomplish  her  design.3  St.  Jerome  tells  with 
rapturous  enthusiasm  of  a  little  girl,  named  Asella,  who, 
when  only  twelve  years  old,  devoted  herself  to  this  reli- 
gious life,  refused  to  look  on  the  face  of  any  man,  and 
whose  knees,  by  constant  prayer,  became  at  last  like 
those  of  a  camel.4  A  famous  widow,  named  Paula,  upon 
the  death  of  her  husband,  deserted  her  family,  listened 
with  '  dry  eyes'  to  her  children,  who  were  imploring  her 
to  stay,  fled  to  the  society  of  the  monks  at  Jerusalem, 

1  De  Virginibus,  i.  11.  2  Milman's  Early  Christianity,  vol.  iii.  p.  123. 

3  Be  Virginibus,  i.  11.  4  Epid.  xxiv. 


142  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

made  it  her  desire  that  '  she  might  die  a  beggar,  and 
leave  not  one  piece  of  money  to  her  son,'  and  having 
dissipated  the  whole  of  her  fortune  m  chanties,  be- 
queathed to  her  children  only  the  embarrassment  of  her 
debts.1  It  was  carefully  inculcated  that  all  money  given 
or  bequeathed  to  the  poor,  or  to  the  monks,  produced 
spiritual  benefit  to  the  donors  or  testators,  but  that  no 
spiritual  benefit  sprang  from  money  bestowed  upon  rela- 
tions ;  and  the  more  pious  minds  recoiled  from  disposing 
of  their  property  in  a  manner  that  would  not  redound  to 
the  advantage  of  their  souls.  Sometimes  parents  made  it 
a  dying  request  of  their  children  that  they  would  preserve 
none  of  their  property,  but  would  bestow  it  all  among  the 
poor.2  It  was  one  of  the  most  honourable  incidents  of 
the  life  of  St.  Augustine,  that  he,  like  Aurelius,  Bishop  of 
Carthage,  refused  to  receive  legacies  or  donations  which 
unjustly  spoliated  the  relatives  of  the  benefactor.3  Usu- 
ally, however,  to  outrage  the  affections  of  the  nearest 
and  dearest  relations  was  not  only  regarded  as  innocent, 
but  proposed  as  the  highest  virtue.  'A  young  man,'  it 
was  acutely  said,  c  who  has  learnt  to  despise  a  mother's 
grief,  will  easily  bear  any  other  labour  that  is  imposed 


1  St.  Jerome  describes  the  scene  at  her  departure  with  admiring  eloquence. 
'  Descendit  ad  portum  fratre,  cognatis,  affinibus  et  quod  majus  est  liberis 
prosequentibus,  et  clementissimam  matrem  pietate  vincere  cupientibus. 
Jam  carbasa  tendebantur,  et  remorum  ductu  navis  in  altum  protrahebatur. 
Parvus  Toxotius  supplices  manus  tendebat  in  littore,  Ruffina  jam  nubilis 
ut  suas  expectaret  nuptias  tacens  fletibus  obsecrabat.  Et  tamen  ilia  siccos 
tendebat  ad  caelum  oculos,  pietatem  in  filios  pietate  in  Deum  superans. 
Nesciebat  se  matrem  ut  Christi  probaret  ancillam.' — Ep.  cviii.  In  another 
place  he  says  of  her,  '  Testis  est  Jesus,  ne  unum  quidem  minimum  ab  ea 
filiaj  derelictum,  sed,  ut  ante  jam  dixi,  derelictum  magnum  a?s  alienum.' — 
Ibid.  And  again,  'Vis,  lector,  ejus  breviter  scire  virtutcs?  Omnes  suos 
pauperes,  pauperior  ipsa  dimisit.' — Ibid. 

3  See  Chastel,  fitudes  historiqttcs  mar  la  Charite,  p.  231.  The  parents  of 
,'-j<  >rv  Niizianzen  had  made  this  request,  which  was  faithfully  observed. 

»  Chastel,  p.  232. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  143 

upon  him.' l  St.  Jerome,  when  exhorting  Heliodorus  to 
desert  his  family  and  become  a  hermit,  expatiated  with 
a  fond  minuteness  on  every  form  of  natural  affection  he 
desired  him  to  violate.  '  Though  your  little  nephew 
twine  his  arms  around  your  neck  ;  though  your  mother, 
with  dishevelled  hair  and  tearing  her  robe  asunder,  point 
to  the  breast  with  which  she  suckled  you  ;  though  your 
father  fall  clown  on  the  threshold  before  you,  pass  on 
over  your  father's  body.  Fly  with  tearless  eyes  to  the 
banner  of  the  cross.  In  this  matter  cruelty  is  the  only 
piety.  .  .  .  Your  widowed  sister  may  throw  her  gentle 
arms  around  you.  .  .  .  Your  father  may  implore  you  to 
wait  but  a  short  time  to  bury  those  near  to  you,  who  will 
soon  be  no  more ;  your  weeping  mother  may  recall  your 
childish  days,  and  may  point  to  her  shrunken  breast  and 
to  her  wrinkled  brow.  Those  around  you  may  tell  you 
that  all  the  household  rests  upon  you.  Such  chains  as 
these,  the  love  of  God  and  the  fear  of  hell  can  easily 
break.  You  say  that  Scripture  orders  you  to  obey  your 
parents,  but  he  who  loves  them  more  than  Christ  loses 
his  soul.  The  enemy  brandishes  a  sword  to  slay  me. 
Shall  I  think  of  a  mother's  tears  ?  ' 2 

The  sentiment  manifested  in  these  cases  continued  to 
be  displayed  in  the  later  ages.  Thus,  St.  Gregoiy  the 
Great  assures  us  that  a  certain  young  boy,  though  he 
had  enrolled  himself  as  a  monk,  was  unable  to  repress 
his  love  for  his  parents,  and  one  night  stole  out  secretly 
to  visit  them.  But  the  judgment  of  God  soon  marked 
the  enormity  of  the  offence.  On  coming  back  to  the 
monastery,  he  died   that  very  day,  and  when  he  was 

1  See  a  characteristic  passage  from  the  Life  of  St.  Fulgentius,  quoted  hy 
Dean  Milman.  *  Facile  potest  juvenis  tolerare  quemcunqiie  imposuerit 
laborem  qui  poterit  maternum  jam  despicere  dolorem.' — Hist,  of  Latin 
Christianity,  vol.  ii.  p.  82.  . 

2  Ep.  xiv.  {Ad  Heliodorum). 


144  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

buried,  the  earth  refused  to  receive  so  heinous  a  criminal. 
His  body  was  repeatedly  thrown  up  from  the  grave,  and 
it  was  only  suffered  to  rest  in  peace  when  St.  Benedict 
had  laid  the  Sacrament  upon  its  breast.1  One  nun  re- 
vealed, it  is  said,  after  death,  that  she  had  been  con- 
demned for  three  days  to  the  fires  of  purgatory,  because 
she  had  loved  her  mother  too  much.2  Of  another  saint 
it  is  recorded,  that  his  benevolence  was  such  that  he  was 
never  known  to  be  hard  or  inhuman  to  anyone  except 
his  relations.3  St.  Eomuakl,  the  founder  of  the  Camal- 
dolites,  counted  his  father  among  his  spiritual  children, 
and  on  one  occasion  punished  him  by  flagellation.4  The 
first  nun,  whom  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  enrolled,  was  a  beau- 
tiful girl  of  Assisi,  named  Clara  Scifi,  with  whom  he  had 
for  some  time  carried  on  a  clandestine  correspondence,  and 
whose  flight  from  her  father's  home  he  both  counselled 
and  planned.5  As  the  first  enthusiasm  of  asceticism  died 
away,  what  was  lost  in  influence  by  the  father  was  gained 
by  the  priest.  The  confessional  made  this  personage  the 
confidant  in  the  most  delicate  secrets  of  domestic  life. 
The  supremacy  of  authority,  of  sympathy,  and  sometimes 
even  of  affection,  pa'ssed  away  beyond  the  domestic  circle, 
and  by  establishing  an  absolute  authority  over  the  most 
secret  thoughts  and  feelings  of  nervous  and  credulous 
women,  the  priests  laid  the  foundation  of  the  empire  of 
the  world. 

The  picture  I  have  drawn  of  the  inroads  made  in  the 
first  period  of  asceticism  upon  the  domestic  affections, 
tells,  I  think,  its  own  story,  and  I  shall  only  add  a  very 

.  Qreg.  Dial.  ii.  24.  2  Bollandists,  May  3  (vol.  vii.  p.  501). 

5  '  Hospitibus  omni  loco  nc  tempore  liberalissimus  fuit.  .  .  .  Solis  con- 
Banguineis  durus  erat  et  inhumanus,  tamquam  ignotos  illos  respiciens.'— 
kdifts,  May  29. 
4  See  Helyot,  Diet,  des  Ordres  reliffieux,  art.  '  Camaldule*.' 
*  See  the  charming  sketch  in  the  Life  of  *S7.  Francis,  by  Ilase. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  145 

few  words  of  comment.  That  it  is  necessary  for  many  men 
who  are  pursuing  a  truly  heroic  course  to  break  loose 
from  the  trammels  which  those  about  them  would  cast 
over  their  actions  or  their  opinions,  and  that  this  severance 
often  constitutes  at  once  one  of  the  noblest  and  one  of  the 
most  painful  incidents  in  their  career,  are  unquestionable 
truths  ;  but  the  examples  of  such  occasional  and  excep- 
tional sacrifices,  endured  rather  than  relinquish  some 
great  unselfish  end,  cannot  be  compared  with  the  conduct 
of  those  who  regarded  the  mortification  of  domestic  love 
as  in  itself  a  form  of  virtue,  and  whose  ends  were  mainly 
or  exclusively  selfish.  The  sufferings  endured  by  the 
ascetic  who  fled  from  his  relations  were  often,  no  doubt, 
very  great.  Many  anecdotes  remain  to  show  that  warm 
and  affectionate  hearts  sometimes  beat  under  the  cold 
exterior  of  the  monk,1  and  St.  Jerome,  in  one  of  his 
letters,  remarked,  with  much  complacency  and  congratu- 
lation, that  the  very  bitterest  pang  of  captivity  is  simply 
this  irrevocable  separation  which  the  superstition  he 
preached  induced  multitudes  to  inflict  upon  themselves. 
But  if,  putting  aside  the  intrinsic  excellence  of  an  act;  we 
attempt  to  estimate  the  nobility  of  the  agent,  we  must 
consider  not  only  the  cost  of  what  he  did,  but  also  the 
motive  which  induced  him  to  do  it.  It  is  this  last  con- 
sideration which  renders  it  impossible  for  us  to  place  the 
heroism  of  the  ascetic  on  the  same  level  with  that  of  the 
great  patriots  of  Greece  or  Borne.     A  man  may  be  as 

1  The  legend  of  St.  Scholastica,  the  sister  of  St.  Benedict,  has  been  often 
quoted.  He  had  visited  her,  and  was  about  to  leave  in  the  evening,  when 
she  implored  him  to  stay.  He  refused,  and  she  then  prayed  to  God,  who 
sent  so  violent  a  tempest  that  the  saint  was  unable  to  depart.  (St.  Greg. 
Dial.  ii.  33.)  Cassian  speaks  of  a  monk  who  thought  it  his  duty  never  to 
see  his  mother,  but  who  laboured  for  a  whole  year  to  pay  off  a  debt  she  had 
incurred.  (Ccenob.  Inst.  v.  38.)  St.  Jerome  mentions  the  strong  natural 
affection  of  Paula,  though  she  considered  it  a  virtue  to  mortify  it .  (Up. 
cviii.) 


14tt  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

truly  selfish  about  the  next  world  as  about  this.  Where 
an  overpowering  dread  of  future  torments,  or  an  intense 
realisation  of  future  happiness,  is  the  leading  motive  of 
action,  the  theological  virtue  of  faith  may  be  present,  but 
the  ennobling  quality  of  disinterestedness  is  assuredly  ab- 
sent. In  our  day,  when  pictures  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments beyond  the  grave  act  but  feebly  upon  the  imagina- 
tion, a  religious  motive  is  commonly  an  unselfish  motive; 
but  it  has  not  always  been  so,  and  it  was  undoubtedly  not 
so  in  the  first  period  of  asceticism.  The  terrors  of  a 
future  judgment  drove  the  monk  into  the  desert,  and 
the  whole  tenor  of  the  ascetic  life,  while  isolating  him 
from  human  sympathies,  fostered  an  intense,  though  it 
may  be  termed  a  religious  selfishness. 

The  effect  of  the  mortification  of  the  domestic  affections 
upon  the  general  character  was  probably  very  pernicious. 
The  family  circle  is  the  appointed  sphere  not  only  for  the 
performance  of  manifest  duties,  but  also  for  the  cultivation 
of  the  affections ;  and  the  extreme  ferocity  which  so  often 
characterised  the  ascetic  was  the  natural  consequence  of 
the  discipline  he  imposed  upon  himself.  Severed  from 
all  other  ties,  the  monks  clung  with  a  desperate  tenacity 
to  their  opinions  and  to  their  Church,  and  hated  those 
who  dissented  from  them  with  all  the  intensity  of  men 
whose  whole  lives  were  concentrated  on  a  single  subject, 
whose  ignorance  and  bigotry  prevented  them  from  con- 
ceiving the  possibility  of  any  good  thing  in  opposition  to 
themselves,  and  who  had  made  it  a  main  object  of  their 
discipline  to  eradicate  all  natural  sympathies  and  affecr 
tions.  We  may  reasonably  attribute  to  the  fierce  bio- 
grapher the  words  of  burning  hatred  of  all  heretics  which 
St.  Athanasius  puts  in  the  mouth  of  the  dying  patriarch  of 
the  hermits  -,1  but  ecclesiastical  history,  and  especially  the 

1  Life  <>f  Anion}/.     Sec,  too,  the  sentiments  of  St.  l'achomius,  Vit.  cnp. 


FROM  CONSTANT1NE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  147 

writings  of  the  later  Pagans,  abundantly  prove  that  the 
sentiment  was  a  general  one.  To  the  Christian  bishops 
it  is  mainly  clue  that  the  wide  and  general,  though  not 
perfect  recognition  of  religious  liberty  in  the  Eoman  legis- 
lation was  replaced  by  laws  of  the  most  minute  and 
stringent  intolerance.  To  the  monks,  acting  as  the  exe- 
cutive of  an  omnipresent,  intolerant,  and  aggressive  clergy, 
is  due  an  administrative  change,  perhaps  even  more  im- 
portant than  the  legislative  change  that  had  preceded  it. 
The  system  of  conniving  at,  neglecting,  or  despising  forms 
of  worship  that  were  formally  prohibited,  which  had  been 
so  largely  practised  by  the  sceptical  Pagans,  and  under 
the  lax  police  system  of  the  empire,  and  which  is  so  im- 
portant a  fact  in  the  history  of  the  rise  of  Christianity, 
was  absolutely  destroyed.  Wandering  in  bands  through 
the  country,  the  monks  were  accustomed  to  burn  the 
temples,  to  break  the  idols,  to  overthrow  the  altars,  to 
engage  in  fierce  conflicts  with  the  peasants,  who  often 
defended  with  desperate  courage  the  shrines  of  their  gods. 
It  would  be  impossible  to  conceive  men  more  fitted  for 
the  task.  Their  fierce  fanaticism,  their  persuasion  that 
every  idol  was  tenanted  by  a  literal  daemon,  and  their 
belief  that  death  incurred  in  this  iconoclastic  crusade  was 
a  form  of  martyrdom,  made  them  careless  of  all  conse- 
quences to  themselves,  while  the  reverence  that  attached 
to  their  profession  rendered  it  scarcely  possible  for  the 
civil  power  to  arrest  them.  Men  who  had  learnt  to  look 
with  indifference  on  the  tears  of  a  broken-hearted  mother, 
and  whose  ideal  was  indissolubly  connected  with  the 
degradation  of  the  body,  were  but  little  likely  to  be 
moved  either  by  the  pathos  of  old  associations,  and  of 
reverent,  though  mistaken  worship,  or  by  the  gran- 
deur of  the  Serapeum,  or  the  noble  statues  of  Phidias 
and  Praxiteles.     Sometimes  the  civil  power  ordered  the 


148  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

reconstruction  of  Jewish  synagogues  or  heretical  churches 
which  had  been  illegally  destroyed  ;  but  the  doctrine  was 
early  maintained,  that  such  a  reconstruction  was  a  deadly 
Bin.  Under  Julian  some  Christians  suffered  martyrdom 
sooner  than  be  parties  to  it ;  and  St.  Ambrose  from  the 
pulpit  of  Milan,  and  Simeon  Stylites  from  his  desert  pillar, 
united  in  denouncing  Theodosius,  who  had  been  guilty  of 
issuing  this  command. 

Another  very  important  moral  result  to  which  aseeti- 
q  largely  contributed,  was  the  depression  and  some- 
times almost  the  extinction  of  the  civic  virtues.  A  candid 
examination  will  show  that  the  Christian  civilisations  have 
been  as  inferior  to  the  Pagan  ones  in  civic  and  intellectual 
virtues  as  they  have  been  superior  to  them  in  the  virtues 
of  humanity  and  of  chastity.  We  have  already  seen  that 
one  remarkable  feature  of  the  intellectual  movement  that 
preceded  Christianity  was  the  gradual  decadence  of  pa- 
triotism. In  the  early  days  both  of  Greece  and  Rome,  the 
first  duty  enforced  was  that  of  a  man  to  his  country. 
This  was  the  rudimentary  or  cardinal  virtue  of  the  moral 
type.  It  gave  the  tone  to  the  whole  system  of  ethics,  and 
different  moral  qualities  were  valued  chiefly  in  propor- 
tion to  their  tendency  to  form  illustrious  citizens.  The 
destruction  of  this  spirit  in  the  Roman  Empire  was  due, 
as  we  have  seen,  to  two  causes — one  of  them  being  poli- 
tical and  the  other  intellectual.  The  political  cause  was 
the  amalgamation  of  the  different  nations  in  one  great 
despotism,  which  gave  indeed  an  ample  field  for  personal 
and  intellectual  freedom,  but  extinguished  the  sentiment 
of  nationality  and  closed  almost  every  sphere  of  political 
activity.  The  intellectual  cause,  which  was  by  no  means 
unconnected  with  the  political  one,  was  the  growing  as- 
cendency of  Oriental  philosophies,  which  dethroned  the 
active  stoicism  of  the  early  empire,  and  placed  its  ideal 


CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  149 

of  excellence  in  contemplative  virtues  and  in  elaborate 
purifications.  By  this  decline  of  the  patriotic  sentiment 
the  progress  of  the  new  faith  was  greatly  aided.  In  all 
matters  of  religion  the  opinions  of  men  are  governed 
much  more  by  their  sympathies  than  by  their  judgments, 
and  it  rarely  or  never  happens  that  a  religion  which  is 
opposed  to  a  strong  national  sentiment,  as  Christianity 
was  in  Judea,  as  Catholicism  and  Episcopalian  Protes- 
tantism have  been  in  Scotland,  and  as  Anglicanism  is  even 
now  in  Ireland,  can  win  the  acceptance  of  the  people. 

The  relations  of  Christianity  to  the  sentiment  of 
patriotism  were  from  the  first  very  unfortunate.  While 
the  Christians  were,  from  obvious  reasons,  completely 
separated  from  the  national  spirit  of  Judea,  they  found 
themselves  equally  at  variance  with  the  lingering  rem- 
nants of  Eoman  patriotism.  Borne  was  to  them  the  power 
of  Antichrist,  and  its  overthrow  the  necessary  prelude 
to  the  millennial  reign.  They  formed  an  illegal  organisa- 
tion, directly  opposed  to  the  genius  of  the  empire,  an- 
ticipating its  speedy  destruction,  looking  back  with  some- 
thing more  than  despondency  to  the  fate  of  the  heroes 
who  had  adorned  its  past,  and  refusing  resolutely  to  partici- 
pate in  those  national  spectacles  which  were  the  symbols 
and  the  expressions  of  patriotic  feeling.  Though  scrupu- 
lously averse  to  all  rebellion,  they  rarely  concealed  their 
sentiments,  and  the  whole  tendency  of  their  teaching 
was  to  withdraw  men  as  far  as  possible  both  from  the 
functions  and  the  enthusiasm  of  public  life.  It  was  at 
once  their  confession  and  their  boast,  that  no  interests 
were  more  indifferent  to  them  than  those  of  their  country.1 
They  regarded  the  lawfulness  of  taking  arms  as  very 
questionable,  and  all  those  proud  and  aspiring  qualities 

1  'Nee  ulla  res  aliena  magis  quani  publico.' — Tertullian,  Apol.  ch. xxxviii. 


150  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

that  constitute  the  distinctive  beauty  of  the  soldier's  cha- 
racter as  emphatically  unchristian.  Their  home  and  their 
interests  were  in  another  world,  and,  provided  only  they 
were  unmolested  in  their  worship,  they  avowed  with 
frankness,  long  after  the  empire  had  become  Christian, 
that  it  was  a  matter  of  indifference  to  them  under  what 
rule  they  lived.1  Asceticism,  drawing  all  the  enthusiasm  of 
Christendom  to  the  desert  life,  and  elevating  as  an  ideal 
the  extreme  and  absolute  abnegation  of  all  patriotism,2 
formed  the  culmination  of  the  movement,  and  was  un- 
doubtedly one  cause  of  the  downfall  of  the  Soman  Em- 
pire. 

There  are,  probably,  few  subjects  on  which  popular 
judgments  are  commonly  more  erroneous  than  upon  the 
relations  between  positive  religions  and  moral  enthusiasm. 


1  'Quid  interest  sub  cujus  imperio  vivat  homo  moriturus,  si  illi  qui  im- 
perant,  nd  impia  et  iniqua  non  cogant.' — St.  Aug.  De  Civ.  Dei,  v.  17. 

2  ■  Monachum  in  patria  sua  perfectum  esse  non  posse,  perfectum  autem 
esse  nolle  delinquere  est.' — Hieron.  Up.  xiv.  Dean  Milman  well  says  of  a 
later  period,  'According  to  the  monastic  view  of  Christianity,  the  total 
abandonment  of  the  world,  with  all  its  ties  and  duties,  as  well  as  its  trea- 
sures, its  enjoyments,  and  objects  of  ambition,  advanced  rather  than  dimi- 
nished the  hopes  of  salvation.  Why  should  they  fight  for  a  perishing 
world,  from  which  it  was  better  to  be  estranged  ?  .  .  .  It  is  singular,  indeed, 
that  while  we  have  seen  the  Eastern  monks  turned  into  fierce  undisciplined 
soldiers,  perilling  their  own  lives  and  shedding  the  blood  of  others  without 
remorse,  in  assertion  of  some  shadowy  shade  of  orthodox  expression,  hardly 
anywhere  do  we  find  them  asserting  their  liberties  or  their  religion  with 
intrepid  resistance.  Hatred  of  heresy  was  a  more  stirring  motive  than  the 
dread  or  the  danger  of  Islamism.  After  the  first  defeats  the  Christian  mind 
was  still  further  prostrated  by  the  common *notion  that  the  invasion  was  a 
just  and  heaven-commissioned  visitation  ;  .  .  .  resistance  a  vain,  almost  an 
impious  struggle  to  avert  inevitable  punishment.'  —  Milman's  Latin  Chri<- 
tianitt/,  vol.  ii.  p.  200.  Compare  Massillon's  famous  Discours  au  Regiment 
de  Catinat : — '  Ce  qu'il  y  a  ici  de  plus  deplorable,  e'est  que  dans  une  vie  rude 
et  penible,  dans  des  emplois  dont  les  devoirs  passent  quelquefois  la  rigueur 
des  cloitres  les  plus  austeres,  vous  soufirez  toujours  en  vain  pour  l'autre  vie. 
.  .  .  Dix  ans  de  services  out  plus  use"  votre  corps  qu'une  vie  entiere  de  peni- 
tence .  .  .  un  seul  jour  de  ces  soufFrances,  consacre*  au  Seigneur,  vous  aurait 
peut-^tre  valu  un  bonheur  eternel.' 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  151 

Religions  have,  no  doubt,  a  most  real  power  of  evoking 
a  latent  energy  which,  without  their  existence,  would 
never  have  been  called  into  action ;  but  tHeir  influence 
is  on  the  whole  probably  more  attractive  than  creative. 
They  supply  the  channel  in  which  moral  enthusiasm 
flows,  the  banner  under  which  it  is  enlisted,  the  mould 
in  which  it  is  cast,  the  ideal  to  which  it  tends.  The  first 
idea  the  phrase  '  a  very  good  man  '  would  have  suggested 
to  an  early  Roman,  would  probably  have  been  that  of 
great  and  distinguished  patriotism,  and  the  passion  and 
interest  of  such  a  man  in  his  country's  cause  were  in  direct 
proportion  to  his  moral  elevation.  Ascetic.  Christianity 
decisively  diverted  moral  enthusiasm  into  another  channel, 
and  the  civic  virtues,  in  consequence,  necessarily  declined. 
The  extinction  of  all  public  spirit,  the  base  treachery  and 
corruption  pervading  every  department  of  the  Govern- 
ment, the  cowardice  of  the  army,  the  despicable  frivolity 
of  character  that  led  the  people  of  Treves,  when  fresh  from 
their  burning  city,  to  call  for  theatres  and  circuses,  and 
the  people  of  Roman  Carthage  to  plunge  wildly  into  the 
excitement  of  the  chariot  races,  on  the  very  day  when 
their  city  succumbed  beneath  the  Vandal ; *  all  these 
things  coexisted  with  extraordinary  displays  of  ascetic  and 
of  missionary  devotion.  The  genius  and  the  virtue  that 
might  have  defended  the  empire  were  engaged  in  fierce 
disputes  about  the  Pelagian  controversy,  at  the  very  time 
when  Attila  was  encircling  Rome  with  his  armies,2  and 
there  was  no  subtlety  of  theological  metaphysics  which  did 
not  kindle  a  deeper  interest  in  the  Christian  leaders  than 


1  See  a  very  striking-  passage  in  Salvian,  De  Gubem.  JDiv.  lib.  vi. 

2  Chateaubriand  very  truly  says,  'qu'Orose  et  saint  Augustin  etoient 
plus  occupes  du  schisme  de  Pelage  que  de  la  desolation  de  1'Afrique  et  des 
Gaules.' — Etudes  hidor.  vime  discours,  2de  partie.  The  remark  might  cer- 
tainly be  extended  much  further. 

44 


102  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  RALS. 

the  throes  of  their  expiring  country.  The  moral  enthu- 
siasm that  in  other  days  would  have  fired  the  armies  of 
Eome  with  an  invincible  valour,  impelled  thousands  to 
abandon  their  country  and  their  homes,  and  consume  the 
weary  hours  in  a  long  routine  of  useless  and  horrible 
macerations.  When  the  Goths  had  captured  Eome,  St. 
Augustine,  as  we  have  seen,  pointed  with  a  just  pride  to 
the  Christian  Church,  which  remained  an  unviolated 
sanctuary  during  the  horrors  of  the  sack,  as  a  proof  that 
a  new  spirit  of  sanctity  and  of  reverence  had  descended 
upon  the  world.  The  Pagan,  in  his  turn,  pointed  to  what 
he  deemed  a  not  less  significant  fact — the  golden  statues 
of  Valour  and  of  Fortune  were  melted  down  to  pay  the 
ransom  to  the  conquerors.1  Many  of  the  Christians  con- 
templated with  an  indifference  that  almost  amounted  to 
complacency  what  they  regarded  as  the  predicted  ruin  of 
the  city  of  the  fallen  gods.2  When  the  Vandals  swept 
over  Africa,  the  Donatists,  maddened  by  the  persecution  of 
the  orthodox,  received  them  with  open  arms,  and  con- 
tributed their  share  to  that  deadly  blow.3  The  immortal 
pass  of  Thermopyla3  was  surrendered  without  a  struggle  to 
the  Goths.  A  Pagan  writer  accused  the  monks  of  having 
betrayed  it.4  It  is  more  probable  that  they  had  absorbed 
or  diverted  the  heroism  that  in  other  days  would  have 
defended  it.  The  conquest,  at  a  later  date,  of  Egypt  by 
the  Mahommedans,  was  in  a  great  measure  due  to  an 
invitation  from  the  persecuted  Monophysites.6  Sub 
quent  religious  wars  have  again  and  again  exhibited  the 

1  Zo;«imus,  Bid.  v.  41.     This  was  on  the  first  occasion  when  Rome  was 
menaced  by  Alaric. 

M.;i  vale's  Conversion  of  the  Northern  Nations,  pp.  207-210. 
3  See  Sismondi,  Hist,  de  la  Chute  de  VEmpire  remain,  tome  i.  p.  200. 
*  Eonapitu.    There  is  no  other  authority  for  the  story  of  the  treachery, 
wliirh  is  not  believed  by  Gibbon. 

OOndi,  Hist,   de  la    Chute  de   I' Empire  romain,  tome   ii.  pp.  62  64  j 
Milman.  Hint,  of  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  ii.  p.  213.     The  Monophysites  were 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  153 

same  phenomenon.  The  treachery  of  a  religionist  to  his 
country  no  longer  argued  an  absence  of  all  moral  feeling. 
It  had  become  compatible  with  the  deepest  religious  en- 
thusiasm, and  wkh  all  the  courage  of  a  martyr. 

It  is  somewhat  difficult  to  form  a  just  estimate  of  how 
far  the  attitude  assumed  by  the  Church  to  the  barbarian 
invaders  has  on  the  whole  proved  beneficial  to  mankind. 
The  empire,  as  we  have  seen,  had  already  been,  both 
morally  and  politically,  in  a  condition  of  manifest  decline; 
its  fall,  though  it  might  have  been  retarded,  could  scarcely 
have  been  averted,  and  the  new  religion,  even  in  its  most 
superstitious  form,  while  it  did  much  to  displace,  did  also 
much  to  elicit  moral  enthusiasm.  It  is  impossible  to  deny 
that  the  Christian  priesthood  contributed  very  materially, 
both  by  their  charity  and  by  their  arbitration,  to  mitigate 
the  calamities  that  accompanied  the  dissolution  of  the 
empire  ;  *  and  it  is  equally  impossible  to  doubt  that  their 
political  attitude  greatly  increased  their  power  for  good. 
Standing  between  the  conflicting  forces,  almost  indifferent 
to  the  issue,  and  notoriously  exempt  from  the  passions  of 
.the  combat,  they  obtained  with  the  conqueror,  and  used 
for  the  benefit  of  the  conquered,  a  degree  of  influence 
they  would  never  have  possessed,  had  they  been  regarded 
as  Eoman  patriots.  Their  attitude,  however,  marked  a 
complete,  and,  as  it  has  proved,  a  permanent  change  in 

greatly  afflicted  because,  after  the  conquest,  the  Mahommedans  tolerated  the 
orthodox,  who  believed  that  two  concurring  wills  existed  in  Christ,  as  well 
as  themselves,  who  believed  that  Christ  had  only  one  will.  In  Gaul,  the 
orthodox  clergy  favoured  the  invasions  of  the  Franks,  who  alone,  of  the 
barbarous  conquerors  of  Gaul,  were  Catholics,  and  St.  Aprunculus  was  obliged 
to  fly,  the  Burgundians  desiring  to  kill  him  on  account  of  his  suspected  con- 
nivance with  the  invaders.     (Greg.  Tur.  ii.  23.) 

1  Dean  Milman  says  of  the  Church,  '  If  treacherous  to  the  interests  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  it  was  true  to  those  of  mankind.' — Hist,  of  Christianity, 
vol.  iii.  p.  48.  So  Gibbon,  '  If  the  decline  of  the  Roman  Empire  was  hastened 
by  the  conversion  of  Constantino,  the  victorious  religion  broke  the  violence 
of  the  fall  and  mollified  the  ferocious  temper  of  the  conquerors.' — Ch.  xxxviii. 


154  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

the  position  assigned  to  patriotism  in  the  moral  scale.  It 
has  occasionally  happened,  in  later  times,  that  Churches 
have  found  it  for  their  interest  to  appeal  to  this  sen- 
timent in  their  conflict  with  opposing  creeds,  or  that 
patriots  have  found  the  objects  of  churchmen  in  harmony 
with  their  own ;  and  in  these  cases  a  fusion  of  theological 
and  patriotic  feeling  has  taken  place,  in  which  each  has 
intensified  the  other.  Such  has  been  the  effect  of  the 
conflict  between  the  Spaniards  and  the  Moors,  between 
the  Poles  and  the  Eussians,  between  the  Scotch  Puritans 
and  the  English  Episcopalians,  between  the  Irish  Catholics 
and  the  English  Protestants.  But  patriotism  itself,  as  a 
duty,  lias  never  found  any  place  in  Christian  ethics,  and 
a  strong  theological  feeling  has  usually  been  directly 
hostile  to  its  growth.  Ecclesiastics  have  no  doubt  taken 
a  very  large  share  in  political  affairs,  but  this  has  been  in 
most  cases  solely  with  the  object  of  wresting  them  into 
conformity  with  ecclesiastical  designs ;  and  no  other  body 
of  men  have  so  uniformly  sacrificed  the  interests  of  their 
country  to  the  interests  of  their  class.  For  the  repug- 
nance between  the  theological  and  the  patriotic  spirit, 
three  reasons  may,  I  think,  be  assigned.  The  first  is  that 
tendency  of  strong  religious  feeling  to  divert  the  mind 
from  all  terrestrial  cares  and  passions,  of  which  the  ascetic 
life  was  the  extreme  expression,  but  which  has  always, 
under  different  forms,  been  manifested  in  the  Church. 
The  second  arises  from  the  fact  that  each  form  of  theolo- 
gical opinion  embodies  itself  in  a  visible  and  organised 
church,  with  a  government,  interest,  and  policy  of  its 
own,  and  a  frontier  often  intersecting  rather  than  follow- 
in-  national  boundaries  ;  and  these  churches  attract  to 
themselves  the  attachment  and  devotion  that  would  natu- 
rally be  bestowed  upon  our  country  and  its  rulers. 
The  third  reason  is,  that  the  saintly  and  the  heroic  cha- 


FROM   CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  155 

racters,  which  represent  the  ideals  of  religion  and  of 
patriotism,  are  generically  different ;  for  although  they 
have  no  doubt  many  common  elements  of  virtue,  the  dis- 
tinctive excellence  of  each  is  derived  from  a  proportion 
or  disposition  of  qualities  altogether  different  from  that  of 
the  other.1 

Before  dismissing  this  very  important  revolution  in 
moral  history,  I  may  add  two  remarks.  In  the  first  place, 
we  may  observe  that  the  relation  of  the  two  great  schools 
of  morals  to  active  and  political  life  has  been  completely 
changed.  Among  the  ancients,  the  Stoics,  who  regarded 
virtue  and  vice  as  generically  different  from  all  other 
things,  participated  actively  in  public  life,  and  made  this 
participation  one  of  the  first  of  duties,  while  the  Epicu- 
reans, who  resolved  virtue  into  utility,  and  esteemed  hap- 
piness its  supreme  motive,  abstained  from  public  life, 
and  taught  their  disciples  to  neglect  it.  Asceticism  fol- 
lowed the  stoical  school  in  teaching  that  virtue  and 
happiness  are  generically  different  things ;  but  it  was  at 
the  same  time  eminently  unfavourable  to  civic  virtue. 
On  the  other  hand,  that  great  industrial  movement  which 
has  arisen  since  the  abolition  of  slavery,  and  which  has 
always  been  essentially  utilitarian  in  its  spirit,  has  been 
one  of  the  most  active  and  influential  elements  of  political 
progress.     This  change,  though,  as  far  as  I  know,  entirety 

1  Observe  with  what  a  fine  perception  St.  Augustine  notices  the  essen- 
tially unchristian  character  of  the  moral  dispositions  to  which  the  greatness 
of  Rome  was  due.  He  quotes  the  sentence  of  Sallust :  '  Civitas,  incredibile 
memoratu  est,  adepta  libertate  quantum  brevi  creverit,  tanta  cupido  gloriae 
incesserat ; '  and  adds,  '  Ista  ergo  laudis  aviditas  et  cupido  gloriae  multa  ilia 
miranda  fecit,  laudabilia  scilicet  atque  gloriosa  secundum  hominum  existima- 
tionem  .  .  .  causa  honoris,  laudis  et  gloriae  consuluerunt  patriae,  in  qua  ipsam 
gloriam  requirebant,  salutemque  ejus  saluti  suae  praeponere  non  dubitaverunt, 
pro  isto  uno  vitio,  id  est,  amore  laudis,  pecuniae  cupiditatem  et  multa  alia 
vitia  comprimentes.  .  .  .  Quid  aliud  amarent  quam  gloriam,  qua  volebant 
*tiam  post  mortem  tanquam  yivere  in  ore  laudantium  ?  ' — Be  Civ.  Dei, 
v.  12-13. 


156  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

unnoticed  by  historians,  constitutes,  I  believe,  one  of  the 
great  landmarks  of  moral  history.    . 

The  second  observation  I  would  make  relates  to  the 
estimate  we  form  of  the  value  of  patriotic  actions.  How- 
r  much  an  historian  may  desire  to  extend  his  researches 
to  the  private  and  domestic  virtues  of  a  people,  civic 
virtues  are  always  those  which  must  appear  most  promi- 
nently in  his  pages.  History  is  concerned  only  with  large 
bodies  of  men.  The  systems  of  philosophy  or  religion, 
which  produce  splendid  results  on  the  great  theatre  of 
public  life,  are  fully  and  easily  appreciated,  and  readers 
and  writers  are  both  liable  to  give  them  very  undue  ad- 
vantages over  those  systems  which  do  not  favour  civic 
virtues,  but  exercise  their  beneficial  influence  in  the  more 
obscure  fields  of  individual  self-culture,  domestic  morals, 
or  private  charity.  If  valued  by  the  self-sacrifice  they 
imply,  or  by  their  effects  upon  human  happiness,  these 
last  rank  very  high,  but  they  scarcely  appear  in  history, 
and  they  therefore  seldom  obtain  their  due  weight  in 
historical  comparisons.  Christianity  has,  I  think,  suffered 
peculiarly  from  this  cause.  Its  moral  action  has  always 
been  much  more  powerful  upon  individuals  than  upon 
societies,  and  the  spheres  in  which  its  superiority  over 
other  religions  is  most  incontestable,  are  precisely  those 
which  history  is  least  capable  of  realising. 

In  attempting  to  estimate  the  moral  condition  of  the 
Roman  and  Byzantine  Empires  during  the  Christian 
period,  and  before  the.  old  civilisation  had  been  dissolved 
by  the  barbarian  or  Mohammedan  invasions,  we  must 
continually  bear  this  last  consideration  in  mind.  We 
must  remember,  too,  that  Christianity  had  acquired  the 
ascendency  among  nations  which  were  already  deeply 
tainted  by  the  inveterate  vices  of  a  corrupt  and  decaying 
civilisation,  and  also  that  many  of  the  censors  from  whose 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  157 

pages  we  are  obliged  to  form  our  estimate  of  the  age  were 
men  who  judged  human  frailties  with  all  the  fastidious- 
ness of  ascetics,  and  who  expressed  their  judgments  with 
all  the  declamatory  exaggeration  of  the  pulpit.  Modern 
critics  will  probably  not  lay  much  stress  upon  the  relapse 
of  the  Christians  into  the  ordinary  dress  and  usages  of  the 
luxurious  society  about  them,  upon  the  ridicule  thrown 
by  Christians  on  those  who  still  adhered  to  the  primitive 
austerity  of  the  sect,  or  upon  the  fact  that  multitudes 
who  were  once  mere  nominal  Pagans  had  become  mere 
nominal  Christians.  We  find,  too,  a  frequent  disposition 
on  the  part  of  moralists  to  single  out  some  new  form  of 
luxury,  or  some  trivial  custom  which  they  regarded  as 
indecorous,  for  the  most  extravagant  denunciation,  and  to 
magnify  its  importance  in  a  manner  which  in  a  later  age 
it  is  difficult  even  to  understand.  Examples  of  this  kind 
may  be  found  both  in  Pagan  and  in  Christian  writings, 
and  they  form  an  extremely  curious  page  in  the  his- 
tory of  morals.  Thus  Juvenal  exhausts  his  vocabulary 
of  invective  in  denouncing  the  atrocious  criminality  of  a 
certain  noble,  who  in  the  very  year  of  his  consulship  did 
not  hesitate — not,  it  is  true,  by  day,  but  at  least  in  the 
sight  of  the  moon  and  of  the  stars — with  his  own  hand  to 
drive  his  own  chariot  along  the  public  road.1  Pliny 
assures  us  that  the  most  monstrous  of  all  criminals  was 
the  man  who  first  devised  the  luxurious  custom  of  wear- 
ing golden  rings.2     Apuleius  was   compelled  to  defend 


1  '  Prseter  majorum  cineres  atque  os.sa,  volucri 

Carpento  rapitur  pinguis  Damasippus  et  ipse, 
Ipse  rotam  stringit  multo  sufflamine  consul ; 
Nocte  quideni ;  sed  luna  videt,  sed  sidera  testes 
Intendunt  oculos.     Finitum  t em  pus  honoris 
Quum  fuerit,  clara  Damasippus  luce  flagellum 
Sumet.' — Juvenal,  Sat.  viii.  140. 

2  '  Pessimum  vitse  scelus  fecit,  qui  id  [aurum]  primus  induit  digitis,  . 


153  HISTORY   OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

himself  for  having  eulogised  tooth-powder,  and  he  did  so, 
among  other  ways,  by  arguing  that  nature  has  justified 
this  form  o(  propriety,  for  crocodiles  were  known  perio- 
dically to  leave  the  waters  of  the  Nile,  and  to  lie  with 
open  jaws  upon  the  banks,  while  a  certain  bird  proceeds 
with  its  beak  to  clean  their  teeth.1  If  we  were  to  mea- 
sure the  degree  of  criminality  of  the  different  customs 
of  the  time  by  the  vehemence  of  the  patristic  denuncia- 
tions, we  might  almost  conclude  that  the  most  atrocious 
offence  of  their  day  was  the  custom  of  wearing  false  hair, 
or  dyeing  natural  hair.  Clement  of  Alexandria  ques- 
tioned whether  the  validity  of  certain  ecclesiastical  cere- 
monies might  not  be  affected  by  wigs ;  for  he  asked,  when 
the  priest  is  placing  his  hand  on  the  head  of  the  person 
who  kneels  before  him,  if  that  hand  is  resting  upon  false 
hair,  who  is  it  he  is  really  blessing?  Tertullian  shuddered 
at  the  thought  that  Christians  might  have  the  hair  of 
those  who  were  in  hell  upon  their  heads,  and  he  found  in 
the  tiers  of  false  hair  that  were  in  use  a  distinct  rebellion 
against  the  assertion  that  no  one  can  add  to  his  stature, 
and  in  the  custom  of  dyeing  the  hair,  a  contravention  of 
the  declaration  that  man  cannot  make  one  hair  white 
or  black.  Centuries  rolled  away.  The  Eoman  Empire 
tottered  to  its  fall,  and  floods  of  vice  and  sorrow  over- 
>]  aead  the  world ;  but  still  the  denunciations  of  the  Fathers 
were  unabated.  St.  Ambrose,  St.  Jerome,  and  St.  Gregory 
Xazianzcn  continued  with  uncompromising  vehemence  the 
war  against  false  hair,  which  Tertullian  and  Clement  of 
;andria  had  began,8 

quisquis  primus  instituit  cunctanter  id  fecit,  lrevisque  manibus,  latentibus- 
que  induit.' — Pfin.  HuL  Xnf.  xxxiii.  4. 

Ige  in  his  Apologia.     It  should  be  said  that  -we  have 
onlv  Meoonl  <>f  tin-  charges  brought  against  him. 

3  The  history  of  false  hair  has  beeu  written  with  much  learning  by  M. 
Guerle  in  his  £lof/c  ties  Icrruqucs. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  159 

But  although  the  vehemence  of  the  Fathers  on  such 
trivial  matters  might  appear  at  first  sight  to  imply  the 
existence  of  a  society  in  which  grave  corruption  was  rare, 
such  a  conclusion  would  be  totally  untrue.  The  pictures 
of  the  Eoman  society  by  Ammianus  Marcellinus,  of  the 
society  of  Marseilles,  by  Salvian,  of  the  society  of  Asia 
Minor  and  of  Constantinople,  by  Chrysostom,  as  well  as 
the  whole  tenor  of  history,  and  innumerable  incidental 
notices  in  the  writers  of  the  time,  exhibit,  after  every  le- 
gitimate allowance  has  been  made,  a  condition  of  depra- 
vity, and  especially  of  degradation,  which  few  societies  have 
surpassed.1  The  corruption  had  reached  classes  and  in- 
stitutions that  appeared  the  most  holy.  The  Agapae,  or 
love  feasts,  which  formed  one  of  the  most  touching  sym- 
bols of  Christian  unity,  had  become  scenes  of  drunkenness 
and  of  riot.  Denounced  by  the  Fathers,  condemned  by 
the  Council  of  Laodicea  in  the  fourth  century,  and  after- 
wards by  the  Council  of  Carthage,  they  lingered  as  a 
scandal  and  an  offence  till  they  were  finally  suppressed 
by  the  Council  of  Trullo,  at  the  end  of  the  seventh  cen- 
tury.2 The  commemoration  of  the  martyrs  soon  degene- 
rated into  scandalous  dissipation.  Fairs  were  held  on  the 
occasion,  gross  breaches  of  chastity  were  frequent,  and 
the  annual  festival  was  suppressed  on  account  of  the  im- 
morality it  produced.3  The  ambiguous  position  of  the 
clergy  with  reference  to  marriage  already  led  to  grave 
disorder.  In  the  time  of  St.  Cyprian,  before  the  outbreak 
of  the  Decian  persecution,  it  had  been  common  to'  find 


1  The  fullest  view  of  this  age  is  given  in  a  very  learned  little  work  by- 
Peter  Erasmus  Miiller  (1797),  De  Genio  Evi  Theodosiani.  Montfaucon 
has  also  devoted  two  essays  to  the  moral  condition  of  the  Eastern  world, 
one  of  which  is  given  in  Jortin's  Remarks  on  Ecclesiastical  History. 

2  See  on  these  abuses  Mosheim,  Eccl.  Hist.  (Soame's  ed.),  vol.  i.  p.  46tf  j 
Cave's  Primitive  Christianity,  part  i.  ch.  xi. 

3  Cave's  Primitive  Christianity,  part  i.  ch.  vii. 


100  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

clergy  professing  celibacy,  but  keeping,  under  various 
pretexts,  their  mistresses  in  their  houses  ;x  and,  after  Con- 
stantrae,  the  complaints  on  this  subject  became  loud  and 
general.1  Virgins  and  monks  often  lived  together  in  the 
-a me  house,  and  with  a  curious  audacity  of  hypocrisy, 
which  is  very  frequently  noticed,  they  professed  to  have  so 
overcome  the  passions  of  their  nature  that  they  shared  in 
chastity  the  same  bed.3  Eich  widows  were  surrounded  by 
swarms  of  clerical  sycophants,  who  addressed  them  in  ten- 
der diminutives,  studied  and  consulted  their  every  foible, 
and,  under  the  guise  of  piety,  lay  in  wait  for  their  gifts  or 
bequests.4  The  evil  attained  such  a  point,  that  a  law  was 
made  under  Valentinian,  depriving  the  Christian  priests 
and  monks  of  that  power  of  receiving  legacies  which  was 


1  Ep.  lxi. 

ftgriUfl  describes  with  much  admiration  how  certain  monks  of  Pales- 
tine, by  'a  life  wholly  excellent  and  divine,'  had  so  overcome  their  passions 
that  they  were  accustomed  to  bathe  with  women  ;  for  neither  sight  nor 
touch,  nor  a  woman's  embrace,  could  make  them  relapse  into  their  natural 
condition.  Among  men  they  desired  to  be  men,  and  among  women, 
women.'     (//.  E.\.  21.) 

3  These  'Mullen  Subintroducta?,'  as  they  were  called,  are  continually 
noticed  by  Cyprian,  Jerome,  and  Chrysostom.  See  Miilier,  Be  Genio  Evi 
Theodosiani,  and  also  the  Codex  Theod.  xvi.  tit.  ii.  lex  44,  with  the  Com- 
ments. Dr.  Todd,  in  his  learned  Life  of  St.  Patrick  (p.  91),  quotes  (I  shall 
not  venture  to  do  so)  from  the  Lives  of  the  Irish  Saints  an  extremely  curious 

ad  of  a  kind  of  contest  of  sanctity  between  St.   Scuthinus  and   St. 

!an,  in  which  it  was  clearly  proved  that  the  former  had  mastered  the 

passions  of  the  flesh  more  completely  than  the  latter.   An  enthusiast  named 

Robert  d'Arbrisselles  is  said  in  the  twelfth  century  to  have  revived  the  old 

custom.     (Jortin's  Remarks,  a.d.  1100.) 

4  St.  Jerome  gives  {Ep.  lii.)  an  extremely  curious  picture  of  these  clerical 

ries,  and  several  examples  of  the  terms  of  endearment  they  were  ac- 
customed to  employ.  The  tone  of  flattery  which  St.  Jerome  himself,  though 
doubtless  with  tfaie  purest  motives,  employs  in  his  copious  correspondence 
with  his  female  admirers,  is  to  a  modern  layman  peculiarly  repulsive,  and 
sometimes  verges  upon  blasphemy.  In  his  letter  to  Eustochium,  whose 
daughter  as  a  nun  had  become  the  'bride  of  Christ,'  he  calls  the  mother 
'  Socrus  Dei/  the  mother-in-law  of  God.  See,  too,  the  extravagant  flat- 
teries of  Chrysostom  in  his  correspondence  with  Olympian. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  101 

possessed  by  every  other  class  of  the  community  ;  and  St. 
Jerome  has  mournfully  acknowledged  that  the  prohibi- 
tion was  necessary.1  Great  multitudes  entered  the  Church, 
to  avoid  municipal  offices ; 2  the  deserts  were  crowded 
with  men  whose  sole  object  was  to  escape  from  honest 
labour,  and  even  soldiers  used  to  desert  their  colours  for 
the  monasteries.3  Noble  ladies,  pretending  a  desire  to 
live  a  life  of  continence,  abandoned  their  husbands  to  live 
with  low-born  lovers.4  Palestine,  which  soon  became  the 
centre  of  pilgrimages,  had  become,  in  the  time  of  St.  Gre- 
gory of  Nyssa,  a  hotbed  of  debauchery.5  The  evil  repu- 
tation of  pilgrimages  long  continued ;  and  in  the  eighth 
century  we  find  St.  Boniface  writing  to  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  imploring  the  English  bishops  to  take  some 
measures  to  restrain  or  regulate  the  pilgrimages  ^of  their 
fellow-countrywomen  ;  for  there  were  few  towns  in  cen- 
tral Europe,  on  the  way  to  Home,  where  English  ladies, 
who  started  as  pilgrims,  were  not  living  in  open  prostitu- 
tion.6    The  luxury  and  ambition  of  the  higher  prelates, 

1  'Pudet  dicere  sacerdotes  idolorum,  mimi  et  aurigae  et  scorta  haereditates 
capiunt ;  solis  clericis  et  monacliis  hoc  lege  prohibetur,  et  prohibetur  non 
a  persecutoribus,  sed  a  principibus  Christian  is.  Nee  de  lege  conqueror  sed 
doleo  cur  meruerimus  hanc  legem.' — Ep.  Hi. 

3  See  Milman's  Hist,  of  Early  Christianity,  vol.  ii.  p.  314. 

3  This  was  one  cause  of  the  disputes  between  St.  Gregory  the  Great  and 
the  Emperor  Eustace.  St.  Chrysostom  frequently  notices  the  opposition  of 
the  military  and  the  monastic  spirits. 

4  Ilieron.  Ep.  exxviii. 

5  St.  Greg.  Nyss.  Ad  cund.  Hieros.  Some  Catholic  writers  have  at- 
tempted to  throw  doubt  upon  the  genuineness  of  this  epistle,  but,  Dean 
Milman  thinks,  with  no  sufficient  reason.  Its  account  of  Jerusalem  is  to 
some  extent  corroborated  by  St.  Jerome.     {Ad  Pdulinum,  Ep.  xxix.) 

6  '  Prseterea  non  taceo  charitati  vestrse,  quia  omnibus  servis  Dei  qui  hie 
vel  in  Scriptura  vel  in  timore  Dei  probatissimi  esse  videntur,  displicet  quod 
bonum  et  honestas  et  pudicitia  vestrae  ecclesise  illuditur;  et  aliquod  leva- 
mentum  turpi tudinis  esset,  si  prohiberet  synodus  et  principes  vestri  mulier- 
ibus  et  velatis  feminis  illud  iter  et  frequenfiam,  quam  ad  Eomanam  civi- 
tatem  veniendo  et  redeundo  faciunt,  quia  magna  ex  parte  pereunt,  paueis 
remeantibus  integris.     Perpaucse  enim  sunt  civitates  in  Longobardia  vel 


162  HISTORY  OF    EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

and  the  passion  for  amusements  of  the  inferior  priests,1  were 
bitterly  acknowledged.  St.  Jerome  complained  that  the 
banquets  of  many  bishops  eclipsed  in  splendour  those  of 
the  provincial  governors,  and  the  intrigues  by  which  they 
obtained  offices,  and  the  fierce  partisanship  of  their  sup- 
porters, appear  in  every  page  of  ecclesiastical  history. 

In  the  lay  world,  perhaps  the  chief  characteristic  was 
extreme  childishness.  The  moral  enthusiasm  was  greater 
than  it  had  been  in  most  periods  of  Paganism,  but,  being 
drawn  away  to  the  desert,  it  had  little  influence  upon 
society.  The  simple  fact  that  the  quarrels  between  the 
factions  of  the  chariot  races  for  a  long  period  eclipsed  all 
political,  intellectual,  and  even  religious  differences,  filled 
the  streets  again  and  again  with  bloodshed,  and  more  than 
once  determined  great  revolutions  in  the  State,  is  sufficient 
to  show  the  extent  of  the  decadence.  Patriotism  and  cou- 
rage had  almost  disappeared,  and  notwithstanding  the 
rise  of  a  Belisarius  or  a  Narses,  the  level  of  public  men 
Was  extremely  depressed.  The  luxury  of  the  court,  the 
servility  of  the  courtiers,  and  the  prevailing  splendour  of 
dress  and  of  ornament,  had  attained  an  extravagant 
height.  The  world  grew  accustomed  to  a  dangerous  alter- 
nation of  extreme  asceticism  and  gross  vice,  and  some- 
times, as  in  the  case  of  Antioch,2  it  was  the  most  vicious 
and  luxurious  cities  that  produced  the  most  numerous 
anchorites.  There  existed  a  combination  of  vice  and 
superstition  which  is  eminently  prejudicial  to  the  nobility, 
though  not  equally  detrimental  to  the  happiness  of  man. 
Public  opinion  was  so  low,  that  very  many  forms  of  vice 
attracted  little  condemnation  and  punishment,  while  un- 

in  Francia  aut  in  Gallia  in  qua  non  sit  adultera  vel  meretrix  generis 
Anglorum,  quod  scnndalum  est  et  turpitudo  totius  ecclesiae  vestrse.' — (a.d. 
74ft)  Ep.  Ixiii. 

'   Bm  If UaMl'l  Ml  Christianity,  vol.  ii.  p.  8. 

a  Tillemont.  Jlist.cccl.  tome  xi.  p.  547. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  163 

doubted  belief  in  the  absolving  efficacy  of  superstitious 
rites  calmed  the  imagination  and  allayed  the  terrors  of 
conscience.  There  was  more  falsehood  and  treachery 
than  under  the  Caesars,  but  there  was  much  less  cruelty, 
violence,  and  shamelessness.  There  was  also  less  public 
spirit,  less  independence  of  character,  less  intellectual  free- 
dom. 

In  some  respects,  however,  Christianity  had  already 
effected  a  great  improvement.  The  gladiatorial  games 
had  disappeared  from  the  West,  and  had  not  been  intro- 
duced into  Constantinople.  The  vast  schools  of  prostitution 
which  had  grown  up  under  the  name  of  temples  of  Venus 
were  suppressed.  Eeligion,  however  deformed  and  de- 
based, was  at  least  no  longer  a  seedplot  of  depravity,  and 
under  the  influence  of  Christianity  the  effrontery  of  vice 
had  in  a  great  measure  disappeared.  The  gross  and  ex- 
travagant indecency  of  representation,  of  which  we  have 
still  examples  in  the  paintings  on  the  walls  and  the  signs 
on  many  of  the  portals  of  Pompeii ;  the  banquets  of  rich 
patricians,  served  by  naked  girls  ;  the  hideous  excesses  of 
unnatural  lust,  in  which  some  of  the  Pagan  emperors  had 
indulged  with  so  much  publicity,  were  no  longer  tole- 
rated. Although  sensuality  was  very  general,  it  was  less 
obtrusive,  and  unnatural  and  eccentric  forms  had  become 
rare.  The  presence  of  a  great  Church,  which,  amid  much 
superstition  and  fanaticism,  still  taught  a  pure  morality, 
and  enforced  it  by  the  strongest  motives,  was  everywhere 
felt — controlling,  strengthening,  or  overawing.  The  ec- 
clesiastics were  a  great  body  in  the  State.  The  cause  of 
virtue  was  strongly  organised  :  it  drew  to  itself  the  best 
men,  determined  the  course  of  vacillating  but  amiable 
natures,  and  placed  some  restraint  upon  the  vicious.  A 
bad  man  might  be  insensible  to  the  moral  beauties  of  re- 
ligion, but  he  was  still  haunted  by  the  recollection  of  its 


164  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

tlireatenings.  If  he  emancipated  himself  from  its  influence 
in  health  and  prosperity,  its  power  returned  in  periods  of 
sickness  or  danger,  or  on  the  eve  of  the  commission  of 
some  great  crime.  If  he  had  nerved  himself  against  all 
its  terrors,  he  was  at  least  checked  and  governed  at  every 
turn  by  the  public  opinion  which  it  had  created.  That 
total  absence  of  all  restraint,  all  decency,  and  all  fear  and 
remorse,  which  had  been  evinced  by  some  of  the  mon- 
sters of  crime  who  occupied  the  Pagan  throne,  and  which 
proves  most  strikingly  the  decay  of  the  Pagan  religion,  was 
no  longer  possible.  The  virtue  of  the  best  Pagans  was 
perhaps  of  as  high  an  order  as  that  of  the  best  Chris- 
tians, though  it  was  of  a  somewhat  different  type,  but  the 
vice  of  the  worst  Pagans  certainly  far  exceeded  that  of 
the  worst  Christians.  The  pulpit  had  become  a  powerful 
centre  of  attraction,  and  charities  of  many  kinds  were 
actively  developed. 

The  moral  effects  of  the  first  great  outburst  of  asceticism, 
as  far  as  we  have  as  yet  traced  them,  appear  almost  un- 
mingled  evils.  In  addition  to  the  essentially  distorted 
ideal  of  perfection  it  produced,  the  simple  withdrawal 
from  active  life  of  that  moral  enthusiasm  which  is  the 
leaven  of  society  was  extremely  pernicious,  and  there  can 
be  little  doubt  that  to  this  cause  we  must  in  a  great 
degree  attribute  the  conspicuous  failure  of  the  Church, 
for  some  centuries,  to  effect  any  more  considerable  ame- 
lioration in  the  moral  condition  of  Europe.  There  were, 
however,  some  distinctive  excellencies  springing  even 
from  the  first  phase  of  asceticism,  which,  although  they 
do  not,  as  I  conceive,  suffice  to  counterbalance  these  evils, 
may  justly  qualify  our  censure. 

The  first  condition  "of  all  really  great  moral  excellence 
is  a  spirit  of  genuine  self-sacrifice  and  self-renunciatiom 
habits  of  compromise,  moderation,  reciprocal    self-" 


V 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  165 

restraint,  gentleness,  courtesy,  and  refinement,  which  are 
appropriate  to  luxurious  or  utilitarian  civilisations,  are 
very  favourable  to  the  development  of  many  secondary 
virtues;  but  there  is  in  human  nature  a  capacity  for  a 
higher  and  more  heroic  reach  of  excellence,  which 
demands  very  different  spheres  for  its  display,  accustoms 
men  to  far  nobler  aims,  and  exercises  a  far  greater  attrac- 
tive influence  upon  mankind.  Imperfect  and  distorted 
as  was  the  ideal  of  the  anchorite;  deeply,  too, as  it  was  per- 
verted by  the  admixture  of  a  spiritual  selfishness,  still  the 
example  of  many  thousands,  who,  in  obedience  to  what 
they  believed  to  be  right,  voluntarily  gave  up  everything 
that  men  hold  dear,  cast  to  the  winds  every  compromise 
with  enjoyment,  and  made  extreme  self-abnegation  the 
very  principle  of  their  lives,  was  not  wholly  lost  upon 
the  world.  At  a  time  when  increasing  riches  had  pro- 
foundly tainted  the  Church,  they  taught  men  '  to  love 
labour  more  than  rest,  and  ignominy  more  than  glory, 
and  to  give  more  than  to  receive.'  *  At  a  time  when 
the  passion  for  ecclesiastical  dignities  had  become  the 
scandal  of  the  empire,  they  systematically  abstained  from 
them,  teaching,  in  their  quaint  but  energetic  language, 
that  '  there  are  two  classes  a  monk  should  especially 
avoid — bishops  and  women.'2  The  very  eccentricities  of 
their  lives,  their  uncouth  forms,  their  horrible  penances, 
won  the  admiration  of  rude  men,  and  the  superstitious 
reverence  thus  excited  gradually  passed  to  the  charity  and 
the  self-denial  which  formed  the  higher  elements  of  the 
monastic  character.  Multitudes  of  barbarians  were  con- 
verted to  Christianity  at  the  sight  of  St.  Simeon  Stylites. 


1  This  was  enjoined  in  the  rule  of  St.  Paphnutius.  See  Tillemont, 
tome  x.  p.  45. 

*  '  Omnimodis  monachum  fugere  debere  mulieres  et  episcopo?.' — Cassian, 
X)e  Caenob.  Inst.  xi.  17. 


t 


160  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

The  hermit,  too,  was  speedily  idealised  by  the  popular 
imagination.  The  more  repulsive  features  of  his  life  and 
appearance  were  forgotten.  He  was  thought  of  only  as  an 
old  man  with  long  white  beard  and  gentle  aspect,  weaving 
his  mats  beneath  the  palm-trees,  while  daemons  vainly 
tried  to  distract  him  by  their  stratagems,  and  the  wild 
beasts  grew  tame  in  his  presence,  and  every  disease  and 
ry  sorrow  vanished  at  his  word.  The  imagination 
of  Christendom,  fascinated  by  this  ideal,  made  it  the 
centre  of  countless  legends,  usually  very  childish,  and 
occasionally,  as  we  have  seen,  worse  than  childish,  yet  full 
of  beautiful  touches  of  human  nature,  and  often  convey- 
ing admirable  moral  lessons.1  Nursery  tales,  which  first 
determine  the  course  of  the  infant  imagination,  play  no 
inconsiderable  part  in  the  history  of  humanity.  In  the 
fable  of  Psyche — that  bright  tale  of  passionate  love  with 
which  the  Greek  mother  lulled  her  child  to  rest — Pagan 
antiquity  has  bequeathed  us  a  single  specimen  of  trans- 
cendent beauty,  and  the  lives  of  the  saints  of  the  desert 
often  exhibit  an  imagination  different  indeed  in  kind,  but 
scarcely  less  brilliant  in  its  display.  St.  Antony,  we  are 
told,  was  thinking  one  night  that  he  was  the  best  man  in 
the  desert,  when  it  was  revealed  to  him  that  there  was 
another  hermit  far  holier  than  himself.  In  the  morning 
he  started  across  the  desert  to  visit  this  unknown  saint. 
He  met  first  of  all  a  centaur,  and  afterwards  a  little  man 

1  We  (Cbq  find  now  and  then,  though  I  think  very  rarely,  intellectual 
flashes  of  some  brilliancy.  Two  of  them  strike  me  as  especially  note- 
worthy. St.  Arsenius  refused  to  separate  young  criminals  from  com- 
munion, though  he  had  no  hesitation  about  old  men  ;  for  he  had  observed 
that  young  men  speedily  get  accustomed  and  indifferent  to  the  state  of 
excommunication,  while  old  men  feel  continually,  and  acutely,  the  separa- 
><  rates,  iv.  23.)  St.  Apollonlua  explained  the  Egyptian  idolatry 
with  the  most  intelligent  rationalism.  The  ox,  lie  thought,  was  in  the 
first  instance  worshipped  for  its  domestic  uses  ;  Hie  Nile,  because  it  was  the 
chief  cauae  of  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  &c.     (Rutin us,  Hid.  Man.  cap.  vii.) 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  167 

with  horns  and  goafs  feet,  who  said  that  he  was  a  faun ;  and 
these,  having  pointed  out  the  way,  he  arrived  at  last  at  his 
destination.     St.  Paul  the  hermit,  at  whose  cell  he  stopped, 
was  one  hundred  and  thirteen  years  old,  and,  having  been 
living  for  a  very  long  period  in  absolute  solitude,  he  at  first 
refused  to  admit  the  visitor,  but  at  last  consented,  embraced 
him,  and  began,  with  a  very  pardonable  curiosity,  to  ques- 
tion him  minutely  about  the  world  he  had  left ;  '  whether 
there  was  much  new  building  in  the  towns,  what  empire 
ruled  the  world,  whether  there  were  any  idolaters  remain- 
ing?'    The  colloquy  was  interrupted  by  a  crow,  which 
came  with  a  loaf  of  bread,  and  St.  Paul,  observing  that  dur- 
ing the  last  sixty  years  his  daily  allowance  had  been  only 
half  a  loaf,  declared  that  this  was  a  proof  that  he  had  done 
right  in  admitting  Antony.     The  hermits  returned  thanks, 
and  sat  down  together  by  the  margin  of  a  glassy  stream. 
But  now  a  difficulty  arose.     Neither  could  bring  himself 
to  break  the  loaf  before  the  other.     St.  Paul  alleged  that 
St.  Antony,  being  his  guest,  should  take  the  precedence ; 
but  St.  Antony,  who  was  only  ninety  years  old,  dwelt 
upon  the  greater  age  of  St.  Paul.    So  scrupulously  polite 
were  these  old  men,  that  they  passed  the  entire  afternoon 
disputing  on  this  weighty  question,  till  at  last,  when  the 
evening  was  drawing  in,  a  happy  thought  struck  them, 
and,  each  holding  one  end  of  the  loaf,  they  pulled  together. 
To  abridge  the  story,  St.  Paul  soon  died,  and  his  com- 
panion, being  a  weak  old  man,  was  unable  to  bmy  him, 
when  two  lions  came  from  the  desert  and  dug  the  grave 
with  their  paws,  deposited  the  body  in  it,  raised  a  loud  howl 
of  lamentation,  and  then  knelt  down  submissively  before 
St.  Antony,  to  beg  a  blessing.     The  authority  for  this 
history  is  no  less  a  person  than  St.  Jerome,  who  relates 
it  as  literally  true,  and  intersperses  his  narrative  with 
severe  reflections  on  all  who  might  question  his  accuracy. 

45 


168  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

The  historian  Palladius  assures  us  that  he  heard  from 
the  lips  of  St.  Macarius  of  Alexandria  an  account  of 
a  pilgrimage  which  that  saint  had  made,  under  the 
impulse  of  curiosity,  to  visit  the  Enchanted  garden  of 
Jannes  and  Jambres,  tenanted  by  demons.  For  nine 
days  Macarius  traversed  the  desert,  directing  his  course 
by  the  stars,  and,  from  time  to  time,  fixing  reeds  in  the 
ground,  as  landmarks  for  his  return ;  but  this  pre- 
caution proved  useless,  for  the  devils  tore  up  the  reeds, 
and  placed  them  during  the  night  by  the  head  of  the 
sleeping  saint.  As  he  drew  near  the  garden,  seventy 
daemons  of  various  forms  came  forth  to  meet  him,  and 
reproached  him  for  disturbing  them  in  their  home.  St. 
Macarius  promised  simply  to  walk  round  and  inspect  the 
wonders  of  the  garden,  and  then  depart  without  doing  it 
any  injury.  He  fulfilled  his  promise,  and  a  journey  of 
twenty  days  brought  him  again  to  his  cell.1  Other  legends 
are,  however,  of  a  less  fantastic  nature ;  and  many  of 
them  display,  though  sometimes  in  very  whimsical  forms, 
a  spirit  of  courtesy  which  seems  to  foreshadow  the  later 
chivalry,  and  some  of  them  contain  striking  protests 
against  the  very  superstitions  that  were  most  prevalent. 
When  St.  Macarius  was  sick,  a  bunch  of  grapes  was  once 
given  to  him,  but  his  charity  impelled  him  to  give  them  to 
another  hermit,  who  in  his  turn  refused  to  keep  them, 
and  at  last,  having  made  the  circuit  of  the  entire  desert, 
they  were  returned  to  the  saint:2  The  same  saint,  whose 
usual  beverage  wras  putrid  water,  never  failed  to  drink 
wine  when  set  before  him  by  the  hermits  he  visited, 
atoning  privately  for  this  relaxation,  which  he  thought 
the  laws  of  courtesy  required,  by  abstaining  from  water 


1  Falladius,  Hist.  Lane.  cap.  xix. 
9  Rufinue,  Sid.  Monach.  cap.  xxix. 


FJEtOM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  1G9 

for  as  many  days  as  he  had  drunk  glasses  of  wine.1  One 
of  his  disciples  once  meeting  an  idolatrous  priest  running 
in  great  haste  across  the  desert,  holding  a  great  stick  in 
his  hand,  cried  out  in  a  loud  voice,  '  Where  are  you 
going,  daemon  ? '  The  priest,  naturally  indignant,  beat  the 
Christian  severely,  and  was  proceeding  on  his  way,  when 
he  met  St.  Macarius,  who  accosted  him  so  courteously 
and  so  tenderly,  that  the  Pagan's  heart  was  touched,  he 
became  a  convert,  and  his  first  act  of  charity  was  to  tend 
the  Christian  whom  he  had  beaten.2  St.  Avitus  being  on  a 
visit  to  St.  Marcian,  this  latter  saint  placed  before  him  some 
bread,  which  Avitus  refused  to  eat,  saying  that  it  was  his 
custom  never  to  touch  food  till  after  sunset.  St.  Marcian 
professing  his  own  inability  to  defer  his  repast,  implored 
his  guest  for  once  to  break  this  custom,  and  being  refused, 
exclaimed,  'Alas!  I  am  filled  with  anguish  that  you 
have  come  here  to  see  a  wise  man  and  a  saint,  and  you 
see  only  a  glutton.'  St.  Avitus  was  grieved,  and  said,  'he 
would  rather  even  eat  flesh  than  hear  such  words,'  and  he 
sat  down  as  desired.  St.  Marcian  then  confessed  that  his 
own  custom  was  the  same  as  that  of  his  brother  saint ; 
'  but,'  he  added,  '  we  know  that  charity  is  better  than 
fasting ;  for  charity  is  enjoined  by  the  Divine  law,  but 
fasting  is  left  in  our  own  power  and  will.'3  St.  Epipha- 
nius  having  invited  St.  Hilarius  to  his  cell,  placed  before 
him  a  dish  of  fowl.  '  Pardon  me,  father,'  said  St.  Hilarius, 
'but  since  I  have  become  a  monk  I  have  never  eaten 
flesh.'  '  And  I,'  said  St.  Epiphanius,  '  since  I  have  become 
a  monk  have  never  suffered  the  sun  to  go  down  upon  my 
wrath.'  '  Your  rule,'  rejoined  the  other,  '  is  more  ex- 
cellent than  mine.' 4     While  a  rich  lady  was  courteously 

1  Tillemont,  Hist.  eccl.  tome  viii.  pp.  583-584. 

8  Ibid.  p.  589.  3  Theodoret,  Thilollt.  cap.  iii. 

4  Verba  Scniorum. 


170  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

fulfilling  the  duties  of  hospitality  to  a  monk,  her  child, 
whom  she  had  for  this  purpose  left,  fell  into  a  well.  It 
lay  unharmed  upon  the  surface  of  the  water,  and  after- 
wards told  its  mother  that  it  had  seen  the  arms  of  the 
saint  sustaining  it  below.1  At  a  time  when  it  was  the 
custom  to  look  upon  the  marriage  state  with  profound 
contempt,  it  was  revealed  to  St,  Macarius  of  Egypt,  that 
two  married  women  in  a  neighbouring  city  were  more 
holy  than  he  was.  The  saint  immediately  visited  them, 
and  asked  their  mode  of  life,  but  they  utterly  repudiated 
the  notion  of  their  sanctity.  'Holy  father/  they  said, 
'  suffer  us  to  tell  you  frankly  the  truth.  Even  this  very 
night  we  did  not  shrink  from  sleeping  with  our  husbands, 
and  what  good  works,  then,  can  you  expect  from  us?' 
The  saint,  however,  persisted  in  his  inquiries,  and,  they 
then  told  him  their  stories.  '  We  are,'  they  said,  '  in  no 
way  related,  but  we  married  two  brothers.  We  have 
lived  together  for  fifteen  years,  without  one  licentious  or 
angry  word.  We  have  entreated  our  husbands  to  let  us 
leave  th°m,  to  join  the  societies  of  holy  virgins,  but  they 
refused  to  permit  us,  and  we  then  promised  before  Heaven 
that  no  worldly  word  should  sully  our  lips.'  '  Of  a  truth,' 
cried  St.  Macarius,  '  I  see  that  God  regards  not  whether 
one  is  virgin  or  married,  whether  one  is  in  a  monastery 
or  in  the  world.  He  considers  only  the  disposition  of  the 
heart,  and  gives  the  Spirit  to  all  who  desire  to  serve  Him, 
whatever  their  condition  may  be.' 2 

I  have  multiplied  these  illustrations  to  an  extent  that 
must,  I  fear,  have  already  somewhat  taxed  the  patience 
of  my  readers ;  but  the  fact  that,  during  a  long  period  of 
history,  these  saintly  legends  formed  the  ideals  guiding 
the  imagination   and  reflecting  the  moral   sentiment  of 

1  Theodoret,  Philoth.  cap.  ii. 

2  Tillemont,  torao  \i'i.  pp.  504-5WL 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  171 

the  Christian  world,  gives  them  an  importance  far  be- 
yond their  intrinsic  value.  Before  dismissing  the  saints 
of  the  desert,  there  is  one  other  class  of  legends  to 
which  I  desire  to  advert.  I  mean  those  which  describe 
the  connection  between  saints  and  the  animal  world. 
These  legends  are,  I  think,  worthy  of  special  notice  in 
moral  history,  as  representing  probably  the  first,  and  at 
the  same  time  one  of  the  most  striking  efforts  ever 
made  in  Christendom  to  inculcate  a  feeling  of  kindness 
and  pity  towards  the  brute  creation.  In  Pagan  antiquity, 
considerable  steps  had  been  made  to  raise  this  form  of 
humanity  to  a  recognised  branch  of  ethics.  The  way 
had  been  prepared  by  numerous  anecdotes  growing  for 
the  most  part  out  of  simple  ignorance  of  natural  history, 
which  all  tended  to  diminish  the  chasm  between  men  and 
animals,  by  representing  the  latter  as  possessing  to  a  very 
high  degree  both  moral  and  rational  qualities.  Elephants, 
it  was  believed,  were  endowed  not  only  with  reason  and 
benevolence,  but  also  with  reverential  feelings.  They  wor- 
shipped the  sun  and  moon,  and  in  the  forests  o£  Mauri- 
tania were  accustomed  to  assemble  every  new  moon, 
at  a  certain  river,  to  perform  religious  rites.1  The  hip- 
popotamus taught  men  the  medicinal  value  of  bleeding, 
being  accustomed,  when  affected  by  plethory,  to  bleed 
itself  with  a  thorn,  and  afterwards  close  the  wound  with 
slime.2  Pelicans  committed  suicide  to  feed  their  young, 
and  bees,  when  they  had  broken  the  laws  of  their  sove- 
reign.3 A  temple  was  erected  at  Sestos  to  commemorate 
the  affection  of  an  eagle  which  loved  a  young  girl,  and 

1  Pliny,  Hist.  Nat.  viii.  1.  Many  anecdotes  of  elephants  are  collected 
(viii.  1-12).     See,  too,  Dion  Cassius,  xxxix.  38. 

2  Pliny,  viii.  40. 

3  Donne's  Biathanatos,  p.  22.  This  habit  of  bees  is  mentioned  by  St. 
Ambrose.  The  pelican,  as  is  well  known,  afterwards  became  an  emblem 
of  Christ. 


17i>  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

upon  her  death  cast  itself  in  despair  into  the  flames  by 
which  her  body  was  consumed.1     Numerous  anecdotes 
related   of  faithful  dogs  which  refused  to    surviv 
their  n.  and  one  of  these  had,  it  was  said,  been 

transformed  into  the  dog-star.2  The  dolphin,  especially, 
became  the  subject  of  many  beautiful  legends,  and  its 
affection  for  its  young,  for  music,  and  above  all  for  little 
children,  excited  the  admiration  not  only  of  the  populace, 
but  of  the  most  distinguished  naturalists.3  Many  philo- 
sophers also  ascribed  to  animals  a  rational  soul,  like  that 
of  man.  According  to  the  Pythagoreans,  human  souls 
transmigrate  after  death  into  animals.  According  to  the 
Stoics  and  others,  the  souls  of  men  and  animals  were 
alike  parts  of  the  all-pervading  Divine  Spirit  that  ani- 
mates the  world.4 

We  may  even  find  traces  from  an  early  period  of  a 
certain  measure  of  legislative  protection  for  animals.  By 
a  very  natural  process,  the  ox,  as  a  principal  agent  in 
agriculture,  and  therefore  a  kind  of  symbol  of  civilisation, 
was  in  many  different  countries  regarded  with  a  peculiar 
reverence.  The  sanctity  attached  to  it  in  Egypt  is  well 
known.  That  tenderness  to  animals,  which  is  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  features  in  the  Old  Testament  writings, 
shows  itself,  among  other  ways,  in  the  command  not  to 
muzzle  the  ox  that  treadeth  out  the  corn,  or  to  yoke  to- 
gether the  ox  and  the  ass.5     Among  the  early  Romans, 

1  Plin.  Hist.  Nat.  x.  0. 

*  A  long  list  of  legends  about  dogs  is  given  by  Legendre,  in  the  very 
curious  chapter  on  animals,  in  his  Traitc  de  V Opinion,  tome  i.  pp.  308-327. 

3  Pliny  tells  some  extremely  pretty  stories  of  this  hind  {Hid,  Nat.  ix. 
8-9).  See,  too,  Aulus  Gellius,  xvi.  19.  The  dolphin,  on  account  of  its 
love  for  its  young,  became  a  common  symbol  of  Christ  among  the  early 
Christians. 

*  A  very  full  account  of  the  0]  h  of  undent  and  modern  philo- 
sophers, concerning   t!i"   souls   <»f   animals,  i.s  given  by  Beyle,  Hid.  $rts. 

•  I.   ravins  K.' 

*  The  Jewish  law  did  not  confine  its  care  to  oxen.    The  leader  will  re- 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  173 

the  same  feeling  was  carried  so  far,  that  for  a  long  time 
it  was  actually  a  capital  offence  to  slaughter  an  ox,  that 
animal  being  pronounced,  in  a  special  sense,  the  fellow- 
labourer  of  man.1  A  similar  law  is  said  to  have  in  early 
times  existed  in  Greece.2  The  beautiful  passage  in  which 
the  Psalmist  describes  how  the  sparrow  could  find  a 
shelter  and  a  home  in  the  altar  of  the  temple,  was  as 
applicable  to  Greece  as  to  Jerusalem.  The  sentiment  of 
Xenocrates  who,  when  a  bird  pursued  by  a  hawk  took 
refuge  in  his  breast,  caressed  and  finally  released  it,  say- 
ing to  his  disciples,  that  a  good  man  should  never  give 
up  a  suppliant,3  was  believed  to  be  shared  by  the  gods, 
and  it  was  regarded  as  an  act  of  impiety  to  disturb  the 
birds  who  had  built  their  nests  beneath  the  porticoes  of 
the  temple.4  A  case  is  related  of  a  child  who  was  even 
put  to  death  on  account  of  an  act  of  aggravated  cruelty 
to  birds.5 


member  the  touching  provision, '  Thou  shalt  not  seethe  a  hid  in  his  mother's 
milk'  (Deut.  xiv.  21) ;  and  the  law  forbidding  men  to  take  a  parent  bird 
that  was  sitting  on  its  young  or  on  its  eggs.     (Deut.  xxii.  6-7.) 

1  'Cujus  tanta  fuit  apud  antiquos  venevatio,  ut  tarn  capital  esset  bovem 
necuisse  quam  civem.' — Columella,  lib.  vi.  in  prooem.  '  Hie  socius  hominum 
in  rustico  opere  et  Cereris  minister.  Ab  hoc  antiqui  manus  ita  abstinere 
voluerunt  ut  capite  sanxerint  si  quis  occidisset.' — Varro,  De  Me  Rustic,  lib. 
ii.  cap.  v. 

2  See  Legendre,  tome  ii.  p.  338.  The  sword  with  which  the  priest 
sacrificed  the  ox  was  afterwards  pronounced  accursed.  (iElian,  Hist.  Var. 
lib.  viii.  cap.  iii.)  3  Diog.  Laert.  Xenocrates. 

4  There  is  a  story  told  in  some  classical  writer,  of  an  ambassador  who 
was  sent  by  his  fellow-countrymen  to  consult  the  oracle  of  Apollo  about  a 
suppliant  who  had  taken  refuge  in  the  city,  and  was  demanded  with  menace 
by  the  enemies.  The  oracle,  being  bribed,  enjoined  the  surrender.  The 
ambassador  on  leaving,  with  seeming  carelessness,  disturbed  the  sparrows 
under  the  portico  of  the  temple,  when  the  voice  from  behind  the  altar 
denounced  his  impiety  for  disturbing  the  guests  of  the  gods.  The  ambas- 
sador replied  with  an  obvious  and  withering  retort.  iElian  says  {Hist.  Var.') 
that  the  Athenians  condemned  to  death  a  boy  for  killing  a  sparrow  that 
had  taken  refuge  in  the  temple  of  iEsculapius. 

8  Quintillian,  Inst,  v.  9. 


174  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

The  general  tendency  of  nations,  as  they  advance 
from  a  rude  and  warlike  to  a  refined  and  peaceful  con- 
dition, from  the  stage  in  which  the  realising  powers  are 
faint  and  dull,  to  those  in  which  they  are  sensitive  and 
vivid,  is  undoubtedly  to  become  more  gentle  and  humane 
in  their  actions ;  but  this,  like  all  other  general  tendencies 
in  history,  may  be  counteracted  or  modified  by  many 
special  circumstances.  The  law  I  have  mentioned  about 
oxen  was  obviously  one  of  those  that  belong  to  a  very 
early  stage  of  progress,  when  legislators  are  labouring  to 
form  agricultural  habits  among  a  warlike  and  nomadic 
people.1  The  games  in  which  the  slaughter  of  animals 
bore  so  large  a  part,  having  been  introduced  but  a  little 
before  the  extinction  of  the  republic,  did  very  much  to 
arrest  or  retard  the  natural  progress  of  humane  senti- 
ments. In  ancient  Greece,  besides  the  bull-fights  of  Thes- 
sily,  the  combats  of  quails  and  cocks2  were  favourite 
amusements,  and  were  much  encouraged  by  the  legis- 

1  In  the  same  way  we  find  several  chapters  in  the  Zcndai-csta  about  the 
criminality  of  injuring  dogs;  which  is  explained  by  the  great  importance  of 
shepherds'  dogs  to  a  pastoral  people. 

8  On  the  origin  of  Greek  cock-fighting,  see  ^Elian,  Hid.  Vat,  ii.  28. 
Many  particulars  about  it  are  given  by  Athemeus.  Chrysippus  maintained 
that  cock-fighting  was  the  final  cause  of  cocks,  these  birds  being  made  by 
Providence  in  order  to  inspire  us  by  the  example  of  their  courage.  (Plu- 
tarch, De  Repug.  Stoic.)  The  Greeks  do  not,  however,  appear  to  have 
known '  cock-throwing/  the  favourite  English  game  of  throwing  a  stick  called 
a  '  cock-stick '  at  cocks.  It  was  a  very  ancient  and  very  popular  amusement, 
and  was  practised  especially  on  Shrove  Tuesday,  and  by  school-boys.  Sir 
Thomas  More  had  been  famous  for  his  skill  in  it.  (Strutt's  Sports  and 
Pastimes,  p.  283.)  Three  origins  of  it  have  been  given  : — 1st,  that  in  the 
I>;mi>h  wan  the  Saxons  failed  to  surprise  a  certain  city,  in  consequence  of 
the  crowing  of  cocks,  and  had  in  consequence  a  great  hatred  of  that  bird ; 
2nd,  that  the  cocks  (galli)  were  special  representatives  of  Frenchmen,  with 
whom  the  English  were  constantly  at  war ;  and  3rd,  that  they  were  con- 
nected with  the  denial  of  St.  Peter.  As  Sir  Charles  Sedley  said  : — 
'Mayst  thou  be  punished  for  St  Petri's  crime, 
And  on  Shrove  Tuesday  perish  in  thy  prime.' 

Knight's  Old  lln (jl and,  vol.  ii.  p.  126. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  175 

lators,  as  furnishing  examples  of  valour  to  the  soldiers. 
The  colossal  dimensions  of  the  Soman  games,  the  cir- 
cumstances that  favoured  them,  and  the  overwhelming 
interest  they  speedily  excited,  I  have  described  in  a  for- 
mer chapter.  We  have  seen,  however,  that  notwith- 
standing the  gladiatorial  shows,  the  standard  of  humanity 
towards  men  was  considerably  raised  during  the  empire. 
It  is  also  well  worthy  of  notice,  that  notwithstanding  the 
passion  for  the  combats  of  wild  beasts,  Eoman  literature 
and  the  later  literature  of  the  nations  subject  to  Some 
abound  in  delicate  touches  displaying  in  a  very  high  de- 
gree a  sensitiveness  to  the  feelings  of  the  animal  world. 
This  tender  interest  in  animal  life  is  one  of  the  most 
distinctive  features  of  the  poetry  of  Virgil.  Lucretius, 
who  rarely  struck  the  chords  of  pathos,  had  at  a  still 
earlier  period  drawn  a  very  beautiful  picture  of  the 
sorrows  of  the  bereaved  cow,  whose  calf  had  been  sacri- 
ficed upon  the  altar.1  Plutarch  mentions,  incidentally, 
that  he  could  never  bring  himself  to  sell,  in  its  old  age, 
the  ox  which  had  served  him  faithfully  in  the  time  of  its 
strength.2  Ovid  expressed  a  similar  sentiment  with  an 
almost  equal  emphasis.3  Juvenal  speaks  of  a  Eoman 
lady  with  her  eyes  filled  with  tears  on  account  of  the 
death  of  a  sparrow.4   Apollonius  of  Tyana,  on  the  ground 

1  De  Natura  IZerum,  lib.  ii. 

2  Life  of  Marc.  Cato. 

*  '  Quid  meruere  boves,  animal  sine  fraude  dolisque, 

Innocuum,  simplex,  natum  tolerare  labores  ? 
Iramemor  est  demum  nee  frugum  munere  dignus, 
Qui  potuit  curvi  dempto  niodo  pondere  aratri 
Ruricolam  mactare  simm.' — Metamorph.  xv.  120-124. 

4  'Cujus 

Turbavit  nitidos  extinctus  passer  ocellos.' 

Juvenal,  Sat.  vi.  7-8. 

There  is  a  little  poem  in  Catullus  (iii.)  to  console  bis  mistress  upon 
the  death  of  her  favourite  sparrow ;  and  Martial  more  than  once  alludes  to 
the  pets  of  the  Roman  ladies. 


176  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN    MORALS. 

of  humanity,  refused,  even  when  invited  by  a  king,  to  par- 
ticipate IB  the  chase.1  Arrian,  the  friend  of  Epictetus,  in 
his  book  upon  coursing,  anticipated  the  beautiful  picture 
which  Addison  has  drawn  of  the  huntsman  refusing  to 
sacrifice  the  life  of  the  captured  hare  which  had  given 
him  so  much  pleasure  in  its  flight.2 

These  touches  of  feeling,  slight  as  they  may  appear, 
indicate,  I  think,  a  vein  of  sentiment  such  as  we  should 
scarcely  have  expected  to  find  coexisting  with  the 
gigantic  slaughter  of  the  amphitheatre.  The  progress, 
however,  was  not  simply  one  of  sentiment — it  was  also 
shown  in  distinct  and  definite  teaching.  Pythagoras  and 
Empedocles  were  quoted  as  the  founders  of  this  branch  of 
ethics.  The  moral  duty  of  kindness  to  animals  was  in 
the  first  instance  based  upon  a  dogmatic  assertion  of  the 
transmigration  of  souls,  and  the  doctrine  that  animals  are 
within  the  circle  of  human  duty,  being  thus  laid  down, 
subsidiary  considerations  of  humanity  were  alleged.  The 
rapid  growth  of  the  Pythagorean  school,  in  the  latter 
days  of  the  empire,  made  these  considerations  familiar  to 
the  people.3     Porphyry  elaborately  advocated,  and  even 

Compare  the  charming  description  of  the  Prioress,  in  Chaucer : — 
'  She  was  so  charitable  and  so  pitous, 
She  wolde  wepe  if  that  she  saw  a  mous 
Caughtc  in  a  trappe,  if  it  -were  ded  or  hledde. 
Of  smale  houndes  had  she  that  she  fedde 
With  rosted  flesh  and  milke  and  wastel  brede, 
But  sore  wept  she  if  on  of  them  were  dede, 
Or  if  men  smote  it  with  a  yerde  smert : 
And  all  was  conscience  and  tendre  herte.' 

Pi'oloyuc  to  the  '  Canterbury  Tales.' 
1  rhilost.  Apol.  i.  38. 

a  See  the  curious  chapter  in  his  KwqyiTtKi'n;,  xvi.  and  compare  it  with  No. 
110  in  the  Spectator. 

3  In  his  De  Abstinentia  Cami*.  The  controversy  between  Origen  and 
Celsus  furnishes  us  witli  a  very  curious  illustration  of  the  extravagancies 
into  which  some  Pngans  of  the  third  century  fell  about  animals.  Celsus 
objected  to  the  Christian  doctrine  about  the  position  of  men  in  the  universe; 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  177 

Seneca  for  a  time  practised,  abstinence  from  flesh  But 
the  most  remarkable  figure  in  this  movement  is  unques- 
tionably Plutarch.  Casting  aside  the  dogma  of  transmi- 
gration, or  at  least  speaking  of  it  only  as  a  doubtful 
conjecture,  he  places  the  duty  of  kindness  to  animals  on 
the  broad  ground  of  the  affections,  and  he  urges  that 
duty  with  an  emphasis  and  a  detail  to  which  no  adequate 
parallel  can,  I  believe,  be  found  in  the  Christian  writ- 
ings for  at  least  seventeen  hundred  years.  He  condemns 
absolutely  the  games  of  the  amphitheatres,  dwells  with 
great  force  upon  the  effect  of  such  spectacles  in  hardening 
the  character,  enumerates  in  detail,  and  denounces  with 
unqualified  energy,  the  refined  cruelties  which  gastronomic 
fancies  had  produced,  and  asserts  in  the  strongest  lan- 
guage that  every  man  has  duties  to  the  animal  world  as 
truly  as  to  his  fellow-men.1 

If  we  now  pass  to  the  Christian  Church,  we  shall  find 
that  little  or  no  progress  was  at  first  made  in  this 
sphere.  Among  the  Manicheans,  it  is  true,  the  mixture  of 
Oriental  notions  was  shown  in  an  absolute  prohibition  of 
animal  food,  and  abstinence  from  this  food  was  also  fre- 
quently practised  upon  totally  different  grounds  by  the 
orthodox.  One  or  two  of  the  Fathers  have  also  men- 
tioned with  approbation  the  humane  councils  of  the 
Pythagoreans.2  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  doctrine  of 
transmigration  was  emphatically  repudiated  by  the  Catho- 
lics ;  the  human  race  was  isolated,  by  the  scheme  of  re- 


that  many  of  the  animals  were  at  least  the  equals  of  men  both  in  reason 
and  in  religious  feeling  and  knowledge.     (Orig.  Cont.  Cels.  lib.  iv.) 

1  These  views  are  chiefly  defended  in  his  two  tracts  on  eating  flesh. 
Plutarch  has  also  recurred  to  the  subject,  incidentally,  in  several  other 
works ;  especially  in  a  very  beautiful  passage  in  his  Life  of  Marcus  Cato. 

3  See,  for  example,  a  striking  passage  in  Clem.  Alex.  Strom,  lib.  ii. 
St.  Clement  imagines  Pythagoras  had  borrowed  his  sentiments  on  this 
subject  from  Moses. 


178  HISTORY  OP  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

demption,  more  than  ever  from  all  other  races ;  and  in  the 
range  and  circle  of  duties  inculcated  by  the  early  Fathers 
those  to  animals  had  no  place.  This  is  indeed  the  one 
form  of  humanity  which  appears  more  prominently  in  the 
Old  Testament  than  in  the  New.  The  many  beautiful 
traces  of  it  in  the  former,  which  indicate  a  sentiment,1 
even  where  they  do  not  very  strictly  define  a  duty,  gave 
way  before  an  ardent  philanthropy  which  regarded  human 
interests  as  the  one  end,  and  the  relations  of  man  to  his 
Creator  as  the  one  question  of  life,  and  dismissed  some- 
what contemptuously,  as  an  idle  sentimentalism,  notions  of 
duty  to  animals.2  A  refined  and  subtle  sympathy  with 
animal  feeling  is  indeed  rarely  found  among  those  who 
are  engaged  very  actively  in  the  affairs  of  life,  and  it  was 
not  without  a  meaning  or  a  reason  that  Shakspeare  placed 
that  exquisitely  pathetic  analysis  of  the  sufferings  of  the 
wounded  stag,  which  is  perhaps  its  most  perfect  poetical 
expression,  in  the  midst  of  the  morbid  dreamings  of  the 
diseased  and  melancholy  Jacques. 

But  while  what  are  called  the  rights  of  animals  had  no 
place  in  the  ethics  of  the  Church,  a  feeling  of  sympathy 
with  the  irrational  creation  was  in  some  degree  inculcated 
indirectly  by  the  incidents  of  the  hagiology.  It  was  very 
natural  that  the  hermit,  living  in  the  lonely  deserts  of  the 
East,  or  in  the  vast  forests  of  Europe,  should  come  into 

1  There  is,  I  believe,  no  record  of  any  wild  beast  combat3  existing 
UUOng  the  Jews,  and  the  rabbinical  writers  have'  been  remarkable  for  the 
•  emphasis  with  which  they  inculcated  the  duty  of  kindness  to  animals. 
See  some  passages  from  them,  cited  in  Wollaston,  Religion  of  Nature,  §  ii. 
§  1,  note.  .M;ii:iic.nide8  believed  in  a  future  life  for  animals,  to  recompense 
them  for  their  sufferings  here.  (Bayle,  Diet.  art.  '  Rorarius  D.')  Tin  -re  is 
a  curious  collection  of  the  opinions  of  different  writers  on  this  last  point 
in  a  little  book  called  the  Mights  of  Animals,  by  William  Driimmond 
!on,  1838),  pp.  107-205. 

u  Thus  St.  Paul  (1  Cor.  ix.  9)  turned  aside  the  precept,  '  Thou  shalt  not 
muzzle  the  mouth  of  the  ox  that  treadeth  out  the  corn,'  from  its  natural 
meaning,  with  the  contemptuous  question,  'Doth  God  take  care  for  oxen?' 


FROM   CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  179 

an  intimate  connection  with  the  animal  world,  and  it  was 
no  less  natural  that  the  popular  imagination,  when  de- 
picting the  hermit  life,  should  make  this  connection  the 
centre  of  many  picturesque  and  sometimes  touching 
legends.  The  birds,  it  was  said,  stooped  in  their  flight  at 
the  old  man's  call ;  the  lion  and  the  hyena  crouched  sub- 
missively at  his  feet ;  his  heart,  which  was  closed  to  all 
human  interests,  expanded  freely  at  the  sight  of  some 
suffering  animal ;  and  something  of  his  own  sanctity  de- 
scended to  the  companions  of  his  solitude  and  the  objects 
of  his  miracles.  The  wild  beasts  attended  St.  Theon  when 
he  walked  abroad,  and  the  saint  rewarded  them  by  giving 
them  drink  out  of  his  well.  An  Egyptian  hermit  had 
made  a  beautiful  garden  in  the  desert,  and  used  to  sit 
beneath  the  palm-trees  while  a  lion  eat  fruit  from  his 
hand.  When  St.  Poemen  was  shivering  in  a  winter  night, 
a  lion  crouched  beside  him,  and  became  his  covering. 
Lions  buried  St.  Paul  the  hermit  and  St.  Mary  of  Egypt. 
They  appear  in  the  legends  of  St.  Jerome,  St.  Gerasimus, 
St.  John  the  Silent,  St.  Simeon,  and  many  others.  When 
an  old  and  feeble  monk,  named  Zosimas,  was  on  his 
journey  to  Cassarea,  with  an  ass  which  bore  his  pos- 
sessions, a  lion  seized  and  devoured  the  ass,  but,  at 
the  command  of  the  saint,  the  lion  itself  carried  the 
burden  to  the  city  gates.  St.  Helenus  called  a  wild  ass 
from  its  herd  to  bear  his  burden  through  the  wilder- 
ness. The  same  saint,  as  well  as  St.  Pachomius,  crossed 
the  Nile  on  the  back  of  a  crocodile,  as  St.  Scuthinus  did 
the  Irish  Channel  on  a  sea  monster.  Stags  continually  ac- 
companied saints  upon  their  journeys,  bore  their  burdens, 
ploughed  their  fields,  revealed  their  relics.  The  hunted 
stag  was  especially  the  theme  of  many  picturesque  legends. 
A  Pagan,  named  Branchion,  was  once  pursuing  an  ex- 
hausted stag,  when  it  took  refuge  in  a  cavern,  whose 


180  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

threshold  no  inducement  could  persuade  the  hounds  to 
cross.  The  astonished  hunter  entered,  and  found  himself 
in  presence  of  an  old  hermit,  who  at  once  protected  the 
fugitive  and  converted  the  pursuer.  In  the  legends  of 
St.  Eustachius  and  St.  Hubert,  Christ  is  represented  as 
having  assumed  the  form  of  a  hunted  stag,  which  turned 
upon  its  pursuer,  with  a  crucifix  glittering  on  its  brow, 
and,  addressing  him  with  a  human  voice,  converted  him 
to  Christianity.  In  the  full  frenzy  of  a  chase,  hounds  and 
stags  stopped  and  knelt  down  together  to  venerate  the 
relics  of  St.  Fingar.  On  the  festival  of  St.  Eegulus,  the  wild 
stags  assembled  at  the  tomb  of  the  saint,  as  the  ravens 
used  to  do  at  that  of  St.  Apollinar  of  Eavenna.  St.  Eras- 
mus was  the  special  protector  of  oxen,  and  they  knelt 
down  voluntarily  before  his  shrine.  St.  Anthony  was  the 
protector  of  hogs,  who  were  usually  introduced  into  his 
pictures.  St.  Bridget  kept  pigs,  and  a  wild  boar  came 
from  the  forest  to  subject  itself  to  her  rule.  A  horse  fore- 
shadowed by  its  lamentations  the  death  of  St.  Columba. 
The  three  companions  of  St.  Colman  were  a  cock,  a  mouse, 
and  a  fly.  The  cock  announced  the  hour  of  devotion, 
the  mouse  bit  the  ear  of  the  drowsy  saint  till  he  got  up, 
and  if  in  the  course  of  his  studies  he  was  afflicted  by  any 
wandering  thoughts,  or  called  away  to  other  business,  the 
fly  alighted  on  the  line  where  he  had  left  off,  and  kept 
the  place.  Legends,  not  without  a  certain  whimsical 
beauty,  described  the  moral  qualities  existing  in  animals. 
A  hermit  was  accustomed  to  share  his  supper  with  a 
wolf,  which,  one  evening  entering  the  cell  before  the 
return  of  the  master,  stole  a  loaf  of  bread.  Struck  with 
remorse,  it  was  a  week  before  it  ventured  again  to  visit 
the  cell,  and  when  it  did  so,  its  head  hung  down,  and  its 
whole  demeanour  manifested  the  most  profound  contri- 
tion.    The  hermit  c  stroked  with  a  gentle  hand  its  bowed 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  181 

down  head,'  and  gave  it  a  double  portion  as  a  token  of 
forgiveness.  A  lioness  knelt  down  with  lamentations 
before  another  saint,  and  then  led  him  to  its  cub,  which 
was  blind,  but  which  received  its  sight  at  the  prayer 
of  the  saint.  Next  day  the  lioness  returned,  bearing 
the  skin  of  a  wild  beast  as  a  mark  of  its  gratitude.  Nearly 
the  same  thing  happened  to  St.  Macarius  of  Alexandria ; 
a  hyena  knocked  at  his  door,  brought  its  young,  which, 
was  blind,  and  which  the  saint  restored  to  sight,  and  re- 
paid the  obligation  soon  afterwards,  by  bringing  a  fleece 
of  wool.  '  0  hyena ! '  said  the  saint,  '  how  did  you 
obtain  this  fleece?  you  must  have  stolen  and  eaten  a 
sheep.'  Full  of  shame,  the  hyena  hung  its  head  clown, 
but  persisted  in  offering  its  gift,  which,  however,  the  holy 
man  refused  to  receive  till  the  hyena  'had  sworn'  to 
cease  for  the  future  to  rob.  The  hyena  bowed  its  head 
in  token  of  its  acceptance  of  the  oath,  and  St.  Macarius 
afterwards  gave  the  fleece  to  St.  Melania.  Other  legends 
simply  speak  of  the  sympathy  between  saints  and  the 
irrational  world.  The  birds  came  at  the  call  of  St. 
Cuthbert,  and  a  dead  bird  was  resuscitated  by  his  prayer. 
When  St.  Aengussius,  in  felling  wood,  had  cut  his  hand, 
the  birds  gathered  round,  and  writh  loud  cries  lamented 
his  misfortune.  A  little  bird,  struck  down  and  mortally 
wounded  by  a  hawk,  fell  at  the  feet  of  St.  Kieranus, 
who  shed  tears  as  he  looked  upon  its  torn  breast,  and 
offered  up  a  prayer,  upon  which  the  bird  was  instantly 
healed.1 


1  I  have  taken  these  illustrations  from  the  collection  of  hermit  literature 
in  Rosweyde,  from  different  volumes  of  the  Bollandists,  from  the  Dia- 
logues of  Sulpicius  Severus,  and  from  what  is  perhaps  the  most  interesting 
of  all  collections  of  saintly  legends,  Colgan's  Acta  Sanctorum  Hibernian.  M. 
Alfred  Maury,  in  his  most  valuable  work,  Legcndes  pievscs  da  Moyen  Age, 
lias  examined  minutely  the  part  played  by  animals  in  symbolising  virtues 
and  vices,  and  has  shown  the  way  in  which  the  same  incidents  were 


182  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

Many  hundreds,  I  should  perhaps  hardly  exaggerate 
were  I  to  say  many  thousands  of  legends,  of  this  kind 
exist  in  the  lives  of  the  saints.  Suggested  in  the  first  in- 
stance by  that  desert  life  which  was  at  once  the  earliest 
phase  of  monachism  and  one  of  the  earliest  sources  of 
Christian  mythology,  strengthened  by  the  symbolism 
which  represented  different  virtues  and  vices  under  the 
forms  of  animals,  and  by  the  reminiscences  of  the  rites 
and  the  superstitions  of  Paganism,  the  connection  be- 
tween men  and  animals  became  the  key-note  of  an 
infinite  variety  of  fantastic  tales.  In  our  eyes  they  may 
appear  extravagantly  puerile,  yet  it  will  scarcely,  I  hope, 
be  necessary  to  apologise  for  introducing  them  into  what 
purports  to  be  a  grave  work,  when  it  is  remembered  that 
for  many  centuries  they  were  universally  accepted  by 
mankind,  and  were  so  interwoven  with  all  local  traditions, 
and  with  all  the  associations  of  education,  that  they 
at  once  determined  and  reflected  the  inmost  feelings  of 
the  heart.  Their  tendency  to  create  a  certain  feeling  of 
sympathy  towards  animals  is  manifest,  and  this  is  probably 
the  utmost  the  Catholic  Church  has  done  in  that  direc- 
tion.1 A  very  few  authentic  instances  may,  indeed,  be 
cited  of  saints  whose  natural  gentleness  of  disposition  was 
displayed  in  kindness  to  the  animal  world.  Of  St.  James 
of  Venice — an  obscure  saint  of  the  thirteenth  century — 
it  is  told  that  he  was  accustomed  to  buy  and  release  the 
birds  witli  which  Italian  boys  used  to  play  by  attaching 


repeated,  with  slight  variations,  in  different  legends.  M.  de  Montalembert 
has  devoted  what  is  probably  the  most  beautiful  chapter  of  his  MoIuch 
d Occident  ('Les  Moines  et  la  Nature  ')  to  the  relations  of  monks  and  the 
animal  world  :  but  tin:  numerous  legends  he  cites  are  all,  with  one  or  two 
.  different  from  those  I  have  given. 
1  Chateaubriand  speaks,  however  (iZtudcs  hixtorir/urx,  etude  vim%  partie 
1"),  of  an  old  Gallic  law,  forbidding  to  throw  a  stone  at  an  ox  attached  to 
the  plough,  or  to  make  its  yoke  too  tight. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  183 

them  to  strings,  saying  that  J  he  pitied  the  little  birds  of 
the  Lord,'  and  that  his  '  tender  charity  recoiled  from  all 
cruelty,  even  to  the  most  diminutive  of  animals.' 1  St. 
Francis  of  Assisi  was  a  more  conspicuous  example  of  the 
same  spirit.  4  If  I  could  only  be  presented  to  the  em- 
peror,' he  used  to  say,  '  I  would  pray  him,  for  the  love  of 
God,  and  of  me,  to  issue  an  edict  prohibiting  anyone  from 
catching  or  imprisoning  my  sisters  the  larks,  and  ordering, 
that  all  who  have  oxen  or  asses  should  at  Christmas  feed 
them  particularly  well.'  A  crowd  of  legends  turning 
upon  this  theme  were  related  of  him.  A  wolf,  near 
Gubbio,  being  adjured  by  him,  promised  to  abstain  from 
eating  sheep,  placed  its  paw  in  the  hand  of  the  saint,  to 
ratify  the  promise,  and  was  afterwards  fed  from  house  to 
house  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  city.  A  crowd  of  birds, 
on  another  occasion,  came  to  hear  the  saint  preach,  as 
fish  did  to  hear  St.  Anthony  of  Padua,  A  falcon  awoke 
him  at  his  hour  of  prayer.  A  grasshopper  encouraged 
him  by  her  melody  to  sing  praises  to  God.  The  noisy 
swallows  kept  silence  when  he  began  to  teach.2 

On  the  whole,  however,  Catholicism  has  done  very, 
little  to  inculcate  humanity  to  animals.  The  fatal  vice  of 
theologians,  who  have  always  looked  upon  others  solely 
through  the  medium  of  their  own  special  dogmatic  views, 
has  been  an  obstacle  to  all  advance  in  this  direction.  The 
animal  world,  being  altogether  external  to  the  scheme  of 

1  Bollandists,  May  31.  Leonardo  da  Vinci  is  said  to  Lave  had  the 
same  fondness  for  "buying  and  releasing  caged  birds,  and  (to  go  back  a 
long  way)  Pythagoras  to  have  purchased  one  day,  near  Metapontus,  from 
some  iishermen  all  the  fish  in  their  net,  that  lie  might  have  the  pleasure 
of  releasing  them.     (Apuleius,  Apoloyia.) 

3  See  these  legends  collected  by  Hase  (St.  Francis.  Assisi).  It  is  said 
of  Cardinal  Bellarmine,  that  he  used  to  allow  vermin  to  bite  him,  saying, 
'  We  shall  have  heaven  to  reward  us  for  our  sufferings,  but  these  poor 
creatures  have  nothing  but  the  enjoyment  of  tins  present  life.'  (Bayle, 
Diet,  philos.  art.  '  Bellarmine.') 
4G 


184  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

redemption,  was  regarded  as  beyond  the  range  of  duty, 
and  the  notion  of  our  having  any  kind  of  obligation  to 
them  lias  never  been  inculcated — has  never,  I  believe, 
been  even  admitted  by  Catholic  theologians.  In  the 
popular  legends,  and  in  the  recorded  traits  of  individual 
amiability,  it  is  curious  to  observe  how  constantly  those 
who  have  sought  to  inculcate  kindness  to  animals  have 
done  so  by  endeavouring  to  associate  them  with  some- 
thing distinctively  Christian.  The  legends  I  have  noticed 
glorified  them  as  the  companions  of  the  saints.  The  stag 
was  honoured  as  especially  commissioned  to  reveal  the 
relics  of  saints,  and  as  the  deadly  enemy  of  the  serpent. 
In  the  feast  of  asses,  that  animal  was  led  with  veneration 
into  the  churches,  and  a  rude  hymn  proclaimed  its  dig- 
nity, because  it  had  borne  Christ  in  His  flight  to  Egypt,  and 
on  His  entry  into  Jerusalem.  St.  Francis  always  treated 
limbs  with  a  peculiar  tenderness,  as  being  symbols  of  his 
Master.  Luther  grew  sad  and  thoughtful  at  a  hare  hunt, 
for  it  seemed  to  him  to  represent  the  pursuit  of  souls  by 
the  devil.  Many  popular  legends  exist,  associating  some 
bird  or  animal  with  some  incident  in  the  evangelical  nar- 
rative, and  securing  for  them,  in  consequence,  an  unmo- 
lested life.  But  such  influences  have  never  extended  far. 
There  are  two  distinct  objects  which  may  be  considered 
by  moralists  in  this  sphere.     They  may  regard  the  cha- 

ter  of  the  men,  or  they  may  regard  the  sufferings  of 
animals.     The  amount  of  callousness  or  of  conscious 

city  displayed  or  elicited  by  amusements  or  prac- 
tices that  inflict  sufferings  on  animals,  bears  no  kind  of 
proportion  to  the  intensity  of  thajt  suffering.  Could  we 
follow  with  adequate  realisation  the  pangs  of  the  wounded 
birds  that  are  struck  down  in  our  sports,  or  of  the  timid 
hare  in  the  long  course  of  its  flight,  we  should  probably 
conclude  that  they  were  not  really  less  than  those  caused 


FROM  CONSTANTINE   TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  185 

by  the  Spanisli  bull-fight,  or  by  the  English  pastimes  of 
the  last  century.  But  the  excitement  of  the  chase  refracts 
the  imagination ;  the  diminutive  size  of  the  victim,  and 
the  undemonstrative  character  of  its  suffering,  withdraw 
it  from  our  sight,  and  these  sports  do  not,  in  consequence, 
exercise  that  prejudicial  influence  upon  character  which 
they  would  exercise  if  the  sufferings  of  the  animals  were 
vividly  realised,  and  were  at  the  same  time  accepted  as 
an  element  of  the  enjoyment.  That  class  of  amusements 
of  which  the  ancient  combats  of  wild  beasts  form  the 
type,  have  no  doubt  nearly  disappeared  from  Christendom, 
and  it  is  possible  that  the  softening  power  of  Christian 
teaching  may  have  had  some  indirect  influence  in  abolish- 
ing them ;  but  a  candid  judgment  will  confess  that  it  has 
been  very  little.  During  the  periods,  and  in  the  countries, 
in  which  theological  influence  was  supreme,  they  were 
unchallenged.1  They  disappeared2  at  last,  because  a  lux- 
urious and  industrial  civilisation  involved  a  refinement  of 
manners ;  because  a  fastidious  taste  recoiled  with  a  sensa- 
tion of  disgust  from  pleasures  that  an  uncultivated  taste 
would  keenly  relish  ;  because  the  drama,  at  once  reflect- 
ing and  accelerating  the  change,  gave  a  new  form  to 
popular  amusements,  and  because,  in  consequence  of  this 

1  I  have  noticed,  in  my  History  of  Rationalism,  that  although  some  Popes 
did  undoubtedly  try  to  suppress  Spanish  hull-fights,  this  was  solely  on 
account  of  the  destruction  of  human  life  they  caused.  Full  details  on  this 
subject  will  he  found  in  Concina,  Be  Spcctaculis  (Romse,  1752).  Bayle  says, 
1 II  n'y  a  point  de  casuiste  qui  croie  qu'on  peche  en  faisant  comhattre  des 
taureaux  contre  des  dogues,'  &c.     (Diet,  philos.  '  Itorarius,  C) 

3  On  the  ancient  amusements  of  England  the  reader  may  consult  Sey- 
mour's Survey  of  London  (1734),  vol.  i.  pp.  227-235 ;  Strutt's  Sports  and 
Pastimes  of  the  English  Teople.  Cock-fighting  was  a  favourite  children's 
amusement  in  England  as  early  as  the  twelfth  century.  (Hampson's  Medii 
JEci  Kalendarii,  vol.  i.  p.  1G0.  It  was,  with  foot-hall  and  several  other 
amusements,  for  a  time  suppressed  by  Edward  III.,  on  the  ground  that  they 
were  diverting  the  people  from  archery,  which  was  necessary  to  the  mili- 
tary greatness  of  England. 


186  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

revolution,  the  old  practices  being  left  to  the  dregs  of 
society,  they  became  the  occasions  of  scandalous  disor- 
ders.1    In  Protestant  countries  the  clergy  have,  on  the 

1  The  decline  of  these  amusements  in  England  began  with  the  great 
lopment  of  the  theatre  under  Elizabeth.  An  order  of  the  Privy 
Council,  in  July  1591,  prohibits  the  exhibition  of  plays  on  Thursday, 
because  on  Thursdays  bear-baiting  and  suchlike  pastimes  had  been  usually 
practised,  and  an  injunction  to  the  same  effect  was  sent  to  the  Lord  Mayor, 
wherein  it  was  stated  that,  i  in  divers  places  the  players  do  use  to  recite 
their  plays,  to  the  great  hurt  and  destruction  of  the  game  of  bear-baiting 
and  like  pastimes,  which  are  maintained  for  Her  Majesty's  pleasure.' — 
Nichols.  Progresses  of  Queen  Elizabeth  (ed.  1823),  vol.  i.  p.  438.  The  reader 
will  remember  the  pictm-e  in  Kcmlworth  of  the  Duke  of  Sussex  petitioning 
Elizabeth  against  Shakespeare,  on  the  ground  of  his  plays  distracting  men 
from  bear-baiting.  Elizabeth  (see  Nichols)  was  extremely  fond  of  bear- 
baiting.  James  I.  especially  delighted  in  cock-lighting,  and  in  1G10  was 
eat  at  a  great  fight  between  a  lion  and  a  bear.  (Home,  Every  Day 
Booh,  vol.  i.  pp.  255-299).  The  theatres,  however,  rapidly  multiplied,  and 
a  writer  who  lived  about  1G29  said,  l  that  no  less  than  seventeen  playhouses 
had  been  built  in  or  about  London  within  threescore  years.'  (Seymour's 
Survey,  vol.  i.  p.  229.)  The  Rebellion  suppressed  all  public  amusements, 
and  when  they  were  re-established  after  the  Restoration,  it  was  found  that 
the  tastes  of  the  better  classes  no  longer  sympathised  with  the  bear-garden. 
IVpys'  (Diary,  August  14,  10G0)  speaks  of  bull-baiting  as  'a  very  rude 
and  nasty  pleasure,'  and  says  he  had  not  been  in  the  bear-gavden  for  many 
elyn  (Diary,  June  10,  1G70),  having  been  present  at  these  shows, 
describes  them  as  i  butcherly  sports,  or  rather  barbarous  cruelties,'  and  says 
he  had  not  visited  them  before  for  twenty  years.  A  paper  in  the  Spectator 
111.  written  in  1711)  talks  of  those  who  (  seek  their  diversion  at  the 
bear-garden,  .  .  .  where  reason  and  good  manners  have  no  right  to  disturb 
them.'  In  1761,  however,  Lord  Karnes  was  able  to  say,  'The  bear-garden, 
which  is  one  of  the  chief  entertainments  of  the  English,  is  held  in  abhor- 
rence by  the  French  and  other  polite  nations.' — Essay  on  Morals  (1st  ed.), 
]».  7:  and  be  warmly  defends  (p.  30)  the  English  taste.  During  the  latter 
half  of  the  last  century  there  was  constant  controversy  on  the  subject 
(which  maybe  traced  in  the  pages  of  the  Annual  Peyider),  and  several 
Men  clergymen  published  sermons  upon  it,  and  the  frequent  riots 
tting  from  tht-  fact  that  the  bear-gardens  had  become  the  resort  of  the 
f  classes  assisted  the  movement.  The  London  magistrates  took  mea- 
sures to  suppress  cock-throwing  in  17G9  (Hampson's  Med.  sEv.  Kalend.  p. 
100);  but  bull-baiting  continued  far  into  the  present  century.  Windham 
and  Canmng  strongly  defended  it;  Dr.  Parr  is  said  to  have  been  fond  of 
it  (Soothey'i  Commonplace  Hook,  vol.  it.  p.  585)  ;  and  as  late  as  1824,  Sir 
Robert  (then  Mr.)  Reel  argued  strongly  against  its  prohibition.  (Parlia- 
mentary Debates,  vol.  x.  pp.  L82-133,  491- 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  187 

whole,  sustained  this  movement.  In  Catholic  countries 
it  has  been  much  more  faithfully  represented  by  the  school 
of  Voltaire  and  Beccaria.  In  treating,  however,  amuse- 
ments which  derived  their  zest  from  a  display  of  the 
natural  ferocious  instincts  of  animals,  and  which  suggest 
the  alternative  between  death  endured  in  the  frenzy  of 
combat  and  that  endured  in  the  remote  slaughter-house, 
a  judicious  moralist  may  reasonably  question  whether 
they  have,  in  any  appreciable  degree,  added  to  the  sum  of 
animal  misery,  and  will  dwell  less  upon  the  suffering  in- 
flicted upon  the  animal  than  upon  the  injurious  influence 
the  spectacle  may  sometimes  exercise  on  the  character 
of  the  spectator.  But  there  are  forms  of  cruelty  which 
must  be  regarded  in  a  different  light.  The  horrors  of 
vivisection,  often  so  wantonly,  so  needlessly  practised,1  the 
prolonged  and  atrocious  tortures,  sometimes  inflicted  in 

1  Bacon,  in  an  account  of  the  deficiencies  of  medicine,  recommends  vivi- 
section in  terms  that  seem  to  imply  that  it  was  not  practised  in  his  time. 
'  As  for  the  passages  and  pores,  it  is  true  which  was  anciently  noted,  that 
the  more  subtle  of  them  appear  not  in  anatomies,  "because  they  are  shut  and 
latent  in  dead  "bodies,  though  they  be  open  and  manifest  in  live ;  which 
being  supposed,  though  the  inhumanity  of  anatomia  vivorum  was  by  Celsus 
justly  reproved,  yet,  in  regard  of  the  great  use  of  this  observation,  the  en- 
quiry needed  not  by  him  so  slightly  to  have  been  relinquished  altogether, 
or  referred  to  the  casual  practices  of  surgery ;  but  might  have  been  well 
diverted  upon  the  dissection  of  beasts  alive,  which,  notwithstanding  the 
dissimilitude  of  their  parts,  may  sufficiently  satisfy  this  enquiry.' — Advance- 
ment of  Learning,  x.  4.  Harvey  speaks  of  vivisections  as  having  contri- 
buted to  lead  him  to  the  discovery  of  the  circulation  of  blood.  (Acland's 
Harveian  Oration  (1865),  p.  55.)  Bayle,  describing  the  treatment  of  ani- 
mals by  men,  says,  '  Nous  fouillons  dans  leurs  entrailles  pendant  leur  vie 
afin  de  satisfaire  notre  curiosite.' — Diet,  philos.  art.  *  Rorarius,  C  Public 
opinion  in  England  was  very  strongly  directed  to  the  subject  in  the  pre- 
sent century,  by  the  atrocious  cruelties  perpetrated  by  Majendie  at  his 
lectures.  See  a  most  frightful  account  of  them  in  a  speech  by  Mr.  Martin 
(an  eccentric  Irish  member,  who  was  generally  ridiculed  during'his  life,  and 
has  been  almost  forgotten  since  his  death,  but  to  whose  untiring  exertions 
the  legislative  protection  of  animals  in  England  is  due). — Parliament.  Hist. 
vol.  xii.  p.  652.  Mandeville,  in  his  day,  was  a  very  strong  advocate  of 
kindness  to  animals. — Commentary  on  Fable  of  the  Bees, 


188  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

order  to  procure  some  gastronomic  delicacy,  are  so  far 
removed  from  the  public  gaze,  that  they  exercise  little 
influence  on  the  character  of  men.  Yet  no  humane  man 
can  reflect  upon  them  witliout  a  shudder.  To  bring  these 
tilings  within  the  range  of  ethics,  to  create  the  notion  of 
duties  towards  the  animal  world,  has,  so  far  as  Christian 
countries  are  concerned,  been  one  of  the  peculiar  merits 
of  the  last  century,  and,  for  the  most  part,  of  Protestant 
nations.  However  fully  we  may  recognise  the  humane 
spirit,  transmitted  to  the  world  in  the  form  of  legends, 
from  the  saints  of  the  desert,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
the  inculcation  of  humanity  to  animals  on  a  wide  scale  is 
mainly  the  work  of  a  recent  and  a  secular  age;  that  the 
Mohammedans  and  the  Brahmins  have  in  this  sphere  con- 
siderably surpassed  the  Christians,  and  that  Spain  and 
Southern  Italy,  in  which  Catholicism  has  most  deeply 
planted  its  roots,  are  even  now,  probably  beyond  all  other 
countries  in  Europe,  those  in  which  inhumanity  to  ani- 
mals is  most  wanton  and  most  unrebuked. 

The  influence  the  first  form  of  monachism  has  exer- 
cised upon  the  world,  as  far  as  it  has  been  beneficial,  has 
been  chiefly  through  the  imagination,  which  has  been 
fascinated  by  its  legends.  In  the  great  periods  of  theolo- 
gical controversy,  the  Eastern  monks  had  furnished  some 
leading  theologians,  but  in  general,  in  Oriental  lands,  the 
hermit  life  predominated,  and  extreme  maceration  was 
the  chief  merit  of  the  saint.  But  in  the  West  monachism 
assumed  very  different  forms,  and  exercised  far  higher 
functions.  At  first  the  Oriental  saints  were  the  ideals  of 
Western  monks.  The  Eastern  St.  Athanasius  had  been 
the  founder  of  Italian  monachism.  St.  Martin  of  Tours 
excluded  labour  from  the  discipline  of  his  monks,  and  he 
and  they,  like  the  Eastern  saints,  were  accustomed  to 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  180 

wander  abroad,  destroying  the  idols  of  the  temples.1  But 
three  great  causes  conspired  to  direct  the  monastic  spirit 
in  the  West  into  practical  channels.  Conditions  of  race 
and  climate  have  ever  impelled  the  inhabitants  of  these 
lands  to  active  life,  and  have  at  the  same  time  rendered 
them  constitutionally  incapable  of  enduring  the  austerities 
or  enjoying  the  hallucinations  of  the  sedentary  Oriental. 
There  arose,  too,  in  the  sixth  century,  a  great  legislator, 
whose-  form  may  be  dimly  traced  through  a  cloud  of 
fantastic  legends,  and  the  order  of  St.  Benedict,  with  that 
of  St.  Columba  and  some  others,  founded  on  substantially 
the  same  principle,  soon  ramified  through  the  greater 
part  of  Europe,  tempered  the  wild  excesses  of  useless 
penances,  and,  making  labour  an  essential  part  of  the 
monastic  system,  directed  the  movement  to  the  pur- 
poses of  general  civilisation.  In  the  last  place,  the  bar- 
barian invasions,  and  the  dissolution  of  the  Western  Em- 
pire, distorting  the  whole  system  of  government  and 
almost  resolving  society  into  its  primitive  elements,  natu- 
rally threw  upon  the  monastic  corporations  social,  political, 
and  intellectual  functions  of  the  deepest  importance. 

It  has  been  observed  that  the  capture  of  Eome  by 
Alaric,  involving  as  it  did  the  destruction  of  the  grandest 
religious  monuments  of  Paganism,  in  fact  established  in 
that  city  the  supreme  authority  of  Christianity.2  A 
similar  remark  may  be  extended  to  the  general  downfall  of 
the  Western  civilisation.  In  that  civilisation  Christianity 
had  indeed  been  legally  enthroned ;  but  the  philosophies 
and  traditions  of  Paganism,  and  the  ingrained  habits  of  an 
ancient,  and  at  the  same  time  an  effete  society,  continually 
paralysed  its  energies.  What  Europe  would  have  been 
without  the   barbarian  invasions,  we  may  partly  divine 

1  See  his  life  by  Sulpicius  Severus.  2  Milman. 


190  HISTORY   OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

from  the  history  of  the  Lower  Empire,  which  represented, 
in  fact,  the  old  Roman  civilisation  prolonged  and  Chris- 
tianized.    The  barbarian  conquests,  breaking  up  .the  old 

•misation,  provided  the  Church  with  a  virgin  soil,  and 
made  it,  for  a  long  period,  the  supreme  and  indeed  sole 
centre  of  civilisation. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  skill  and  courage 
displayed  by  the  ecclesiastics  in  this  most  trying  period. 
We  have  already  seen  the  noble  daring  with  which  they 
interfered  between  the  conqueror  and  the  vanquished,  and 
the  unwearied  charity  with  which  they  sought  to  alle- 
viate the  unparalleled  sufferings  of  Italy,  when  the  colo- 
nial supplies  of  corn  were  cut  off,  and  when  the  fairest 
plains  were  desolated  by  the  barbarians.  Still  more  won- 
derful is  the  rapid  conversion  of  the  barbarian  tribes. 
Unfortunately  this,  which  is  one  of  the  most  important, 
is  also  one  of  the  most  obscure  pages  in  the  history  of  the 
Church.  Of  whole  tribes  or  nations  it  may  be  truly  said 
that  we  are  absolutely  ignorant  of  the  cause  of  their 
change;  The  Goths  had  already  been  converted  by 
Ulphilas,  before  the  downfall  of  the  empire,  and  the  con- 
version of  the  Germans  and  of  several  northern  na- 
tions was  long  posterior  to  it ;  but  the  great  work  of 
Christianising  the  barbarian  world  was  accomplished 
almost  in  the  hour  when  that  world  became  supreme. 
Rude  tribes,  accustomed  in  their  own  lands  to  pay  abso- 
lute obedience  to  their  priests,  found  themselves  in  a 
foreign  country,  confronted  by  a  priesthood  far  more 
civilised  and  imposing  than  that  which  they  had  left,  by 
gorgeous  ceremonies,  well  fitted  to  entice,  and  by  threats 
of  coming  judgment,  well  fitted  to  scare  their  imagina- 
tions. Disconnected  from  all  their  old  associations,  they 
bowed  before  the  majesty  of  civilisation,  and  the  Latin 
religion,   like   the   Latin   language,  though  with   many 


FKOM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  191 

adulterations,  reigned  over  the  new  society.  The  doc- 
trine of  exclusive  salvation,  and  the  doctrine  of  daemons, 
had  an  admirable  missionary  power.  The  first  produced 
an  ardour  of  proselytising  which  the  polytheist  could 
never  rival,  while  the  Pagan,  who  was  easily  led  to 
recognise  the  Christian  God,  was  menaced  with  eternal 
fire  if  he  did  not  take  the  further  step  of  breaking  off 
from  his  old  divinities.  The  second  dispensed  the  con- 
vert from  the  perhaps  impossible  task  of  disbelieving  his 
former  religion,  for  it  was  only  necessary  for  him  to 
degrade  it,  attributing  its  prodigies  to  infernal  beings. 
The  priests,  in  addition  to  their  noble  devotion,  carried 
into  their  missionary  efforts  the  most  masterly  judgment. 
The  barbarian  tribes  usually  followed  without  enquiry  the 
religion  of  their  sovereign,  and  it  was  to  the  conversion 
of  the  king,  and  still  more  to  the  conversion  of  the  queen, 
that  the  Christians  devoted  all  their  energies.  Clotilda, 
the  wife  of  Clovis,  Bertha,  the  wife  of  Ethelbert,  and 
Theodolinda,  the  wife  of  Lothaire,  were  the  chief  instru- 
ments in  converting  their  husbands  and  their  nations. 
Nothing  that  could  affect  the  imagination  was  neglected. 
It  is  related  of  Clotilda,  that  she  was  careful  to  attract  her 
husband  by  the  rich  draperies  of  the  ecclesiastical  cere- 
monies.1 Tn  another  case,  the  first  work  of  proselytising 
was  confided  to  an  artist,  who  painted  before  the  terrified 
Pagans  the  last  judgment  and  the  torments  of  hell.2 
But  especially  the  belief,  which  was  sincerely  held,  and 
sedulously  inculcated,  that  temporal  success  followed  in 
the  train  of  Christianity,  and  that  every  pestilence, 
famine,  or  military  disaster  was  the  penalty  of  idolatry, 
heresy,  sacrilege,  or  vice,  assisted  the  movement.     The 

1  Greg.  Turon.  ii.  29. 

*  This  was  the  first  step  towards  the  conversion  of  the  Bulgarians. — 
Milman's  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  iii.  p.  249. 


192  HISTORY  OF    EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

theory  was  so  wide,  that  it  met  every  variety  of  fortune, 
and  being  taught  with  consummate  skill,  to  barbarians 
who  were  totally  destitute  of  all  critical  power,  and 
strongly  predisposed  to  accept  it,  it  proved  extremely 
efficacious,  and  hope,  fear,  gratitude,  and  remorse  drew 
multitudes  into  the  Church.  The  transition  was  softened 
by  the  substitution  of  Christian  ceremonies  and  saints  for 
the  festivals  and  the  divinities  of  the  Pagans.1  Besides 
the  professed  missionaries,  the  Christian  captives  zealously 
diffused  their  faith  among  their  Pagan  masters.  When  the 
chieftain  had  been  converted,  and  the  army  had  followed 
his  profession,  an  elaborate  monastic  and  ecclesiastical 
organisation  grew  up  to  consolidate  the  conquest,  and  re- 
pressive laws  soon  crushed  all  opposition  to  the  faith. 

In  these  ways  the  victory  of  Christianity  over  the 
barbarian  world  was  achieved.  But  that  victory,  though 
very  great,  was  less  decisive  than  might  appear.  A 
religion  which  professed  to  be  Christianity,  and  which 
contained  many  of  the  ingredients  of  pure  Christianity, 
had  risen  into  the  ascendant,  but  it  had  undergone  a 
profound  modification  through  the  struggle.  Eeligions, 
as  well  as  worshippers,  had  been  baptised.  The  festivals, 
images,  and  names  of  saints  had  been  substituted  for 
those  of  the  idols,  and  the  habits  of  thought  and  feeling 
of  the  ancient  faith  reappeared  in  new  forms  and  a  new 
language.  The  tendency  to  a  material,  idolatrous,  and 
polytheistic  faith,  which  had  long  been  encouraged  by  the 
monks,  and  which  the  heretics  Jovinian,  Vigilantius,  and 
Aerius  had  vainly  resisted,  was  fatally  strengthened  by 
the  infusion  of  a  barbarian  element  into  the  Church,  by 
the  general  depression  of  intellect  in  Europe,  and  by  the 
many  accommodations  that  were  made  to  facilitate  con- 

1  A  remarkable  collection  of  instances  of  this  luud  is  <?iven  by  Ozunam, 
Cioili&dloii  in  the  Fifth  Ciniury  (Eng.  trans.),  vol.  i.  pp.  124-127. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  193 

version.  Though  apparently  defeated  and  crushed,  the 
old  gods  still  retained,  under  a  new  faith,  no  small  part  of 
their  influence  over  the  world. 

To  this  tendency  the  leaders  of  the  Church  made  in 
general  no  resistance,  though  in  another  form  they  were 
deeply  persuaded  of  the  vitality  of  the  old  gods.  Many 
curious  and  picturesque  legends  attest  the  popular  belief 
that  the  old  Eoman  and  the  old  barbarian  divinities,  in 
their  capacity  of  daBmons,  were  still  waging  an  unrelenting 
war  against  the  triumphant  faith.  A  great  Pope  of  the 
sixth  century  relates  how  a  Jew,  being  once  benighted  on 
his  journey,  and  finding  no  other  shelter  for  the  night,  lay 
down  to  rest  in  an  abandoned  temple  of  Apollo.  Shud- 
dering at  the  loneliness  of  the  building,  and  fearing  the 
da3mons  who  were  said  to  haunt  it,  he  determined,  though 
not  a  Christian,  to  protect  himself  by  the  sign  of  the 
cross,  which  he  had  often  heard  possessed  a  mighty  power 
against  spirits.  To  that  sign  he  owed  his  safety.  For  at 
midnight  the  temple  was  filled  with  dark  and  threatening 
forms.  The  god  Apollo  was  holding  his  court  at  his 
deserted  shrine,  and  his  attendant  daemons  were  re- 
counting the  temptations  they  had  devised  against  the 
Christians.1  A  newly  married  Eoman,  when  one  day 
playing  ball,  took  off  his  wedding-ring,  which  he  found  an 
impediment  in  the  game,  and  he  gaily  put  it  on  the  finger 
of  a  statue  of  Venus,  which  was  standing  near.  When  he 
returned,  the  marble  finger  had  bent  so  that  it  was  im- 
possible to  withdraw  the  ring,  and  that  night  the  goddess 
appeared  to  him  in  a  dream,  and  told  him  that  she  was 

1  St.  Gregory,  Dial.  iii.  7.  The  particular  temptation  the  Jew  heard  dis- 
cussed was  that  of  the  bishop  of  the  diocese,  who,  under  the  instigation  of 
one  of  the  daemons,  was  rapidly  tailing  in  love  with  a  nun,  and  had  proceeded 
so  far  as  jocosely  to  stroke  her  on  the  hack.  The  Jew,  having- related  the 
vision  to  the  bishop,  the  latter  reformed  his  manners,  the  Jew  became  a 
Christian,  and  the  temple  was  turned  into  a  church. 


194  HISTORY  OF    EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

now  his  wedded  wife,  and  that  she  would  abide  with  him 
for  ever.1  When  the  Irish  missionary  St.  Gall  was  fish- 
ing one  night  upon  a  Swiss  lake,  near  which  he  had 
planted  a  monastery,  he  heard  strange  voices  sweeping 
r  the  lonely  deep.  The  Spirit  of  the  Water  and  the 
Spirit  of  the  Mountains  were  consulting  together  how 
they  could  expel  the  intruder  who  had  disturbed  their 
ancient  reign.2 

The  details  of  the  rapid  propagation  of  Western  mon- 
achism  have  been  amply  treated  by  many  historians,  and 
the  causes  of  its  success  are  sufficiently  manifest.  Some 
of  the  reasons  I  have  assigned  for  the  first  spread  of 
asceticism  continued  to  operate,  while  others  of  a  still 
more  powerful  kind  had  arisen.  The  rapid  decomposition 
of  the  entire  Eoman  Empire  by  continuous  invasions  of 
barbarians  rendered  the  existence  of  an  inviolable  asylum 
and  centre  of  peaceful  labour  a  matter  of  transcendent  im- 
portance, and  the  monastery  as  organised  by  St.  Benedict 
soon  combined  the  most  heterogeneous  elements  of  at- 
traction. It  was  at  once  eminently  aristocratic  and  in- 
tensely democratic.  The  power  and  princely  position  of 
the  abbot  was  coveted,  and  usually  obtained,  by  members 
of  the  most  illustrious  families,  while  emancipated  serfs  or 
peasants,  who  had  lost  their  all  in  the  invasions,  or  were 
harassed  by  savage  nobles,  or  had  fled  from  military 
service,  or  desired  to  lead  a  more  secure  and  easy  life, 
found  in  the  monastery  an  unfailing  refuge.  The  insti- 
tution exercised  all  the  influence  of  great  wealth,  ex- 
pended for  the  most  part  with  great  charity,  while  the 
monk  himself  was  invested  with  the  aureole  of  a  sacred 
poverty.  To  ardent  and  philanthropic  natures,  the  pro- 
fession opened  boundless  vistas  of  missionary,  charitable, 

1  This  is  mentioned  by  one  of  the  English  historians — I  think  by  Mathew 
of  Westminster. 

*  Set-  Milmans  Hid.  vf  Latin  CkritUanUff,  vol.  ii.  p.  293. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  105 

and  civilising  activity.  To  the  superstitious  it  was  the 
plain  road  to  heaven.  To  the  ambitious  it  was  the  portal 
to  bishoprics,  and,  after  the  monk  St.  Gregory,  not  un- 
frequently  to  the  Popedom.  To  the  studious  it  offered 
the  only  opportunity  then  existing  in  the  world  of  seeing 
many  books  and  passing  a  life  of  study.  To  the  timid 
and  the  retiring  it  afforded  the  most  secure,  and  probably 
the  least  laborious,  life  a  poor  peasant  could  hope  to  find. 
Vast  as  were  the  multitudes  that  thronged  the  monas- 
teries, the  means  for  their  support  were  never  wanting. 
The  belief  that  gifts  or  legacies  to  a  monastery  opened 
the  doors  of  heaven,  was  in  a  superstitious  age  sufficient 
to  secure  for  the  community  an  almost  boundless  wealth, 
which  was  still  further  increased  by  the  skill  and  per- 
severance with  which  the  monks  tilled  the  waste  lands, 
by  the  exemption  of  their  domains  from  all  taxation,  and 
by  the  tranquillity  which  in  the  most  turbulent  ages  they 
usually  enjoyed.  In  France,  the  Low  Countries,  and  Ger- 
many they  were  pre-eminently  agriculturists.  Gigantic 
forests  were  felled,  inhospitable  marshes  reclaimed,  barren 
plains  cultivated  by  their  hands.  The  monastery  often 
became  the  nucleus  of  a  city.  It  was  the  centre  of  civi- 
lisation and  industry,  the  symbol  of  moral  power  in  an  age 
of  turbulence  and  war. 

It  must  be  observed,  however,  that  the  beneficial  in- 
fluence of  the  monastic  system  was  necessarily  transitional, 
and  the  subsequent  corruption  the  normal  and  inevitable 
result  of  its  constitution.  Vast  societies  living  in  enforced 
celibacy,  exercising  an  unbounded  influence,  and  possessing 
enormous  wealth,  must  necessarily  have  become  hotbeds 
of  corruption  when  the  enthusiasm  that  had  created  them 
expired.  The  services  they  rendered  as  the  centres  of 
agriculture,  the  refuge  of  travellers,  the  sanctuaries  in  war, 
the  counterpoise  of  the  baronial  castle,  were  no  longer 


196  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

required  when  the  convulsions  of  invasion  had  ceased, 
and  when  civil  society  was  definitely  organised.  And 
a  similar  observation  may  be  extended  even  to  their 
moral  type.  Thus,  while  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  the 
Benedictine  monks,  by  making  labour  an  essential  ele- 
ment of  their  discipline,  did  very  much  to  efface  the 
stigma  which  slavery  had  affixed  upon  it,  it  is  also  true 
that  when  industry  had  passed  out  of  its  initial  stage, 
the  monastic  theories  of  the  sanctity  of  poverty,  and  the 
evil  of  wealth,  were  its  most  deadly  opponents.  The  dog- 
matic condemnation  by  theologians  of  loans  at  interest. 
which  are  the  basis  of  industrial  enterprise,  was  the  expres- 
sion of  a  far  deeper  antagonism  of  tendencies  and  ideals. 

In  one  important  respect,  the  transition  from  the  ere- 
mite to  the  monastic  life  involved  not  only  a  change  of 
circumstances,  but  also  a.  change  of  character.  The  habit 
of  obedience,  and  the  virtue  of  humility,  assumed  a  posi- 
tion which  they  had  never  previously  occupied.  The 
conditions  of  the  hermit  life  contributed  to  develope  to  a 
very  high  degree  a  spirit  of  independence  and  spiritual 
pride,  which  was  still  further  increased  by  a  curious  habit 
that  existed  in  the  Church  of  regarding  each  eminent 
hermit  as  the  special  model  or  professor  of  some  parti- 
cular virtue,  and  making  pilgrimages  to  him,  in  order  to 
study  this  aspect  of  his  character. 1  These  pilgrimages, 
combined  with  the  usually  solitary  and  self-sufficing  life 
of  the  hermit,  and  also  with  the  habit  of  measuring 
progress  almost  entirely  by  the  suppression  of  a  physical 
appetite,  which  it  is  quite  possible  wholly  to  destroy, 
very  naturally  produced  an  extreme  arrogance.2     lUil  in 

1  Caspian.  Camob.  Instil,  v.  4.  See,  too,  some  striking  instances  of  this 
in  the  life  of  St.  Antony. 

2  This  spiritual  pride  is  well  noticed  by  Xeander,  Ecclesiastical  History 
(Bohn'l  »d.),  \u].  iii.  pp.  32 1-823.  It  irjtais  in  many  traits  scattered 
through  the  lives  of  their  saints.     I  have  already  cited  the  instances  of  Si 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  197 

the  highly  organised  and  disciplined  monasteries  of  the 
West,  passive  obedience  and  humility  were  the  very  first 
things  that  were  inculcated.  The  monastery,  beyond  all 
other  institutions,  was  the  school  for  their  exercise ;  and  as 
the  monk  represented  the  highest  moral  ideal  of  the  age, 
obedience  and  humility  acquired  a  new  value  in  the  minds 
of  men.  Nearly  all  the  feudal  and  other  organisations  that 
arose  out  of  the  chaos  that  followed  the  destruction  of  the 
Eoman  Empire  were  intimately  related  to  the  Church,  not 
simply  because  the  Church  supplied  in  itself  an  admirable 
model  of  an  organised  body,  but  also  because  it  had  done 
much  to  educate  men  in  habits  of  obedience.  The  spe- 
cial value  of  this  education  depended  upon  the  peculiar 
circumstances  of  the  time.  The  ancient  civilisations,  and 
especially  that  of  Home,  had  been  by  no  means  deficient 
in  those  habits,  but  it  was  in  the  midst  of  the  dissolution 
of  an  old  society,  and  of  the  ascendency  of  barbarians, 
who  exaggerated  to  the  highest  degree  their  personal  in- 
dependence, that  the  Church  proposed  to  the  reverence  of 
mankind  a  life  of  passive  obedience  as  the  highest  ideal 
of  virtue. 

The  habit  of  obedience  was  no  new  thing  in  the  world, 
but  the  disposition  of  humility  was  pre-eminently  and  al- 
most exclusively  a  Christian  virtue ;  and  there  has  probably 
never  been  any  sphere  in  which  it  has  been  so  largely 
and  so  successfully  inculcated  as  in  the  monastery.     The 

Antony  and  St.  Macarius,  and  the  visions  telling  them  they  were  not  the 
best  of  living  people  ;  and  also  the  case  of  the  hermit,  who  was  deceived  "by 
a  devil  in  the  form  of  a  woman,  because  he  had  been  exalted  by  pride. 
Another  hermit,  being  very  holy,  received  pure  white  bread  every  day  from 
heaven,  but,  being  extravagantly  elated,  the  bread  got  worse  and  worse  till 
it  became  perfectly  black.  (Tillemont,  tome  x.  pp.  27-28.)  A  certain  Isidore 
affirmed  that  he  had  not  been  conscious  of  sin,  even  in  thought,  for  forty 
years.  (Socrates,  iv.  23.)  It  was  a  saying  of  St.  Antony,  that  a  solitary 
man  in  the  desert  is  free  from  three  wars — of  sight,  speech,  and  hearing ; 
lie  has  to  combat  only  fornication.     (Apotlieymata  Patrnm.) 


193  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

whole  penitential  discipline,  the  entire  mode  or  tenor  of 
the  monastic  life,  was  designed  to  tame  every  sentiment  of 
pride,  and  to  give  humility  a  foremost  place  in  the  hier- 
archy of  virtues  Wie  have  here  one  great  source  of  the 
mollifying  influence  of  Catholicism.     The  gentler  virtues 

benevolence  and  amiability — may,  and  in  an  advanced 

civilisation  often  do,  subsist  in  natures  that  are  completely 
devoid  of  genuine  humility ;  but  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 

rcely  possible  for  a  nature  to  be  pervaded  by  a  deep 
sentiment  of  humility  without  this  sentiment  exercising  a 
softening  influence  over  the  whole  character.  To  trans- 
form a  fierce  warlike  nature  into  a  character  of  a  gentler 
type,  the  first  essential  is  to  awaken  this  feeling.  In  the 
monasteries,  the  extinction  of  social  and  domestic  feelings, 
the  narrow  corporate  spirit,  and,  still  more,  the  atrocious 
opinions  that  were  prevalent  concerning  the  guilt  of 
heresy,  produced  in  many  minds  an  extreme  and  most 
active  ferocity;  but  the  practice  of  charity,  and  the  ideal 
of  humility,  never  failed  to  exercise  some  softening  in- 
fluence upon  Christendom. 

But,  however  advantageous  the  temporary  pre-eminence 
of  this  moral  type  may  have  been,  it  was  obviously  un- 
stated for  a  later  stage  of  civilisation.  Political  liberty  is 
almost  impossible  where  the  monastic  system  is  supreme, 
not  merely  because  the  monasteries  divert  the  energies  of 
the  nation  from  civic  to  ecclesiastical  channels,  but  also 
because  the  monastic  ideal  is  the  very  apotheosis  of  ser- 
vitude. Catholicism  has  been  admirably  fitted  at  once 
to  mitigate  and  to  perpetuate  despotism.  When  men  have 
learnt  to  reverence  a  life  of  passive,  unreasoning  obedience 
as  the  highest  type  of  perfection,  the  enthusiasm  and 

-ion  of  freedom  necessarily  decline.  In  this  repect 
there  is  an  analogy  between  the  monastic  and  the  mili- 
tary spirit,  both  of  which  promote  and  glorify  passive 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHAELEMAGNE.  199 

obedience,  and  therefore  prepare  the  minds  of  men 
for  despotic  rule;  but  on  the  whole,  the  monastic  spirit 
is  probably  more  hostile  to  freedom  than  the  military 
spirit,  for  the  obedience  of  the  monk  is  based  upon 
humility,  while  the  obedience  of  the  soldier  coexists  with 
pride.  Now,  a  considerable  measure  of  pride,  or  self-asser- 
tion, is  an  invariable  characteristic  of  free  communities. 

The  ascendency  which  the  monastic  system  gave  to  the 
virtue  of  humility  has  not  continued.  This  virtue  is 
indeed  the  crowning  grace  and  beauty  of  the  most  perfect 
characters  of  the  saintly  type  ;  but  experience  has  shown 
that  among  common  men  humility  is  more  apt  to  degene- 
rate into  servility  than  pride  into  arrogance  ;  and  modern 
moralists  have  appealed  more  successfully  to  the  sense  of 
dignity  than  to  the  opposite  feeling.  Two  of  the  most 
important  steps  of  later  moral  history  have  consisted  of 
the  creation  of  a  sentiment  of  pride  as  the  parent  and  the 
guardian  of  many  virtues.  The  first  of  these  encroach- 
ments on  the  monastic  spirit  was  chivalry,  which  called 
into  being  a  proud  and  jealous  military  honour  that  has 
never  since  been  extinguished.  The  second  was  the 
creation  of  that  feeling  of  self-respect  which  is  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  characteristics  that  distinguish  Protes- 
tant  from  most  Catholic  populations,  and  which  has  proved 
among  the  former  an  invaluable  moral  agent,  forming 
frank  and  independent  natures,  and.  checking  every  servile 
habit  and  all  mean  and  degrading  vice.1     The  peculiar 


1  '  Pride,  under  such  training  [that  of  modern  rationalistic  philosophy], 
instead  of  running  to  waste,  is  turned  to  account.  It  gets  anew  name;  it  is 
called  self-respect.  ...  It  is  directed  into  the  channel  of  industry,  ru- 
gality,  honesty,  and  obedience,  and  it  becomes  the  very  staple  of  the  religion 
and  morality  held  in  honour  in  a  day  like  our  own.  It  becomes  the  safe- 
guard of  chastity,  the  guarantee  of  veracity,  in  high  and  low  ;  it  is  the  very 
household  god  of  th«  Protestant,  inspiring  neatness  and  decency  in  the  ser- 
vant-girl, propriety  of  carriage  and  refined  manners  in  her  mistress,  upright- 
"47 


200  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

»ur  with  which  it  has  been  developed  in  Protestant 

countries  maybe  attributed  to  the  suppression  of  monastic 

■".unions  and  habits;  to  the  stigma  Protestantism  has 

attached  to  mendicancy,  which  Catholicism  has  usually 

rilied    and  encouraged;  and  lastly,  to  the  action  of 

political    institutions,    which    have   taken    deepest 

root  where  the  principles  of  the  Eeformation  have  been 

accepted. 

The  relation  of  the  monasteries  to  the  intellectual  virtues, 
which  we  have  next  to  examine,  opens  out  a  wide  field 
of  discussion ;  and  in  order  to  appreciate  it,  it  will  be 
necessary  to  revert  briefly  to  a  somewhat  earlier  stage  of 
ecclesiastical  history.  And  in  the  first  place,  it  may  be 
i  Tvcd,  that  the  phrase  intellectual  virtue,  which  is  often 
1  in  a  metaphorical  sense,  is  susceptible  of  a  strictly 
literal  interpretation.  If  a  sincere  and  active  desire  for 
truth  be  a  moral  duty,  the  discipline  and  the  dispositions 
that  are  plainly  involved  in  every  honest  search  fall  rigidly 
within  the  range  of  ethics.  To  love  truth  sincerely  means 
to  pursue  it  with  an  earnest,  conscientious,  unflagging  zeal. 
It  means  to  be  prepared  to  follow  the  light  of  evidence 
even  to  the  most  unwelcome  conclusions ;  to  labour 
nestly  to  emancipate  the  mind  from  early  prejudices ; 
to  resist  the  current  of  the  desires,  and  the  refracting  in- 
fluence of  the  passions ;  to  proportion  on  all  occasions 
conviction  to  evidence,  and  to  be  ready,  if  need  be,  to 

ness,  manliness,  and  generosity  in  the  head  of  the  family.  ...  It  is  the 
Btimnlatuig  principle  of  providence,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  free  expenditure 
on  \.  tan  honourable  ambition  and  of  elegant  enjoyment.' — New- 

man. Education^  discourse  ix.   In  the  same  lecture  (which  is, 

mtifnl  6f  the  many  beautiful  productions  of  its  illus- 
D ft    NeVflMfl    describe*,   With    admirable    eloquence,    the 
mnnm-r  in  whirh  ttodfltty  has   Supplanted  humility  in  the  modem   type  of 
excellence.     It  is  *•<•  nary  to  say  that  the  lecturer  strongly  disap- 

proves of  the  movement  he  describes. 


FROM  CONSTAXTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  201 

exchange  the  calm  of  assurance  for  all  the  suffering  of  a 
perplexed  and  disturbed  mind.  To  do  this  is  very  diffi- 
cult and  very  painful ;  but  it  is  clearly  involved  in  the 
notion  of  earnest  love  of  truth.  If,  then,  any  system  stig- 
matises as  criminal  the  state  of  doubt,  denounces  the  ex- 
amination of  some  one  class  of  arguments  or  facts,  seeks 
to  introduce  the  bias  of  the  affections  into  the  enquiries  of 
the  reason,  or  regards  the  honest  conclusion  of  an  up- 
right investigator  as  involving  moral  guilt,  that  system  is 
subversive  of  intellectual  honesty. 

Among  the  ancients,  although  the  methods  of  enquiry 
were  often  very  faulty,  and  generalisations  very  hasty,  a 
respect  for  the  honest  search  after  truth  was  widely  dif- 
fused.1 There  were,  as  we  have  already  seen,  instances 
in  which  certain  religious  practices  which  were  regarded 
as  attestations  of  loyalty,  or  as  necessary  to  propitiate  the 
gods  in  favour  of  the  State,  were  enforced  by  law ;  there 
were  even  a  few  instances  of  philosophies,  which  were  be- 
lieved to  lead  directly  to  immoral  results  or  social  convul- 
sions, being  suppressed  ;  but  as  a  general  rule,  speculation 
was  untrammelled,  the  notion  of  there  being  any  necessary 
guilt  in  erroneous  opinion  was  unknown,  and  the  boldest 
enquirers  were  regarded  with  honour  and  admiration. 
The  religious  theory  of  Paganism  had  in  this  respect 
some  influence.  Polytheism,  with  many  faults,  had  three 
great  merits.  It  was  eminently  poetical,  eminently  pa- 
triotic, and  eminently  tolerant.  The  conception  of  a  vast 
hierarchy  of  beings  more  glorious  than,  but  not  wholly 
unlike,  men,  presiding  over  all  the  developments  of  nature, 
and  filling  the  universe  with  their  deeds,  supplied  the 
chief  nutriment  of  the  Greek  imagination.     The  national 


1  Thus,  'indagatio  veri'  was  reckoned  among-  the  leading-  virtues,  and  the 
high  place  given  to  ao$ia  and  '  prudentia'  in  ethical  writings,  preserved  the 
notion  of  the  moral  duties  connected  with  the  disc-inline  of  the  intellect. 


901  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

religions,  interweaving  religious  ceremonies  and  associa- 
tions with  all  civic  life,  concentrated  and  intensified  the 
iment  of  patriotism,  and  the  notion  of  many  distinct 
groups  of  gods  led  men  to  tolerate  many  forms  of  worship 
and  great  variety  of  creeds.  In  that  colossal  amalgam 
of  nations  of  which  Borne  became  the  metropolis,  in- 
tillectual  liberty  still  further  advanced;  the  vast  variety 
of  philosophies  and  beliefs  expatiated  unmolested ;  the 
search  for  truth  was  regarded  as  an  important  element  of 
virtue,  and  the  relentless  and  most  sceptical  criticism 
which  Socrates  had  applied  in  turn  to  all  the  fundamental 
propositions  of  popular  belief  remained  as  an  example  to 
his  successors. 

We  have  already  seen  that  one  leading  cause  of  the 
rapid  progress  of  the  Church  was,  that  its  teachers  en- 
forced their  distinctive  tenets  as  absolutely  essential  to 
silvation,  and  thus  assailed  at  a  irre^t  advantage  the 
supporters  of  all  other  creeds  which  did  not  claim  this 
exclusive  authority.  We  have  seen,  too,  that  in  an  age  of 
great  and  growing  credulity  they  had  been  conspicuous 
for  their  assertion  of  the  duty  of  absolute,  unqualified, 
and  unquestioning  belief.  The  notion  of  the  guilt,  both 
of  error  and  of  doubt,  grew  rapidly,  and,  being  soon  re- 
garded as  a  fundamental  tenet,  it  determined  the  whole 
course  and  policy  of  the  Church. 

And  here,  I  think,  it  will  not  be  unadvisable  to  pause 
for  a  moment,  and  endeavour  to  ascertain  what  miscon- 

\  ed  truth  lay  at  the  root  of  this  fatal  tenet.  Considered 
;il)4ractedly  and  by  the  light  of  nature,  it  is  as  unmeaning 
to  speak  of  the  immorality  of  an  intellectual  mistake  as 
it  would  be  to  talk  of  the  colour  of  a  sound.  If  a  man 
has  sincerely  persuaded  himself  that  it  is  possible  for 
parallel  lines  to  meet,  or  for  two  straight  lines  to  eneL 
a  space,  we  pronounce  his  judgment  to  be  absurd;  but  it  is 
free  from  all  tincture  of  immorality.     And  if,  instead  of 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  203 

failing  to  appreciate  a  demonstrable  truth,  his  error  con- 
sisted in  a  false  estimate  of  the  conflicting  arguments  of 
an  historical  problem,  this  mistake — assuming  always  that 
the  enquiry  was  an  upright  one — is  still  simply  external 
to  the  sphere  of  morals.  It  is  possible  that  his  conclusion, 
by  weakening  some  barrier  against  vice,  may  produce 
vicious  consequences,  like  those  which  might  ensue  from 
some  ill-advised  modification  of  the  police  force ;  but  it 
in  no  degree  follows  from  this  that  the  judgment  is  in 
itself  criminal.  If  a  student  applies  himself  with  the 
same  dispositions  to  Eoman  and  Jewish  histories,  the 
mistakes  he  may  make  in  the  latter  are  no  more  immoral 
than  those  which  he  may  make  in  the  former. 

There  are,  however,  two  cases  in  which  an  intellectual 
error  may  be  justly  said  to  involve,  or  at  least  to  repre- 
sent, guilt.  In  the  first  place,  error  very  frequently 
springs  from  the  partial  or  complete  absence  of  that 
mental  disposition  which  is  implied  in  a  real  love  of  truth. 
Hypocrites,  or  men  who  through  interested  motives  pro- 
fess opinions  which  they  do  not  really  believe,  are  pro- 
bably rarer  than  is  usually  supposed ;  but  it  would  be 
difficult  to  over-estimate  the  number  of  those  whose 
genuine  convictions  are  due  to  the  unresisted  bias  of  their 
interests.  By  the  term  interests,  I  mean  not  only  material 
well-being,  but  also  all  those  mental  luxuries,  all  those 
grooves  or  channels  for  thought,  which  it  is  easy  and 
pleasing  to  follow,  and  painful  and  difficult  to  abandon. 
Such  are  the  love  of  ease,  the  love  of  certainty,  the  love 
of  system,  the  bias  of  the  passions,  the  associations  of  the 
imagination,  as  well  as  the  coarser  influences  of  social 
position,  domestic  happiness,  professional  interest,  party 
feeling,  or  ambition.  In  most  men,  the  love  of  truth  is 
so  languid,  and  their  reluctance  to  encounter  mental 
suffering  is  so  great,  that  they  yield  their  judgments  with- 
out an  effort  to  the  current,  withdraw  their  minds  from 


204  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

all  opinions  or  arguments  opposed  to  their  own,  and  thus 
speedily  convince  themselves  of  the  truth  of  what  they 
wish  to  believe.  He  who  really  loves  truth,  is  bound  at 
least  bo  endeavour  to  resist  these  distorting  influences, 
and  in  so  far  as  his  opinions  are  the  result  of  his  not 
1  laving  done  so,  in  so  far  they  represent  a  moral  failing. 

In  the  next  place,  it  must  be  observed  that  every  moral 
disposition  brings  with  it  an  intellectual  bias  which  exer- 
cises a  great  and  often  a  controlling  and  decisive  influence 
even  upon  the  most  earnest  enquirer.  If  we  know  the 
character  or  disposition  of  a  man,  we  can  usually  predict 
with  tolerable  accuracy  many  of  his  opinions.  We  can 
tell  to  what  side  of  politics,  to  what  canons  of  taste,  to 
what  theory  of  morals  he  will  naturally  incline.  Stern, 
heroic,  and  haughty  natures  tend  to  systems  in  which 
these  qualities  occupy  the  foremost  position  in  the  moral 
type,  while  gentle  natures  will  as  naturally  lean  towards 

;ems  in  which  the  amiable  virtues  are  supreme.  Im- 
pelled by  a  species  of  moral  gravitation,  the  enquirer  will 
glide  insensibly  to  the  system  which  is  congruous  to  his 
disposition,  and  intellectual  difficulties  will  seldom  arrest 
him.  He  can  have  observed  human  nature  with  but- 
little  fruit  who  has  not  remarked  how  constant  is.  this 
connection,  and  how  very-  rarely  men  change  funda- 
mentally the  principles  they  had  deliberately  adopted 
on  religious,  moral,  or  even  political  questions,  without 
the  change  being  preceded,  accompanied,  or  very  speedily 
followed,  by  a  serious  modification  of  character.  So,  tod, 
a  vicious  and  depraved  nature,  or  a  nature  which  is  hard, 
narrow,  and  unsympathetic,  will  tend,  much  less  by  calcu- 
lation or  indolence  than  by  natural  affinity,  to  low  and 
degrading   views  of  human   nature.     Those  who   have 

■  er  felt  the  higher  emotions  will  scarcely  appreciate 
them.     The  material-  with  which  the  intellect  builds  are 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  205 

often  derived  from  the  heart,  and  a  moral  disease  is  there- 
fore not  imfrequently  at  the  root  of  an  erroneous  judg- 
ment. 

Of  these  two  truths  the  first  cannot,  I  think,  be 
said  to  have  had  any  influence  in  the  formation  of  the 
theological  notion  of  the  guilt  of  error.  An  elaborate 
process  of  mental  discipline,  with  a  view  to  strengthening 
the  critical  powers  of  the  mind,  is  utterly  remote  from 
the  spirit  of  theology  ;  and  this  is  one  of  the  great  reasons 
why  the  growth  of  an  inductive  and  scientific  spirit  is 
invariably  hostile  to  theological  interests.  To  raise  the 
requisite  standard  of  proof,  to  inculcate  hardness  and 
slowness  of  belief,  is  the  first  task  of  the  inductive  rea- 
soned He  looks  writh  great  favour  upon  the  condition 
of  a  suspended  judgment ;  he  encourages  men  rather  to 
prolong  than  to  abridge  it ;  he  regards  the  tendency  of 
the  human  mind  to  rapid  and  premature  generalisations 
as  one  of  its  most  fatal  vices  ;  he  desires  especially  that 
that  which  is  believed  should  not  be  so  cherished  that 
the  mind  should  be  indisposed  to  admit  doubt,  or,  on  the 
appearance  of  new  arguments,  to  revise  with  impartiality 
its  conclusions.  Nearly  all  the  greatest  intellectual  achieve- 
ments of  the  last  three  centuries  have  been  preceded 
and  prepared  by  the  growth  of  scepticism.  The  historic 
scepticism  which  Vico,  Beaufort,  Pouilly,  and  Voltaire 
in  the  last  century,  and  Niebuhr  and  Lewes  in  the  present 
century,  applied  to  ancient  history,  lies  at  the  root  of  all 
the  great  modern  efforts  to  reconstruct  the  history  of 
mankind.  The  splendid  discoveries  of  physical  science 
would  have  been  impossible  but  for  the  scientific  scep- 
ticism of  the  school  of  Bacon,  which  dissipated  the  old 
theories  of  the  universe,  and  led  men  to  demand  a  seve- 
rity of  proof  altogether  unknown  to  the  ancients.  The 
philosophic  scepticism  of  Hume  and  Kant  has  given  the 


Hfl  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

greatest  modern  impulse  to  metaphysics  and  ethics.  Ex- 
actly in  proportion,  therefore,  as  men  are  educated  in  the 
inductive  school,  they  are  alienated  from  those  theological 
terns  which  represent  a  condition  of  doubt  as  sinful, 
k  to  govern  the  reason  by  the  interests  and  the  affec- 
tions, and  make  it  a  main  object  to  destroy  the  impar- 
tiality of  the  judgment. 

But  although  it  is  difficult  to  look  upon  Catholicism  in 
any  other  light  than  as  the  most  deadly  enemy  of  the 
scientific  spirit,  it  has  always  cordially  recognised  the  most 
important  truth,,  that  character  in  a  very  great  measure 
determines  opinions.  To  cultivate  the  moral  type  that  is 
most  congenial  to  the  opinions  it  desires  to  recommend, 
has  always  been  its  effort,  and  the  conviction  that  a  de- 
viation from  that  type  has  often  been  the  predisposing 
cause  of  intellectual  heresy,  had  doubtless  a  large  share 
IB  the  first  persuasion  of  the  guilt  of  error.  But  priestly 
and  other  influences  soon  conspired  to  enlarge  this  doc- 
trine. A  crowd  of  speculative,  historical,  and  adminis- 
trative propositions  were  asserted  as  essential  to  salvation, 
and  all  who  rejected  them  were  wholly  external  to  the 
bond  of  Christian  sympathy. 

If,  indeed,  we  put  aside  the  pure  teaching  of  the  Chris- 
tian founders,  and  consider  the  actual  history  of  the  Church 
since  Constantine,  we  shall  find  no  justification  for  the 
popular  theory,  that  beneath  its  influence  the  narrow  spirit 
of  patriotism  faded  into  a  wide  and  cosmopolitan  philan- 
thropy. A  real  though  somewhat  languid  feeling  of  uni- 
versal brotherhood  had  already  been  created  in  the  world 
by  the  universality  of  the  Soman  Empire.  In  the  new  faith 
the  range  of  genuine  sympathy  was  strictly  limited  by  the 
creed.  According  to  the  popular  belief,  all  who  differed 
from  the  teaching  of  the  orthodox  lived  under  the  hatred 
of  the  Almighty,  and  were  destined  after  death  for  an 


FROM   CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  207 

eternity  of  anguish.  Very  naturally,  therefore,  they  were 
wholly  alienated  from  the  true  believers,  and  no  moral  or 
intellectual  excellence  could  atone  for  their  crime  in  pro- 
pagating error.  The  eighty  or  ninety  sects1  into  which 
Christianity  speedily  divided,  hated  one  another  with  an 
intensity  that  extorted  the  wonder  of  Julian  and  the 
ridicule  of  the  Pagans  of  Alexandria,  and  the  fierce  riots 
and  persecutions  that  hatred  produced  appear  in  every 
page  of  ecclesiastical  history.  There  is,  indeed,  some- 
thing at  once  grotesque  and  ghastly  in  the  spectacle. 
The  Donatists,  having  separated  from  the  orthodox  simply 
on  the  question  of  the  validity  of  the  consecration  of  a 
certain  bishop,  declared  that  all  who  adopted  the  ortho- 
dox view  must  be  damned,  refused  to  perform  their  rites 
in  the  orthodox  churches  which  they  had  seized,  till  they 
had  burnt  the  altar  and  scraped  the  wood,  beat  multitudes 
to  death  with  clubs,  blinded  others  by  anointing  their  eyes 
with  lime,  filled  Africa,  during  nearly  two  centuries,  with 
war  and  desolation,  and  contributed  largely  to  its  final 
ruin.2  The  childish  and  almost  unintelligible  quarrels 
between  the  Homoiousians  and  the  Homoousians,  be- 
tween those  who  maintained  that  the  nature  of  Christ  was 
like  that  of  the  Father  and  those  who  maintained  that 
it  was  the  same,  filled  the  world  with  riot  and  hatred. 
The  Catholics  tell  how  an  Arian  emperor  caused  eighty 
orthodox  priests  to  be  drowned  on  a  single  occasion ; 3 
how  three  thousand  persons  perished  in  the  riots  that 
convulsed  Constantinople  when  the  Arian  bishop  Mace- 
donius  superseded  the  Athanasian  Paul;4  how  George  of 

1  St.  Augustine  reckoned  eighty-eight  sects  as  existing  in  his  time. 

2  See  a  full  account  of  these  persecutions  in  Tillemont,  Mem.  d'Histoire 
cedes,  tome  vi. 

s  Socrates,   II.  E.,  it.  16.     This  anecdote  is  much  doubted  by  modem 
historians. 

4  Milman's  Hist,  of  Christianity  (ed.  18G7),  vol.  ii.  p.  422. 


208  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

Cappadocia,  the  Arian  bishop  of  Alexandria,  caused  the 
■widows  of  the  Athanasian  party  to  be  scourged  on  the 
soles  of  their  feet,  the  holy  virgins  to  be  stripped  naked, 
to  be  flogged  with  the  prickly  branches  of  palm-trees,  or 
to  be  slowly  scorched  over  fires  till  they  abjured  their 
erred.1  The  triumph  of  the  Catholics  in  Egypt  was 
accompanied  (if  we  may  believe  the  solemn  assertions 
of  eighty  Arian  bishops)  by  every  variety  of  plunder, 
murder,  sacrilege,  and  outrage,2  and  Arius  himself  was 
probably  poisoned  by  Catholic  hands.3  The  followers  of 
St.  Cyril  of  Alexandria,  who  were  chiefly  monks,  filled 
their  city  with  riot  and  bloodshed,  wounded  the  prefect 
Orestes,  dragged  the  pure  and  gifted  Hypatia  into  one 
of  their  ehurches,  murdered  her,  tore  the  flesh  from  her 
bones  with  sharp  shells,  and,  having  stripped  her  body 
naked,  flung  the  mangled  remains  into  the  flames.4  In 
Ephesus,  during  the  contest  between  St.  Cyril  and  the 
Nestorians,  the  cathedral  itself  wTas  the  theatre  of  a  fierce 
and  bloody  conflict.5  Constantinople,  on  the  occasion  of 
the  deposition  of  St.  Chrysostom,  was  for  several  days  in 
a  condition  of  absolute  anarchy.6  After  the  Council  of 
Chalcedon,  Jerusalem  and  Alexandria  were  again  con- 
vulsed, and  the  bishop  of  the  latter  city  was  murdered  in 
his  baptistery.7  About  fifty  years  later,  when  the  Mono- 
physite  controversy  was  at  its  height,  the  palace  of  the 

1  St.  Athanasius,  Historical  Treatises  (Library  of  the  Fathers),  pp.  192, 
284. 

Milman,  Hist,  of  Christianity,  ii.  pp.  436-437. 
8  Th"  (lt;tth  of  Arius,  ns  is  well  known,  took  place  suddenly  (his  bowels, 
it  is  said,  coming  out)  when  just  about  to  make  his  triumphal  entry  into  the 
( 'ath<  <lr;il  of  Constantinople.  The  death  never  seems  to  have  been  regarded 
as  natural,  but  it  was  a  matter  of  controversy  whether  it  wTas  a  miracle  or  a 
murder. 

I,  ILE.,\\\.  18   15. 

*  Mil  man,  Hist,  uf  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  i.  pp.  214-215. 

•  Milman,  Hist,  of  Christianity,  vol.  iii.  p.  145. 

7  Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  i.  pp.  290-201. 


FROM   CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  209 

emperor  at  Constantinople  was  blockaded,  the  churches 
were  besieged,  and  the  streets  commanded  by  furious 
bands  of  contending  monks.1  Eepressed  for  a  time,  the 
riots  broke  out  two  years  after  with  an  increased  ferocity, 
and  almost  every  leading  city  of  the  East  was  filled  by 
the  monks  with  bloodshed  and  with  riots.2  St.  Augustine 
himself  is  accused  of  having  excited  every  kind  of  popular 
persecution  against  the  Semi-Pelagians.3  The  Councils, 
animated  by  an  almost  frantic  hatred,  urged  on  by  their 
anathemas  the  rival  sects.4  In  the  '  Eobber  Council  •  of 
Ephesus,  Flavianus,  the  Bishop  of  Constantinople,  was 
kicked  and  beaten  by  the  Bishop  of  Alexandria,  or  at 
least  by  his  followers,  and  a  few  days  later  died  from 
the  effect  of  the  blows.5     In  the  contested  election  that 


1  Milman,  Mist,  of  Lathi  Christianity,  vol.  i.  pp.  310-311. 

9  Ibid.  vol.  i.  pp.  314-318.  Dean  Milman  thus  sums  up  the  history : 
;  Monks  in  Alexandria,  monks  in  Antioch,  monks  in  Jerusalem,  monks  in 
Constantinople,  decide  peremptorily  on  orthodoxy  and  heterodoxy.  The 
"bishops  themselves  cower  before  them.  Macedonius  in  Constantinople, 
Flavianus  in  Antioch,  Eliasin  Jerusalem,  condemn  themselves  and  abdicate, 
or  are  driven  from  their  sees.  Persecution  is  universal — persecution  by 
every  means  of  violence  and  cruelty  ;  the  only  question  is,  in  whose  hands 
is  the  power  to  persecute.  .  .  .  Bloodshed,  murder,  treachery,  assassina- 
tion, even  during  the  public  worship  of  God  —  these  are  the  frightful 
means  by  which  each  party  strives  to  maintain  its  opinions  and  to  defeat 
its  adversary.' 

3  See  a  striking  passage  from  Julianus  of  Eclana,  cited  lay  Milman,  Hist, 
of  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  i.  p.  164. 

4  '  Nowhere  is  Christianity  less  attractive  than  in  the  Councils  of  the 
church.  .  .  .  Intrigue,  injustice,  violence,  decisions  on  authority  alone,  and 
that  the  authority  of  a  turbulent  majority  .  .  .  detract  from  the  reverence 
and  impugn  the  judgments  of  at  least  the  later  Councils.  The  close  is 
almost  invariably  a  terrible  anathema,  in  which  it  is  impossible  not  to 
discern  the  tones  of  human  hatred,  of  arrogant  triumph,  of  rejoicing  at 
the  damnation  imprecated  against  the  humiliated  adversary.' — Ibid.  vol.  i. 
p.  202. 

5  See  the  account  of  this  scene  in  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall,  ch.  xlvii. ; 
Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  i.  p.  263.  There  is  a  conflict  of  authorities 
as  to  whether  the  Bishop  of  Alexandria  himself  kicked  his  adversary,  or, 
to  speak  mere  correctly,  the  act  which  is  charged  against  him  by  some 


210  HISTORY  OF   EUROPEAN    MORALS. 

issued  in  the  election  of  St.  Damasus  as  Pope  of  Home, 
though  no  theological  question  appears  to  have  been  at 
he  riots  were  so  fierce,  that  one  hundred  and 
thirty-seven  corpses  were  found  in  one  of  the  churches.1 
The  precedent  of  the  Jewish  persecutions  of  idolatry 
having  been  adduced  by  St.  Cyprian,  in  the  third 
century,  in  favour  of  excommunication,2  was  urged  by 
Optatus,  in  the  reign  of  Constantine,  in  favour  of  per- 
secuting the  Donatists  ; 3  in  the  next  reign  we  find 
a  large  body  of  Christians  presenting  to  the  emperor  a 
petition,  based  upon  this  precedent,  imploring  him  to 
destroy  by  force  the  Pagan  worship.4  About  fifteen 
years  later,  the  whole  Christian  Church  was  prepared,  on 
the  same  grounds,  to  support  the  persecuting  policy  of 
St.  Ambrose,5  the  contending  sects  having  found,  in  the 
duty  of  crushing  religious  liberty,  the  solitary  tenet  on 
which  they  were  agreed.  The  most  unaggressive  and 
unobtrusive  forms  of  Paganism  were  persecuted  with  the 
Mime  ferocity.6  To  offer  a  sacrifice  was  to  commit  a 
capital  offence  ;  to  hang  up  a  simple  chaplet  was  to  incur 
the  forfeiture  of  an  estate.  The  noblest  works  of  Asiatic 
architecture  and  of  Greek  sculpture  perished  by  the  same 
iconoclasm  that  shattered  the  humble  temple  at  which 
the  peasant  loved  to  pray,  or  the  household  gods  which 
consecrated  his  home.     There  were  no  varieties  of  belief 

contemporary  writers  is  not  charged  against  him  by  others.  The  violence 
was  certainly  done  by  his  followers  and  in  his  presence. 

1  Annui.inus  BiarceUimu,  xxvii.  3.  2  Cyprian,  Ep.  Ixi. 

n  Milniiin,  Hid.  of  Chrutiantty)  vol.  ii.  p.  o00.  4  Ibid.  iii.  10. 

5  '  By  this  time  the  Old  Testament  language  and  sentiment  with  regard 
to  idolatry  wen  completely  incorporated  with  the  Christian  feeling  ;  and 
when  AmtaoM  enforced  on  a  Christian  emperor  the  sacred  duty  of  intoler- 
ance against  opinions  and  practices  which  scarcely  a  century  before  had 
been  the  established  religion  of  the  empire,  his  zeal  was  supported  by  almost 
the  unanimous  applause  of  the  Christian  world.' — Milnian's  Hist,  of  Chris- 
twntfy,TfA.  iii.  p.  150. 

•  See  the  Theodosian  laws  of  Paganism. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  211 

too  minute  for  the  new  intolerance  to  embitter.  The 
question  of  the  proper  time  of  celebrating  Easter  was 
believed  to  involve  the  issue  of  salvation  or  damnation  ;* 
and  when,  long  after,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  the 
question  of  the  nature  of  the  light  at  the  transfiguration 
was  discussed  at  Constantinople,  those  who  refused  to 
admit  that  that  light  was  uncreated,  were  deprived  of  the 
honours  of  Christian  burial.2 

Together  with  these  legislative  and  ecclesiastical 
measures,  a  literature  arose  surpassing  in  its  mendacious 
ferocity  any  other  the  world  had  known.  The  polemical 
writers  habitually  painted  as  daemons  those  who  diverged 
from  the  orthodox  belief,  gloated  with  a  vindictive  piety 
over  the  sufferings  of  the  heretic  upon  earth,  as  upon 
a  Divine  punishment,  and  sometimes,  with  an  almost 
superhuman  malice,  passing  in  imagination  beyond  the 
threshold  of  the  grave,  exulted  in  no  ambiguous  terms 
on  the  tortures  which  they  believed  to  be  reserved  for 
him  for  ever.  A  few  men,  such  as  Synesius,  Basil,  or 
Salvian,  might  still  find  some  excellence  in  Pagans  or 
heretics,  but  their  candour  was  altogether  exceptional ; 
and  he  who  will  compare  the  beautiful  pictures  the 
Greek  poets  gave  of  their  Trojan  adversaries,  or  the  Eoman 
historians  of  the  enemies  of  their  country,  with  those 
which  ecclesiastical  writers,  for  many  centuries,  almost 
invariably  gave  of  all  who  were  opposed  to  their  Church, 


1  This  appears  from  the  whole  history  of  the  controversy  j  but  the  prevail- 
ing feeling  is,  I  think,  expressed  with  peculiar  vividness  in  the  following 
passage — 'Eadmer  says  (following  the  words  of  Bede)  in  Colman's  limes 
there  was  a  sharp  controversy  about  the  observing  of  Easter,  and  other  rules 
of  life  for  churchmen  ;  therefore,  this  question  deservedly  excited  the  minds 
and  feeling  of  many  people,  fearing  lest,  perhaps,  after  having  received  the 
name  of  Christians,  they  should  run,  or  had  run  in  vain.' — King's  Hist,  of 
the  Church  of  Ireland,  book  ii.  ch.  vi. 

2  Gibbon,  chap,  lxiii. 


IB  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

may  easily  estimate  the  extent  to  which  cosmopolitan 
sympathy  had  retrograded. 

At  tlu'  period,  however,  when  the  Western  monasteries 
began  to  discharge  their  intellectual  functions,  the  supre- 
macy of  Catholicism  was  nearly  established,  and  polemical 
ardour  had  begun  to  wane.  The  literary  zeal  of  the 
Church  took  other  forms,  but  all  were  deeply  tinged 
by  the  monastic  spirit.  It  is  difficult  or  impossible  to 
conceive  what  would  have  been  the  intellectual  future  of 
the  world  had  Catholicism  never  arisen — what  princi- 
ples or  impulses  would  have  guided  the  course  of  the 
human  mind,  or  what  new  institutions  would  have  been 
created  for  its  culture.     Under  the  influence  of  Catho- 

sm,  the  monastery  became  the  one  sphere  of  intel- 
lectual labour,  and  it  continued  during  many  centuries 
to  occupy  that  position.  Without  entering  into  anything 
mbling  a  literary  history,  which  would  be  foreign 
to  the  objects  of  the  present  work,  I  shall  endeavour 
briefly  to  estimate  the  manner  in  which  it  discharged  its 
functions. 

The  first  idea  that  is  naturally  suggested  by  the  men- 
tion of  the  intellectual  services  of  monasteries  is  the  con- 

vation  of  the  writings  of  the  Pagans.     I  have  already 

fved,  that  among  the  early  Christians  there  was  a 

marked  difference  on  the  subject  of  their  writings.     The 

looI  which  was  represented  by  Tertullian  regarded 
them  with  abhorrence,  while  the  Platonists,  who  were 
represented  by  Justin  Martyr,  Clement  of  Alexandria,  and 
(  higen,  not  merely  recognised  with  great  cordiality  their 
beauties,  but  even  imagined  that  they  could  detect  in 
them  both  the  traces  of  an  original  Divine  inspiration, 
and  plar  fr<  ma  the  Jewish  writings.  While  avoiding, 

for  the  most  part,  these  extremes,  St.  Augustine,  the 
great  oi  of  Western  Christianity,  treats  the  Pagan 


FROM  CONST ANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  213 

writings  with  appreciative  respect.  He  had  himself 
ascribed  his  first  conversion  from  a  course  of  vice  to  the 
•  Hortensius '  of  Cicero,  and  his  works  are  full  of  discrimi- 
nating, and  often  very  beautiful  applications,  of  the  old 
Eoman  literature.  The  attempt  of  Julian  to  prevent  the 
Christians  from  teaching  the  classics,  and  the  extreme 
resentment  which  that  attempt  elicited,  show  how  highly 
the  Christian  leaders  of  that  period  valued  this  form  of 
education  ;  and  it  was  naturally  the  more  cherished  on 
account  of  the  contest.  The  influence  of  Neoplatonism, 
the  baptism  of  multitudes  of  nominal  Christians  after 
Constantine,  and  the  decline  of  zeal  which  necessarily 
accompanied  prosperity,  had  all  in  different  ways  the  same 
tendency.  In  Synesius  we  have  the  curious  phenomenon 
of  a  bishop  who,  not  content  with  proclaiming  himself  the 
admiring  friend  of  the  Pagan  Hypatia,  openly  declared  his 
complete  disbelief  in  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  and  his 
firm  adhesion  to  the  Platonic  doctrine  of  the  pre-existence 
of  souls.1  Had  the  ecclesiastical  theory  prevailed  which 
gave  such  latitude  even  to  the  leaders  of  the  Church,  the 
course  of  Christianity  would  have  been  very  different.  A 
reactionary  spirit,  however,  arose  at  Eome.  The  doctrine 
of  exclusive  salvation  supplied  its  intellectual  basis ;  the 
political  and  organising  genius  of  the  Eoman  ecclesiastics 
impelled  them  to  reduce  belief  into  a  rigid  form  ;  the  genius 
of  St.  Gregory  guided  the  movement,2  and  a  series  of 

1  An  interesting  sketch  of  this  very  interesting-  prelate  has,  lately  been 
written  by  M.  Druon,  Etude  sur  la  Vie  et  les  QZuvres  de  Si/nesius  (Paris, 
.1859). 

2  Tradition  hns  pronounced  Gregory  the  Great  to  have  been  the  destroyer 
of  the  Palatine  library,  and  to  have  been  especially  zealous  in  burning  the 
writings  of  Livy,  because  they  described  the  achievements  of  the  Pagan 
gods.  For  these  charges,  however  (which  I  am  sorry  to  find  repeated  by 
so  eminent  a  writer  as  Dr.  Draper),  there  is  no  real  evidence,  for  they  are 
not  found  in  any  writer  earlier  than  the  twelfth  century.  (See  Bavle,  Diet. 
art.   Greg.)      The  extreme  contempt  of  Gregory  for  Pagan  literature  is. 


214  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

historical  events,  of  which  the  ecclesiastical  and  political  se- 
parate >n  i  >f  the  Western  empire  from  the  speculative  Greeks, 
and  the  invasion  and  conversion  of  the  barbarians,  were 
the  most  important,  definitely  established  the  ascendency 
of  the  Catholic  type.  In  the  convulsions  that  followed 
the  barbarian  invasions,  intellectual  energy  of  a  secular 
kind  almost  absolutely  ceased.  A  parting  gleam  issued, 
indeed,  in  the  sixth  century,  from  the  Court  of  Theodoric, 
at  Eavenna,  which  was  adorned  by  the  genius  of  Boethius, 
and  the  talent  of  Cassiodorus  and  Symmachus  ;  but  after 
this  time,  for  a  long  period,  literature  consisted  almost 
exclusively  of  sermons  and  lives  of  saints,  which  were 
composed  in  the  monasteries.1  Gregory  of  Tours  was 
succeeded  as  au  annalist  by  the  still  feebler  Fredegarius, 
and  there  was  then  a  long  and  absolute  blank.  A  few 
outlying  countries  showed  some  faint  animation.  St. 
Lcander  and  St.  Isidore  planted  at  Seville  a  school,  which 
flourished  in  the  seventh  century,  and  the  distant  monas- 
teries  of  Ireland  continued   somewhat  later   to   be  the 

however,  sufficiently  manifested  in  bis  famous  and  very  curious  letter  to 
Desiderius,  Bishop  of  Vienne,  rebuking  him  for  having  taught  certain  per- 
sons Pagan  literature,  and  thus  mingling  '  the  praises  of  Jupiter  with  the 
praises  of  Christ;'  doing  what  would  be  impious  even  for  a  religious  layman. 
1  polluting  the  mind  with  the  blasphemous  praises  of  the  wicked.'  Some 
curious  evidence  of  the  feelings  of  the  Christians  of  the  fourth,  fifth,  and 
sixth  centuries,  about  Pagan  literature,  is  given  in  Guinguene,  Hist,  litteraire 
deV  Italic,  tome  i.  p.  29-31,  and  some  legends  of  a  later  period  are  candidly 
related  by  one  of  the  moat  enthusiastic  English  advocates  of  the  Middle 
Ages.     (  M;iit]ir.:d,  Dark  Ages.) 

1  Probably  the  best  account  of  the  intellectual  history  of  these  times  is 
still  to  be  found  in  the  admirable  introductory  chapters  with  which  the 
Bpnedictines  prefaced  each  century  of  their  Hist,  litteraire  de  la  France. 
The  Benedictines  think  (with  Ilallam)  that  the  eighth  century  was,  on  the 
whole,  the  darkest  on  the  continent,  though  England  attained  its  lowest 
point  somewhat  later.  Of  the  great  protectors  of  learning  Theodoric  waa 
unable  to  write  (see  Guinguene*,  tome  i.  p.  31),  and  Charjerttagne  (Egtnhaid) 
only  began  to  learn  when  advanced  in  life,  and  was  never  quite  able  to 
master  the  accomplishment.  Alfred,  however,  was  distinguished  in  lite- 
rature. 


FROM  CONSTAXTINE  TO  CHABLEMAGNE.  215 

receptacles  of  learning ;  but  the  rest  of  Europe  sank  into 
an  almost  absolute  torpor,  till  the  rationalism  of  Abelard, 
and  the  events  that  followed  the  crusade,  began  the  revival 
of  learning.  The  principal  service  which  Catholicism  ren- 
dered during  this  period  to  Pagan  literature  was  probably 
the  perpetuation  of  Latin  as  a  sacred  language.  The  com- 
plete absence  of  all  curiosity  about  that  literature  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  Greek  was  suffered  to  become  almost  abso- 
lutely extinct,  though  there  was  no  time  when  the  Western 
nations  had  not  some  relations  with  the  Greek  empire,  or 
when  pilgrimages  to  the  Holy  Land  altogether  ceased. 
The  study  of  the  Latin  classics  was  for  the  most  part  posi- 
tively discouraged.  The  writers,  it  was  believed,  were 
burning  in  hell ;  the  monks  were  too  inflated  with  their 
imaginary  knowledge  to  regard  with  any  respect  a  Pagan 
writer,  and  periodical  panics  about  the  approaching  ter- 
mination of  the  world  continually  checked  any  desire  for 
secular  learning.1  There  existed  a  custom  among  some 
monks,  when  they  were  under  the  discipline  of  silence, 
and  desired  to  ask  for  Virgil  or  Horace,  or  any  other 
Gentile  w^ork,  to  indicate  their  wish  by  scratching  their 
ears  like  a  dog,  to  which  animal  it  was  thought  the 
Pagans  might  be  reasonably  compared.2     The  monasteries 

1  The  belief  that  the  world  was  just  about  to  end  was,  as  is  well  known, 
very  general  among-  the  early  Christians,  and  greatly  affected  their  lives. 
It  appears  in  the  New  Testament,  and  very  clearly  in  the  epistle  ascribed 
to  Barnabas  in  the  first  century.  The  persecutions  of  the  second  and  third 
centuries,  revived  it,  and  both  Tertullian  and  Cyprian  (in  Demctrianum) 
strongly  assert  it.  With  the  triumph  of  Christianity  the  apprehension  for 
a  time  subsided;  but  it  reappeared  with  great  force  when  the  dissolution  of 
the  empire  was  manifestly  impending,  when  it  was  accomplished,  and  in 
the  prolonged  anarchy  and  suffering  that  ensued.  Gregory  of  Tours,  writing 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  sixth  century,  speaks  of  it  as  very  prevalent  (Pro* 
logue  to  the  First  Book)  ;  and  St.  Gregory  the  Great,  about  the  same  time, 
constantly  expresses  it.  The  panic  that  filled  Europe  at  the  end  of  tba 
tenth  century  has  been  often  described. 

8  Maitland's  Dark  Ages,  p.  403. 
48 


21G  HISTORY  OF  EUROrEAN  MORALS. 

contained,  it  is  said,  during  some  time,  the  only  libraries 
in  Europe,  and  were  therefore  the  sole  receptacles  of  the 
in  manuscripts  ;  but  we  cannot  infer  from  this,  that 
if  the  monasteries  had  not  existed,  similar  libraries  would 
not  have  been  called  into  being  in  their  place.  To  the 
occasional  industry  of  the  monks,  in  copying  the  works  of 
antiquity,  we  must  oppose  the  industry  they  displayed, 
though  chiefly  at  a  somewhat  later  period,  in  scraping 
the  ancient  parchments,  in  order  that,  having  obliterated 
the  writing  of  the  Pagans,  they  might  cover  them  with 
their  own  legends.1 

There  are  some  aspects,  however,  in  which  the  mo- 
nastic period  of  literature  appears  eminently  beautiful. 
The  fretfulncss  and  impatience  and  extreme  tension  of 
modern  literary  life,  the  many  anxieties  that  paralyse, 
and  the  feverish  craving  for  applause  that  perverts,  so 
many  noble  intellects,  were  then  unknown.  Severed  from 
all  the  cares  of  active  life,  in  the  deep  calm  of  the  monas- 
tery, where  the  turmoil  of  the  outer  world  could  never 
come,  the  monkish  scholar  pursued  his  studies  in  a  spirit 
which  has  now  almost  faded  from  the  world.  No  doubt 
had  ever  disturbed  his  mind.  To  him  the  problem  of 
the  universe  seemed  solved.  Expatiating  for  ever  with 
unfaltering  faith  upon  the  unseen  world,  he  had  learnt  to 
live  for  it  alone.  His  hopes  were  not  fixed  upon  human 
atness  or  fame,  but  upon  the  pardon  of  his  sins,  and 
the  rewards  of  a  happier  world.  A  crowd  of  quaint  and 
often  beautiful  legends  illustrate  the  deep  union  that  sub- 
sisted between   literature  and  religion.     It  is  related  of 

1  Tliis  passion  for  scraping  MSS.  became  common,  according  t<>  Mont- 
faucon,  after  tin-  twelfth  century.  (Maitland,  p.  40.)  According  to  Hnllam, 
however  {Middle  Age*,  ch.  ix.  part  i.),  it  must  Lave  begun  earlier,  being 
I  by  the  cessation  or  great  diminution  of  the  import  of  Egyp- 
tian papyrus,  which  was  a  coi  of  the  capture  of  Alexandria  by 
the  Saracens,  early  in  the  seventh  century. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  217 

Caedmon,  the  first  great  poet  of  the  Anglo-Saxons,  that 
he  found  in  the  secular  life  no  vent  for  his  hidden  genius: 
When  the  warriors  assembled  at  their  banquets,  sang  in 
turn  the  praises  of  war  or  beauty,  as  the  instrument  passed 
to  him,  he  rose  and  went  out  with  a  sad  heart,  for  he  alone 
was  unable  to  weave  his  thoughts  in  verse.  Wearied  and 
desponding  he  lay  down  to  rest,  when  a  figure  appeared 
to  him  in  his  dream  and  commanded  him  to  sing  the 
Creation  of  the  World.  A  transport  of  religious  fervour 
thrilled  his  brain,  his  imprisoned  intellect  was  unlocked, 
and  he  soon  became  the  foremost  poet  of  his  land.1  A 
Spanish  boy  having  long  tried  in  vain  to  master  his  task, 
and  driven  to  despair  by  the  severity  of  his  teacher,  ran 
away  from  his  father's  home.  Tired  with  wandering, 
and  full  of  anxious  thoughts,  he  sat  down  to  rest  by  the 
margin  of  a  well,  when  his  eye  was  caught  by  the  deep 
furrow  in  the  stone.  He  asked  a  girl  who  was  drawing 
water  to  explain  it,  and  she  told  him  that  it  had  been 
worn  by  the  constant  attrition  of  the  rope.  The  poor 
boy,  who  was  already  full  of  remorse  for  what  he  had 
done,  recognised  in  the  reply  a  Divine  intimation.  ;  If,' 
he  thought,  '  by  daily  use  the  soft  rope  could  thus  pene- 
trate the  hard  stone,  surely  a  long  perseverance  could 
overcome  the  dullness  of  my  brain.  He  returned  to 
his  father's  house ;  he  laboured  with  redoubled  earnest- 
ness, and  he  lived  to  be  the  great  St.  Isidore  of  Spain.2 
A  monk  who  had  led  a  vicious  life  was  saved,  it  is  said, 
from  hell,  because  it  was  found  that  his  sins,  though  very 
numerous,  were  just  outnumbered  by  the  letters  of  a 
ponderous  and  devout  book  he  had  written.3     The  Holy 

1  Bede,  H.  E.  iv.  24. 

2  Mariana  Be  Rebus  Hispanic?,  vi.  7.     Mariana  says  the  stone  was  in  his 
time  preserved  as  a  relic. 

3  Odericus  Vitalis,  quoted  by  Maitland  {Dark  Ages,  pp.  263-209).     The 
monk  was  restored  to  life  that  he  might  have  an  opportunity  of  reformation. 


216  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

Spirit,  iii  the  shape  of  a  dove,  had  been  seen  to  inspire 
St.  Gregory ;  and  the  writings  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
and  of  several  other  theologians,  had  been  expressly  ap- 
plauded by  Christ  or  by  his  saints.  When,  twenty  years 
after  death,  the  tomb  of  a  certain  monkish  writer  was 
opened,  it  was  found  that,  although  the  remainder  of  the 
body  had  crumbled  into  dust,  the  hand  that  had  held 
the  pen  remained  flexible  and  undecayed.1  A  young  and 
nameless  scholar  was  once  buried  near  a  convent  at  Bonn. 
The  night  after  his  funeral,  a  nun  whose  cell  overlooked 
the  cemetery  was  awakened  by  a  brilliant  light  that  filled 
the  room.  She  started  up,  imagining  that  the  day  had 
dawned,  but  on  looking  out  she  found  that  it  was  still 
night,  though  a  dazzling  splendour  was  around.  A  female 
form  of  matchless  loveliness  was  bending  over  the 
scholar's  grave.  The  effluence  of  her  beauty  filled  the 
air  with  light,  and  she  clasped  to  her  heart  a  snow-white 
dove  that  rose  to  meet  her  from  the  tomb.  It  was  the 
Mother  of  God  come  to  receive  the  soul  of  the  martyred 
scholar*;  fc  for  scholars  too,'  adds  the  old  chronicler,  'are 
martyrs  if  they  live  in  purity  and  labour  with  courage.'2 

But  legends  of  this  kind,  though  not  without  a  very 
real  beauty,  must  not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  the  peri<  >d 
of  Catholic  ascendency  was  on  the  whole  one  of  the 
most  deplorable  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind.  The 
energies  of  Christendom  were  diverted  from  all  useful 
and  progressive  studies,  and  were  wholly  expended  on 
theological  disquisitions.     A  crowd  of  superstitions,  attri- 

Th»'  escape  was  a  narrow  one,  for  there  -was  only  one  letter  against  which 
do  too  eould  be  adduced— a  remarkable  instance  of  the  advantages  of  a 
diffuse  style. 

1  l>i-  Catkoiiri,  book  x.  p.  240.  Mathew  of  Westminster  tells 
of  a  certain  king  who  was  very  charitable,  and  whose  right  hand  (which 
had  assuaged  many  sorrows)  remained  undecayed  after  death  (a.i>.  644), 

2  See  Haureau,  Hist,  de  In  I7ulosophie  scolaHiquc,  tomei  pp.  24-- B. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  219 

buted  to  infallible  wisdom,  barred  the  path  of  knowledge, 
and  the  charge  of  magic,  or  the  charge  of  heresy,  crushed 
every  bold  enquiry  in  the  sphere  of  physical  nature  or  of 
opinions.  Above  all,  the  conditions  of  true  enquiry  had 
been  cursed  by  the  Church.  A  blind  unquestioning  cre- 
dulity was  inculcated  as  the  first  of  duties,  and  the  habit 
of  doubt,  the  impartiality  of  a  suspended  judgment,  the 
desire  to  hear  both  sides  of  a  disputed  question,  and  to 
emancipate  the  judgment  from  unreasoning  prejudice, 
were  all  in  consequence  condemned.  The  belief  in  the 
guilt  of  error  and  doubt  became  universal,  and  that  belief 
may  be  confidently  pronounced  to  be  the  most  pernicious 


ous 
an- 


superstition  that  has  ever  been  accredited  among  man 
kind.  Mistaken  facts  are  rectified  by  enquiry.  Mistaken 
methods  of  research,  though  far  more  inveterate,  are  gra- 
dually altered ;  but  the  spirit  that  shrinks  from  enquiry  as 
sinful,  and  deems  a  state  of  doubt  a  state  of  guilt,  is 
the  most  enduring  disease  that  can  afflict  the  mind  of 
man.  Not  till  the  education  of  Europe  passed  from  the 
monasteries  to  the  universities,  not  till  Mahommedan 
science,  and  classical  freethought,  and  industrial  inde- 
pendence broke  the  sceptre  of  the  Church,  did  the  intel- 
lectual revival  of  Europe  begin. 

I  am  aware  that  so  strong  a  statement  of  the  intellec- 
tual darkness  of  the  middle  ages  is  likely  to  encounter 
opposition  from  many  quarters.  The  blindness  which 
the  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century  manifested  to 
their  better  side  has  produced  a  reaction  which  has  led 
many  to  an  opposite,  and,  I  believe,  far  more  erroneous 
extreme.  Some  have  become  eulogists  of  the  period 
through  love  of  its  distinctive  theological  doctrines,  and 
others  through  archaeological  enthusiasm,  while  a  very 
pretentious  and  dogmatic,  but  I  think  sometimes  super- 
ficial, school  of  writers  who  loudly  boast  themselves  the 


220  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

regenerators  of  history,  and  treat  with  supreme  contempt 
all  the  varieties  of  theological  opinion,  are  accustomed, 
partly  through  a  very  shallow  historical  optimism  which 
rcely  admits  the  possibility  of  retrogression,  and  partly 
through  sympathy  with  the  despotic  character  of  Catho- 
licism, to  extol  the  mediaeval  society  in  the  most  extra- 
vagant terms.  Without  entering  into  a  lengthy  ex- 
amination of  this  subject,  I  may  be  permitted  to  indicate 
shortly  two  or  three  fallacies  which  are  continually  dis- 
played in  their  appreciations. 

It  is  an  undoubted  truth  that,  for  a  considerable  period, 
almost  all  the  knowledge  of  Europe  was  included  in  the 
monasteries,  and  from  this  it  is  continually  inferred  that, 
had  these  institutions  not  existed,  knowledge  would  have 
been  absolutely  extinguished.  But  such  a  conclusion  I 
conceive  to  be  altogether  untrue.  During  the  period  of 
the  Pagan  empire,  intellectual  life  had  been  diffused  over 
a  vast  portion  of  the  globe.  Egypt  and  Asia  Minor  had 
become  great  centres  of  civilisation.  Greece  was  still  a 
land  of  learning.  Spain,  Gaul,  and  even  Britain l  were 
full  of  libraries  and  teachers.  The  schools  of  Narbonne, 
Aries,  Bordeaux,  Toulouse,  Lyons,  Marseilles,  Poitiers, 
and  Treves  were  already  famous.  The  Christian  em- 
peror Gratian,  in  a.d.  376,  carried  out  in  Gaul  a  system 
similar  to  that  which  had  already,  under  the  Antonines, 
been  pursued  in  Italy,  ordaining  that  teachers  should  be 
supported  by  the  State  in  every  leading  city.2  To  sup- 
pose that  Latin  literature,  having  been  so  widely  diffused, 
could  have  totally  perished,  or  that  all  interest  in  it  could 
have  permanently  ceased,  even  under  the  extremely 
unfavourable  circumstances  that  followed  the  downfall  of 

1  On  the  progress  of  Roman  civilisation  in  Britain,  ?eo  Tacitus,  Ayri- 
co'a,  xxi. 

2  See  the  Benedictine  Hist,  litter,  de  la  France,  tome  i.  part  ii.  p.  9. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  221 

the  Koman  Empire  and  the  Mahommedan  invasions,  is,  I 
conceive,  absurd.  If  Catholicism  had  never  existed,  the 
human  mind  would  have  sought  other  spheres  for  its  de- 
velopment, and  at  least  a  part  of  the  treasures  of  antiquity 
would  have  been  preserved  in  other  ways.  The  monas- 
teries, as  corporations  of  peaceful  men  protected  from  the 
incursions  of  the  barbarians,  became  very  naturally  the 
reservoirs  to  which  the  streams  of  literature  flowed ;  but 
much  of  what  they  are  represented  as  creating,  they  had 
in  reality  only  attracted.  The  inviolable  sanctity  which 
they  secured  rendered  them  invaluable  receptacles  of  an- 
cient learning  in  a  period  of  anarchy  and  perpetual  war, 
and  the  industry  of  the  monks  in  transcribing  probably 
more  than  counterbalanced  their  industry  in  effacing  the 
classical  writings.  The  ecclesiastical  unity  of  Christendom 
was  also  of  extreme  importance  in  rendering  possible  a 
general  interchange  of  ideas.  Whether  these  services  out- 
weighed the  intellectual  evils  resulting  from  the  complete 
diversion  of  the  human  mind  from  .all  secular  learning, 
and  from  the  persistent  inculcation,  as  a  matter  of  duty, 
of  that  habit  of  abject  credulity  which  it  is  the  first  task 
of  the  intellectual  reformer  to  eradicate,  may  be  rea- 
sonably doubted. 

It  is  not  unfrequent,  again,  to  hear  the  preceding  fal- 
lacy stated  in  a  somewhat  different  form.  We  are  re- 
minded that  almost  all  the  men  of  genius  during  several 
centuries  were  great  theologians,  and  we  are  asked  to 
conceive  the  more  than  Egyptian  darkness  that  would 
have  prevailed  had  the  Catholic  theology  which  produced 
them  not  existed.  This  judgment  resembles  that  of  the 
prisoner  in  a  famous  passage  of  Cicero,  who,  having  spent 
his  entire  life  in  a  dark  dungeon,  and  knowing  the  light 
of  day  only  from  a  single  ray  which  passed  through  a 


222  niSTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

figure  in  the  Avail,  inferred  that  if  the  wall  were  removed, 
as  the  fissure  would  no  longer  exist,  all  light  would  be 
■hided.  Medieval  Catholicism  discouraged  and  sup- 
pressed in  every  way  secular  studies,  while  it  conferred  a 
monopoly  of  wealth  and  honour  and  power  upon  the 
distinguished  theologian.  Very  naturally,  therefore,  it 
attracted  into  the  path  of  theology  the  genius  that  would 
have  existed  without  it,  but  would  have  been  displayed 
in  other  forms. 

It  is  not  to  be  inferred,  however,  from  this,  that  me- 
dieval Catholicism  had  not,  in  the  sphere  of  intellect,  any 
real  creative  power.  A  great  moral  or  religious  enthu- 
siasm always  evokes  a  certain  amount  of  genius  that 
would  not  otherwise  have  existed,  or  at  least  been  dis- 
played, and  the  monasteries  were  peculiarly  fitted  to 
develope  certain  casts  of  mind,  which  in  no  other  sphere 
could  have  so  perfectly  expanded.  The  great  writings  of 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas1  and  his  followers,  and,  in  more 
modern  times,  the  massive  and  conscientious  erudition  of 
the  Benedictines,  will  always  make  certain  periods  of  the 
monastic  history  venerable  to  the  scholar.  But,  when 
we  remember  that  during  many  centuries  nearly  every 
one  possessing  any  literary  taste  or  talents  became  a 
monk,  when  we  recollect  that  these  monks  were  familiar 
with  the  language,  and  might  easily  have  been  familiar 
with  the  noble  literature  of  ancient  Eome,  and  when  we 
also  consider  the  mode  of  their  life,  which  would  seem, 
in >m  its  absence  of  care,  and  from  the  very  monotony  of 
its  routine,  peculiarly  calculated  to  impel  them  to  study, 
we  can  hardly  fail  to  wonder  how  very  little  of  any  real 

1  A  biognpheg  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  modestly  ebservee:  '  L'opinion 
geoeraleroent  rtfpandae  ptruri  let  theologiens  c'est  que  la  s<>m)>,c  de  Tln'ofagie 
de  St.-Thomas  est  non-settlement  ion  chef-d'oeuvre  mail  auasi  celui  de 
l'esprit  hurnoin'  (!  !). — Carle,  Hist,  de  St. -Thames  cTAguin,  p.  140. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  223 

value  they  added,  for  so  long  a  period,  to  the  know- 
ledge of  mankind.  It  is  indeed  a  remarkable  fact,  that 
even  in  the  ages  when  the  Catholic  ascendency  was 
most  perfect,  the  greatest  achievements  were  either 
opposed  to,  or  simply  external  to,  ecclesiastical  influence. 
Soger  Bacon  having  been  a  monk,  is  frequently  spoken 
of  as  a  creature  of  Catholic  teaching.  Bat  there  never 
was  a  more  striking  instance  of  the  force  of  a  great 
genius  in  resisting  the  tendencies  of  his  age.  At  a  time 
when  physical  science  was  continually  neglected,  dis- 
couraged, or  condemned,  at  a  time  when  all  the  great 
prizes  of  the  world  were  open  to  men  who  pursued  a  very 
different  course,  Bacon  applied  himself  with  transcendent 
genius  to  the  study  of  nature.  Fourteen  years  of  his 
life  were  spent  in  prison,  and  when  he  died,  his  name 
was  blasted  as  a  magician.  The  mediaeval  laboratories 
were  chiefly  due  to  the  pursuit  of  alchemy,  or  to  Mo- 
hammedan encouragement.  The  inventions  of  the 
mariner's  compass,  of  gunpowder,  and  of  rag  paper  were 
all,  indeed,  of  extreme  importance ;  but  they  were  great 
inventions  only  from  their  effects,  and  in  no  degree  from 
the  genius  they  implied.  They  were  all  unconnected 
with  the  prevailing  intellectual  tendencies  or  teachings, 
and  might  have  equally  appeared  in  any  age  and  under 
any  religion.  The  monasteries  cultivated  formal  logic  to 
great  perfection.  They  produced  many  patient  and  la- 
borious, though,  for  the  most  part,  wholly  uncritical 
scholars,  and  many  philosophers  who,  having  assumed 
their  premises  with  unfaltering  faith,  reasoned  from  them 
with  admirable  subtlety ;  but  they  taught  men  to  regard 
the  sacrifice  of  secular  learning  as  a  noble  thing ;  they 
impressed  upon  them  a  theory  of  the  habitual  govern- 
ment of  the  universe,  which  is  absolutely  untrue,  and 
they  diffused,  wherever  their  influence  extended,  habits 


224  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

of  credulity  and  intolerance  that  are  the  most  deadly 
poisons  to  the  human  mind. 

It  is,  again,  very  frequently  observed  among  the  more 
philosophic  eulogists  of  the  mediaeval  period,  that  al- 
though the  Catholic  Church  is  a  trammel  and  an  obstacle 
to  the  progress  of  civilised  nations,  although  it  would 
be  scarcely  possible  to-  exaggerate  the  misery  her  perse- 
cuting spirit  caused,  when  the  human  mind  had  out- 
stripped her  teaching ;  yet  there  was  a  time  when  she 
was  greatly  in  advance  of  the  age,  and  the  complete  and 
absolute  ascendency  she  then  exercised  was  intellectually 
eminently  beneficial.  That  there  is  much  truth  in  this 
view,  I  have  myself  repeatedly  maintained.  But  when 
men  proceed  to  isolate  the  former  period,  and  to  make 
it  the  theme  of  unqualified  eulogy,  they  fall,  I  think,  into 
a  grave  error.  The  evils  that  sprang  from  the  later 
period  of  Catholic  ascendency  were  not  an  accident  or  a 
perversion,  but  a  normal  and  necessary  consequence  of 
the  previous  despotism.  The  principles  which  were 
imposed  on  the  mediaeval  world,  and  which  were  the 
conditions  of  so  much  of  its  distinctive  excellence,  were 
of  such  a  nature  that  they  claimed  to  be  final,  and.  could 
not  possibly  be  discarded  without  a  struggle  and  a  con- 
vulsion. We  must  estimate  the  influence  of  these 
principles  considered  as  a  whole,  and  during  the  entire 
period  of  their  operation.  There  are  some  poisons  which, 
before  they  kill  men,  allay  pain  and  diffuse  a  soothing 
sensation  through  the  •  frame.  We  may  recognise  the 
hour  of  enjoyment  they  procure,  but  we  must  not  sepa- 
rate it  from  the  price  at  which  it  was  purchased. 

The  extremely  unfavourable  influence  thS  Catholic 
Church  long  exercised  upon  intellectual  development 
had  important  moral  consequences.  Although  moral 
progress  does   not   necessarily  depend  upon  intellectual 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  225 

progress,  it  is  materially  affected  by  it,  intellectual 
activity  being  the  most  important  element  in  the  growth 
of  that  great  and  complex  organism  which  wTe  call  civili- 
sation. The  medieval  credulity  had  also  a  more  direct 
moral  influence  in  producing  that  indifference  to  truth, 
which  is  the  most  repulsive  feature  of  so  many  Catho- 
lic writings.  The  very  large  part  that  must  be  assigned 
to  deliberate  forgeries  in  the  early  apologetic  literature 
of  the  Church  we  have  already  seen,  and  no  impartial 
reader  can,  I  think,  investigate  the  innumerable  grotesque 
and  lying  legends  that  were  deliberately  palmed  upon 
mankind  as  undoubted  facts,  during  the  whole  course 
of  the  middle  ages,  can  follow  the  histories  of  the  false 
decretals,  and  the  discussions  that  were  connected  with 
them,  Qr  can  observe  the  complete  and  absolute  incapacity 
the  polemical  historians  of  Catholicism  so  frequently  dis- 
play, of  conceiving  any  good  thing  in  the  ranks  of  their 
opponents,  and  their  systematic  suppression  of  whatever 
can  tell  against  their  cause,  without  acknowledging  how 
serious  and  how  inveterate  has  been  the  evil.  There 
have,  no  doubt,  been  many  noble  individual  exceptions. 
Yet  it  is,  I  believe,  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  extent  to 
which  this  moral  defect  exists  in  most  of  the  ancient  and 
very  mueh  of  the  modern  literature  of  Catholicism.  It  is 
this  which  makes  it  so  unspeakably  repulsive  to  all  inde- 
pendent and  impartial  thinkers,  and  has  led  a  great 
German  historian1  to  declare,  with  much  bitterness,  that 
the  j)hrase  Christian  veracity  deserves  to  rank  with  the 
phrase  Punic  faith.  But  this  absolute  indifference  to  truth 
whenever  falsehood  could  subserve  the  interests  of  the 
Church,  is  perfectly  explicable,  and  was  found  in  mul- 
titudes, who/  in  other  respects,  exhibited  the  noblest 
virtue.     An  age  which  has  ceased  to  value  impartiality  of 

1  Herder. 


226  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

judgment  will  soon  cease  to  value  accuracy  of  statement, 
and  when  credulity  is  inculcated  as  a  virtue,  falsehood 
will  not  long  be  stigmatised  as  a  vice.  When,  too,  men 
are  firmly  convinced  that  salvation  can  only  be  found 
within  their  Church,  and  that  their  Church  can  absolve 
from  all  guilt,  they  will  speedily  conclude  that  nothing  can 
possibly  be  wrong  which  is  beneficial  to  it.  They  ex- 
change the  love  of  truth  for  what  they  call  the  love  of 
the  truth.  They  regard  morals  as  derived  from  and  sub- 
ordinate to  theology,  and  they  regulate  all  their  state- 
ments, not  by  the  standard  of  veracity,  but  by  the  interests 
of  their  creed. 

Another  important  moral  consequence  of  the  monastic 
system  was  the  great  importance  that  was  given  to  the 
pecuniary  compensations  for  crime.  It  had  been  at  fust 
one  of  the  broad  distinctions  between  Paganism  and 
Christianity,  that  while  the  rites  of  the  former  were  for 
the  most  part  unconnected  with  moral  dispositions,  Chris- 
tianity made  purity  of  heart  an  essential  element  of  all  its 
worship.  Among  the  Pagans  a  few  faint  efforts  had,  it 
is  true,  been  made  in  this  direction.  An  old  precept 
or  law,  which  is  referred  to  by  Cicero,  and  which  was 
strongly  reiterated  by  Apollonius  of  Tyana,  and  the 
Pythagoreans,  declared  that '  no  impious  man  should  dare 
to  appease  the  anger  of  the  divinities  by  his  gifts'1  and 
oracles  are  said  to  have  more  than  once  proclaimed  that 
the  hecatombs  of  noble  oxen  with  gilded  horns  that  were 
offered  up  ostentatiously  by  the  rich,  wrere  less  pleasing 
to  the  gods  than  the  wreaths  of  flowers  and  the  modest 
and  reverential  worship  of  the  poor.2  In  general,  how- 
ever, in  the  Pagan  world,  the  service  of  the  temple  had 


t  . 


Impius  ne  audeto  placnre  donis  iram  Deorum.' — Cicero,  Da  Ley.  ii.9. 
See,  ton,  Philost.  in  Apoll.  Tyan.  i.  11. 

*  Then   ire  three  or  four  instances  of  this  related  by  I'orph jry,  Abstin. 
Cwmiit  lib.  ii. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  227 

little  or  no  connection  with  morals,  and  the  change 
which  Christianity  effected  in  this  respect  was  one  of  its 
most  important  benefits  to  mankind.  It  was  natural, 
however,  and  perhaps  inevitable,  that  in  the  course  of 
time,  and  under  the  action  of  very  various  causes,  the  old 
Pagan  sentiment  should  revive,  and  even  with  an  in- 
creased intensity.  In  no  respect  had  the  Christians  been 
more  nobly  distinguished  than  by  their  charity.  It  was 
not  surprising  that  the  fathers,  while  exerting  all  their 
eloquence  to  stimulate  this  charity — especially  during  the 
calamities  that  accompanied  the  dissolution  of  the  empire 
— should  have  dilated  in  extremely  strong  terms  upon  the 
spiritual  benefits  the  donor  would  receive  for  his  gift.  It 
is  also  not  surprising  that  this  selfish  calculation  should 
gradually,  and  among  hard  and  ignorant  men,  have 
absorbed  all  other  motives.  A  curious  legend,  which  is 
related  by  a  writer  of  the  seventh  century,  illustrates  the 
kind  of  feeling  that  had  arisen.  The  Christian  bishop 
Synesius  succeeded  in  converting  a  Pagan  named  Eva- 
grius,  who  for  a  long  time,  however,  felt  doubts  about  the 
passage,  *  He  who  giveth  to  the  poor  lendeth  to  the  Lord.' 
On  his  conversion,  and  in  obedience  to  this  verse,  he  gave 
Synesius  three  hundred  pieces  of  gold  to  be  distributed 
among  the  poor  ;  but  he  exacted  from  the  bishop,  as  being 
the  representative  of  Christ,  a  promissory  note,  engaging 
that  he  should  be  repaid  in  the  future  world.  When3 
many  years  later,  Evagrius  was  on  his  deathbed,  he  com- 
manded his  sons,  when  they  buried  him,  to  place  the  note 
in  his  hand,  and  to  do  so  without  informing  Synesius.  His 
dying  injunction  was  observed,  and  three  days  afterwards 
he  appeared  to  Synesius  in  a  dream,  told  him  that  the 
debt  had  been  paid,  and  ordered  him  to  go  to  the  tomb, 
where  he  would  find  a  written  receipt.  Synesius  did  as 
he  was  commanded,  and  the  grave  being  opened,  the 


228  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

promissory  note  was  found  in  the  hand  of  the  dead  man, 
with  an  endorsement  declaring  that  the  debt  had  been 
paid  by  Christ.  The  note,  it  is  said,  was  long  after  pre- 
served as  a  relic  in  the  church  of  Cyrene.1 

The  kind  of  feeling  which  this  legend  displays  was  soon 
turned  witli  tenfold  force  into  the  channel  of  monastic  life. 
A  law  of  Constantine  accorded,  and  several  later  laws  en- 
larged, the  power  of  bequests  to  ecclesiastics.  Ecclesiastical 
property  was  at  the  same  time  exonerated  from  the  public 
burdens,  and  this  measure  not  only  directly  assisted  its 
increase,  but  had  also  an  important  indirect  influence  ; 
for,  when  taxation  was  heavy,  many  laymen  ceded  the 
ownership  of  their  estates  to  the  monasteries,  with  a  secret 
condition  that  they  should  as  vassals  receiye  the  revenues 
unburdened  by  taxation,  and  subject  only  to  a  slight  pay- 
ment to  the  monks  as  to  their  feudal  lords.2  The  monks 
were  regarded  as  the  trustees  of  the  poor,  and  also  as  them- 
es typical  poor,  and  all  the  promises  that  applied  to 
those  who  gave  to  the  poor,  applied,  it  was  said,  to  the 
benefactors  of  the  monasteries.  The  monastic  chapel  also 
contained  the  relics  of  saints  or  sacred  images  of  mira- 
culous power,  and  throngs  of  worshippers  were  attracted 
by  the  miracles,  and  desired  to  place  themselves  under 
the  protection,  of  the  saint.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say, 
that  to  give  money  to  the  priests  was  for  several  centuries 

.  1  Mni-rliu-,  Pratiim  Spiritual*}  (liosweyde),  cap.   exev.    M.  Wallon quotes 
(.■cm   tlie   Life    <■)    St.-Jean    I'AvmCnitr  on   even   stranger  event  which 
St.  Rcter  Telonearius.     'Pour  repousser  les  importunity  des 
paurres,  il  leur  jetait  des  pierres.     Tin  jour,  nVn  trouvant  pas  sous  la  main, 
la  tin  pain  a  la  1»*te.     Jl  toinlm  malade  et  eut  line  vision.     Ses 
m&itoi   t't ait-iit  comptfctj  d'uil  cote1  etaient  tous  ses  crimes,  de  l'autre  ce 
painjete'  comma  one,  intulte  aux  pannes  et  accepte*  connne  une  aumdne  par 
-Christ.' — Hid.  de  VEtdavage)  tome  iii.  p.  .'l'.»7. 
I  may  mentnjn  here  that  tlic  ancient  Qauls  were  said  to  b*ve  been 
Qccnstqmed  te  lend  m<  oej  on  the  condition  of  its  being  repaid  by  the  lender 
in  the  next  life.     (Val.  Blajdmus,  lil>.  ii.  cap.  vi.  §  10.) 
a  Mur.itoii,  Anilck.  Italia**]  di&s.  lxvii. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  229 

the  first  article  of  the  moral  code.  Political  minds  may 
have  felt  the  importance  of  aggrandising  a  pacific  and 
industrious  class  in  the  centre  of  a  disorganised  society, 
and  family  affection  may  have  predisposed  many  in  favour 
of  institutions  which  contained  at  least  one  member  of 
most  families ;  but  in  the  overwhelming  majority  of 
cases  the  motive  was  simple  superstition.  In  seasons 
of  sickness,  of  danger,  of  sorrow,  or  of  remorse,  when- 
ever the  fear  or  the  conscience  of  the  worshipper  was 
awakened,  he  hastened  to  purchase  with  money  the  favour 
of  a  saint.  Above  all,  in  the  hour  of  death,  when  the 
terrors  of  the  future  world  loomed  darkly  upon  his  mind, 
he  saw  in  a  gift  or  legacy  to  the  monks  a  sure  means  of 
effacing  the  most  monstrous  crimes,  and  securing  his  ulti- 
mate happiness.  A  rich  man  was  soon  scarcely  deemed 
a  Christian,  if  he  did  not  leave  a  portion  of  his  property 
to  the  Church,  and  the  charters  of  innumerable  monas- 
teries in  every  part  of  Europe  attest  the  vast  tracts  of 
land  that  were  ceded  by  will  to  the  monks,  'for  the 
benefit  of  the  soul'  of  the  testator.1 

It. has  been  observed  by  a  great  historian,  that  we  may 
trace  three  distinct  phases  in  the  history  of  the  Church. 
In  the  first  period  religion  was  a  question  of  morals  ;  in 
the  second  period,  which  culminated  in  the  fifth  century, 
it  had  become  a  question  of  orthodoxy ;  in  the  third 
period,  which  dates  from  the  seventh  century,  it  was  a 
question  of  munificence  to  monasteries.2     The  despotism 

1  See  on  the .  causes  of  the  wealth  of  the  monasteries,  two  admirable 
dissertations  by  Muratori,  Antich.  Italiane,  lxvii.  lxviii. ;  Hallam's  Middle 
Ages,  ch.  vii.  part  i. 

2  '  Lors  de  Tetablissement  du  christianisme  la  religion  avoit  essentielle- 
ment  consiste  dans  l'enseignement  moral ;  elle  avoit  exerce  les  cceurs  et  les 
allies  par  la  recherche  de  ce  qui  etoit  vraiment  beau,  vraiment  honnete.  Au 
uinquieme  siecle  on  F  avoit  surtout  attachee  a  l'orthodoxie,  au  septieme  on 
1'avoit  rednite  a.  la  bienfaisance  envers  les  couvens.' — Sismondi,  Hist,  des 
Francais,  tome  ii.  p.  50. 


230  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

of  Catholicism,  and  the  ignorance  that  followed  the  bar- 
barian invasions,  had  repressed  the  struggles  of  heresy, 
ami  in  the  period  of  almost  absolute  darkness  that  con- 
tinued from  the  sixth  to  the  twelfth  century,  the  theolo- 
gical ideal  of  unquestioning  faith  and  of  perfect  un- 
animity was  all  but  realised  in  the  West.  All  the  energy 
that  in  previous  ages  had  been  expended  in  combating 
heresy  was  now  expended  in  acquiring  wealth.  The 
people  compounded  for  the  most  atrocious  crimes  by  gifts 
to  shrines  of  those  saints  whose  intercession  was  supposed 
to  be  unfailing.  The  monks,  partly  by  the  natural  cessation 
of  their  old  enthusiasm,  partly  by  the  absence  of  any  hostile 
criticism  of  their  acts,  and  partly  too  by  the  very  wealth 
they  had  acquired,  sank  into  gross  and  general  immorality. 
The  great  majority  of  them  had  probably  at  no  time  been 
either  saints  actuated  by  a  strong  religious  motive,  nor 
yet  diseased  and  desponding  minds  seeking  a  refuge 
from  the  world;  they  had  been  simply  peasants,  of  no 
extraordinary  devotion  or  sensitiveness,  who  preferred  an 
ensured  subsistence,  with  no  care,  little  labour,  a  much 
higher  social  position  than  they  could  otherwise  acquire, 
and  the  certainty,  as  they  believed,  of  going  to  heaven, 
to  the  laborious  and  precarious  existence  of  the  serf, 
relieved,  indeed,  by  the  privilege  of  marriage,  but  exposed 
to  military  service,  to  extreme  hardships,  and  to  constant 
oppression.  Very  naturally,  when  they  could  do  so  with 
impunity,  they  broke  their  vows  of  chastity.  Very  na- 
turally, too,  they  availed  themselves  to  the  full  of  the 
condition  of  affairs,  to  draw  as  much  wealth  as  possible 
into  their  community.1   The  belief  in  the  approaching  end 

1  Mr.  Ilalliiin,  speaking  of  the  legends  of  the  miracles  of  saints, 
•It  must  not  be  supposed  that  these  absurdities  were  produced  as  well  as 
nourished  by  ignorance.    In  most  cases  they  \\<iv  the  work  of  deliberate 
imposture.     Bray  cathedra]  or  monastery  bad  its  tutelar  saint,  and  every 
saint  his  legend,  fabricated  in  order  to  enrich  the  churches  under  his  pro- 


FEOM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHAELEMAGNE.  231 

of  the  world,  especially  at  the  close  of  the  tenth  cen- 
tury, the  crusades,  which  gave  rise  to  a  profitable  traffic 
in  the  form  of  a  pecuniary  commutation  of  vows,  and  the 
black  death,  which  produced  a  paroxysm  of  religious 
fanaticism,  stimulated  the  movement.  In  the  monkish 
chronicles,  the  merits  of  sovereigns  are  almost  exclusively 
judged  by  their  bounty  to  the  Church,  and  in  some 
cases  this  is  the  sole  part  of  their  policy  which  has  been 
preserved.1 

There  were,  no  doubt,  a  few  redeeming  points-  in  this 
dark  period.  The  Irish  monks  are  said  to  have  been 
honourably  distinguished  for  their  reluctance  to  accept 
the  lavish  donations  of  their  admirers,2  and-  some  mis- 
sionary monasteries  of  a  high  order  of  excellence  were 
scattered  through  Europe.  A  few  legends,  too,  may 
perhaps  be  cited  censuring  the  facility  with'  which  money 
acquired  by  crime  was  accepted  as  an  atonement  for 
crime.3     But  these  cases  were  very  rare,  and  the  religious 

tection,  by  exaggerating  his  virtues,  his  miracles,  and  consequently  his 
power  of  serving  those  who  paid  liberally  for  his  patronage.' — Middle  Ages, 
ch.  ix.  part  i.  I  do  not  think  this  passage  makes  sufficient  allowance  for 
the  unconscious  formation  of  many  saintly  myths,  but  no  impartial  person 
doubts  its  substantial  truth. 

1  Sismondi,  Hist,  des  Francais,  tome  ii.  pp.  54,  62-63. 

2  Milman's  Hist,  of  Latin  Christianity,  vol.  ii.  p.  257. 

3  Durandus,  a  French  bishop  of  the  thirteenth  century,  tells  how, 
'  when  a  certain  bishop  was  consecrating  a  church  built  out  of  the  fruits  of 
usury  and  pillage,  he  saw  behind  the  altar  the  devil  in  a  pontifical  vestment, 
standing  in  the  bishop's  throne,  who  said  unto  the  bishop,  "  Cease  from 
consecrating  the  church;  for  it  pertaineth  to  my  jurisdiction,  since  it  is 
built  from  the  fruits  of  usuries  and  robberies."  Then  the  bishop  and  the 
clergy  having  fled  thence  in  fear,  immediately  the  devil  destroyed  that 
church  with  a  great  noise.' — Rationale  Divinorum,  i.  6  (translated  for  the 
Camden  Society). 

A  certain  St.  Launomar  is  said  to  have  refused  a  gift  for  his  monastery 
from  a  rapacious  noble,  because  he  was  sure  it  was  derived  from  pillage. 
(Montalembert's  Moines  d?  Occident,  tome  ii.  pp.  350-351.)  When  pro- 
stitutes were  converted  in  the  early  Church,  it  was  a  rule  that  the  money 
of  which  they  had  become  possessed  should  never  be  applied  to  eccle- 
siastical purposes,  but  should  be  distributed  among  the  poor. 
49 


232  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

history  of  several  centuries  is  little  more  than  a  history 
of  the  rapacity  of  priests  and  of  the  credulity  of  laymen. 
In  England,  the  perpetual  demands  of  the  Pope  excited 
a  fierce  resentment ;  and  we  may  trace  with  remarkable 
clearness,  in  every  page  of  Mathew  Paris,  the  alienation 
of  sympathy  arising  from  this  cause,  which  prepared  and 
foreshadowed  the  final  rupture  of  England  from  the 
Church.  Ireland,  on  the  other  hand,  had  been  given 
over  by  two  Popes  to  the  English  invader,  on  the  con- 
dition of  the  payment  of  Peter's  pence.  The  outrageous 
and  notorious  immorality  of  the  monasteries,  during  the 
century  before  the  Beformation,  was  chiefly  due  to  their 
great  wealth,  and  that  immorality,  as  the  writings  of 
1  Tasmus  and  Ulric  Yon  Hutten  show,  gave  a  powerful 
impulse  to  the  new  movement,  while  the  abuses  of  the 
indulgences  were  the  immediate  cause  of  the  revolt  of 
Luther.  But  these  things  arrived  only  after  many  cen- 
turies of  successful  fraud.  The  religious  terrorism  that 
was  unscrupulously  employed  had  done  its  work,  and  the 
chief  riches  of  Christendom  had  passed  into  the  coffers  of 
the  Church. 

The  part  which  was  played  by  the  Catholic  doctrine  of 
future  torture  was  indeed  probably  greater  in  the  monas- 
tic phase  of  the  Church  than  it  had  been  even  in  the  great 
work  of  converting  the  Pagans.  Although  two  or  three 
amiable  theologians  had  made  faint  and  altogether  abor- 
tive attempts  to  question  the  eternity  of  punishment ;  al- 
though there  had  been  some  slight  difference  of  opinion 
concerning  the  future  of  some  Pagan  philosophers  who 
had  lived  before  the  introduction  of  Christianity,  and  also 
upon  the  question  whether  infants  who  died  unbaptiscd 
were  simply  deprived  of  all  joy,  or  were  actually  sub- 
jected to  never-ending  agony,  there  was  no  question  as  to 
the  main  features  of  the  Catholic  doctrine.     According 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  233 

to  the  patristic  theologians,  it  was  part  of  the  gospel 
revelation  that  the  misery  and  suffering  the  human  race 
endures  upon  earth  is  but  a  feeble  image  of  that  which 
awaits  it  in  the  future  world ;  that  the  entire  human  race 
beyond  the  Church,  as  well  as  a  very  large  proportion  of 
those  who  are  within  its  pale,  are  doomed  to  an  eternity 
of  agony  in  a  literal  and  undying  fire.  The  monastic 
legends  took  up  this  doctrine,  which  in  itself  is  sufficiently 
revolting,  and  they  developed  it  with  an  appalling  vivid- 
ness and  minuteness.  St.  Macarius,  it  is  said,  when 
walking  one  day  through  the  desert,  saw  a  skull  upon  the 
ground.  He  struck  it  with  his  staff  and  it  began  to  speak. 
It  told  him  that  it  was  the  skull  of  a  Pagan  priest  who  had 
lived  before  the  introduction  of  Christianity  into  the  world, 
and  who  had  accordingly  been  doomed  to  hell.  As  high 
as  the  heaven  is  above  the  earth,  so  high  does  the  fire  of 
hell  mount  in  waves  above  the  souls  that  are  plunged 
into  it.  The  damned  souls  were  pressed  together  back  to 
back,  and  the  lost  priest  made  it  his  single  entreaty  to  the 
saint,  that  he  would  pray  that  they  might  be  turned  face 
to  face,  for  he  believed  that  the  sight  of  a  brother's  face 
might  afford  him  some  faint  consolation  in  the  eternity  of 
agony  that  was  before  him.1  The  story  is  well  known  of 
how  St.  Gregory,  seeing  on  a  bas-relief  a  representation 
of  the  goodness  of  Trajan  to  a  poor  widow,  pitied  the 
Pagan  emperor,  whom  he  knew  to  be  in  hell,  and  he 
prayed  that  he  might  be  released.  He  was  told  that  his 
prayer  was  altogether  unprecedented ;  but  at  last,  on  his 
promising  that  he  would  never  make  such  a  prayer  again, 
it  was  partially  granted.  Trajan  was  not  withdrawn 
from  hell,  but  he  was  freed  from  the  torments  which  the 
remainder  of  the  Pagan  world  endured.2 

1   Verba  Seniorum,  Prol.  §  172. 

8  This  vision  is  not  related  by  St.  Gregory  himself,  and  some  Catholics 


234  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS, 

An  entire  literature  of  visions  describing  the  torments 
of  hell,  was  soon  produced  by  the  industry  of  the  monks. 
The  apocryphal  Gospel  of  Nieodemus,  which  purported 
to  describe  the  descent  of  Christ  into  the  lower  world, 
contributed  to  foster  it,  and  St.  Gregory  the  Great  has 
related  many  visions  in  a  more  famous  work,  which  pro- 
fessed to  be  compiled  with  scrupulous  veracity  from  the 
most  authentic  sources,1  and  of  which  it  may  be  confi- 
dently averred,  that  it  scarcely  contains  a  single  page 
which  is  not  tainted  with  grotesque  and  deliberate  false- 
hood. Men,  it  was  said,  passed  into  a  trance  or  tem- 
porary death,  and  were  then  carried  for  a  time  to  hell. 
Among  others,  a  certain  man  named  Stephen,  from  whose 
lips  the  saint  declares  that  he  had  heard  the  tale,  had  died 
by  mistake.  When  his  soul  was  borne  to  the  gates  of 
hell,  the  Judge  declared  that  it  was  another  Stephen  who 
Was  wanted  ;  the  disembodied  spirit,  after  inspecting  hell, 
was  restored  to  its  former  body,  and  the  next  day  it  was 
known  that  another  Stephen  had  died.2  Volcanoes  were 
the  portals  of  hell,  and  a  hermit  had  seen  the  soul  of  the 
Arian  emperor  Theodoric,  as  St.  Eucherius  afterwards 
did  the  soul  of  Charles  Martel^carried  down  that  in  the 
Island  of  Lipari.3  The  craters  in  Sicily,  it  was  remarked, 
were  continually  agitated  and  continually  increasing,  and 
this,  as  St.  Gregory  observes,  was  probably  due  to  the 

are  perplexed  about  it,  on  account  of  the  vision  of  another  saint,  who 
wards  asked  whether  Trajan  was  saved,  and  received  for  answer,  '  I  wish 
men  t<>  rest  in  ignorance  of  this  subject,  that  the  Catholics  may  become 
stronger.  For  this  emperor,  though  he  had  great  virtues,  was  an  un- 
b.iptised  infidel.'  The  whole  subject  of  the  vision  of  St.  Gregory  is  dis- 
cussed by  Champairnv,  Let  Antonius,  tome  i.  pp.  372-373.  This  devout 
writer  says, '  Cette  legende  fut  accepted  par  tout  le  moyen-age,  indulgent 
pour  U  Vudrei  et  tout  dispose  a  les  suppoeer  Chretiens  et  sauveV 

1  See  the  solemn  asseveration  of  the  care  which  he  took  in  going  only 
to  the  most  credible  and  authorised  sources  for  his  materials,  in  the  Preface  to 
ihe  First  Book  of  Dialogues. 

■'.  iv.  .",<;.  3  Dial  iv.  30. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  235 

impending  ruin  of  the  world,  when  the  great  press  of 
lost  souls  would  render  it  necessary  to  enlarge  the  ap- 
proaches to  their  prisons.1 

But  the  glimpses  of  hell  that  are  furnished  in  the 
6  Dialogues  '  of  St.  Gregory  appear  meagre  and  unimagin- 
ative, compared  with  those  of  some  later  monks.  A  long 
series  of  monastic  visions,  of  wdiich  that  of  St.  Fursey,  in 
the  seventh  century,  was  one  of  the  first,  and  which  fol- 
lowed in  rapid  succession,  till  that  of  Tundale,  )n  the 
twelfth  century,  professed  to  describe  with  the  most  u. 
tailed  accuracy  the  condition  of  the  lost.2  It  is  impos- 
sible to  conceive  more  ghastly,  grotesque,  and  material 
conceptions  of  the  future  world  than  they  evince,  or  more 
hideous  calumnies  against  that  Being  who  was  supposed 
to  inflict  upon  His  creatures  such  unspeakable  misery. 
The  devil  was  represented  bound  by  red-hot  chains,  on 
a  burning  gridiron  in  the  centre  of  hell.  The  screams 
of  his  never-ending  agony  made  its  rafters  to  resound ; 
but  his  hands  were  free,  and  with  these  he  seized  the  lost 
souls,  crushed  them  like  grapes  against  his  teeth,  and 
then  drew  them  by  his  breath  clown  the  fiery  cavern  of 
his  throat.  Daemons  with  hooks  of  red-hot  iron  plunged 
souls  alternately  into  fire  and  ice.  Some  of  the  lost  were 
hung   up  by  their  tongues,   other  were  sawn  asunder, 

1  Dial  iv.  35. 

2  The  fullest  collection  of  these  visions  with  which  I  am  acquainted,  is 
that  made  for  the  Philobiblon  Society  (vol.  ix.),  by  M.  Delepierre,  called 
EEnfer  decrii  par  ceux  qui  Pont  vu,  of  which  I  have  largely  availed  myself. 
See,  too,  Wright's  Purgatory  of  St.  Patrick,  and  an  interesting  collection  of 
visions  given  by  Mr.  Longfellow,  in  his  translation  of  Dante.  In  an  older 
work,  Rasca  De  Inferno,  there  is,  I  believe,  a  complete  collection  of  these 
visions,  but  it  has  not  come  in  my  way.  The  Irish  saints  were,  I  am  sorry 
to  say,  prominent  in  producing  this  branch  of  literature.  St.  Fursey,  whose 
vision  is  one  of  the  earliest,  and  Tondale,  or  Tundale,  whose  vision  is  one 
of  the  most  detailed,  were  both  Irish.  The  English  historians  contain 
several  of  these  visions.  Bede  relates  two  or  three — William  of  Malmes- 
burv  that  of  Charles  the  Fat ;  Mathew  Paris  three  visions  of  purgatory. 


280  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

others  gnawed  by  serpents,  others  beaten  together  on  an 
anvil  and  welded  into  a  single  mass,  others  boiled  and 
then  strained  through  a  cloth,  others  twined  in  the  em- 
braces of  dscmons  whose  limbs  were  of  flame.  The  fire 
of  earth,  it  was  said,  was  but  a  picture  of  that  of  hell. 
The  latter  was  so  immeasurably  more  intense,  that  it 
alone  could  be  called  real.  Sulphur  was  mixed  with  it, 
partly  to  increase  its  heat,  and  partly,  too,  in  order  that  an 
insufferable  stench  might  be  added  to  the  misery  of  the 
lost,  while,  unlike  other  flames,  it  emitted,  according  to 
some  visions,  no  light,  that  the  horror  of  darkness  might  be 
added  to  the  horror  of  pain.  A  narrow  bridge  spanned 
the  abyss,  and  from  it  the  souls  of  sinners  were  plunged 
into  the  darkness  that  was  below.1 

Such  catalogues  of  horrors,  though  they  now  awake 
in  an  educated  man  a  sentiment  of  mingled  disgust, 
weariness,  and  contempt,  were  able  for  many  centuries  to 
create  a  degree  of  panic  and  of  misery  we  can  scarcely 
realise.  With  the  exception  of  the  heretic  Pelagius,  whose 
noble  genius,  anticipating  the  discoveries  of  modern 
science,  had  repudiated  the  theological  notion  of  death 
having  been  introduced  into  the  world  on  account  of  the 
act  of  Adam,  it  was  universally  held  among  Christians, 
that  all  the  forms  of  suffering  and  dissolution  that  are 
manifested  on  earth  were  penal  inflictions.  The  destruc- 
tion of  the  world  was  generally  believed  to  be  at  hand. 
The  minds  of  men  were  filled  with  the  images  of  the 
approaching  catastrophe,  and  innumerable  legends  of 
visible  daemons  were  industriously  circulated.  It  was 
the  custom  then,  as  it  is  the  custom  now,  for  Catholic 


1  The  narrow  bridge  over  hell  (in  some  virions  covered  with  spikes), 
which  is  a  conspicuous  (feature  in  the  tfafa&mmedao  pictures  of  the  future- 
world,  appears  very  often  in  Catholic  visions.  See  Greg.  Tor.  iv.  88  ;  St 
Greg.  Dial  iv.  Bdj  and  the  vision  of  Tundale,  in  Delepierre. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  237 

priests  to  stain  the  imaginations  of  young  children  by- 
ghastly  pictures  of  future  misery,  to  imprint  upon  the 
virgin  mind  atrocious  images  which  they  hoped,  not  un- 
reasonably, might  prove  indelible.1  In  hours  of  weakness 
and  of  sickness  their  overwrought  fancy  seemed  to  see 
hideous  beings  hovering  around,  and  hell  itself  yawning 
to  receive  its  victim.  St.  Gregory  describes  how  a  monk, 
who  though  apparently  a  man  of  exemplary  and  even 
saintly  piety,  had  been  accustomed  secretly  to  eat  meat, 
saw  on  his  deathbed  a  fearful  dragon  twining  its  tail  round 
his  body,  and  with  open  jaws  sucking  his  breath  ;2  and 
how  a  little  boy  of  five  years  old,  who  had  learnt  from  his 

1  Few  Englishmen,  I  imagine,  are  aware  of  the  infamous  publications 
written  with  this  object,  that  are  circulated  by  the  Catholic  priests  among 
the  poor.  I  have  before  me  a  tract  '  for  children  and  young  persons/  called 
The  Sight  of  Hell,  by  the  Rev.  J.  Furniss,  C.S.S.R.,  published,  'permissu 
superiorum,'  by  Duffy  (Dublin  and  London).  It  is  a  detailed  descrip- 
tion of  the  dungeons  of  hell,  and  a  few  sentences  may  serve  as  a  sample. 
1  See  !  on  the  middle  of  that  red-hot  floor  stands  a  girl ;  she  looks  about  six- 
teen years  old.  Her  feet  are  bare.  She  has  neither  shoes  nor  stockings. 
.  .  .  Listen  !  she  speaks.  She  says,  I  have  been  standing  on  this  red-hot 
floor  for  years.  Day  and  night  my  only  standing-place  has  been  this  red-hot 
floor.  .  .  .  Look  at  my  burnt  and  bleeding  feet.  Let  me  go  off  this  burning 
floor  for  one  moment,  only  for  one  single  short  moment.  .  .  .  The  fourth 
dungeon  is  the  boiling  kettle  ...  in  the  middle  of  it  there  is  a  boy.  .  .  . 
His  eyes  are  burning  like  two  burning  coals.  Two  long  flames  come  out  of 
his  ears.  .  .  .  Sometimes  he  opens  his  mouth,  and  blazing  iire  rolls  out. 
But  listen !  there  is  a  sound  like  a  kettle  boiling.  .  .  .  The  blood  is  boiling 
in  the  scalded  veins  of  that  boy.  The  brain  is  boiling  and  bubbling  in  his 
head.  The  marrow  is  boiling  in  his  bones.  .  .  .  The  fifth  dungeon  is  the 
red-hot  oven.  .  .  .  The  little  child  is  in  this  red-hot  oven.  Hear  how  it 
screams  to  come  out.  See  how  it  turns  and  twists  itself  about  in  the  fire. 
It  beats  its  head  against  the  roof  of  the  oven.  It  stamps  its  little  feet  on 
the  floor.  .  .  .  God  was  very  good  to  this  child.  Very  likely  God  saw  it 
would  get  worse  and  worse,  and  would  never  repent,  and  so  it  would  have 
to  be  punished  much  more  in  hell.  So  God  in  his  mercy  called  it  out  of 
the  world  in  its  early  childhood.'  If  the  reader  desires  to  follow  this  sub- 
ject further,  he  may  glance  over  a  companion  tract  by  the  same  reverend 
gentleman,  called  A  Terrible  Judgment  on  a  Little  Child  ;  and  also  a 
book  on  Hell,  translated  from  the  Italian  of  Finamonti,  and  with  illustra- 
tions depicting  the  various  tortures. 

8  St.  Greg.  Dial.  iv.  38. 


238  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

father  to  repeat  blasphemous  words,  saw,  as  he  lay  dying, 
exulting  drcmons  who  were  waiting  to  carry  him  to  hell.1 
To  the  jaundiced  eye  of  the  theologian,  all  nature  seemed 
stricken  and  forlorn,  and  its  brightness  and  beauty  sug- 
gested no  ideas  but  those  of  deception  and  of  sin.  The 
redbreast,  according  to  one  popular  legend,  was  commis- 
sioned by  the  Deity  to  carry  a  drop  of  water  to  the  souls 
of  unbaptised  infants  in  hell,  and  its  breast  was  singed  in 
piercing  the  flames.2  In  the  calm,  still  hour  of  evening, 
when  the  peasant  boy  asked  why  the  sinking  sun,  as  it 
dipped  beneath  the  horizon,  flushed  with  such  a  glorious 
red,  he  was  answered,  in  the  words  of  an  old  Saxon 
catechism,  because  it  is  then  looking  into  hell.3 

It  is  related  in  the  vision  of  Tundale,  that  as  he  gazed 
upon  the  burning  plains  of  hell,  and  listened  to  the 
screams  of  ceaseless  and  hopeless  agony  that  were  wrung 
from  the  sufferers,  the  cry  broke  from  his  lips,  '  Alas, 
Lord,  what  truth  is  there  in  what  I  have  so  often  heard 
— the  earth  is  filled  with  the  mercy  of  God?'4  It  is 
indeed  one  of  the  most  curious  things  in  moral  history, 
to  observe  how  men  who  were  sincerely  indignant  with 
Pagan  writers  for  attributing  to  their  divinities  the  frailties 
of  an  occasional  jealousy  or  an  occasional  sensuality,  for 

1  Ibid.  iv.  18. 

9  Alger's  History  of  the  Doctrine  of  a  Future  Life  (New  York,  1860), 
p.  414.     The  ignis  fatuus  was  sometimes  supposed  to  be  the  soul  of  an  un- 
baptised child.     There  is,  I  believe,  another  Catholic  legend  about  the  red- 
breast, of  a  very  different  kind — that  its  breast  was  stained  with  blood  when 
frying  to  pull  out  the  thorns  from  the  crown  of  Christ. 
*  Wright*!    "Purgatory   of  St.    Patrick,  p.  20.     M.  Delepierre   quotes  a 
rurious  theory  of  Father  Hardouin  (who  is  chiefly  known  for  his  sugges- 
tion that  the  classics  , were  composed  by  the  mediaeval  monks)  that  the  rota- 
tion of  the  earth  is  caused  by  the  lost  souls  trying  to  escape  from  the  fire 
that  h  .it   the  centre  of  the  globe,  climbing,  in  consequence,  on  the  inner 
of  the  earth,  which  is  the  wall  of  hell,  and  thus  making  the  whole 
squirrel  by  climbing  turns  its  cage  !    {VEnfer  davit  par  ceux. 
pm  r„„f  r,t,  p.  161.)  4  Delepierre,  p.  70. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  239 

representing  them,  in  a  word,  like  men  of  mingled  cha- 
racters and  passions,  have  nevertheless  unscrupulously 
attributed  to  their  own  Divinity  a  degree  of  cruelty  which 
may  be  confidently  said  to  transcend  the  utmost  bar- 
barity of  which  human  nature  is  capable.  Neither  Nero 
nor  Phalaris  could  have  looked  complacently  for  ever 
on  millions  enduring  the  torture  of  fire — most  of  them 
because  of  a  crime  which  was  committed,  not  by  them- 
selves, but  by  their  ancestors,  or  because  they  had 
adopted  some  mistaken  conclusion  on  intricate  questions 
of  history  or  metaphysics.1  To  those  who  do  not  regard 
such  teaching  as  true,  it  must  appear  without  exception 
the  most  odious  in  the  religious  history  of  the  world, 
subversive  of  the  very  foundations  of  morals,  and  well 
fitted  to  transform  the  man  who  at  once  realised  it,  and 

1  Thus  Jeremy  Taylor,  in  two  singularly  unrhetorical  and  unimpassioned 
chapters,  deliberately  enumerates  the  most  atrocious  acts  of  cruelty  in  human 
history,  and  says  that  they  are  surpassed  by  the  tortures  inflicted  by  the 
Deity.  A  few  instances  will  suffice.  Certain  persons  'put  rings- of  iron 
stuck  fast  with  sharp  points  of  needles,  about  their  arms  and  feet,  in  such  a 
manner  as  the  prisoners  could  not  move  without  wounding  themselves  j 
then  they  compassed  them  about  with  fire,  to  the  end  that,  standing  still, 
they  might  be  burnt  alive,  and  if  they  stirred  the  sharp  points  pierced  their 
flesh.  .  .  .  What,  then,  shall  be  the  torment  of  the  damned  where  they  shall 
burn  eternally  without  dying,  and  without  the  possibility  of  removing  p  .  . 
Alexander,  the  son  of  Hyrcanus,  caused  eight  hundred  to  be  crucified,  and  whilst 
they  were  yet  alive  caused  their  wives  and  children  to  be  murdered  before 
their  eyes,  that  so  they  might  not  die  once,  but  many  deaths.  This  rigour 
shall  not  be  wanting  in  hell.  .  .  .  Mezentius  tied  a  living  body  to  the  dead 
until  the  putrefied  exhalations  of  the  dead  had  killed  the  living.  .  .  .  What 
is  this  in  respect  of  hell,  when  each  body  of  the  damned  is  more  loathsome 
and  unsavoury  than  a  million  of  dead  dogs  ?  .  .  .  Bonaventure  says,  if  one 
of  the  damned  were  brought  into  this  world  it  were  sufficient  to  infect  the 
whole  earth.  .  .  .  We  are  amazed  to  think  of  the  inhumanity  of  Phalaris, 
who  roasted  men  alive  in  his  brazen  bull.  That  was  a  joy  in  respect  of 
that  fire  of  hell.  .  .  .  The  torment  .  .  .  comprises  as  many  torments  as  the 
body  of  man  has  joints,  sinews,  arteries,  &c,  being  caused  by  that  pene- 
trating and  real  fire,  of  which  this  temporal  fire  is  but  a  painted  fire.  .  .  . 
What  comparison  will  there  be  between  burning  for  an  hundred  years' 
space,  and  to  be  burning  without  interruption  as  long  as  God  is  God  ? ' — 
Contemplations  on  the  State  of  Man,  book  ii.  ch.  G-7. 


£40  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

who  accepted  it  with  pleasure,  into  a  monster  of  barbarity. 
Of  the  writers  of  the  mediaeval  period,  certainly  one  of 
the  two  or  three  most  eminent  was  Peter  Lombard,  whose 

itences,'  though  now,  I  believe,  but  little  read,  were 
for  a  long  time  the  basis  of  all  theological  literature  in 
Europe.  More  than  four  thousand  theologians  are  said 
to  have  written  commentaries  upon  them1  —  among 
others,  Albert  the  Great,  St.  Bonaventura,  and  St,  Thomas 
Aquinas.  Nor  is  the  work  unworthy  of  its  former  re- 
putation. Calm,  clear,  logical,  subtle,  and  concise,  the 
author  professes  to  expound  the  whole  system  of  Catholic 
theology  and  ethics,  and  to  reveal  the  interdependence  of 
their  various  parts.  Having  explained  the  position  and 
the  duties,  he  proceeds  to  examine  the  prospects,  of  man. 
He  maintains  that  until  the  day  of  judgment  the  in- 
habitants of  heaven  and  hell  will  continually  see  one 
another ;  but  that,  in  the  succeeding  eternity,  the  inhabit- 
ants of  heaven  alone  will  see  those  of  the  opposite  world ; 
and  he  concludes  his  great  work  by  this  most  impressive 

-age.  '  In  the  last  place,  we  must  enquire  whether  the 
sight  of  the  punishment  of  the  condemned  will  impair 
the  glory  of  the  blest,  or  whether  it  will  augment  their 
beatitude.  Concerning  this,  Gregory  says  the  sight  of 
the  punishment  of  the  lost  will  not  obscure  the  beatitude 
of  the  just ;  for  when  it  is  accompanied  by  no  compassion 
it  can  be  no  diminution  of  happiness.  And  although 
their  own  joys  might  suffice,  to  the  just,  yet  to  their 
greater  glory  they  will  see  the  pains  of  the  evil,  which 
by  grace  they  have  escaped.  .  .  .  The  elect  will  go  forth, 
not  indeed  locally,  but  by  intelligence  and  by  a  clear 
vision,  to  behold  the  torture  of  the  impious,  and  as  they 
see  them  they  will  not  grieve.     Their  minds  will  be  sated 

1  Perrone,  llixtorico  Theilogim  <  tf*H  Pfttiotophia  contparafit  Synopsis,  p.  29, 
Peter  Lombnrd'a  work  to*  published  in  a.d.  11G0. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  241 

with  joy  as  they  gaze  on  the  unspeakable  anguish  of 
the  impious,  returning  thanks  for  their  own  freedom. 
Thus  Esaias,  describing  the  torments  of  the  impious,  and 
the  joy  of  the  righteous  in  witnessing  it,  saj^s,  '  The  elect 
in  truth  will  go  out  and  will  see  the  corpses  of  men  who 
have  prevaricated  against  Him ;  their  worm  will  not  die, 
and  they  will  be  to  the  satiety  of  vision  to  all  flesh,  that 
is,  to  the  elect.  The  just  man  will  rejoice  when  he  shall 
see  the  vengeance.'1 

This  passion  for  visions  of  heaven  and  hell  was,  in 
fact,  a  natural  continuation  of  the  passion  for  dogmatic 
definition,  which  had  raged  during  the  fifth  century.  It 
was  natural  that  men,  whose  curiosity  had  left  no  con- 
ceivable question  of  theology  undefined,  should  have 
endeavoured  to  describe  with  corresponding  precision  the 
condition  of  the  dead.  Much,  however,  was  due  to  the 
hallucinations  of  solitary  and  ascetic  life,  and  much  more 
to  deliberate  imposture.  It  is  impossible  for  men  to  con- 
tinue long  in  a  condition  of  extreme  panic,  and  supersti- 
tion speedily  discovers  remedies  to  allay  the  fears  it  had 
created.  If  a  malicious  dasmon  was  hovering  around 
the  believer,  and  if  the  jaws  of  hell  were  opening  to 

1  '  Postremo  quaeritur,  An  poena  reproborum  visa  decoloret  gloriam  bea- 
torum  ?  an  eorum  beatitudini  proficiat  ?  De  hoc  ita  Gregorius  ait,  Apud 
animum  justorum  non  obfuscat  beatitudinem  aspecta  poena  reproborum; 
quia  ubi  jam  compassio  niiserise  non  erit,  minuere  beatorum  loetitiam  non 
valebit.  Et  licet  justis  sua  gaudia  sufficiant,  ad  majoreni  gloriam  vident 
pcenas  malorum  quas  per  gratiam  evaserunt.  .  .  .  Egredientur  ergo  electi, 
non  loco,  sed  intelligentia  vel  visione  manifesta  ad  videndum  impiorum  cru- 
ciatus ;  quos  videntes  non  dolore  afficientur  sed  lsetitia  satiabuntur,  agentes 
gratias  de  sua  liberatione  visa  impiorum  ineffabili  calamitate.  Unde  Esaias 
impiorum  tormenta  describens  et  ex  eorum  visione  lsetitiam  bonorum  expri- 
mens,  ait,  Egredientur  electi  scilicet  et  videbunt  cadavera  virorum  qui 
praevaricati  sunt  in  me.  Vermis  eorum  non  morietur  et  ignis  non  extin- 
guetur,  et  erunt  usque  ad  satietatem  visionia  omni  carni,  id  est  electis. 
Lsetabitur  Justus  cum  viderit  vindictam.' — Peter  Lombard,  Senten.  lib.  ir. 
finis.  These  amiable  views  have  often  been  expressed  both  by  Catholic  and 
by  Puritan  divines.     See  Alger's  Doctrine  of  a  Future  Life,^.  541. 


242  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

receive  him,  he  was  defended,  on  the  other  hand,  by 
countless  angels ;  a  lavish  gift  to  a  Church  or  monastery 
could  always  enlist  a  saint  in  his  behalf,  and  priestly 
power  could  protect  him  against  the  dangers  which 
priestly  sagacity  had  revealed.  When  the  angels  were 
weighing  the  good  and  evil  deeds  of  a  dead  man,  the 
latter  were  found  by  far  to  preponderate ;  but  a  priest  of 
St.  Lawrence  came  in,  and  turned  the  scale  by  throwing 
down  among  the  former  a  heavy  gold  chalice,  which  the 
deceased  had  given  to  the  altar.1  Dagobert  was  snatched 
from  the  very  arms  of  daemons  by  St.  Denis,  St.  Maurice, 
and  St.  Martin.2  Charlemagne  was  saved,  because  the 
monasteries  he  had  built  outweighed  his  evil  deeds.3 
Others,  who  died  in  mortal  sin,  were  raised  from  the 
dead  at  the  desire  of  their  patron  saint,  to  expiate  their 
guilt.  To  amass  relics,  to  acquire  the  patronage  of 
saints,  to  endow  monasteries,  to  build  churches,  became 
the  chief  part  of  religion,  and  the  more  the  terrors  of  the 
unseen  world  were  unfolded,  the  more  men  sought 
tranquillity  by  the  consolations  of  superstition.4 

The  extent  to  which  the  custom  of  materialising  re- 
ligion was  carried,  can  only  be  adequately  realised  by 
those  who  have  examined  the  mediaeval  literature  itself. 
That  which  strikes  a  student  in  perusing  this  literature, 
is  not  so  much  the  existence  of  these  superstitions,  as 


1  Legcnda  Aurea.     There  is  a  curious  fresco  representing  tins  transaction, 
on  the  portal  of  the  church  of  St.  Lorenzo,  near  Rome. 

2  Aimnni.  De  '  BOrtffn  Hist.  iv.  .'51. 

3  Turpin'H  Chronicle,  ch.  32.  In  the  vision  of  Watlin,  however  (a. p.  824) 
Charlemagne  was  seen  tortured  in  purgatory  on  account  of  his  excessive  lore 
of  women.     (Delepierre,  LEnfer  tUcrit  pur  ccux  qui  font  vu,  pp.  27-28.) 

4  As  the  Abbe  Mably  observes :  '  On  croyoit  en  quelque  sorte  dans  ces 
SS  jrrossiers  que  l'avarice  dtoit  le  premier  attribut  de  Dieu,  et  que  les 

faints  faisoient  un  commerce  de  leur  credit  et  de  leur  protection.  De-la  les 
richflfoj  immense*  donnees  aux  tiglises  par  des  homines  dont  les  mceurs 
d&shon  iroient  la  religion.' — Observations  sur  VHist.  de  France,  i.  4. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  243 

their  extraordinary  multiplication,  the  many  thousands  of 
grotesque  miracles  wrought  by  saints,  monasteries,  or 
relics,  that  were  deliberately  asserted  and  universally 
believed.  Christianity  had  assumed  a  form  •  that  was 
quite  as  polytheistic  and  quite  as  idolatrous  as  the 
ancient  Paganism.  The  low  level  of  intellectual  culti- 
vation, the  religious  feelings  of  half-converted  barbarians, 
the  interests  of  the  clergy,  the  great  social  importance  of 
the  monasteries,  and  perhaps  also  the  custom  of  com- 
pounding for  nearly  all  crimes  by  pecuniary  fines,  which 
was  so  general  in  the  penal  system  of  the  barbarian 
tribes,  combined  in  their  different  ways,  with  the  panic 
created  by  the  fear  of  hell,  in  driving  men  in  the  same 
direction,  and  the  wealth  and  power  of  the  clergy  rose 
to  a  point  that  enabled  them  to  overshadow  all  other 
classes.  They  had  found,  as  has  been  well  said,  in  an- 
other world,  the  standing-point  of  Archimedes  from  which 
they  could  move  this.  No  other  system  had  ever  ap- 
peared so  admirably  fitted  to  endure  for  ever.  The 
Church  had  crushed  or  silenced  every  opponent  in 
Christendom.  It  had  an  absolute  control  over  education 
in  all  its  branches  and  in  all  its  stages.  It  had  absorbed 
ail  the  speculative  knowledge  and  art  of  Europe.  It 
possessed  or  commanded  wealth,  rank,  and  military 
power.  It  had  so  directed  its  teaching,  that  everything 
which  terrified  or  distressed  mankind  drove  men  speedily 
into  its  arms,  and  it  had  covered  Europe  with  a  vast  net- 
work of  institutions,  admirably  adapted  to  extend  and 
perpetuate  its  power.  In  addition  to  all  this,  it  had 
guarded  with  consummate  skill  all  the  approaches  to  its 
citadel.  Every  doubt  was  branded  as  a  sin,  and  a  long 
course  of  doubt  must  necessarily  have  preceded,  the 
rejection  of  its  tenets.  All  the  avenues  of  enquiry  were 
painted  with  images  of  appalling  suffering,  and  of  mali- 


244  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

cious  demons.  No  sooner  did  the  worshipper  begin  to 
question  any  article  of  faith,  or  to  lose  his  confidence  in 
the  virtue  of  the  ceremonies  of  his  Church,  than  he  was 
threatened  with  a  doom  that  no  human  heroism  could 
brave,  that  no  imagination  could  contemplate  undismayed. 
Of  all  the  suffering  that  was  undergone  by  those  brave 
men  who  in  ages  of  ignorance  and  superstition  dared  to 
break  loose  from  the  trammels  of  their  Church,  and  who 
laid  the  foundation  of  the  liberty  we  now  enjoy,  it  is 
this  which  was  probably  the  most  poignant,  and  which  is 
the  least  realised.  Our  imaginations  can  reproduce  with 
much  yj  ridness  gigantic  massacres  like  those  of  the  Albi- 
genses  or  of  St.  Bartholomew.  We  can  conceive,  too,  the 
tortures  of  the  rack  and  of  the  boots,  the  dungeon,  the 
scaffold,  and  the  slow  fire.  We  can  estimate,  though  less 
pei-feet ly,  the  anguish  which  the  bold  enquirer  must  have 
undergone  from  the  desertion  of  those  he  most  dearly 
loved,  from  the  hatred  of  mankind,  from  the  malignant 
calumnies  that  were  heaped  upon  his  name.  But  in  the 
chamber  of  his  own  soul,  in  the  hours  of  his  solitary 
meditation,  he  must  have  found  elements  of  a  suffering 
that  was  still  more  acute.  Taught  from  his  earliest 
childhood  to  regard  the  abandonment  of  his  hereditary 
opinions  as  the  most  deadly  of  crimes,  and  to  ascribe 
it  to  the  instigation  of  deceiving  daemons,  persuaded 
that  if  he  died  in  a  condition  of  doubt  he  must  pass 
into  a  state  of  everlasting  torture,  his  imagination  satu- 
rated with  images  of  the  most  hideous  and  appalling 
anguish,  he  found  himself  alone  in  the  world,  struggling 
with  his  difficulties  and  his  doubts.  There  existed  no 
rival  sect  in  wliieh  he  could  take  refuge,  and  where,  in  the 
professed  agreement  of  many  minds,  he  could  forget  the 
anathemas  of  the  Chureh.  Physical  science,  that  has  dis- 
proved the  theological  theories  which  attribute  death  to 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  245 

human  sin,  and  suffering  to  Divine  vengeance,  and  all  na- 
tural phenomena  to  isolated  acts  of  Divine  intervention — 
historical  criticism,  which  has  dispelled  so  many  imposing 
fabrics  of  belief,  traced  so  many  elaborate  superstitions 
to  the  normal  action  of  the  undisciplined  imagination,  and 
explained  and  defined  the  successive  phases  of  religious 
progress,  were  both  unknown.  Every  comet  that  blazed 
in  the  sky,  every  pestilence  that  swept  over  the  land, 
appeared  a  confirmation  of  the  dark  threats  of  the  theo- 
logian. A  spirit  of  blind  and  abject  credulity,  inculcated 
as  the  first  of  duties,  and  exhibited  on  all  subjects  and  in 
all  forms,  pervaded  the  atmosphere  he  breathed.  Who  can 
estimate  aright  the  obstacles  against  which  a  sincere  en- 
quirer in  such  an  age  must  have  struggled  ?  Who  can 
conceive  the  secret  anguish  he  must  have  endured  in  the 
long  months  or  years  during  which  rival  arguments 
gained  an  alternate  sway  over  his  judgment, .  while  all 
doubt  was  still  regarded  as  damnable  ?  And  even  when 
his  mind  was  convinced,  his  imagination  would  still  often 
revert  to  his  old  belief.  Our  thoughts  in  after  years  flow 
spontaneously,  and  even  unconsciously,  in  the  channels 
that  are  formed  in  youth.  In  moments  when  the  con- 
trolling judgment  has  relaxed  its  grasp,  old  intellectual 
habits  reassume  their  sway,  and  images  painted  on  the 
imagination  will  live,  when  the  intellectual  propositions 
on  which  they  rested  have  been  wholly  abandoned.  In 
hours  of  weakness,  of  sickness,  and  of  drowsiness,  in  the 
feverish  and  anxious  moments  that  are  known  to  all,  when 
the  mind  floats  passively  upon  the  stream,  the  phantoms 
which  reason  had  exorcised  must  have  often  reappeared, 
and  the  bitterness  of  an  ancient  tyranny  must  have  en- 
tered into  his  soul. 

It  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  many  services  that  were 
rendered  to  mankind  by  the  Troubadours,  that  they  cast 


HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

such  a  flood  of  ridicule  upon  the  visions  of  hell,  by  which 
the  monks  had  been  accustomed  to  terrify  mankind,  that 
they  completely  discredited  and  almost  suppressed  them.1 
Whether,  however,  the  Catholic  mind,  if  unassisted  by  the 
literature  of  Paganism  and  by  the  independent  thinkers 
who  grew  up  under  the  shelter  of  Mahommedanism,  could 
have  ever  unwound  the  chains  that  had  bound  it,  may  well 
be  questioned.  The  growth  of  towns,  which  multiplied 
secular  interests  and  feelings,  the  revival  of  learning,  the 
depression  of  the  ecclesiastical  classes  that  followed  the 
crusades,  and  at  last,  the  dislocation  of  Christendom  by 
the  Reformation,  gradually  impaired  the  ecclesiastical 
doctrine,  which  ceased  to  be  realised  before  it  ceased  to 
be  believed.  There  was,  however,  another  doctrine  which 
exercised  a  still  greater  influence  in  augmenting  the 
riches  of  the  clergy,  and  in  making  donations  to  the 
Church  the  chief  part  of  religion.  I  allude,  of  course,  to 
the  doctrine  of  purgatory. 

A  distinguished  modern  apologist  for  the  middle  ages 
has  made  this  doctrine  the  object  of  his  special  and  very 
characteristic  eulogy,  because,  as  he  says,  by  providing  a 
finite  punishment  graduated  to  every  variety  of  guilt,  and 
adapted  for  those  who,  without  being  sufficiently  virtuous 
to  pass  at  once  into  heaven,  did  not  appear  sufficiently 
vicious  to  pass  into  hell,  it  formed  an  indispensable 
corrective  to  the  extreme  terrorism  of  the  doctrine  of 
eternal  punishment.2  This  is  one  of  those  theories  which, 
though  exceedingly  popular  with  a  large  and  influential 
class  of  the  writers  of  our  day,  must  appear,  I  think, 
almost  grotesque  to  those  who  have  examined  the  ac- 
tual operation  of  the  doctrine  during  the  middle  ages. 

1  Mnny  curious  examples  of  the  way  in  which  the  Troubadours  burlesqued 
the  monkish  visions  of  hell  are  given  by  Delepierre,  p.  144. — Wright's  Pur- 
gatory of  tit.  Patrick,  pp.  47-52. 

4  Comte,  Philosophic  positive,  tome  v.  p.  2G9. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  247 

According  to  the  practical  teaching  of  the  Church,  the 
expiatory  powers  at  the  disposal  of  its  clergy  were  so 
great,  that  those  who  died  believing  its  doctrines,  and 
fortified  in  their  last  hours  by  its  rites,  had  no  cause 
whatever  to  dread  the  terrors  of  hell.  On  the  other 
hand,  those  who  died  external  to  the  Church  had  no 
prospect  of  entering  into  purgatory.  This  latter  was 
designed  altogether  for  true  believers ;  it  was  chiefly 
preached  at  a  time  when  no  one  was  in  the  least  disposed 
to  question  the  powers  of  the  Church  to  absolve  any 
crime,  however  heinous,  or  to  free  the  worst  men  from 
hell,  and  it  was  assuredly  never  regarded  in  the  light  of  a 
consolation.  Indeed,  the  popular  pictures  of  purgatory 
were  so  terrific  that  it  may  be  almost  doubted  whether 
the  imagination  could  ever  fully  realise,  though  the  reason 
could  easily  recognise  the  difference  between  this  state 
and  that  of  the  lost.  The  fire  of  purgatory,  according  to 
the  most  eminent  theologians,  was  like  the  fire  of  hell — a 
literal  fire,  prolonged,  it  was  sometimes  said,  for  ages. 
The  declamations  of  the  pulpit  described  the  sufferings 
of  the  saved  souls  in  purgatory  as  incalculably  greater 
than  were  endured  by  the  most  wretched  mortals  upon 
earth.1     The  rude  artists  of  medievalism  exhausted  their 

1  '  Saint-Bernard,  dans  son  sermon  Tie  dbitu  Humherti,  affirme  que  tous 
les  tourments  de  cette  vie  sont  joies  si  on  les  compare  a  une  seconde  des 
peines  du  purgatoire.  "  Imaginez-vous  done,  delicates  dames,"  dit  le  pere 
Valladier  (1613)  dans  son  sermon  du  8me  dimanche  de  l'Avent,  "  d'estre  au 
travers  de  vos  chenets,  sur  vostre  petit  feu  pour  une  centaine  d'ans  :  ce  nVst 
rien  au  respect  d'un  moment  de  purgatoire.  Mais  si  vous  vistes  jamais  tirer 
quelqu'una  quatre  chevaux,  quelqu'un  brusler  a  petit  feu,  enrager  de  faim 
ou  de  soif,  une  heure  de  purgatoire  est  pire  que  tout  cela." ' — Meray.  Les 
libres  Precheurs  (Paris,  1860),  pp.  130-131  (an  extremely  curious  and  sugges- 
tive book).  I  now  take  up  the  first  contemporary  book  of  popular  Catholic 
devotion  on  this  subject,  which  is  at  hand,  and  read,  '  Compared  with  the 
pains  of  purgatory,  then  all  those  wounds  and  dark  prisons,  all  those  wild 
beasts,  hooks  of  iron,  red-hot  plates,  &c,  which  the  holy  martyrs  suffered, 
are  nothing.'  '  Thev  (souls  in  purgatory)  are  in  a  real,  though  miraculous 
50 


243  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

efforts  in  depicting  the  writhings  of  the  dead  in  the 
flames  that  encircled  them.  Innumerable  visions  detailed 
with  a  ghastly  minuteness  the  various  kinds  of  torture  they 
underwent,1  and  the  monk,  who  described  what  he  pro- 
fessed to  have  seen,  usually  ended  by  the  characteristic 
moral,  that  could  men  only  realise  those  sufferings,  they 
would  shrink  from  no  sacrifice  to  rescue  their  friends 
from  such  a  state.  A  special  place,  it  was  said,  was 
reserved  in  purgatory  for  those  who  had  been  slow  in 
paying  their  tithes.2  St.  Gregory  tells  a  curious  story  of 
a  man  who  wras,  in  other  respects,  of  admirable  virtue ; 
but  who,  in  a  contested  election  for  the  popedom,  sup- 
ported the  wrong  candidate,  and  without,  as  it  would 
appear,  in  any  degree  refusing  to  obey  the  successful 
candidate  when  elected,  continued  secretly  of  opinion 
that  the  choice  was  an  unwise  one.  He  was  accordingly 
placed  for  some  time  after  death  in  boiling  water.3 
Whatever  may  be  thought  of  its  other  aspects,  it  is  im- 
possible to  avoid  recognising  in  this  teaching  a  masterly 

manner,  tortured  by  fire,  which  is  of  the  same  kind  (says  Bellarmine)  as  our 
element  fire.'  l  The  Angelic  Doctor  affirms  u  that  the  fire  which  torments 
the  damned  is  like  the  fire  which  purges  the  elect."  '  •  What  agony  will 
not  those  holy  souls  suffer  when  tied  and  bound  with  the  most  tormenting 
chains  of  a  living  fire  like  to  that  of  hell  ?  and  we,  while  able  to  make 
tlicin  free  and  happy,  shall  we  stand  like  uninterested  spectators?'  'St. 
Austin  is  of  opinion  that  the  pains  of  a  soul  in  purgatory  during  the  time 
required  to  open  and  shut  one's  eye,  is  more  severe  than  what  St.  Lawrence 
suffered  on  the  gridiron ; '  and  much  more  to  the  same  effect.  (Pwyatoru 
■  •  d  to  the  "Piety  of  the  Faithful.     Richardson,  London.) 

1  See  Delepierre,  Wright,  and  Alger. 

2  This  appears  from  the  vision  of  Thurcill.  (Wright's  Fun/afon/,  p.  42, ) 
Brompton  (Chronicon)  tells  of  an  English  landlord  who  had  refused  t<>  pay 
tithes.  St.  Augustine,  having  vainly  reasoned  with  him,  at  last  convinced 
him  by  a  miracle.  Before  celebrating  mass  he  ordered  all  excommunicated 
•persons  to  leave  the  church,  Whereupon  a  corpse  got  out  of  a  grave  and 
•walked  away.  The  corpse,  on  being  questioned,  said  it  was  the  body  of  an 
ancient  Briton  who  refused  to  pay  tithes,  and  had  in  consequence  been 
excommunicated  and  damned. 

J  Greg.  Dial  iv.  40. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  249 

skill,  in  the  adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  which  almost 
rises  to  artistic  beauty.  A  system  which  deputed  its 
minister  to  go  to  the  unhappy  widow  in  the  first  dark 
hour  of  her  anguish  and  her  desolation,  to  tell  her  that 
he  who  was  dearer  to  her  than  all  the  world  besides  was 
now  burning  in  a  fire,  and  that  he  could  only  be  relieved 
by  a  gift  of  money  to  the  priests,  was  assuredly  of  its 
own  kind  not  without  an  extraordinary  merit. 

If  we  attempt  to  realise  the  moral  condition  of  the 
society  of  Western  Europe  in  the  period  that  elapsed  be- 
tween the  downfall  of  the  Eoman  empire  and  Charle- 
magne, during  which  the  religious  transformations  I  have 
noticed  chiefly  arose,  we  shall  be  met  by  some  formidable 
difficulties.  In  the  first  place,  our  materials  are  very  scanty. 
From  the  year  a.d.  642,  when  the  meagre  chronicle  of 
Fredigarius  closes,  to  the  biography  of  Charlemagne  by 
Eginhard,  a  century  later,  there  is  almost  a  complete 
blank  in  trustworthy  history,  and  we  are  reduced  to  a 
few  scanty  and  very  doubtful  notices  in  the  chronicles  of 
monasteries,  the  lives  of  saints,  and  the  decrees  of  Councils. 
All  secular  literature  had  almost  disappeared,  and  the 
thought  of  posterity  seems  to  have  vanished  from  the 
world.1  Of  the  first  half  of  the  seventh  century,  how- 
ever, and  of  the  two  centuries  that  preceded  it,  we  have 
much  information  from  Gregory  of  Tours,  and  Fredi- 
garius, whose  tedious  and  repulsive  pages  illustrate  with 
considerable  clearness  the  conflict  of  races  and  the  dis- 
location of  governments  that  for  centuries  existed.  In 
Italy,  the  traditions  and  habits  of  the  old  empire  had  in 
some  degree  reasserted  their  sway,   but    in    Gaul    the 

1  As  Sismondi  says,  '  Pendant  quatre-vingts  ans,  tout  au  moins,  il  n'y  eut 
pas  un  Franc  qui  songeat  a  transmettre  a  la  posterite  la  memoire  des  6ve"ne- 
ments  contemporains,  et  pendant  le  meme  espace  de  temps  il  n'y  eut  pas 
un  personnage  puissant  qui  ne  batit  des  temples  pour  la  posterite*  la  plus 
recule'e/ — Hist,  des  Francais,  tome  ii.  p.  40. 


250  HISTORY   OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

Church  subsisted  in  the  midst  of  barbarians,  whose  native 
vigour  had  never  been  emasculated  by  civilisation  and 
refined  by  knowledge.  The  picture  which  Gregory  of 
Tours  gives  us  is  that  of  a  society  which  was  almost  abso- 
lutely anarchical.  The  mind  is  fatigued  by  the  mono- 
tonous account  of  acts  of  violence  and  of  fraud  springing 
from  no  fixed  policy,  tending  to  no  end,  leaving  no 
lasting  impress  upon  the  world.1  The  two  queens  Fre- 
degonde  and  Brunehaut  rise  conspicuous  above  other 
figures  for  their  fierce  and  undaunted  ambition,  for  the 
fascination  they  exercised  over  the  minds  of  multitudes, 
and  for  the  number  and  atrocity  of  their  crimes.  All 
classes  seem  to  have  been  almost  equally  tainted  with 
vice.  We  read  of  a  bishop  named  Cautinus,  who  had 
to  be  carried,  when  intoxicated,  by  four  men  from  the 
table ; 2  who,  upon  the  refusal  of  one  of  his  priests  to 
surrender  some  private  property,  deliberately  ordered 
that  priest  to  be  buried  alive,  and  who,  when  the  victim, 
escaping  by  a  happy  chance  from  the  sepulchre  in  which 


1  Gibbon  says  of  the  period  during-  which  the  Merovingian  dynasty 
reigned,  that  f  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  anywhere  more  vice  or  less 
virtue.'  Hallam  reproduces  this  observation,  and  adds,  '  The  facts  of  these 
times  are  of  little  other  importance  than  as  they  impress  on  the  mind  a 
thorough  notion  of  the  extreme  wickedness  of  almost  every  person  concerned 
in  them,  and  consequently  of  the  state  to  which  society  was  reduced.' — Hist, 
of tJie  Middle  Ages,  ch.  i.  Dean  Milman  is  equally  unfavourable  and  em- 
phatic in  his  judgment.  '  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  a  more  dark  and  odious 
of  society  than  that  of  France  under  her  Merovingian  kings,  the  de- 
scendants of  Clovis,  as  described  by  Gregory  of  Tours.  In  the  conflict  of 
barbarism  with  Roman  Christianity,  barbarism  has  introduced  into  Chris- 
tianity all  :y  with  none  of  its  generosity  and  magnanimity;  its 
energy  shows  itself  in  atrocity  of  cruelty,  and  even  of  sensuality.  Chris- 
tianity lias  given  to  barbarism  hardly  more  than  its  superstition  and  its 
hatred  of  heretics  and  unbelievers.  Throughout,  assassinations,  parricides, 
and  fratricides  intermingle  with  adulteries  and  rapes' — History  of  Latin 
Christianity,  vol.  i.  p. 

3  Greg.  Tur.  iv.  12.  Gregory  mentions  (v.  41)  another  bishop  who  used 
to  become  so  intoxicated  as  to  be  unable  to  stand,  and  St.  Boniface,  after 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  251 

he  had  been  immured,  revealed  the  crime,  received  no 
greater  punishment  than  a  censure.1  The  worst  sove- 
reigns found  flatterers  or  agents  in  ecclesiastics.  Frede- 
gonde  deputed  two  clerks  to  murder  Childebert,2  and 
another  clerk  to  murder  Brunehaut ; 3  she  caused  a  bishop 
of  Eouen  to  be  assassinated  at  the  altar — a  bishop  and 
an  archdeacon  being  her  accomplices;4  and  she  found 
in  another  bishop,  named  iEgidius,  one  of  her  most  de- 
voted instruments  and  friends.5  The  pope,  St.  Gregory 
the  Great,  was  an  ardent  flatterer  of  Brunehaut.6  Gun- 
debald  having  murdered  his  three  brothers,  was  consoled 
by  St.  Avitus,  the  Bishop  of  Vienne,  who,  without  inti- 
mating the  slightest  disapprobation  of  the  act,  assured 
him  that  by  removing  his  rivals  he  had  been  a  providen- 
tial agent  in  preserving  the  happiness  of  his  people.7  The 
bishoprics  were  filled  by  men  of  notorious  debauchery, 
or  by  grasping  misers.8  The  priests  sometimes  celebrated 
the  sacred  mysteries  '  gorged  with  food  and  dull  with 
wine.' 9     They  had  already  begun  to  carry  arms,  and 

describing  the  extreme  sensuality  of  the  clergy  of  his  time,  adds,  that 
there  are  some  bishops  *  qui  licet  dicant  se  fornicarios  vel  adulteros  non 
esse,  sed  sunt  ebriosi  et  injuriosi/  &c. — Ep.  xlix. 

1  Greg.  Tur.  iv.  12. 

2  Id.  viii.  29.  She  gave  them  knives  with  hollow  grooves,  filled  with 
poison,  in  the  blades. 

3  Greg.  Tur.  vii.  20.  *  Id.  viii.  31-41. 

5  Id.  v.  19. 

6  See  his  very  curious  correspondence  with  her. — Ep.  vi.  5, 50,  59 ;  ix.  11, 
117  ;xi.  62-63. 

7  Avitus,  Ep.  v.  He  adds,  '  Minuebat  regni  felicitas  numerum  regalium 
personarum.' 

8  See  the  emphatic  testimony  of  St.  Boniface  in  the  eighth  century. 
'  Modo  autem  maxima  ex  parte  per  civitates  episcopales  sedes  traditaB  sunt 
laicis  cupidis  ad  possidendum,  vel  adulteratis  clericis,  scortatoribus  et 
publicanis  sseculariter  ad  perfruendum.' — Epist.  xlix.  <ad  Zachariam.' 
The  whole  epistle  contains  an  appalling  picture  of  the  clerical  vices  of  the 
limes. 

0  More  than  one  Council  made  decrees  about  this.  See  the  Vie  de  St. 
leyer,  by  Dom  Pitra,  pp.  172-177. 


HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

Gregory  tells  of  two  bishops  of  the  fifth  century  who 
had  killed  many  enemies  with  their  own  hands.1  There 
was  scarcely  a  reign  that  was  not  marked  by  some  atro- 
cious domestic  tragedy.  There  were  few  sovereigns  who 
were  not  guilty  of  at  least  one  deliberate  murder.  Never, 
perhaps,  was  the  infliction  of  mutilation,  and  prolonged 
and  agonising  forms  of  death,  more  common.  We  read, 
among  other  atrocities,  of  a  bishop  being  driven  to  a  dis- 
tant place  of  exile  upon  a  bed  of  thorns;2  of  a  king 
burning  together  his  rebellious  son,  his  daughter-in-law, 
and  their  daughters  ;3  of  a  queen  condemning  a  daughter 
she  had  had  by  a  former  marriage  to  be  drowned,  lest 
her  beauty  should  excite  the  passions  of  her  husband  ;4 
of  another  queen  endeavouring  to  strangle  her  daughter 
with  her  own  hands  ;6  of  an  abbot,  with  the  assistance  of 
one  of  his  clerks,  driving  a  poor  man  by  force  out  of  his 
house,  that  he  might  commit  adultery  with  his  wife,  and 
being  murdered,  together  with  his  partner,  in  the  act  ;6 
of  a  prince  who  made  it  an  habitual  amusement  to  torture 
his  slaves  with  fire,  and  who  buried  two  of  them  alive, 
because  they  had  married  without  his  permission  ;7  of  a 
bishop's  wife,  who  besides  other  crimes,  was  accustomed 
to  mutilate  men  and  to  torture  women,  by  applying  red- 
hot  irons  to  the  most  sensitive  parts  of  their  bodies  ;8  of 

1  Greg.  Tur.  iv.  43.  St.  Boniface,  at  a  much  later  period  (a.d.  742), 
talks  of  bishops  'Qui  pugnant  in  exercitu  armati  et  effundunt  propria  maim 
Banguinem  hominum.' — Up.  xlix. 

2  Greg.  Tur.  iv.  26.  s  id.  iv.  20. 

*  Id.  iii.  20.  »  Id>  ix>  34 

6  Greg.  Tur.  viii.  19.  Gregory  says  this  story  should  warn  clergymen 
not  to  meddle  with  the  wives  of  other  people,  but  'content  themselves  with 
those  that  they  may  possess  without  crime.'  The  abbot  had  previously 
tried  to  seduce  the  husband  within  the  precincts  of  the  monastery,  that  he 
might  murdf-r  him. 

'  Greg.  Tur.  v.  8. 

*  Id.  viii.  99.  She  was  guilty  of  many  other  crimes,  which  the  his- 
torian says  '  it  is  better  to  pass  in  silence.'     The  bishop  himself  had  been 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  253 

great  numbers  who  were  deprived  of  their  ears  and  noses, 
tortured  through  several  days,  and  at  last  burnt  alive  or 
broken  slowly  on  the  wheel.  Brunehaut,  at  the  close  of 
her  long  and  in  some  respects  great,  though  guilty  career, 
fell  into  the  hands  of  Glotaire,  and  the  old  queen,  having 
been  subjected  for  three  days  to  various  kinds  of  torture, 
was  led  out  on  a  camel  for  the  derision  of  the  army,  and 
at  last  bound  to  the  tail  of  a  furious  horse,  and  dashed  to 
pieces  in  its  course.1 

And  yet  this  age  was,  in  a  certain  sense,  eminently 
religious.  All  literature  had  become  sacred.  Heresy  of 
every  kind  was  rapidly  expiring.  The  priests  and  monks 
had  acquired  enormous  power,  and  their  wealth  was 
inordinately  increasing.2  Several  sovereigns  voluntarily 
abandoned  their  thrones  for  the  monastic  life.3  The' 
seventh  century,  which,  together  with  the  eighth,  forms 
the  darkest  period  of  the  dark  ages,  is  famous  in  the 
hagiology,  as  having  produced  more  saints  than  any 
other  century,  except  that  of  the  martyrs.4 

guilty  of  outrageous  and  violent  tyranny.  The  marriage  of  ecclesiastics 
appears  at  this  time  to  have  been  common  in  Gaul,  though  the  best  men 
commonly  deserted  their  wives  when  they  were  ordained.  Another  bishop's 
wife  (iv.  86)  was  notorious  for  her  tyrannies. 

1  Fredigarius,  xlii.  The  historian  describes  Clotaire  as  a  perfect  paragon 
of  Christian  graces. 

2  'Ail  sixieme  siecle  on  compte  214  etablissements  religieux  des  Pyrenees 
a  la  Loire  et  des  bouches  du  Rhone  aux  Vosges.' — Ozanam,  Etudes  germa- 
niques,  tome  ii.  p.  93.  In  the  two  following  centuries  the  ecclesiastical  wealth 
was  enormously  increased. 

3  Mathew  of  Westminster  (a.d.  757)  speaks  of  no  less  than  eight  Saxon 
kings  having  done  this. 

4  '  Le  septieme  siecle  est  celui  peut-etre  qui  a  donne*  le  plus  de  saints  au 
calendrier.' — Sismondi,  Hist,  de  France,  tome  ii.  p.  50.  '  Le  plus  beau  titre 
du  septieme  siecle  a  une  rehabilitation  c'est  le  nombre  considerable  de 
saints  qu'il  a  produits.  .  .  .  Aucun  siecle  n'a  ete  ainsi  glorifie'  sauf  l'age 
des  martyrs  dont  Dieu  s'est  reserve  de  compter  le  nombre.  Chaque  annee 
foumit  sa  moisson,  chaque  jour  a  sa  gerbe.  ...  Si  done  il  plait  a  Dieu  et  au 
Christ  de  repandre  a  pleines  mains  sur  un  siecle  les  splendeurs  des  saints, 
qu'importe  que  l'histoire  et  la  gloire  humaine  en  tiennent  peu  compte  ?  ' — 


254  HISTORY    OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

The  manner  in  which  events  were  regarded  by  his- 
torians was  also  exceedingly  characteristic.  Our  principal 
authority,  Gregory  of  Tours,  was  a  bishop  of  great 
eminence,  and  a  man  of  the  most  genuine  piety,  and  of 
very  strong  affections.1  He  describes  his  work  as  a 
record  *  of  the  virtues  of  saints,  and  the  disasters  of 
nations,'2  and  the  student  who  turns  to  his  pages  from 
those  of  the  Pagan  historians,  is  not  more  struck  by  the 
extreme  prominence  he  gives  to  ecclesiastical  events,  than 
by  the  uniform  manner  in  which  he  views  all  secular 
events  in  their  religious  aspect,  as  governed  and  directed 
by  a  special  Providence.  Yet,  in  questions  where  the 
difference  between  orthodoxy  and  heterodoxy  are  con- 
cerned, his  ethics  sometimes  exhibit  the  most  singular 
distortion.  Of  this,  probably  the  most  impressive  example 
is  the  manner  in  which  he  has  described  the  career  of 
Clovis,  the  great  representative  of  orthodoxy.3  Having 
recounted  the  circumstances  of  his  conversion,  Gregory 
proceeds  to  tell  us,  with  undisguised  admiration,  how 
that  chieftain,  as  the  first-fruits  of  his  doctrine,  professed 
to  be  grieved  at  seeing  that  part  of  Gaul  was  held  by  an 
Arian  sovereign ;  how  he  accordingly  resolved  to  invade 
and  appropriate  that  territory ;  how  with  admirable  piety, 
he  commanded  his  soldiers  to  abstain  from  all  devastations 
when  traversing  the  territory  of  St.  Martin,  and  how 
several  miracles  attested  the  Divine  approbation  of  the 
expedition.  The  war — which  is  the  first  of  the  long 
series  of  professedly  religious  wars  that  have  been  under- 
taken by  Christians — was  fully  successful,  and  Clovis 
proceeded  to  direct  his  ambition  to  new  fields.     In  his 

Pitra,  Vie  de  St..  Liyer,  Introd.  p.  x.-xi.     This  learned  and  very  credulous 
writer  (who  is  now  a  cardinal)  afterwards  says  that  we  have  the  record  of 
more  than  eight  hundred  saints  of  the  seventh  century.     (Introd.  p.  lxxx.) 
*  See,  «•-.  the  very  touching  passage  about  the  death  of  his  children,  V.85, 
a  Lib.  ii.  Proh  »  Greg.  Tur.  ii.  27-43. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  255 

expedition  against  the  Arians,  he  had  found  a  faithful 
ally  in  his  relative  Sighebert,  the  old  and  infirm  king  of 
the  Eipuarian  Franks.  He  now  proceeded  artfully  to 
suggest  to  the  son  of  Sighebert  the  advantages  he  would 
obtain  if  his  father  were  dead.  The  hint  was  taken. 
Sighebert  was  murdered,  and  Clovis  sent  ambassadors  to 
the  parricide,  professing  a  warm  friendship,  but  with 
secret  orders  on  the  first  opportunity  to  kill  him.  This 
being  done,  and  the  kingdom  being  left  entirely  without 
a  head,  Clovis  proceeded  to  Cologne,  the  capital  of  Sighe- 
bert ;  he  assembled  the  people,  professed  with  much 
solemnity  his  horror  of  the  tragedies  that  had  taken  place, 
and  his  complete  innocence  of  all  connection  with  them ;  * 
but  suggested,  that  as  they  were  now  without  a  ruler,  they 
should  place  themselves  under  his  protection.  The  pro- 
position was  received  with  acclamation.  The  warriors 
elected  him  as  their  king,  and  thus,  says  the  episcopal 
historian,  ■  Clovis  received  the  treasures  and  dominions  of 
Sighebert,  and  added  them  to  his  own.  Every  day  God 
caused  his  enemies  to  fall  beneath  his  hand,  and  enlarged 
his  kingdom,  because  he  walked  with  a  right  heart  before 
the  Lord,  and  did  the  things  that  were  pleasing  in  his 
sight.'2  His  ambition  was,  however,  still  unsated.  He 
proceeded,  in  a  succession  of  expeditions,  to  unite  the 
whole  of  Gaul  under  his  sceptre,  invading,  defeating, 
capturing,  and  slaying  the  lawful  sovereigns,  who  were 
for  the  most  part  his  own  relations.  Having  secured 
himself  against  dangers  from  without,  by  killing  all  his 
relations,  with  the  exception  of  his  wife  and  children,  he 

1  He  observes  how  impossible  it  was  that  he  could  be  guilty  of  shedding 
the  blood  of  a  relation  :  '  Sed  in  his  ego  nequaquam  conscius  sum.  Nee  enim 
possum  sanguinem  parentum  meorum  effundere.' — Greg.  Tur.  ii.  40. 

2  *  Prosternebat  enim  quotidie  Deus  hostes  ejus  sub  manu  ipsius,  et  auge- 
bat  regnum  ejus  eo  quod  ambularet  recto  corde  coram  eo;  et  faceret  quae 
placitaerant  in  oculis  ejus.' — Greg.  Tur.  ii.  40. 


25G  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

is  reported  to  have  lamented  before  his  courtiers  his 
isolation,  declaring  that  he  had  no  relations  remaining  in 
the  world  to  assist  him  in  his  adversity ;  but  this  speech, 
Gregory  assures  us,  was  a  stratagem ;  for  the  king  desired 
to  discover  whether  any  possible  pretender  to  the  throne 
had  escaped  his  knowledge  and  his  sword.  Soon  after, 
he  died  full  of  years  and  honours,  and  was  buried  in  a 
cathedral  which  he  had  built. 

Having  recounted  all  these  things  with  unmoved  com- 
posure, Gregory  of  Tours  requests  his  reader  to  permit 
him  to  pause,  to  draw  the  moral  of  the  history.  It  is 
the  admirable  manner  in  which  Providence  guides  all 
tilings  for  the  benefit  of  those  whose  opinions  concerning 
the  Trinity  are  strictly  orthodox.  Having  briefly  re- 
ferred to  Abraham,  Jacob,  Moses,  Aaron,  and  David,  all 
of  whom  are  said  to  have  intimated  the  correct  doctrine 
on  this  subject,  and  all  of  whom  were  exceedingly  pro- 
sperous, he  passes  to  more  modern  times.  '  Arius,  the 
impious  founder  of  the  impious  sect,  his  entrails  having 
fallen  out,  passed  into  the  flames  of  hell ;  but  Hilary,  the 
blessed  defender  of  the  undivided  Trinity,  though  exiled 
on  that  account,  found  his  country  in  Paradise.  The 
King  Clovis,  who  confessed  the  Trinity,  and  by  its  assist- 
ance crushed  the  heretics,  extended  his  dominions  through 
all  Gaul.  Alaric,  who  denied  the  Trinity,  was  deprived 
of  his  kingdom  and  his  subjects,  and,  what  was  far  worse, 
was  punished  in  the  future  world.'1 

It  would  be  easy  to  cite  other,  though  perhaps  not 
quite  such  striking  instances,  of  the  degree  in  which  the 
moral  judgments  of  this  unhappy  age  were  distorted  by 


1  Lib.  iii.  Prologue.  St.  Avitus  enumerates  in  glowing  terms  the  Chris- 
tian virtues  of  Clovis  (Ep.  xli.),  but  as  this  was  in  a  letter  addressed  to  the 
king  himself,  the  eulogy  may  easily  be  explained. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  257 

superstition.1  Questions  of  orthodoxy,  or  questions  of 
fasting,  appeared  to  the  popular  mind  immeasurably  more 
important  than  what  we  should  now  call  the  fundamental 
principles  of  right  and  wrong.  A  law  of  Charlemagne, 
and  also  a  law  of  the  Saxons,  condemned  to  death  any 
one  who  eat  meat  in  Lent,2  unless  the  priest  was  satisfied 
that  it  was  a  matter  of  absolute  necessity.  The  moral 
enthusiasm  of  the  age  chiefly  drove  men  to  abandon 
their  civic  or  domestic  duties,  to  immure  themselves  in 
monasteries,  and  to  waste  their  strength  by  prolonged 
and  extravagant  maceration.3  Yet,  in  the  midst  of  all 
this  superstition,  there  can  be  no  question  that  in  some 
respects  the.  religions  agencies  were  operating  for  good. 
The  monastic  bodies  that  everywhere  arose,  formed  secure 
asylums  for  the  multitudes  who  had  been  persecuted  by 
their  enemies,  constituted  an  invaluable  counterpoise  to 
the  rude  military  forces  of  the  time,  familiarised  the 
imagination  of  men  with  religious  types,  that  could  hardly 
fail  in  some  degree  to  soften  the  character,  and  led  the 

1  Thus  Hallam  says,  l  There  are  continual  proofs  of  immorality  in  the 
monkish  historians.  In  the  history  of  Rumsey  Abbey,  one  of  our  best 
documents  for  Anglo-Saxon  times,  we  have  an  anecdote  of  a  bishop  who 
made  a  Danish  nobleman  drunk,  that  he  might  cheat  him  out  of  an  estate, 
which  is  told  with  much  approbation.  Walter  de  Hemingford  records,  with 
excessive  delight,  the  well-known  story  of  the  Jews  who  were  persuaded 
by  the  captain  of  their  vessel  to  walk  on  the  sands  at  low  water  till  the 
rising  tide  drowned  them.'— Hallam' s  Middle  Ages  (12th  ed.),  iii.  p.  306. 

2  Canciani,  Leges  Barbarorum,  vol.  iii.  p.  04.  Canciani  notices,  that  among 
the  Poles  the  teeth  of  the  offending-  persons  were  pulled  out.  The  follow- 
ing passage,  from  Bodin,  is,  I  think,  very  remarkable  :— '  Les  loix  et  canons 
veulent  qu'on  pardonne  aux  heretiques  repentis  (combien  que  les  magistrats 
en  quelques  lieux  par  cy-devant,  y  ont  eu  tel  esgard,  que  celui  qui  avoit 
mange  de  la  chair  au  Vendredy  estoitbrusle  tout  vif,  comme  il  fut  faict  en 
la  ville  d' Angers  Fan  mil  cinq  cens  trente-neuf,  s'il  ne  s'en  repentoit :  et 
jacoit  qu'il  se  repentist  si  estoit-il  pendu  par  compassion).'— Lemonomamc 
des  Sorciers,  p.  21(1. 

3  A  long  list  of  examples  of  extreme  maceration  from  lives  of  the  saints  of 
the  seventh  or  eighth  century  is  given  by  Fitra,  Tie  de  St.-Leger,  Introd. 
pp.  cv.-cvii. 


IirSTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

way  in  most  forms  of  peaceful  labour.  When  men, 
filled  with  admiration  at  the  reports  of  the  sanctity,  and 
the  miracles  of  some  illustrious  saint,  made  pilgrimages  to 
behold  him.  and  found  him  attired  in  the  rude  garb  of  a 
peasant,  with  thick  shoes,  and  with  a  scythe  on  his 
shoulder,  superintending  the  labours  of  the  farmers,1  or 
sitting  in  a  small  attic  mending  lamps,2  whatever  other 
benefit  they  might  derive  from  the  interview,  they  could 
scarcely  fail  to  return  with  an  increased  sense  of  the 
dignity  of  labour.  It  was  probably  at  this  time  as  much 
for  the  benefit  of  the  world  as  of  the  Church,  that  the 
ecclesiastical  sanctuaries  and  estates  should  remain  in- 
violate, and  the  numerous  legends  of  Divine  punishment 
having  overtaken  those  who  transgressed  them,3  attest 
the  zeal  with  which  the  clergy  sought  to  establish  that 
inviolability.  The  great  sanctity  that  was  attached  to 
holidays  was  also  an  important  boon  to  the  servile  classes. 
The  celebration  of  the  first  day  of  the  week,  in  commemo- 
ration of  the  resurrection,  and  as  a  period  of  religious 
exercises,  dates  from  the  earliest  age  of  the  Church.  The 
Christian  festival  was  carefully  distinguished  from  the 
Jewish  Sabbath,  with  which  it  never  appears  to  have 
been  confounded  till  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century  ; 
but  some  Jewish  converts  who  considered  the  Jewish  law 
to  be  still  in  force  observed  both  days.  In  general,  how- 
ever, the  Christian  festival  alone  was  observed,  and  the 
Jewish  Sabbatical  otligation,  as  St.  Paul  most  explicitly 

1  This  was  related  of  St.  Equitius.— Greg.  Dialog,  i.  4. 

2  Ibid.  i.  5.     This  saint  was  named  Constantius. 

\  ast  number  of  miracles  of  this  kind  are  recorded.  See,  e.g.,  Gr» itt. 
Tur.  I)e  Miraculi*,\.  61-66  \  Hist.  iv.  40.  Perhaps  the  most  singular  in- 
stance of  ill.-  violation  of  the  sanctity  of  the  church  was  that  by  the  nuns 
of  a  convent  founded  by  St.  Radegunda.  They,  having  broken  into  rebellion, 
four  bishops,  with  their  attendant  clergy,  went  to  compose  the  dispute,  and 
having  failed,  they  excommunicated  the  rebels,  whereupon  the  nuns  almost 
beat  them  to  death  in  the  church. — Greg.  Tur.  ix.  41. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  259 

affirms,  no  longer  rested  upon  the  Christians.  The 
grounds  of  the  observance  of  Sunday  were  the  mani- 
fest propriety  and  expediency  of  devoting  a  certain  por- 
tion of  time  to  devout  exercises,  the  tradition  which 
traced  the  sanctification  of  Sunday  to  apostolical  times, 
and  the  right  of  the  Church  to  appoint  certain  seasons 
to  be  kept  holy  by  its  members.  When  Christianity 
acquired  an  ascendency  in  the  empire,  its  policy  on  this 
subject  was  manifested  in  one  of  the  laws  of  Constantino, 
which,  without  making  any  direct  reference  to  religious 
motives,  ordered  that,  '  on  the  day  of  the  sun,'  no  servile 
work  should  be  performed  except  agriculture,  which, 
being  dependent  on  the  weather,  could  not,  it  was  thought, 
be  reasonably  postponed.  Theodosius  took  a  step  fur- 
ther, and  suppressed  the  public  spectacles  on  that  day. 
During  the  centuries  that  immediately  followed  the 
dissolution  of  the  Eoman  empire,  the  clergy  devoted 
themselves  with  great  and  praiseworthy  zeal  to  the  sup- 
pression of  labour  both  on  Sundays  and  on  the  other 
leading  Church  holidays.  More  than  one  law  was  made, 
forbidding  all  Sunday  labour,  and  this  prohibition  was 
reiterated  by  Charlemagne  in  his  Capitularies.1  Several 
Councils  made  decrees  on  the  subject,2  and  several  legends 
were  circulated,  of  men  who  had  been  struck  miraculously 
with  disease  or  death,  for  having  been  guilty  of  this  sin.8 
Although  the  moral  side  of  religion  was  greatly  degraded 
or  forgotten,  there  was,  as  I  have  already  intimated,  one 

1  See  Canciani,  Leges  Barbarorum,  vol.  iii.  pp.  19,  151. 

2  Much  information  about  these  measures  is  given  by  Dr.  Hessey,  in  his 
Bampton  Lectures  on  Sundaij.  See,  especially,  lect.  3.  See,  too,  Moehler, 
Le  Christianisme  et  V Esclavage,  pp.  186-187. 

3  Gregory  of  Tours  enumerates  some  instances  of  this  in  his  extravagant 
book  Be  Miraculis,  ii.  11 ;  iv.  57  ;  v.  7.  One  of  these  cases,  however,  was 
for  having  worked  on  the  day  of  St.  John  the  Baptist.  Some  other  miracles 
of  the  same  nature,  taken,  I  believe,  from  English  sources,  are  given  in 
Hessey's  Sunday  (3rd  edition),  p.  321. 


200  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

important  exception.  Charity  was  so  interwoven  with 
the  superstitious  parts  of  ecclesiastical  teaching,  that  it 
continued  to  grow  and  flourish  in  the  darkest  period.  Of 
the  acts  of  Queen  Bathilda,  it  is  said  we  know  nothing 
except  her  donations  to  the  monasteries,  and  the  charity 
with  which  she  purchased  slaves  and  captives,  and  released 
them  or  converted  them  into  monks.1  St.  Germanus,  the 
Bishop  of  Paris,  near  the  close  of  the  sixth  century,  was 
especially  famous  for  his  zeal  in  ransoming  captives.2 
While  many  of  the  bishops  were  men  of  gross  and  scan- 
dalous vice,  there  were  always  some  who  laboured 
assiduously  in  the  old  episcopal  vocation  of  protecting 
the  oppressed,  interceding  for  the  captives,  and  opening 
their  sanctuaries  to  the  fugitives.  The  fame  acquired  by 
St.  Germanus  was  so  great,  that  prisoners  are  said  to  have 
called  upon  him  to  assist  them,  in  the  interval  between 
his  deatli  and  his  burial ;  and  the  body  of  the  saint 
becoming  miraculously  heavy,  it  was  found  impossible  to 
carry  it  to  the  grave  till  the  captives  had  been  released.3 
In  the  midst  of  the  complete  eclipse  of  all  secular  learn- 
ing, in  the  midst  of  a  reign  of  ignorance,  imposture,  and 
credulity  which  cannot  be  paralleled  in  history,  there  grew 
up  a  vast  legendary  literature,  clustering  around  the  form 
of  the  ascetic,  and  the  lives  of  the  saints  among  very 

1  Compare  Pitra,  Vie  de  Sb.-Leger,  p.  187.      Sismondi,  Hist,  des  F?-angais} 
tome  ii.  p.  62-68. 
a  See  a  remarkable  passage  from  his  life,  cited  by  Guizot,  Hist,  de  la  Civi- 
France,  xviimc  lecon.    The  English  historians  contain  several  in- 
$8  of  the  activity  of  charity  in  the  darkest  period.     Alfred  and  EDdward 
the  Confe-  conspicuous  for  it.     Ethelwolf  is  said  to  have  provided 

'  for  the  gcod  of  his  soul/  that,  till  the  day  of  judgment,  one  poor  man  in  ten 
should  be  provided  with  meat,  drink,  and  clothing.  (Asser's  Life  of  Alfred.) 
There  wrm  I  popular  legend  of  a  poor  man  who,  having  in  vain  asked  alms 
ii"  tailors,  all  the  bread  in  their  vessel  was  turned  into  slone.     (Roger 
I  eodurer,  a.i>.  r>00.)     See,  too,  another  legend  of  charity  in  Mathew  of 
W'  itmt—ter,  a.d.  Oil. 
*  Greg.  Tur.  Hist.  v.  8. 


FKOM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHAKLEMAGNE.  261 

i 

much  that  is  grotesque,  childish,  and  even  immoral, 
contain  some  fragments  of  the  purest  and  most  touching 
religious  poetry.1 

But  the  chief  title  of  the  period  we  are  considering,  to 
the  indulgence  of  posterity,  was  its  great  missionary 
labours.  The  stream  of  missionaries  which  had  at  first 
flowed  from  Palestine  and  Italy  began  to  flow  from  the 
West.  The  Irish  monasteries  furnished  the  earliest,  and 
probably  the  most  numerous,  labourers  in  the  field.  A 
great  portion  of  the  north  of  England  was  converted  by 
the  Irish  monks  of  Lindisfarne.  The  fame  of  St.  Colum- 
banus  in  Gaul,  in  Germany,  and  in  Italy,  for  a  time  even 
balanced  that  of  St.  Benedict  himself,  and  the  school 
he  founded  at  Luxeuil  became  the  great  seminary  for 
mediaeval  missionaries,  while  the  monastery  he  planted 
at  Bobbio  continued  to  the  present  century.  The  Irish 
missionary,  St.  Gall,  gave  his  name  to  a  portion  of 
Switzerland  he  had  converted,  and  a  crowd  of  other 
Irish  missionaries  penetrated  to  the  remotest  forests  of 
Germany.  The  movement  which  began  with  St.  Columba 
in  the  middle  of  the  sixth  century,  was  communicated 
to  England  and  Gaul  about  a  century  later.  Early  in  the 
eighth  century  it  found  a  great  leader  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
St.  Boniface,  who  spread  Christianity  far  and  wide  through 
Germany,  and  at  once  excited  and  disciplined  an  ardent 
enthusiasm,  which  appears  to  have  attracted  all  that  was 
morally  best  in  the  Church.  During  about  three  cen- 
turies, and  while  Europe  had  sunk  into  the  most  extreme 
moral,  intellectual,  and  political  degradation,  a  constant 
stream  of  missionaries  poured  forth  from  the  monasteries, 
who  spread  the  knowledge  of  the  Cross  and  the  seeds  of 

1  M.  Guizot  has  given  several  specimens  of  this,  (Hist,  de  In,  Giuilis.  xviime 
lefon.) 


>2&2  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

a  future  civilisation  through  every  land,  from  Lombardy 
to  Sweden.1 

On  the  whole,  however,  it  would  be  difficult  to  ex- 
erate  the  superstition  and  the  vice  of  the  period 
between  the  dissolution  of  the  Empire  and  the  reign  of 
Charlemagne.  But  in  the  midst  of  the  chaos  the  elements 
of  a  new  society  may  be  detected,  and  we  may  already 
observe  in  embryo  the  movement  which  ultimately 
issued  in  the  crusades,  the  feudal  system,  and  chivalry. 
It  is  exclusively  with  the  moral  aspect  of  this  movement 
that  the  present  work  is  concerned,  and  I  shall  endeavour, 
in  the  remainder  of  this  chapter,  to  describe  and  explain 
it>  incipient  stages.  It  consisted  of  two  parts — a  fusion  of 
Christianity  with  the  military  spirit,  and  an  increasing 
reverence  for  secular  rank. 

It  had  been  an  ancient  maxim  of  the  Greeks,  that  no 
more  acceptable  gifts  can  be  offered  in  the  temples  of  the 
gods  than  the  trophies  won  from  an  enemy  in  battle.2 
Of  this  military  religion  Christianity  had  been  at  first 
the  extreme  negation.  I  have  already  had  occasion  to 
observe  that  it  had  been  one  of  its  earliest  rules  that 
no  arms  should  be  introduced  within  the  church,  and 
that  soldiers  returning  even  from  the  most  righteous 
war  should  not  be  admitted  to  communion  until  after  a 
period  of  penance  and  purification.  A  powerful  party, 
which  counted  among  its  leaders  Clement  of  Alexandria, 
Tertullian,  Origen,  Lactantius,  and  Basil,  maintained  that 


1  This  portion  of  medieval  history  has  lately  been  well  traced  by  Mr. 
Maclear,  in  his  History  of  Christian  Missions  in  the  Middle  Ages  (1863). 
See,  too,  Montalembert's  Moines  it  Occident;  Ozanam's  £tudcs  germaniqum, 
original  materials  are  to  be  found  in  Bede,  and  in  the  Lives  of  the 
Saint*— especially  that  of  St.  Columba,  by  Adanman.  On  the  French 
missionaries,  see  the  Benedictine  Hist.  lit.  de  la  France,  tome  iv.  p.  5  ;  and  on 
the  English  missionaries,  Sharon  Turner's  Hist,  of  England,  book  x.  ch.  ii. 

7  Dion  Chrysostom,  Or.  ii.  (De  Regno). 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  263 

all  warfare  was  unlawful  for  those  who  had  been  con- 
verted, and  this  opinion  had  its  martyr  in  the  celebrated 
Maximilianus,  who  suffered  death  under  Diocletian  solely 
because,  having  been  enrolled  as  a  soldier,  he  declared 
that  he  was  a  Christian,  and  that  therefore  he  could  not 
fight.  The  extent  to  which  this  doctrine  was  dissemi- 
nated, has  been  suggested  with  much  plausibility  as  one 
of  the  causes  of  the  Diocletian  persecution.1  It  was  the 
subject  of  one  of  the  reproaches  of  Celsus,  and  Origen,  in 
reply,  frankly  accepted  the  accusation  that  Christianity 
was  incompatible  with  military  service,  though  he  main- 
tained that  the  prayers  of  the  Christians  were  more 
efficacious  than  the  swords  of  the  legions.2  At  the  same 
time,  there  can  be  no  question  that  many  Christians,  from 
a  very  early  date,  did  enlist  in  the  army,  and  that  they 
were  not  cut  off  from  the  Church.  The  legend  of  the 
thundering  legion,  under  Marcus  Aurelius,  whatever  we 
may  think  of  the  pretended  miracle,  attested  the  fact, 
which  is  expressly  asserted  by  Tertullian.3  The  first 
fury  of  the  Diocletian  persecution  fell  upon  Christian 
soldiers,  and  by  the  time  of  Constantine  the  army  ap- 
pears to  have  become,  in  a  great  degree,  Christian.  A 
Council  of  Aries,  under  Constantine,  condemned  soldiers 
who,  through  religious  motives,  deserted  their  colours ; 
and  St.  Augustine  threw  his  great  influence  into  the  same 
scale.  But  even  where  the  calling  was  seldom  regarded  as 
sinful,  it  was  strongly  discouraged.  The  ideal  or  type 
of  supreme  excellence  conceived  by  the  imagination  of 
the  Pagan  world,  and  to  which  all  their  purest  moral 
enthusiasm  naturally  aspired,  was  the  patriot  and  soldier. 
The  ideal  of  the  Catholic  legends  was  the  ascetic,  whose 

1  Gibbon,  ch.  xvi.  2  Origen,  Ccls.  lib.  viii. 

3  l  Navigamus  et  nos  vobiscuni  et  militamus.' — Tert.  Apol.  xlii.    See  too 
Grotius  De  Jure,  i.  cap.  ii. 
51 


HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

first  duty  was  to  abandon  all  secular  feelings  and  ties. 
In  most  family  circles  the  conflict  between  the  two  prin- 
ciples appeared,  and  in  the  moral  atmosphere  of  the 
fourth  and  fifth  centuries  it  was  almost  certain  that  every 
young  man  who  was  animated  by  any  pure  or  genuine 
enthusiasm  would  turn  from  the  army  to  the  monks. 
St.  Martin,  St.  Ferreol,  St.  Tarrachus,  and  St.  Victricius, 
were  among  those  who  through  religious  motives  aban- 
doned the  army.1  When  Ulphilas  translated  the  Bible 
into  Gothic,  he  is  said  to  have  excepted  the  four  books 
of  Kings,  through  fear  that  they  might  encourage  the 
martial  disposition  of  the  barbarians.'2 

The  first  influence  that  contributed  to  bring  the  military 
profession  into  friendly  connection  with  religion  was  the 
received  doctrine  concerning  the  Providential  government 
of  affairs.  It  was  generally  taught  that  all  national  cata- 
strophes were  penal  inflictions,  resulting,  for  the  most  part, 
from  the  vices  or  the  religious  errors  of  the  leading  men, 
and  that  temporal  prosperity  was  the  reward  of  orthodoxy 
and  virtue.  A  great  battle,  on  the  issue  of  which  the 
fortunes  of  a  people  or  of  a  monarch  depended,  was  there- 
fore supposed  to  be  the  special  occasion  of  Providen- 
tial interposition,  and  the  hope  of  obtaining  military 
success  became  one  of  the  most  frequent  motives  of 
conversion.  The  conversion  of  Constantine  was  profess- 
edly, and  the  conversion  of  Clovis  was  perhaps  really, 
due  to  the  persuasion  that  the  Divine  interposition  had 
in  a  critical  moment  given  them  the  victory ;  and  I  have 
already  noticed  how  large  a  part  must  be  assigned  to  this 


1  See  an  admirable  dissertation  on  the  opinions  of  the  early  Christians 
about  military  service,  in  Le  Blant,  Inscription*  chrStiame*  de  la  Gaulc,  tome 
i.  pp.  81-87.  The  subject  is  frequently  referred  to  by  Barbeyrac,  Morale 
des  rires,  and  Grotius  I)c  Jure,  lib.  i.  cap.  ii. 

'  Philostorgiua,  ii. 


FROM   CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  265 

order  of  ideas  in  facilitating  the  progress  of  Christianity 
among  the  barbarians.  When  a  cross  was  said  to  have 
appeared  miraculously  to  Constantine,  with  an  inscription 
announcing  the  victory  of  the  Milvian  bridge;  when  the 
same  holy  sign,  adorned  with  the  sacred  monogram,  was 
carried  in  the  forefront  of  the  Eoman  armies ;  when  the 
nails  of  the  cross,  which  Helena  had  brought  from  Jeru- 
salem, were  converted  by  the  emperor  into  a  helmet,  and 
into  bits  for  his  warhorse,  it  was  evident  that  a  great 
change  was  passing  over  the  once  pacific  spirit  of  the 
Church.1 

Many  circumstances  conspired  to  accelerate  it.  North- 
ern tribes,  who  had  been  taught  that  the  gates  of 
the  Walhalla  were  ever  open  to  the  warrior  who  pre- 
sented himself  stained  with  the  blood  of  his  vanquished 
enemies,  were  converted  to  Christianity ;  but  they  carried 
their  old  feelings  into  their  new  creed.  The  conflict  of 
many  races,  and  the  paralysis  of  all  government  that  fol- 
lowed the  fall  of  the  empire,  made  force  everywhere 
dominant,  and  petty  wars  incessant.  The  military  obli- 
gations attached  to  the  'benefices' which  the  sovereigns 
gave  to  their  leading  chiefs,  connected  the  idea  of  mi- 
litary service  with  that  of  rank,  and  rendered  it  doubly 
honourable  in  the  eyes  of  men.  Many  bishops  and  abbots, 
partly  from  the  turbulence  of  their  times  and  characters, 
and  partly,  at  a  later  period,  from  their  position  as  great 
feudal  lords,  were  accustomed  to  lead  their  followers  in 
battle  ;  and  this  custom,  though  prohibited  by  Charle- 
magne, may  be  traced  to  so  late  a  period  as  the  battle  of 
Agincourt.2 


1  See  some  excellent  remarks  on  this  change,  in  Milman's  History  of 
Christianity,  vol.  ii.  pp.  287-288. 

2  Mably,  Observations  stir  VHistoire  de  France,  i.  6 ;  Ilallam's  Middle  Ages, 
ch.  ii.  part  ii. 


20t>  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

The  stigma  which  Christianity  had  attached  to  war  was 
thus  gradually  effaced.  At  the  same  time,  the  Church 
remained,  on  the  whole,  a  pacific  influence.  War  was 
rather  condoned  than  consecrated,  and,  whatever  might 
be  the  case  with  a  few  isolated  prelates,  the  Church  did 
nothing  to  increase  or  encourage  it.  The  transition  from 
the  almost  Quaker  tenets  of  the  primitive  Church  to  the 
essentially  military  Christianity  of  the  Crusades  was  chiefly 
due  to  another  cause — to  the  terrors  and  to  the  example 
of  Mahommedanism. 

This  great  religion,  which  so  long  rivalled  the  influence 
of  Christianity,  had  indeed  spread  the  deepest  and  most 
justifiable  panic  through  Christendom.  Without  any  of 
those  aids  to  the  imagination  which  pictures  and  images 
can  furnish,  without  any  elaborate  sacerdotal  organisa- 
tion, preaching  the  purest  Monotheism  among  ignorant 
and  barbarous  men,  and  inculcating,  on  the  whole,  an 
extremely  high  and  noble  system  of  morals,  it  spread 
with  a  rapidity  and  it  acquired  a  hold  over  the  minds  of 
it-  votaries,  which  it  is  probable  that  no  other  religion 
lias  altogether  equalled.  It  borrowed  from  Christianity 
that  doctrine  of  salvation  by  belief,  which  is  perhaps  the 
most  powerful  impulse  that  can  be  applied  to  the  cha- 
racters of  masses  of  men,  and  it  elaborated  so  minutely 
the  charms  of  its  sensual  heaven,  and  the  terrors  of  its 
material  hell,  as  to  cause  the  alternative  to  appeal  with 
unrivalled  force  to  the  gross  imaginations  of  the  people. 
It  possessed  a  book  which,  however  inferior  to  that  of 
the  opposing  religion,  has  nevertheless  been  the  consola- 
tion and  the  support  of  millions  in  many  ages.  It  taught 
a  fatalism  which  in  its  first  age  nerved  its  adherents  with  a 
in ; i tehless  military  courage,  and  which,  though  in  later 
dajs,  it  has  often  paralysed  their  active  energies,  has  also 
rarely  failed  to  support  them  under  the  pressure  of  inevi- 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  267 

table  calamity.  But,  above  all,  it  discovered  the  great, 
though  fatal  secret  of  uniting  indissolubly  the  passion  of 
the  soldier  with  the  passion  of  the  devotee.  Making  the 
conquest  of  the  infidel  the  first  of  duties,  and  proposing 
heaven  as  the  certain  reward  of  the  valiant  soldier,  it 
created  a  blended  enthusiasm  that  soon  overpowered  the 
divided  counsels  and  the  voluptuous  governments  of  the 
East,  and  within  a  century  of  the  death  of  Mahomet,  his 
followers'  had  almost  extirpated  Christianity  from  its  ori- 
ginal home,  founded  great  monarchies  in  Asia  and.  Africa, 
planted  a  noble,  though  transient  and  exotic  civilisation  in 
Spain,  menaced  the  capital  of  the  Eastern  empire,  and,  but 
for  the  issue  of  a  single  battle,  they  would  probably  have 
extended  their  sceptre  over  the  energetic  and  progressive 
races  of  Central  Europe.  The  wave  was  broken  by  Charles 
Martel,  at  the  battle  of  Poictiers,  and  it  is  now  useless  to 
speculate  what  might  have  been  the  consequences  had 
Mahommedanism  unfurled  its  triumphant  banner  among 
those  Teutonic  tribes  who  have  so  often  changed  their 
creed,  and  on  whom  the  course  of  civilisation  has  so 
largely  depended.  But  one  great  change  was  in  fact 
achieved.  The  spirit  of  Mahommedanism  slowly  passed 
into  Christianity,  and  transformed  it  into  its  image.  The 
spectacle  of  an  essentially  military  religion  fascinated  men 
who  were  at  once  very  warlike  and  very  superstitious. 
The  panic  that  had  palsied  Europe  was  after  a  long  in- 
terval succeeded  by  a  fierce  reaction  of  resentment.  Pride 
and  religion  conspired  to  urge  the  Christian  warriors 
against  those  who  had  so  often  defeated  the  armies  and 
wasted  the  territory  of  Christendom,  .who  had  shorn  the 
empire  of  the  Cross  of  many  of  its  fairest  provinces,  and 
profaned  that  holy  city  which  was  venerated  not  only 
for  its  past  associations,  but  also  for  the  spiritual  bless- 
ings it  could  still  bestow  upon  the  pilgrim.     The  papal 


208  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

indulgences  proved  not  less  efficacious  in  stimulating  the 
military  spirit  than  the  promises  of  Mahomet,  and  for 
about  two  centuries  every  pulpit  in  Christendom  proclaimed 
the  duty  of  war  with  the  unbeliever,  and  represented  the 
battle  field  as  the  sure  path  to  heaven.  The  religious 
orders  which  arose  united  the  character  of  the  priest  with 
that  of  the  warrior,  and  when,  at  the  hour  of  sunset,  the 
soldier  knelt  down  to  pray  before  his  cross,  that  cross 
Wbfl  the  handle  of  his  sword. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  conceive  any  more  complete 
transformation  than  Christianity  had  thus  undergone,  and 
it  is  melancholy  to  contrast  with  its  aspects  during  the 
crusades  the  impression  it  had  once  most  justly  made 
upon  the  world,  as  the  spirit  of  gentleness  and  of  peace 
encountering  the  spirit  of  violence  and  war.  Among  the 
many  curious  habits  of  the  Pagan  Irish,  one  of  the  most 
significant  was  that  of  perpendicular  burial.  With  a 
feeling  something  like  that  which  induced  Vespasian  to 
declare  that  a  Roman  emperor  should  die  standing,  the 
Pagan  warriors  shrank  from  the  notion  of  being  prostrate 
even  in  death,  and  they  appear  to  have  regarded  this 
martial  burial  as  a  special  symbol  of  Paganism.  An  old 
Irish  manuscript,  tells  how,  when  Christianity  had  been 
introduced  into  Ireland,  a  king  of  Ulster  on  his  death- 
bed charged  his  son  never  to  become  a  Christian,  but  to 
be  buried  standing  upright  like  a  man  in  battle,  with  his 
face  for  ever  turned  to  the  south,  defying  the  men  of 
Leinster.1  As  late  as  the  sixteenth  century,  it  is  said 
that  in  some  parts  of  Ireland  children  were  baptised  by 
immersion;  but  the  right  arms  of  the  males  were  carefully 

1  Wakeman's  Archaologia  Ilibcrnica,  p.  21.  However,  Giraldus  Cam- 
brensis  observes  that  the  Irish  .stints  Were  peculiarly  vindictive,  and  St. 
Columba  Mid  St  Comgall  are  said  t<>  have  been  leaders  in  a  sanguinary  con- 
ili<  t  about  a  church  near  Colerainc.  See  Reeves1  edition  of  Adamnaii'a 
Life  of  St.  <  pa.  lxxvii.  268. 


FKOM  COXSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  269 

held  above  the  water,  in  order  that,  not  having  been 
dipped  in  the  sacred  stream,  they  might  strike  the  more 
deadly  blow.1 

It  had  been  boldly  predicted  by  some  of  the  early 
Christians,  that  the  conversion  of  the  world  would  lead 
to  a  cessation  of  all  war.  In  looking  back,  with  our 
present  experience,  we  are  driven  to  the  melancholy 
conclusion  that  not  only  has  ecclesiastical  influence  had 
no  appreciable  effect  in  diminishing  the  number  of  wars, 
but  that  it  has  actually  and  very  seriously  increased 
it.  We  may  look  in  vain  for  any  period  since  Con- 
stantine,  in  which  the  clergy,  as  a  body,  exerted  them- 
selves to  repress  the  military  spirit,  or  to  prevent  or 
abridge  a  particular  war,  with  an  energy  or  a  success  the 
least  comparable  to  what  they  displayed  during  several 
centuries  in  stimulating  the  fanaticism  of  the  crusaders, 
in  producing  the  atrocious  massacre  of  the  Albigenses, 
in  embittering  the  religious  war^  that  followed  the  Be- 
formation.  Private  wars  were,  no  doubt,  in  some  degree 
repressed  by  their  influence ;  for  the  institution  of  the 
*  Truce  of  God  '  was  for  a  time  of  much  value,  and  when, 
towards  the  close  of  the  middle  ages,  the  custom  of  duels 
arose,  it  was  strenuously  condemned  by  the  clergy ;  but 
we  shall  probably  not  place  any  great  value  on  .  their 
exertions  in  this  field,  when  we  remember  that  duels 
were  almost  or  altogether  unknown  to  the  Pagan  world ; 
that,  having  arisen  in  a  period  of  great  superstition,  the 
anathemas  of  the  Church  were  almost  impotent  to  dis- 
courage them  ;  and  that  in  our  own  century  they  are 
rapidly  disappearing  before  the  simple  censure  of  an 
.industrial  society.  It  is  possible^-though  it  would,  I 
imagine,  be  difficult  to  prove  it — that  the  mediatorial 
office,  so  often  exercised  by  bishops,  may  sometimes  have 

Campion's  Historie  of  Ireland  (1571),  book  i.  ch.  vi. 


270  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

prevented  wars  ;  and  it  is  certain  that  during  the  periods 
of  the  religions  wars,  so  much  military  spirit  existed  in 
Europe,  that  it  must  necessarily  have  found  a  vent,  and 
under  no  circumstances  could  the  period  have  been  one 
of  perfect  peace.  But  when  all  these  qualifications  have 
been  fully  admitted,  the  broad  fact  will  remain,  that, 
with  the  exception  of  Mahommedanism,  no  other  religion 
has  done  so  much  to  produce  war  as  was  done  by  the 
religious  teachers  of  Christendom  during  several  centuries. 
The  military  fanaticism  they  evoked  by  the  indulgences 
of  the  popes,  by  the  ceaseless  exhortations  of  the  pulpit, 
by  the  religious  importance  that  was  attached  to  the 
relics  at  Jerusalem,  and  by  the  extreme  antipathy  they 
fostered  towards  all  who  differed  from  their  theology,  has 
•  ly  ever  been  equalled  in  its  intensity,  and  it  has 
caused  the  effusion  of  oceans  of  blood,  and  has  been  pro- 
ductive of  incalculable  misery  to  the  world.  Eeligious 
fanaticism  was  a  main  cause  of  the  earlier  wars,  and 
an  important  ingredient  in  the  later  ones.  The  peace 
principles,  that  were  so  common  before  Constantino,  have 
found  scarcely  any  echo  except  from  Erasmus,  the 
Quakers,  and  the  Anabaptists ; x  and  although  some  very 
important  pacific  agencies  have  arisen  out  of  the  in- 
dustrial progress  of  modern  times,  these  have  been,  for 
the  most  part,  wholly  unconnected  with,  and  have  in 
some  cases  been  directly  opposed  to,  theological  interests. 
But  although  theological  influences  cannot  reasonably 
be  said  to  have  diminished  the  number  of  wars,  they  have 
had  a  very  real  and  beneficial  effect  in  diminishing  their 


1  It  seems  curious  to  find  in  so  calm  and  unlanaticai  a  writer  as  Justus 
Lipsius  the  following  passage :  *  Jam  et  invasio  quoedam  legitima  videtur 
ptiam  Mne  injuria,  ut  in  barbaros  et  moribus  aut  rcligionc  prorsum  a  nobis 
abhorrentes.' — rolUicorwn  sive  Civilis  Doctrina  libri  (Paris.  1594),  lib.  iv. 
ch.  ii.  cap.  iv. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  271 

atrocity,  by  improving  the  condition  of  the  vanquished. 
On  few  subjects  have  the  moral  opinions  of  different  ages 
exhibited  so  marked  a  variation  as  in  their  judgments  of 
what  punishment  may  justly  be  imposed  on  a  conquered 
enemy,  and  these  variations  have  often  been  cited  as  an 
argument  against  those  who  believe  in  the  existence  of 
natural  moral  perceptions.  To  those,  however,  who 
accept  that  doctrine,  with  the  limitations  that  have  been 
stated  in  the  first  chapter,  they  can  cause  no  perplexity. 
In  the  first  dawning  of  the  human  intelligence  (as  I  have 
said)  the  notion  of  duty,  as  distinguished  from  that  of 
interest,  appears,  and  the  mind,  in  reviewing  the  various 
emotions  by  which  it  is  influenced,  recognises  the  unsel- 
fish and  benevolent  motives  as  essentially  and  generically 
superior  to  the  selfish  and  the  cruel.  But  it  is  the  general 
condition  of  society  alone  that  determines  the  standard  of 
benevolence — the  classes  towards  which  every  good  man 
will  exercise  it.  At  first,  the  range  of  duty  is  the  family, 
the  tribe,  the  state,  the  confederation.  Within  these 
limits  every  man  feels  himself  under  moral  obligations  to 
those  about  him  ;  but  he  regards  the  outer  world  as  we 
regard  wild  animals,  as  beings  upon  whom  he  may 
justifiably  prey.  Hence,  we  may  explain  the  curious 
fact  that  the  terms  brigand  or  corsair  conveyed  in  the 
early  stages  of  society  no  notion  of  moral  guilt.1     Such 


1  l  Con  1'  occasione  di  queste  cose  Plutarco  nel  Teseo  dice  clie  gli  eroi  si 
recavano  a  grande  onore  e  si  reputavano  in  pregio  d?  armi  con  1'  esser  cliiamati 
ladroni ;  siccome  a' tempi  barbari  ritornati  quello  di  Corsale  eratitolo  riputato 
di  signoria ;  d'  intorno  a'  quali  tempi  venuto  Solone,  si  dice  aver  permesso 
nelle  sue  leggi  le  societa  per  cagion  di  prede  ;  tanto  Solone  ben  intese  questa 
nostra  compiata  Umanita,  nella  quale  costoro  non  godono  del  diritto  natural 
delle  genti!  Ma  quel  che  fa  piu  maraviglia  e  che  Platone  edAiistotile 
posero  il  ladroneccio  fralle  spezie  della  caccia  e  con  tali  e  tanti  filosoti  d'  una 
o-ente  umanissima  convengono  con  la  loro  bnrbarie  i  Germani  anticlii ;  appo 
i  quali  al  referire  di  Cesare  i  ladronecci  non  solo  non  eran  infami,  ma  si  tene- 
vano  tra  gli  esercizi  della  virtu  siccome  tra  quelli  che  per  costume  nou  appli- 


272  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

men  were  looked  upon  simply  as  we  look  upon  hunts- 
men, and  if  they  displayed  courage  and  skill  in  their 
pursuit,  they  were  deemed  fit  subjects  for  admiration. 
ii  in  the  writings  of  the  most  enlightened  philosophers 
of  Greece,  war  with  barbarians  is  represented  as  a  form 
of  chase,  and  the  simple  desire  of  obtaining  the  barbarians 
as  slaws  was  considered  a  sufficient  reason  for  invading 
them.  The  right  of  the  conqueror  to  kill  his  captives 
VttS  generally  recognised,-  nor  was  it  at  first  restricted  by 
any  considerations  of  age  or  sex.  Several  instances  are 
recorded  of  Greek  and  other  cities  being  deliberately 
destroyed  by  Greeks  or  by  Eomans,  and  the  entire 
populations  ruthlessly  massacred.1  The  whole  career  of 
the  early  republic  of  Rome,  though  much  idealised  and 
transfigured  by  later  historians,  was  probably  governed  by 
these  principles.2  The  normal  fate  of  the  captive,  which, 
among  barbarians,  had  been  death,  was,  in  civilised  an- 
tiquity, slavery;  but  many  thousands  were  condemned 
to  the  gladiatorial  shows,  and  the  vanquished  general 
was  commonly  slain  in  the  Mamertine  prison,  while  his 
conqueror  ascended  in  triumph  to  the  Capitol. 

cando  ad  arte  alcuna  cosi  fuggivano  1'  ozio.' — Vico,  Srienza  Nuova,  ii.  G.    See 
t  i  »  WhewelTfl  Elements  of  Morality,  book  vi.  cli.  ii. 

1  The  aucient  right  of  war  is  fully  discussed  by  Grotius  Be  Jure,  lib.  iii. 
See,  especially,  the  horrible  catalogue  of  tragedies  in  cap.  4.     The  military 

ig  that  regards  capture  as  disgraceful,  had  probably  some,  though  only 
a  very  subordinate  influence,  in  producing  cruelty  to  the  prisoners. 

2  Le  jour  ou  Athenes  decnSta  que  tous  les  Mityleniens,  sans  distinction  de 
sexe  ni  d'age,  seraient  extermines,  elle  ne  croyait  pas  de"passer  son  droit; 
quand  le  lendemain  elle  revint  sur  son  d£cret  et  se  contenta  de  mettre  a  mort 
mille  citoyens  et  de  confisquer  toutes  les  terres,  elle  se  crut  humaine  et  indul- 
gente.  Apivs  la  prise  de  Platee  les  hommes  furent  egorg<*s,  les  femmes 
vendues,  et  personne  n'accusa  les  vainqueurs  d'avoir  viole  le  droit.  .  .  . 
C'est  en  vertu  de  ce  droit  de  la  guerre  que  Rome  a  etendu  la  solitude  autour 
d'elk  :  da  tenitoire  ou  les  Volsques  avaient  vingt-trois  rite's  elle  a  fait  les 
marais  pontins;  les  cinquantf-trois  villes  du  Latium  out  disparu  ;  dans  le 
Samnium  on  put  longt'-iiijis  rrrunnaitiv  les  lieux  ou  les  armees  romaimn 
avaient  pa?so,  inoins  avi  vettlgei  deleurs  camps  qu'a  la  Solitude  ciuircgnait 
aux  environs.'— Fustel  de  Coulanges,  La  Cite  antique,  pp.  203-2G4. 


FROM   CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  273 

A  few  traces  of  a  more  humane  spirit  may,  it  is  true, 
be  discovered.  Plato  had  advocated  the  liberation  of  all 
Greek  prisoners  upon  payment  of  a  fixed  ransom,1  and 
the  Spartan  general,  Callicratidas,  had  nobly  acted  upon 
this  principle;2  but  his  example  never  appears  to  have 
been  generally  followed.  In  Borne,  the  notion  of  inter- 
national obligation  was  very  strongly  felt.  No  war  was 
considered  just  which  had  not  been  officially  declared; 
and  even  in  the  case  of  wars  with  barbarians,  the  Roman 
historians  often  discuss  the  sufficiency  or  insufficiency  of 
the  motives  of  the  wars,  with  a  conscientious  severity  a 
modern  historian  could  hardly  surpass.3  The  later  Greek 
and  Latin  writings  occasionally  contain  maxims  which 
exhibit  a  considerable  progress  in  this  sphere.  The 
sole  legitimate  object  of  war,  both  Gicero  and  Sallust 
declared  to  be  an  assured  peace.  That  war,  according 
to  Tacitus,  ends  well  which  ends  with  a  pardon.  Pliny 
refused  to  apply  the  epithet  great  to  Cassar,  on  account 
of  the  torrents  of  human  blood  he  had  shed.  Two  Ro- 
man conquerors  4  are  credited  with  the  saying,  that  it  is 
better  to  save  the  life  of  one  citizen  than  to  destroy  a 
thousand  enemies.  Marcus  Aurelius  mournfully  assimi- 
lated the  career  of  a  conqueror  to  that  of  a  simple  robber. 
Nations  or  armies  which  voluntarily  submitted  to  Rome 
were  habitually  treated  with  extreme  leniency,  and  nu- 
merous acts  of  individual  magnanimity  are  recorded. 
The  violation  of  the  chastity  of  conquered  women  by 
soldiers  in  a  siege  was  denounced  as  a  rare  and  atrocious 


1  Plato,  Republic,  lib.  v. ;  Bodin,  Republique,  liv.  i.  cap.  5. 

2  Grote,  Hist,  of  Greece,  vol.  viii.  p.  224     Agesilaus  was  also  very  hu- 
mane to  captives. — Ibid.  pp.  365-6. 

3  This  appears  continually  in  Livy,  but  most  of  all,  I  think,  in  the  Gaulish 
historian,  Florus. 

4  Scipio  and  Trajan. 


274  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

crime.1  The  extreme  atrocities  of  ancient  war  appear  at 
last  to  have  been  practically,  though  not  legally,  restricted 
to  two  classes.2  Cities  where  Eoman  ambassadors  had 
been  insulted,  or  where  some  special  act  of  ill  faith 
or  cruelty  was  said  to  have  taken  place,  were  razed  to 
the  ground,  and  their  populations  massacred  or  delivered 
into  slavery.  Barbarian  prisoners  were  regarded  almost 
as  wild  beasts,  and  sent  in  thousands  to  fill  the  slave 
market  or  to  combat  in  the  arena. 

The  changes  Christianity  effected  in  the  rights  of  war 
were  very  important,  and  they  may,  I  think,  be  comprised 
under  three  heads.  In  the  first  place,  it  suppressed  the 
gladiatorial  shows,  and  thereby  saved  thousands  of  cap- 
tives from  a  bloody  death.  In  the  next  place,  it  steadily 
discouraged  the  practice  of  enslaving  prisoners,  ransomed 
immense  multitudes  with  charitable  contributions,  and 
by  slow  and  insensible  gradations  proceeded  on  its  path 
of  mercy  till  it  became  a  recognised  principle  of  inter- 
national law,  that  no  Christian  prisoners  should  be  reduced 
to  slavery.3     In  the  third  place,  it  had  a  more  indirect 

1  See  some  very  remarkable  passages  in  Grotius,  de  Jure  Bell.  lib.  iii.  cap. 
4,  §  19. 

3  These  mitigations  are  fully  enumerated  by  Ayala,  De  Jure  et  Officiis 
JJi/licis  (Antwerp,  1597),  Grotius,  De  Jure.  It  is  remarkable  that  both 
Ayala  and  Grotius  base  their  attempts  to  mitigate  the  severity  of  war  chiefly, 
la  almost  entirely,  upon  the  writings  and  examples  of  the  Pagans.  There 
is  an  interesting  discussion  of  the  limits  of  the  right  of  conquerors  and  of 
the  just  causes  of  war  in  Cicero,  De  Offic.  lib.  i. 

3  In  England  the  change  seems  to  have  immediately  followed  conversion. 
'  The  evangelical  precepts  of  peace  and  love,'  says  a  very  learned  historian, 
1  diil  not  put  an  end  to  war,  they  did  not  put  an  end  to  aggressive  conquests, 
but  tiny  distinctly  humanised  the  way  in  which  war  was  carried  on.  From 
this  time  forth  the  never-ending  wars  with  the  Welsh  cease  to  be  wars  of 
extermination.  The  heathen  English  had  been  satisfied  with  nothing 
short  of  the  destruction  and  expulsion  of  their  enemies;  the  Christian 
isfa  thought  it  ecough  to  reduce  them  to  political  subjection.  .  .  .  The 
Christian  Welsh  could  now  eit  down  as  subjects  of  the  Christian  Saxon. 
The  \Wl-lmmn  was  acknowledged  as  a  man  and  a  citizen,  and  WM  put 
under  the  protection  of  the  law.' — Freeman's  Hid.  of  the  Nw  man  Conquest, 


FKOM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  275 

but  very  powerful  influence,  by  the  creation  of  a  new 
warlike  ideal.  The  ideal  knight  of  the  Crusades  and  of 
chivalry,  uniting  all  the  force  and  lire  of  the  ancient 
warrior,  with  all  the  tenderness  and  humility  of  the 
Christian  saint,  sprang  from  the  conjunction  of  the  two 
streams  of  religious  and  of  military  feeling ;  and  although 
this  ideal,  like  all  others,  was  a  creation  of  the  imagina- 
tion, although  it  was  rarely  or  never  perfectly  realised  in 
life,  yet  it  remained  the  type  and  model  of  warlike  excel- 
lence, to  which  many  generations  aspired  ;  and  its  soften- 
ing influence  may  even  now  be  largely  traced  in  the  cha- 
racter of  the  modern  gentleman. 

Together  with  the  gradual  fusion  of  the  military  spirit 
with  Christianity,  we  may  dimly  descry,  in  the  period 
before  Charlemagne,  the  first  stages  of  that  consecration 
of  secular  rank  which  at  a  later  period,  in  the  forms  of 
chivalry,  the  divine  right  of  kings,  and  the  reverence 
for  aristocracies,  played  so  large  a  part  both  in  moral  and 
in  political  history.  We  have  already  seen  that  the 
course  of  events  in  the  Eoman  empire  had  been  towards 
the  continual  aggrandisement  of  the  imperial  power. 
The  representative  despotism  of  Augustus  was  at  last 
succeeded  by  the  oriental  despotism  of  Diocletian.  The 
senate  sank  into  a  powerless  assembly  of  imperial  nomi- 
nees, and  the  spirit  of  Eoman  freedom  wholly  perished 
with  the  extinction  of  Stoicism. 

vol.  i.  pp.  33-34.  Christians  who  assisted  infidels  in  wars  against  Chris- 
tians were  ipso  facto  excommunicated,  and  might  therefore  be  enslaved, 
but  all  others  were  free  from  slavery.  '  Et  quidem  inter  Christianos  lauda- 
bili  et  antiqua  consuetudine  introductum  est,  ut  capti  hinc  inde,  litcunque 
justo  bello,  non  fierent  servi,  sed  liberi  servarentur  donee  solvant  precium 
redemptionis.' — Ayala,  lib.  i.  cap.  5.  'This  rule,  at  least/  says  Grotius, 
1  (though  but  a  small  matter)  the  reverence  for  the  Christian  law  has  en- 
forced, which  Socrates  vainly  sought  to  have  established  among  the  Greeks.' 
The  Mahommedans  also  made  it  a  rule  not  to  enslave  their  co  -religionists. — 
Grotius  de  Jure,  iii.  7.  §  9.  Pagan  and  barbarian  prisoners  were,  however, 
sold  as  slaves  (especially  by  the  Spaniards)  till  very  recently. 


270  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

It  would  probably  be  a  needless  refinement  to  seek 
any  deeper  causes  for  this  change  than  may  be  found  in 
the  ordinary  principles  of  human  nature.  Despotism  is 
the  normal  and  legitimate  government  of  an  early  society 
in  which  knowledge  has  not  yet  developed  the  powers  of 
the  people  ;  but  when  it  is  introduced  into  a  civilised 
community,  it  is  of  the  nature  of  a  disease,  and  a  disease 
which,  unless  it  be  checked,  has  a  continual  tendency  to 
spread.  When  free  nations  abdicate  their  political  func- 
tions, they  gradually  lose  both  the  capacity  and  the  desire 
for  freedom.  Political  talent  and  ambition,  having  no 
sphere  for  action,  steadily  decay,  and  servile,  enervating, 
and  vicious  habits  proportionately  increase.  Nations  are 
organic  beings  in  a  constant  process  of  expansion  or 
decay,  and  where  they  do  not  exhibit  a  progress  of 
liberty  they  usually  exhibit  a  progress  of  servitude. 

It  can  hardly  be  asserted  that  Christianity  had  much  in- 
fluence upon  this  change.  By  accelerating  in  some  degree 
the  withdrawal  of  the  virtuous  energies  of  the  people  from 
the  sphere  of  government  which  had  long  been  in  pro- 
cess, it  prevented  the  great  improvement  of  morals,  which 
it  undoubtedly  effected,  from  appearing  perceptibly  in 
public  affairs.  It  taught  a  doctrine  of  passive  obedience, 
which  its  disciples  nobly  observed  in  the  worst  periods 
of  persecution.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Christians  em- 
phatically repudiated  the  ascription  of  Divine  honours  to 
the  sovereign,  and  they  asserted  with  heroic  constancy 
their  independent  worship,  in  defiance  of  the  law.  After 
the  time  of  Constantine,  however,  their  zeal  became  far 
less  pure,  and  sectarian  interests  wholly  governed  their 
principles.  Much  misapplied  learning  has  been  employed 
in  endeavouring  to  extract  from  the  Fathers  a  consistent 
doctrine  on  the  subject  of  the  relations  of  subjects  to  their 
sovereigns  ;  but  every  impartial  observer  may  discover 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  277 

that  the  principle  upon  which  they  acted  was  exceedingly- 
simple.  When  a  sovereign  was  sufficiently  orthodox  in 
his  opinions,  and  sufficiently  zealous  in  patronising  the 
Church  and  in  persecuting  the  heretics,  he  was  extolled  as 
an  -angel.  When  his  policy  was  opposed  to  the  Church, 
he  was  represented  as  a  dsemon.  The  estimate  which 
Gregory  of  Tours  has  given  of  the  character  of  Clovis, 
though  far  more  frank,  is  not  a  more  striking  instance  of 
moral  perversion  than  the  fulsome  and  indeed  blas- 
phemous adulation  which  Eusebius  poured  upon  Con- 
stantine — a  sovereign  whose  character  was  at  all  times  of 
the  most  mingled  description,  and  who,  shortly  after  his 
conversion,  put  to  a  violent  death  his  son,  his  nephew, 
and  his  wife.  If  we  were  to  estimate  the  attitude  of 
ecclesiastics  to  sovereigns  by  the  language  of  Eusebius,  we 
should  suppose  that  they  ascribed  to  them  a  direct  Divine 
inspiration,  and  exalted  the  Imperial  dignity -to  an  extent 
that  wTas  before  unknown.1  But  when  Julian  mounted 
the  throne,  the  whole  aspect  of  the  Church  was  changed. 
This  great  and  virtuous,  though  misguided,  sovereign, 
whose  private  life  was  a  model  of  purity,  who  carried 
to  the  throne  the  manners,  tastes,  and  friendships  of  a 
philosophic  life,  and  who  proclaimed,  and,  with  very 
slight  exceptions,  acted  with  the  largest  and  most  gene- 
rous toleration,  wras  an  enemy  of  the  Church,  and  all  the 
vocabulary  of  invective  was  in  consequence  habitually 
lavished  upon  him.  Ecclesiastics  and  laymen  combined 
in  insulting  him,  and  when,  after  a  brief  but  glorious 
reign  of  less  than  two  years,  he  met  an  honourable  death 
on  the  battle-field,  neither  the  disaster  that  had  befallen 
the  Roman  arms,  nor  the  present  dangers  of  the  army, 
nor   the  heroic  courage  which  the  fallen  emperor  had 

1   The  character  of  Constantine,  and  the  estimate  of  it  in  Eusebius,  are 
well  treated  by  Dean  Stanley,  Lectures  on  the  Eastern  Church  (Lect.  vi.). 


278  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

di -played,  nor  the  majestic  tranquillity  of  his  end,  nor  the 
tears  of  his  faithful  friends,  could  shame  the  Christian 
community  into  the  decency  of  silence.  A  peal  of  brutal 
merriment  filled  the  land.  In  Antioch  the  Christians 
enabled  in  the  theatres  and  in  the  churches,  to  cele- 
brate with  rejoicing,  the  death  which  their  emperor  had 
met  in  lighting  against  the  enemies  of  his  country.1  A 
crowd  of  vindictive  legends,  expressed  the  exultation 
of  the  Church,2  and  St.  Gregory  Nazianzen  devoted  his 
eloquence  to  immortalising  it.  His  brother  had  at  one 
time  been  a  high  official  in  the  empire,  and  had  fearlessly 
owned  his  Christianity  under  Julian ;  but  that  emperor 
not  only  did  not  remove  him  from  his  post,  but  even 
honoured  him  with  his  warm  friendship.3.  The  body 
of  Julian  had  been  laid  but  a  short  time  in  the  grave, 
when  St.  Gregory  delivered  two  fierce  invectives  against 
Us  memory,  collected  the  grotesque  calumnies  that  had 
been  heaped  upon  his  character,  expressed  a  regret  that 
his  remains  had  not  been  flung  after  death  into  the  com- 
mon sewer,  and  regaled  the  hearers  by  an  emphatic 
assertion  of  the  tortures  that  were  awaiting  him  in  hell. 
Among  the  Pagans  a  charge  of  the  gravest  kind  was 
brought  against  the  Christians.  It  was  said  that  Julian 
died  by  the  spear,  not  of  an  enemy,  but  of  one  of  his  own 
Christian  soldiers.  When  we  remember  that  he  was  at 
once  an  emperor  and  a  general,  that  he  fell  when  bravely 
and  confidently  leading  his  army  in  the  field,  and  in  the 
critical  moment  of  a  battle  on  which  the  fortunes  of  the 
empire  largely  depended,  this  charge  which  Libanius  has 
made,  appears  to  involve  as  large  an  amount  of  base 
treachery  as  any  that  can  be  conceived.     That  it  was  a 

1  Theodoret,  iii.  28. 

3  They  are  collected  by  Chateaubriand,  Etudes  hist.  2n,e  disc.  2me  partio. 

•  See  St.  Gregory's  oration  on  Cesairiu<. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  279 

groundless  calumny  will  now  scarcely  be  questioned ;  but 
the  manner  in  which  it  was  regarded  among  the  Chris- 
tians is  singularly  characteristic.  '  Libanius,'  says  one  of 
the  ecclesiastical  historians,  '  clearly  states  that  the  em- 
peror fell  by  the  hand  of  a  Christian  ;  and  this,  probably, 
Avas  the  truth.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  some  of  the  soldiers 
who  then  served  in  the  Eoman  army  might  have  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  acting  like  the  ancient  slayers  of 
tyrants  who  exposed  themselves  to  death  in  the  cause 
of  liberty,  and  fought  in  defence  of  their  country,  their 
families,  and  their  friends,  and  whose  names  are  held  in 
universal  admiration.  Still  less  is  he  deserving  of  blame 
who,  for  the  sake  of  God  and  of  religion,  performed  so 
bold  a  deed.' ' 

It  may  be  asserted,  I  think,  without  exaggeration, 
that  the  complete  subordination  of  all  other  principles 
to  their  theological  interests,  which  characterised  the 
ecclesiastics  under  Julian,  continued  for  many  centimes. 
No  language  of  invective  was  too  extreme  to  be  applied 
to  a  sovereign  who  opposed  their  interests — no  language 
of  adulation  too  extravagant  for  a  sovereign  who  sus- 
tained them.  Of  all  the  emperors  who  disgraced  the 
throne  of  Constantinople,  the  most  odious  and  ferocious 
was  probably  Phocas.  An  obscure  centurion,  he  rose  by 
a  military  revolt  to  the  supreme  power,  and  the  emperor 
Maurice,  with  his  family,  fell  into  his  hands.  He  resolved 
to  put  the  captive  emperor  to  death ;  but  first  of  all,  he 
ordered  his  five  children  to  be  brought  out  and  to  be 
successively  murdered  before  the  eyes  of  their  father,  who 
bore  the  awful  sight  with  a  fine  mixture  of  antique  hero- 
ism and  of  Christian  piety,  murmuring,  as  each  child  fell 
beneath  the  knife  of  the  assassin,  'Thou  art  just,  0 
Lord,  and  righteous  are  Thy  judgments,'  and  even  inter- 

1  Sozomen,  vi.  2, 
52 


280  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

posing  at  the  last  moment,  to  reveal  the  heroic  fraud  of 
the  nurse  -who  desired  to  save  his  youngest  child  by  sub- 
stituting for  it  her  own.  But  Maurice — who  had  been  a 
ik  and  avaricious  rather  than  a  vicious  sovereign — had 
Bhown  himself  jealous  of  the  influence  of  the  Pope,  had 
forbidden  the  soldiers,  during  the  extreme  danger  of  their 
country,  deserting  their  colours  to  enrol  themselves  as 
monks,  and  had  even  encouraged  the  pretensions  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Constantinople  to  the  title  of  Universal 
Bishop ;  and  in  the  eyes  of  the  Eoman  priests,  the  recol- 
lection of  these  crimes  was  sufficient  to  condone  the 
most  brutal  of  murders.  In  two  letters,  full  of  passages 
from  Scripture,  and  replete  wTith  fulsome  and  blasphemous 
flattery,  the  Pope,  St.  Gregory  the  Great,  wrote  to  con- 
gratulate Phocas  and  his  wife,  upon  their  triumph  ;  he 
called  heaven  and  earth  to  rejoice  over  them  ;  he  placed 
their  images  to  be  venerated  in  the  Lateran,  and  he 
adroitly  insinuated  that  it  was  impossible  that,  with  their 
well-known  piety,  they  could  foil  to  be  very  favourable 
to  the  See  of  Peter.1 

The  course  of  events  in  relation  to  the  monarchical 
power  was  for  some  time  different  in  the  East  and  the 
West  Constantine  had  himself  assumed  more  of  the 
pomp  and  manner  of  an  oriental  sovereign  than  any 
preceding  emperor,  and  the  court  of  Constantinople  was 
soon  characterised  by  an  extravagance  of  magnificence 
on  the  part  of  the  monarch,  and  of  adulation  on  the  part 
of  the  subjects,  which  has  probably  never  been  exceeded.2 
The  imperial  power  in  the  East  overshadowed  the  cccle- 

1  Ep.  xiii.  31-39.  In  the  second  of  these  letters  (which  is  .addressed  to 
Lcontia),  he  snys:  'Itogare  forsitan  debui  ut  ecclcsiam  beati  Petri  apostoli 
qua)  nunc  usque  gravibus  insidiis  laboravit,  haberet  Vestra  Tranquillitas 
specialiter  commendatam.  Sed  qui  scio  quia  omnipotentem  Deum  diligitis, 
nam  debeo  petere  quod  sponte  ex  benignitate  vestra*  pietatis  exhibetis.' 

*  See  the  graphic  description  in  Gibbon,  eh.  liii. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  281 

siastical,  and  notwithstanding  their  fierce  outbreak  during 
the  iconoclastic  controversy,  and  a  few  minor  paroxysms 
of  revolt,  the  priests  gradually  sank  into  that  contented 
subservience  which  has  usually  characterised  the  Eastern 
Church.  In  the  West,  however,  the  Eoman  bishops 
were  in  a  great  degree  independent  of  the  sovereigns, 
and  in  some  degree  opposed  to  their  interests.  The 
transfer  of  the  imperial  power  to  Constantinople,  by 
leaving  the  Eoman  bishops  the  chief  personages  in  a  city 
which  long  association  as  well  as  actual  power  rendered 
the  foremost  in  the  world,  was  one  of  the  great  causes 
of  the  extreme  aggrandisement  of  the  Papacy  and  the 
Arianism  of  many  sovereigns  ;  the  jealousy  which  others 
exhibited  of  ecclesiastical  encroachments,  and  the  luke- 
warmness  of  a  few  in  persecuting  heretics,  were  all 
causes  of  dissension.  On  the  severance  of  the  empire,  the 
Western  Church  came  in  contact  with  rulers  of  another 
type.  The  barbarian  kings  were  little  more  than  military 
chiefs,  elected  for  the  most  part  by  the  people,  surrounded 
by  little  or  no  special  sanctity,  and  maintaining  their  pre- 
carious and  very  restricted  authority  by  their  courage 
or  their  skill.  A  few  feebly  imitated  the  pomp  of  the 
Eoman  emperors,  but  their  claims  had  no  great  weight 
upon  the  world.  The  aureole  which  the  genius  of 
Theodoric  cast  around  his  throne  passed  away  upon  his 
death,  and  the  Arianism  of  that  great  sovereign  sufficiently 
debarred  him  from  the  sympathies  of  the  Church.  In 
Gaul,  under  a  few  bold  and  unscrupulous  men,  the  Mero- 
vingian dynasty  emerged  from  a  host  of  petty  kings,  and 
consolidated  the  whole  country  into  one .  kingdom ;  but 
after  a  short  period  it  degenerated,  the  kings  became 
mere  puppets  in  the  hands  of  the  mayors  of  the  palace, 
and  these  latter,  holding  as  they  did  an  office  which  had 
become  hereditary,  being  the  chief  of  the  great  landed 


161  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

proprietors,  and  having  acquired  by  their  position  a  great 
personal  ascendency  over  the  sovereigns,  became  the 
virtual  rulers  of  the  nation. 

It  was  out  of  these  somewhat  unpromising  conditions 
that  the  mediaeval  doctrine  of  the  Divine  right  of  kings, 
and  the  general  reverence  for  rank,  that  formed  the 
essence  of  chivalry,  were  slowly  evolved.  Political  and 
moral  causes  conspired  in  producing  them.  The  chief 
political  causes — which  are  well  known — may  be  summed 
up  in  a  few  words. 

When  Leo  the  Isaurian  attempted,  in  the  eighth 
century,  to  repress  the  worship  of  images,  the  resistance 
which  he  met  at  Constantinople,  though  violent,  was 
speedily  allayed ;  but  the  Pope,  assuming  a  far  higher 
position  than  any  Byzantine  ecclesiastic  could  attain, 
boldly  excommunicated  the  emperor,  and  led  a  revolt 
against  his  authority,  which  issued  in  the  virtual  inde- 
pendence of  Italy.  His  position  was  at  this  time 
singularly  grand.  He  represented  a  religious  cause  to 
which  the  great  mass  of  the  Christian  world  wrere  pas- 
sionately attached.  He  was  venerated  as  the  emancipator 
of  Italy.  He  exhibited  in  the  hour  of  his  triumph  a 
moderation  which  conciliated  many  enemies,  and  pre- 
vented the  anarchy  that  might  naturally  have  been  ex- 
pected. He  presided,  at  the  same  time,  over  a  vast 
monastic  organisation,  which  ramified  over  all  Christen- 
dom, propagated  his  authority  among  many  barbarous 
and,  by  its  special  attachment  to  the  Papacy,  as 
distinguished  from  the  Episcopacy,  contributed  very  much 
to  transform  Christianity  into  a  spiritual  despotism.  One 
(lunger,  however,  still  menaced  his  power.  The 
baittaroufc  Lombards  were  continually  invading  his  terri- 
tory, and  threatening  the  independence  of  Eome.  The 
Lombard  monarch,  Luitprand,  had  quailed  in  the  very 
hour  of  his  triumph  before  the  menace  of  eternal  torture ; 


FROxM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  283 

but  his  successor,  Astolphus,  was  proof  against  every  fear, 
and  it  seemed  as  though  the  Papal  city  must  have  ine- 
vitably succumbed  before  his  arms. 

In  their  complete  military  impotence,  the  Popes  looked 
abroad  for  some  foreign  succour,  and  they  naturally 
turned  to  the  Franks,  whose  martial  tastes  and  triumphs 
were  universally  renowned.  Charles  Martel,  though 
simply  a  mayor  of  the  Palace,  had  saved  Europe  from 
the  Mahommedans,  and  the  Pope  expected  that  he  would 
unsheath  his  sword  for  the  defence  of  the  Vatican. 
Charles,  however,  was  deaf  to  all  entreaties  ;  and  although 
he  had  done  more  than  any  ruler  since  Constantine  for 
the  Church,  his  attention  seems  to  have  been  engrossed 
by  the  interests  of  his  own  country,  and  he  was  much 
alienated  from  the  sympathies  of  the  clergy.  An  ancient 
legend  tells  how  a  saint  saw  his  soul  carried  by  daemons 
into  hell,  because  he  had  secularised  Church  property, 
and  a  more  modern  historian l  has  ascribed  his  death  to 
his  having  hesitated  to  defend  the  Pope.  His  son, 
Pepin,  however,  actuated  probably  in  different  degrees 
by  personal  ambition,  a  desire  for  military  adventure, 
and  religious  zeal,  listened  readily  to  the  prayer  of  the 
Pope,  and  a  compact  was  entered  into  between  the 
parties,  which  proved  one  of  the  most  important  events 
in  history.  Pepin  agreed  to  secure  the  Pope  from  the 
danger  by  which  he  was  threatened.  The  Pope  agreed 
to  give  his  religious  sanction  to  the  ambition  of  Pepin, 
who  designed  to  depose  the  Merovingian  dynasty,  and  to 
become  in  name,  as  he  was  already  in  fact,  the  sovereign 
of  Gaul. 

It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  recount  at  length  the 
details  of  these  negotiations,  which  are  described  by  many 
historians.  It  is  sufficient  to  say,  that  the  compact  was 
religiously   observed.     Pepin  made   two  expeditions  to 

1  Baronius. 


284  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

Italy,  and  completely  shattered  the  power  of  the 
Lombards,  wresting  from  them  the  rich  exarchate  of 
Ravenna,  which  lie  ceded  to  the  Pope,  who  still  retained 
his  nominal  allegiance  to  the  Byzantine  emperor,  but  who 
became,  by  this  donation,  for  the  first  time  avowedly  an 
independent  temporal  prince.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
deposition  of  Childeric  was  peaceably  effected ;  the  last  of 
the  Merovingians  was  immured  in  a  monastery,  and  the 
Carlovingian  dynasty  ascended  the  throne  under  the 
special  benediction  of  the  Pope,  who  performed  on  the 
occasion  the  ceremony  of  Consecration,  which  had  not 
previously  been  in  general  use,1  placed  the  crown  with  his 
own  hands  on  the  head  of  Pepin,  and  delivered  a  solemn 
anathema  against  all  who  should  rebel  against  the  new 
king  or  against  his  successors. 

The  extreme  importance  of  these  events  was  probably 
not  fully  realised  by  any  of  the  parties  concerned  in  them. 
It  was  evident,  indeed,  that  the  Pope  had  been  freed  from 
a  pressing  danger,  and  had  acquired  a  great  accession  of 
temporal  power,  and  also  that  a  new  dynasty  had  arisen  in 
Gaul  under  circumstances  that  were  singularly  favourable 
and  imposing.  But,  much  more  important  than  these 
facts  was  the  permanent  consecration  of  the  royal  authority 
that  had  been  effected.  The  Pope  had  successfully  as- 
serted his  power  of  deposing  and  elevating  kings,  and  had 
tli us  acquired  a  position  which  influenced  the  whole  sub- 
sequent course  of  European  history.  The  monarch,  if  he 
had  become  in  some  degree  subservient  to  the  priest,  had 
become  in'a  great  degree  independent  of  his  people  ;  the 
Divine  origin  of  his  power  was  regarded  as  a  dogma 
of  religion,  and  a  sanctity  surrounded  him  which  im- 
measureably  aggrandised  his  power.  The  ascription  by 
the  Pagans  of  divinity  to  kings  had  had  no  appreciable 

1  Mably,  ii.  1 ;  Gibbon,  oh.  xlix. 


\ 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO   CHARLEMAGNE.  285 

effect  in  increasing  their  authority  or  restraining  the 
limits  of  criticism  or  of  rebellion.  The  ascription  of  a 
Divine  right  to  kings,  independent  of  the  wishes  of  the 
people,  has  been  one  of  the  most  enduring  and  influen- 
tial of  superstitions,  and  it  has  even  now  not  wholly 
vanished  from  the  world.1 

Mere  isolated  political  events  have,  however,  rarely  or 
never  this  profound  influence,  unless  they  have  been  pre- 
ceded and  prepared  by  other  agencies.  The  first  pre- 
disposing cause  of  the  ready  reception  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  Divine  character  of  authority,  may  probably  be  found 
in  the  prominence  of  the  monastic  system.  I  have  already 
observed  that  this  system  represents  in  the  most  extreme 
form  that  exaltation  of  the  virtues  of  humility  and  of 
obedience  which  so  broadly  distinguishes  the  Christian 
from  the  Pagan  type  of  excellence.  I  have  also  noticed 
that,  owing  to  the  concurrence  of  many  causes,  it  had 
acquired  such  dimensions  and  influence  as  to  supply  the 
guiding  ideal  of  the  Christian  world.  Controlling  or 
monopolising  all  education  and  literature,  furnishing  most 
of  the  legislators  and  many  of  the  statesmen  of  the  age, 
attracting  to  themselves  all  moral  enthusiasm  and  most 
intellectual  ability,  the  monks  soon  left  their  impress  on 
the  character  of  nations.  Habits  of  obedience  and  dis- 
positions of  humility  were  diffused  abroad,  revered  and 


1  There  are  some  good  remarks  upon  the  way  in  which,  among  the  free 
Franks,  the  bishops  taught  the  duty  of  passive  obedience,  in  Mably,  Obs.  sur 
VHistoire  de  France,  livre  i.  ch.  iii.  Gregory  of  Tours,  in  his  address  to 
Chilpeiic,  had  said,  'If  any  of  us,  0  king,  transgress  the  boundaries  of 
justice,  thou  art  at  hand  to  correct  us ;  but  if  thou  shouldst  exceed  them,  who 
is  to  condemn  thee  ?  We  address  thee,  and  if  it  please  thee  thou  listenest  to 
us  5  but  if  it  please  thee  not,  who  is  to  condemn  thee  save  Him  who  has  pro- 
claimed himself  Justice.'— Greg.  Tur.  v.  19.  On  the  other  hand,  Ilincmar, 
Archbishop  of  Rheims,  strongly  asserted  the  obligation  of  kings  to  observe 
the  law,  and  denounced  as  diabolical  the  doctrine  that  they  are  subject  to 
none  but  God.     (Allen,  On  the  Royal  Prerogative  (1849),  pp.  171-172.) 


2SG  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

idealised,  and  a  Church  which  rested  mainly  on  tradition 
fostered  a  deep  sense  of  the  sanctity  of  antiquity,  and  a 
natural  disposition  to  observe  traditional  customs.  In 
this  maimer  a  tone  of  feeling  was  gradually  formed  that 
assimilated  with  the  monarchical  and  aristocratical  insti- 
tutions of  feudalism,  which  flourished  chiefly  because  they 
corresponded  with  the  moral  feelings  of  the  time. 

In  the  next  place,  a  series  of  social  and  political  causes 
were  tending  to  abridge  the  personal  independence  for 
which  the  barbarians  had  been  noted.  The  king  had  at 
first  been  not  the  sovereign  of  a  country,  but  the  chief  of 
a  tribe.1  Gradually,  however,  with  more  settled  habits, 
the  sovereignty  assumed  a  territorial  character,  and  we 
may  soon  discover  the  rudiments  of  a  territorial  aristo- 
cracy. The  kings  gave  their  leading  chiefs  portions  of 
conquered  land  or  of  the  royal  domains,  under  the  name 
of  benefices.  By  slow  and  perhaps  insensible  stages, 
each  of  which  has  been  the  subject  of  fierce  controversy, 
the  obligation  of  military  service  was  attached  to  these 
benefices :  they  were  made  irrevocable,  and  ultimately 
hereditary.  At  the  same  time,  through  causes  to  which 
I  have  already  adverted,  the  free  peasants  for  the  most 
part  sank  into  serfs  subject  to  the  rich  and  protected  by 
the  power  of  great  landowners.  In  this  manner  a  hier- 
archy of  ranks  was  gradually  formed,  of  which  the 
sovereign  was  the  apex  and  the  serf  the  basis.  The  com- 
plete legal  organisation  of  this  hierarchy  belongs  to  the 
period  of  feudalism,  which  is  not  within  the  scope  of  the 
present  volume ;  but  the  chief  elements  of  feudalism  ex- 
1  before  Charlemagne,  and  the  moral  results  flowing 

1  The  exact  degree  of  the  authority  of  the  barbarian  kings,  and  the  dif- 
ferent stages  by  which  their  power  wns  increased,  are  matters  of  great  con- 
troversy. The  reader  may  consult  Thierry's  Lcttrcs  sur  VHid.  tic  France 
(let  0) ;  Goizo  a  CxvUUation  \  Mably,  Obscrv.  sur  VHist.  de  France-, 

Freeman's  Hist,  of  the  Norman  Conguett,  vol.  i. 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  287 

from  them  may  be  already  discerned.  Each  rank,  except 
the  very  highest,  was  continually  brought  into  contact 
with  a  superior,  and  a  feeling  of  constant  dependence  and 
subordination  was  accordingly  fostered.  To  the  serf, 
who  depended  for  all  things  upon  the  neighbouring  noble, 
to  the  noble,  who  held  all  his  dignities  on  the  condi- 
tion of  frequent  military  service  under  his  sovereign,  the 
idea  of  secular  rank  became  indissolubly  connected  with 
that  of  supreme  greatness. 

It  will  appear  evident  from  the  foregoing  observations, 
that  in  the  period  before  Charlemagne,  the  moral  and 
political  causes  were  already  in  action,  which  at  a  much 
later  period  produced  the  organisation  of  chivalry,  an 
organisation  which  was  founded  on  the  combination  and 
the  glorification  of  secular  rank  and  military  prowess. 
But  in  order  that  the  tendencies  I  have  described  should 
acquire  their  full  force,  it  was  necessary  that  they  should 
be  represented  or  illustrated  in  some  great  personage, 
who,  by  the  splendour  and  the  beauty  of  his  career, 
could  fascinate  the  imaginations  of  men.  It  is  much 
easier  to  govern  great  masses  of  men  through  their  ima- 
gination than  through  their  reason.  Moral  principles 
rarely  act  powerfully  upon  the  world,  except  by  way  of 
example  or  ideals.  When  the  course  of  events  has  been 
to  glorify  the  ascetic  or  monarchical  or  military  spirit,  a 
great  saint,  or  sovereign,  or  soldier  will  arise,  who  will 
concentrate  in  one  dazzling  focus  the  blind  tendencies  of 
his  time,  kindle  the  enthusiasm  and  fascinate  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  people.  But  for  the  prevailing  tendency,  the 
great  man  would  not  have  arisen,  or  would  not  have  exer- 
cised his  great  influence.  But  for  the  great  man,  whose 
career  appealed  vividly  to  the  imagination,  the  prevailing 
tendency  would  never  have  acquired  its  full  intensity. 

This  typical  figure  appeared  in  Charlemagne,  whose 


288  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

colossal  form  towers  with  a  majestic  grandeur  both  in 
history  and  in  romance.  Of  all  the  great  rulers  of  men, 
there  has  probably  been  no  other  who  was  so  truly  many- 
1.  wliose  influence  pervaded  so  completely  all  the 
religious,  intellectual,  and  political  modes  of  thought  ex- 
isting in  his  time.  Basing  in  one  of  the  darkest  periods 
of  European  history,  this  great  emperor  resuscitated,  with 
a  brief  but  dazzling  splendour,  the  faded  glories  of  the 
empire  of  the  West,  conducted,  for  the  most  part  in  per- 
son, numerous  expeditions  against  the  barbarous  nations 
around  him,  promulgated  a  vast  system  of  legislation, 
reformed  the  discipline  of  every  order  of  the  Church, 
reduced  all  classes  of  the  clergy  to  subservience  to  his 
will,  while,  by  legalising  tithes,  he  greatly  increased  their 
material  prosperity ;  contributed,  in  a  measure,  to  check 
the  intellectual  decadence  by  founding  schools  and  libra- 
ries, and  drawing  around  him  all  the  scattered  learning 
of  Europe;  reformed  the  coinage,  extended  commerce,  in- 
fluenced religious  controversies,  and  created  great  repre- 
sentative assemblies,  which  ultimately  contributed  largely 
to  the  organisation  of  feudalism.  In  all  these  spheres 
the  traces  of  his  vast,  organising,  and  far-seeing  genius 
may  be  detected,  and  the  influence  which  he  exercised 
over  the  imaginations  of  men  is  shown  by  the  numerous 
legends  of  which  he  is  the  hero.  In  the  preceding  ages 
the  supreme  ideal  had  been  the  ascetic.  When  the 
popular  imagination  embodied  in  legends  its  conception 
of  humanity  in  its  noblest  and  most  attractive  form,  it 
instinctively  painted  some  hermit-saint  of  many  penances 
and  many  miracles.  In  the  Eomances  of  Charlemagne 
and  of  Arthur  we  may  trace  the  dawning  of  a  new  type 
of  greatness.  The  hero  of  the  imagination  of  Europe 
was  no  longer  a  hermit  but  a  king,  a  warrior,  a  knight. 
The  long  train  of  influences  I  have  reviewed,  culminating 


FROM  CONSTANTINE  TO  CHARLEMAGNE.  289 

in  Charlemagne,  had  done  their  work.  The  age  of  the 
ascetics  began  to  fade.  The  age  of  the  crusades  and  of 
chivalry  succeeded  it. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  the  manner  in  which,  under 
the  influence  of  the  prevailing  tendency,  the  career  of 
Charlemagne  was  transfigured  by  the  popular  "imagina- 
tion. This  great  emperor  had,  in  fact,  been  in  no  degree 
actuated  by  the  spirit  of  a  crusader ;  his  military  enter- 
prises had  been  chiefly  directed  against  the  Saxons,  against 
whom  he  had  made  not  less  than  thirty-two  expeditions. 
With  the  Mahommedans  he  had  but  little  contact.  It 
was  Charles  Martel,  not  his  grandson,  who,  by  the  great 
battle  of  Poictiers,  had  checked  their  career.  Charle- 
magne made,  in  person,  but  a  single  expedition  against 
them  in  Spain,  and  that  expedition  was  on  a  scale  that 
was  altogether  inconsiderable,  and  it  was  disastrous  in  its 
issue.  But  in  the  Carlovingian  romances,  which  arose  at 
a  time  when  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Crusades  was  per- 
meating all  Christendom,  events  were  represented  in  a 
wholly  different  light.  Charles  Martel  has  no  place 
among  the  ideal  combatants  of  the  Church.  He  had 
appeared  too  early,  his  figure  was  not  sufficiently  great 
to  fascinate  the  popular  imagination,  and  by  confiscating 
ecclesiastical  property,  and  refusing  to  assist  the  Pope 
against  the  Lombards,  he  had  fallen  under  the  ban  of  the 
clergy.  Charlemagne,  on  the  other  hand,  is  represented 
as  the  first  and  greatest  of  the  crusaders.  His  wars  with 
the  Saxons  were  scarcely  noticed.  His  whole  life  was 
said  to  have  been  spent  in  heroic  and  triumphant  com- 
bats with  the  followers  of  Mahomet.5  Among  the 
achievements  attributed  to  him  was  an  expedition  to 
rescue  Nismes  and  Carcassone  from  their  grasp,  which 
was.  in  fact,  a  dim  tradition  of  the  victories  of  Charles 

1  Ffturiel.  Hist,  de  la  Poesie  provenqale,  tome  ii.  p.  252. 


290  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

Martel.1  lie  is  even  said  to  have  carried  his  victorious 
arms  into  the  heart  of  Palestine,  and  he  is  the  hero  of 
what  are  probably  the  three  earliest  extant  romances  of 
the  Crusades.2  In  fiction,  as  in  history,  his  reign  forms 
the  great  landmark  separating  the  early  period  of  the 
middle  ages  from  the  age  of  military  Christianity. 

On  the  verge  of  this  great  change  I  draw  this  history 
to  a  close.  In  pursuing  our  long  and  chequered  course, 
from  Augustus  to  Charlemagne,  we  have  seen  the  rise 
and  fall  of  many  types  of  character,  and  of  many  forms 
of  enthusiasm.  We  have  seen  the  influence  of  universal 
empire  expanding,  and  the  influence  of  Greek  civilisation 
intensifying,  the  sympathies  of  Europe.  We  have  sur- 
veyed the  successive  progress  of  Stoicism,  Platonism,  and 

yptian  philosophies,  at  once  reflecting  and  guiding  the 
moral  tendencies  of  society.  We  have  traced  the  course 
of  progress  or  retrogression  in  many  fields  of  social, 
political,  and  legislative  life;  have  watched  the  cradle 
of  European  Christianity,  examined  the  causes  of  its 
triumph,  the  difficulties  it  encountered,  and  the  priceless 
blessings  its  philanthropic  spirit  bestowed  upon  mankind. 
We  have  also  pursued  step  by  step  the  mournful  history 
of  its  corruption,  its  asceticism,  and  its  intolerance,  the 
various  transformations  it  produced  or  underwent  when 
the  turbid  waters  of  the  barbarian  invasions  had  inun- 
dated the  civilisations  of  Europe.  It  remains  for  me, 
before  concluding  this  work,  to  investigate  one  class  of 
-ubjects  to  which  I  have,  as  yet,  but  briefly  adverted — to 

mine  the  effects  of  the  changes  I  have  described  upon 
the  character  and  position  of  woman,  and  upon  the  grave 
moral  questions  concerning  the  relations  of  the  sexes. 

illrid.p.  258. 

2liC  Grand  TVAxumy,   FaLliaux,  preT.  p.   xxiv.     These  .romances  were 
accounts  of  his  expeditions  to  Spain,  to  Languedoc,  and  to  Palestine. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  291 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN. 

In  the  long  series  of  moral  revolutions  that  have  been 
described  in  the  foregoing  chapters,  I  have  more  than 
once  had  occasion  to  refer  to  the  position  that  was 
assigned  to  woman  in  the  community,  and  to  the  virtues 
and  vices  that  spring  directly  from  the  relations  of  the 
sexes.  I  have  not,  however,  as  yet  discussed  these 
questions  with  a  fulness  at  all  corresponding  to  their 
historical  importance,  and  I  propose,  in  consequence, 
before  concluding  this  volume,  to  devote  a  few  pages  to 
their  examination.  Of  all  the  many  questions  that  are 
treated  in  this  work,  there  is  none  which  I  approach 
with  so  much  hesitation,  for  there  is  probably  none 
which  it  is  so  difficult  to  treat  with  clearness  and  impar- 
tiality, and  at  the  same  time  without  exciting  any  scan- 
dal or  offence.  The  complexity  of  the  problem,  arising 
from  the  very  large  place  which  exceptional  institutions 
or  circumstances,  and  especially  the  influence  of  climate 
and  race,  have  had  on  the  chastity  of  nations,  I  have 
already  noticed,  and  the  extreme  delicacy  of  the  matters 
with  which  this  branch  of  ethics  is  connected  must  be 
palpable  to  all.  The  first  duty  of  an  historian,  however, 
is  to  truth,  and  it  is  absolutely  impossible  to  present  a 
true  picture  of  the  moral  condition  of  different  ages,  and 
to  form  a  true  estimate  of  the  moral  effects  of  different 
religions,  without  adverting  to  the  department  of  morals, 


389  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

which  lias  exhibited  most  change,  and  has  probably 
exercised  most  influence. 

It  is  natural  that,  in  the  period  when  men  are  still 
perfect  barbarians,  when  their  habits  of  life  are  still 
nomadic,  and  when  war  and  the  chase,  being  their  sole 
pursuits,  the  qualities  that  are  required  in  these  are  their 
sole  measure  of  excellence,  the  inferiority  of  women  to 
men  should  be  regarded  as  undoubted,  and  their  position 
should  be  extremely  degraded.  In  all  those  qualities  which 
are  then  most  prized,  women  are  indisputably  inferior. 
The  social  qualities  in  which  they  are  especially  fitted 
to  excel  have  no  sphere  for  their  display.  The  ascend- 
ency of  beauty  is  very  faint,  and  even  if  it  were  otherwise, 
few  traces  of  female  beauty  could  survive  the  hardships 
of  the  savage  life.  Woman  is  looked  upon  simply  as  the 
of  man,  and  as  the  minister  to  his  passions.  In  the 
first  capacity,  her  life  is  one  of  continual,  abject,  and 
unrequited  toil.  In  the  second  capacity,  she  is  exposed 
to  all  the  violent  revulsions  of  feeling  that  follow,  among 
rude  men,  the  gratification  of  the  animal  passions. 

Even  in  this  early  stage,  however,  wTe  may  trace  some 
rudiments  of  those  moral  sentiments  which  are  destined 
at  a  later  period  to  expand.  The  institution  of  marriage 
exists.  The  value  of  chastity  is  commonly  in  some 
degree  felt,  and  appears  in  the  indignation  which  is  dis- 
played against  the  adulterer.  The  duty  of  restraining 
the  sensual  passions  is  largely  recognised  in  the  female, 
though  the  males  are  only  restricted  by  the  prohibition 
of  adultery. 

The  two  first  steps  which  are  taken  towards  the  ele- 
vation of  woman  are  probably  the '  cessation  of  the 
custom  of  purchasing  wives,  and  the  construction  of  the 
family  on  the  basis  of  monogamy.  In  the  first  periods 
of  civilisation,  tliu  marriage  contract  was  arranged  be- 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  293 

tween  the  bridegroom  and  the  father  of  the  bride,  on  the 
condition  of  a  sum  of  money  being  paid  by  the  former  to 
the  latter.  This  sum,  which  is  known  in  the  laws  of  the 
barbarians  as  the  c  mundium,' *  was  in  fact  a  payment  to 
the  father  for  the  cession  of  his  daughter,  who  thus 
became  the  bought  slave  of  her  husband.  It  is  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  features  of  the  ancient  laws  of  India, 
that  they  forbade  this  gift,  on  the  ground  that  the  parent 
should  not  sell  his  child ; 2  but  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  this  sale  w^as  at  one  time  the  ordinary  type  of  marriage. 
In  the  Jewish  writings  we  find  Jacob  purchasing  Leah 
and  Rachel  by  the  performance  of  certain  services  for 
their  father,  and  this  custom,  which  seems  to  have  been 
at  first  general  in  Judea,3  appears  in  the  age  of  Homer 
to  have  been  general  in  Greece.  At  an  early  period, 
however,  of  Greek  history,  the  purchase-money  was  re- 
placed by  the  dowry,  or  sum  of  money  paid  by  the  father 
of  the  bride  for  the  use  of  his  daughter,4  and  this, 
although  it  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  husband,  con- 
tributed to  elevate  the  wife,  in  the  first  place,  by  the 
dignity  it  gave  her,  and  in  the  next  place,  by  special  laws, 
which  both  in  Greece  and  Borne  secured  it  to  her  in 

1  The  Mva  of  the  Greeks. 

2  Lego uve,  Histoire  morale  des  Femmes,  pp.  95-9G. 

3  Gen.  xxix.  xxxiv.  12  ;  Deut.  xxii.  29;  1  Sam.  xviii.  25. 

4  The  history  of  dowries  is  briefly  noticed  b}r  Grote,  Hist,  of  Greece,  vol. 
ii.  pp.  112-113 ;  and  more  fully  by  Lord  Karnes,  in  the  admirable  chapter 
'On  the  Progress  of  the  Female  Sex,'  in  his  Sketches  of  the  History  of 
Man,  a  book  less  read  than  it  deserves  to  be.  M.  Legouve  has  also  devoted 
a  chapter  to  it  in  his  Hist,  morale  des  Femmes.  See,  too,  Legendre,  Traite 
de  V Opinion,  tome  ii.  pp.  329-330.  We  find  traces  of  the  dowry,  as  well 
as  of  the  'idvaf  in  Homer.  Penelope  had  received  a  dowry  from  Icarus,  her 
father.  M.  Michelet,  in  one  of  those  fanciful  books  which  he  has  recently 
published,  maintains  a  view  of  the  object  of  the  'iCia  which  I  do  not 
remember  to  have  seen  elsewhere,  and  which  I  do  not  believe.  He  says : 
'  Ce  prix  n'est  point  un  achat  de  la  femme,  mais  une  indemnity  qui  dedom- 
magelafamilledu  pere  pour  les  enfants  future,  qui  ne  profiteront  pas  a  cette 
famille  mais  a  celle  oil  la  femme  va  entiw.' — Lu  Fcmmc,  p.  100. 


294  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

most  cases  of  separation.1  The  wife  thus  possessed  a 
guarantee  against  ill-usage  by  her  husband.  She  ceased 
to  be  his  slave,  and  became  in  some  degree  a  contracting 
party.  Among  the  early  Germans,  a  different  and  very 
remarkable  custom  existed.  The  bride  did  not  bring 
any  dowry  to  her  husband,  nor  did  the  bridegroom  give 
thing  to  the  father  of  the  bride ;  but  he  gave  his  gift 
to  the  bride  herself,  on  the  morning  after  the  first  night 
of  marriage,  and  this,  which  was  called  the  '  Morgengab,' 
or  morning  gift,  was  the  origin  of  the  jointure.2 

Still  more  important  than  the  foregoing  was  the  insti- 
tution of  monogamy,  by  which,  from  its  earliest  days,  the 
Greek  civilisation  proclaimed  its  superiority  to  the  Asiatic 
civilisations  that  had  preceded  it.  We  may  regard  mono- 
gamy either  in  the  light  of  our  intuitive  moral  sentiment 
on  the  subject  of  chastity,  or  in  the  light  of  the  interests 
of  society.  By  the  first,  I  understand  that  universal  per- 
ception or  conviction  which  I  believe  to  be  an  ultimate 
fact  in  human  nature,  that  the  sensual  side  of  our  being  is 
the  lower  side,  and  that  some  degree  of  shame  may  ap- 
propriately be  attached  to  it.  In  its  Oriental  or  poly- 
gamous stage,  marriage  is  regarded  almost  exclusively,  in 
its  sensual  aspect,  as  a  gratification  of  the  animal  passions, 
while  in  European  marriages  the  mutual  attachment  and 
respect  of  the  contracting  parties,  the  formation  of  a  house- 
hold, and  the  long  train  of  domestic  feelings  and  duties 
that  accompany  it,  have  all  their  distinguished  place  among 

1  In  Rome,  when  the  separation  was  due  to  the  misconduct  of  the  wife, 
the  dowry  belonged  to  her  husband. 

•  l>)tem  non  uxor  marito  eed  nzori  niaritus  oft'ert.—  Tac.  Germ,  xx in. 
On  the  Morgengab,  see  Canciani,  Leges  Barbororum  (Venetiis,  1781),  vol. 
i.  pp.  102-104 ;  ii.  pp.  230-231.  Muratori,  Antich.  Ital.  diss.  xx.  Luit- 
brand  enacted  that  no  Longobard  should  give  more  than  one-fourth  of  his 
substance  as  a  Morgengab.  In  Gregory  of  Tours  (ix.  20)  we  have  an 
example  of  the  gift  of  some  cities  as  a  Morgengab. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  295 

the  motives  of  the  contract,  and  the  lower  element  has 
comparatively  little  prominence.  In  this  way  it  may  be 
intelligibly  said,  without  any  reference  to  utilitarian  con- 
siderations, that  monogamy  is  a  higher  state  than  poly- 
gamy. The  utilitarian  arguments  in  its  defence  are  also 
extremely  powerful,  and  may  be  summed  up  in  three  sen- 
tences. Nature,  by  making  the  number  of  males  and 
females  nearly  equal,  indicates  it  as  natural.  In  no  other 
form  of  marriage  can  the  government  of  the  family,  which 
is  one  of  the  chief  ends  of  marriage,  be  so  happily  sus- 
tained, and  in  no  other  does  woman  assume  the  position 
of  the  equal  of  man. 

Monogamy  was  the  general  system  in  Greece,  though 
there  are  said  to  have  been  slight  and  temporary  devia- 
tions into  the  earlier  system,  after  some  great  disasters, 
when  an  increase  of  population  was  ardently  desired.1  A 
broad  line  must,  however,  be  drawn  between  the  legen- 
dary or  poetical  period,  as  reflected  in  Homer  and  perpe- 
tuated in  the  tragedians,  and  the  later  historical  period. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable,  and  to  some  writers  one 
of  the  most  perplexing  facts  in  the  moral  history  of 
Greece,  that  in  the  former  and  ruder  period  women  had 
undoubtedly  the  highest  place,  and  their  type  exhibited 
the  highest  perfection.  Moral  ideas,  in  a  thousand  forms, 
have  been  sublimated,  enlarged,  and  changed,  by  ad- 
vancing civilisation ;  but  it  may  be  fearlessly  asserted  that 
the  types  of  female  excellence  which  are  contained  in  the 
Greek  poems,  while  they  are  among  the  earliest,  are  also 
among  the  most  perfect  in  the  literature  of  mankind. 
The  conjugal  tenderness  of  Hector  and  Andromache  ;  the 
unwearied  fidelity  of  Penelope,  awaiting  through  the  long 
revolving  years  the  return  of  her  storm-tossed  husband, 

1  See,  on  this  point,  Aul.  Gellius,  Noct.  Att.  xv.  20.     Euripides  is  said  to 
have  had  two  wives. 
53 


290  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

who  looked  forward  to  her  as  to  the  crown  of  all  his 
labours  ;  the  heroic  love  of  Alccstis,  voluntarily  dying  that 
her  husband  might  live ;  the  filial  piety  of  Antigone  ;  the 
majestic  grandeur  of  the  death  of  Polyxena;  the  more 
subdued  and  saintly  resignation  of  Iphigenia,  excusing  with 
her  last  breath  the  father  who  had  condemned  her ;  the 
joyous,  modest,  and  loving  Nausicaa,  whose  figure  shines 
like  a  perfect  idyll  among  the  tragedies  of  the  Odyssey — 
all  these  are  pictures  of  perennial  beauty,  which  Borne  and 
Christendom,  chivalry  and  modern  civilisation,  have  neither 
eclipsed  nor  transcended.  Virgin  modesty  and  conjugal 
fidelity,  the  graces  as  well  as  the  virtues  of  the  most  perfect 
womanhood,  have  never  been  more  exquisitely  pourtrayed. 
The  female  figures  stand  out  in  the  canvas  almost  as 
prominently  as  the  male  ones,  and  are  surrounded  by  an 
almost  equal  reverence.  The  whole  history  of  the  Siege 
of  Troy  is  a  history  of  the  catastrophes  that  followed  a 
violation  of  the  nuptial  lie.  Yet,  at  the  same  time,  the 
position  of  women  was  in  some  respects  a  degraded  one. 
The  custom  of  purchase-money  given  to  the  father  of  the 
bride  was  general.  The  husbands  appear  to  have  in- 
dulged largely,  and  with  little  or  no  censure,  in  concubines.1 
Female  captives  of  the  highest  rank  were  treated  with 
at  harshness.  The  inferiority  of  women  to  men  was 
strongly  asserted,  and  it  was  illustrated  and  defended  by 
a  very  curious  physiological  notion,  that  the  generative 
I  )(»wer  belonged  exclusively  to  men,  women  having  only 
a  very  subordinate  part  in  the  production  of  their  chil- 
dren.2 The  woman  Pandora  was  said  to  have  been  the 
author  of  all  human  ills. 

1  Aristotle  said  that  Homer  never  gives  a  concubine  to  Menelaus,  in  order 
to  intimate  hi*  respect  for  Helen — though  fal.se.    (Athenceut,  xiii.  8. 1 

2  Kuripides  has  put  this  curious  notion  into  the  mouth  of  Apollo,  in  a 
speech  in  the  i  .it  baaj  bowererj  been  very  widely  diffused,  and 
may  be  found  in  Indian,   Greek,    Roman,  and   even    Christian  writer* 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  297 

In  the  historical  age  of  Greece,  the  legal  position  of 
women  had  in  some  respects  slightly  improved,  but  their 
moral  condition  had  undergone  a  marked  deterioration. 
Virtuous  women  lived  a  life  of  perfect  seclusion.  The 
foremost  and  most  dazzling  type  of  Ionic  womanhood  was 
the  courtesan,  and  among  the  males,  at  least,  the  empire 
of  passion  was  almost  unrestricted. 

The  facts  in  moral  history,  which  it  is  at  once  most  im- 
portant and  most  difficult  to  appreciate,  are  what  may  be 
called  the  facts  of  feeling.  It  is  much  easier  to  show 
what  men  did  or  taught  than  to  realise  the  state  of  mind 
that  rendered  possible  such  actions  or  teaching ;  and  in 
the  case  before  us  we  have  to  deal  with  a  condition  of 
feeling  so  extremely  remote  from  that  of  our  own  day, 
that  the  difficulty  is  pre-eminently  great.  Very  sensual, 
and  at  the  same  time  very  brilliant  societies,  have  indeed 
repeatedly  existed,  and  the  histories  of  both  France  and 
Italy  afford  many  examples  of  an  artistic  and  intellectual 
enthusiasm  encircling  those  who  were  morally  most  frail ; 
but  the  peculiarity  of  Greek  sensuality  is,  that  it  grew  up, 
for  the  most  part,  uncensured,  and  indeed  even  encou- 
raged, under  the  eyes  of  some  of  the  most  illustrious  of 
moralists.  If  we  can  imagine  Ninon  de  l'Enclos  at  a  time 
when  the  rank  and  splendour  of  Parisian  society  thronged 
her  drawing-rooms,  reckoning  a  Bossuet  or  a  Fenelon 
among  her  followers — if  we  can  imagine  these  prelates 
publicly  advising  her  about  the  duties  of  her  profession, 


M.  Legouve,  who  has  devoted  a  very  curious  chapter  to  the  subject, 
quotes  a  passage  from  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  accepting  it,  and  arguing  from 
it.  that  a  father  should  he  more  loved  than  a  mother.  M.  Legouve  says 
that  when  the  male  of  ot.e  animal  and  the  female  of  another  is  crossed,  the 
type  of  the  female  usually  predominates  in  the  offspring.  See  Legouve*, 
Hist,  morale  des  Femmes,  pp.  216-228;  Fustelde  Coulanges,  La  Cite  antique, 
pp.  39-40 ;  and  also  a  curious  note  by  Boswell,  in  Croker's  edition  of  Bos- 
well's  Life  of  Johnson  (1847),  p.  472. 


M  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

and  the  means  of  attaching  the  affections  of  her  lovers, 
we  shall  have  conceived  a  relation  scarcely  more  strange 
than  thai  which  existed  between  Socrates  and  the  courte- 
Theodota. 

In  order  to  reconstruct,  as  far  as  possible,  the  modes  of 
feeling  of  the  Greek  moralists,  it  will  be  necessary  in  the 
first  place  to  say  a  few  words  concerning  one  of  the  most 
delicate,  but  at  the  same  time  most  important,  problems 
with  which  the  legislator  and  the  moralist  have  to 
deal 

It  was  a  favourite  doctrine  of  the  Christian  Fathers* 
that  concupiscence,  or  the  sensual  passion,  was  '  the  ori- 
ginal sin'  of  human  nature ;  and  it  must  be  owned  that 
the  progress  of  knowledge,  which  is  usually  extremely 
opposed  to  the  ascetic  theory  of  life,  concurs  with  the 
theological  view,  in  showing  the  natural  force  of  this 
appetite  to  be  far  greater  than  the  well-being  of  man 
requires.  The  writings  of  Malthus  have  proved  what  the 
Greek  moralists  appear  in  a  considerable  degree  to  have 
seen,  that  the  normal  and  temperate  exercise  of  a  purely 
natural  appetite,  in  the  form  of  marriage,  would  produce, 
if  universal,  the  utmost  calamities  to  the  world,  and  that, 
while  nature  seems  in  the  most  unequivocal  manner  to 
urge  the  human  race  to  early  marriages,  the  first  con- 
dition of  an  advancing  civilisation  in  populous  countries 
is  to  re-train  or  diminish  them.  In.no  highly  civilised 
society  is  marriage  general  on  the  first  development  of 
the  passions,  and  the  continual  tendency  of  increasing 
knowledge  is  to  render  such  marriages  more  rare.  It  is 
also  an  undoubted  truth  that,  however  much  moralists 
may  enforce  the  obligation  of  extra-matrimonial  chastity, 
this  obligation  has  never  been  even  approximately  re- 
garded ;  and  in  all  nations,  ages,  and  religions  a  vast 
mass  of  irregular  indulgence  has  appeared,  which  has 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  299 

probably  contributed  more  than  any  other  single  cause 
to  the  misery  and  the  degradation  of  man. 

There  are  two  ends  which  a  moralist,  in  dealing  with 
this  question,  will  especially  regard — the  natural  duty  of 
every  man  doing  something  for  the  support  of  the  child 
he  has  called  into  existence,  and  the  preservation  of  the 
domestic  circle  unassailed  and  unpolluted.  The  family  is 
the  centre  and  the  archetype  of  the  State,  and  the  happi- 
ness and  goodness  of  society  are  always  in  a  very  great 
degree  dependent  upon  the  purity  of  domestic  life.  The 
essentially  exclusive  nature  of  marital  affection,  and  the 
natural  desire  of  every  man  to  be  certain  of  the  paternity 
of  the  child  he  supports,  render  the  incursions  of  irregular 
passions  within  the  domestic  circle  a  cause  of  extreme 
suffering.  Yet  it  would  appear  as  if  the  excessive  force 
of  these  passions  would  render  such  incursions  both  fre- 
quent and  inevitable. 

Under  these  circumstances,  there  has  arisen  in  society 
a  figure  which  is  certainly  the  most  mournful,  and  in 
some  respects  the  most  awful,  upon  which  the  eye  of  the 
moralist  can  dwell.  That  unhappy  being  whose  very 
name  is  a  shame  to  speak ;  who  counterfeits  with  a  cold 
heart  the  transports  of  affection,  and  submits  herself  as 
the  passive  instrument  of  lust ;  who  is  scorned  and  in- 
sulted as  the  vilest  of  her  sex,  and  doomed,  for  the  most 
part,  to  disease  and  abject  wretchedness  and  an  early 
death,  appears  in  every  age  as  the  perpetual  symbol  of 
the  degradation  and  the  sinfulness  of  man.  Herself  the 
supreme  type  of  vice,  she  is  ultimately  the  most  efficient 
guardian  of  virtue.  But  for  her,  the  unchallenged  purity 
of  countless  happy  homes  would  be  polluted,  and  not  a 
few  who,  in  the  pride  of  their  untempted  chastity,  think 
of  her  with  an  indignant  shudder,  would  have  known  the 
agony  of  remorse  and  of  despair.     On  that  one  degraded 


300  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

and  ignoble  form  are  concentrated  the  passions  that 
might  have  filled  the  world  with  shame.  She  remains, 
-while  creedfl  and  civilisations  rise  and  fall,  the  eternal 
priestess  of  humanity,  blasted  for  the  sins  of  the  people. 

In  dealing  with  this  unhappy  being,  and  with  all  of 
her  sex  who  have  violated  the  law  of  chastity,  the  public 
opinion  of  most  Christian  countries  pronounces  a  sentence 
of  extreme  severity.  In  the  Anglo-Saxon  nations  espe- 
cially, a  single  fault  of  this  kind  is  sufficient,  at  least  in 
the  upper  and  middle  classes,  to  affix  an  indelible  brand 
which  no  time,  no  virtues,  no  penitence  can  wholly  efface. 
This  sentence  is  probably,  in  the  first  instance,  simply 
the  expression  of  the  religious  feeling  on  the  subject,  but 
it  is  also  sometimes  defended  by  powerful  arguments 
drawn  from  the  -interests  of  society.  It  is  said  that  the 
preservation  of  domestic  purity  is  a  matter  of  such  tran- 
scendent importance  that  it  is  right  that  the  most  crushing 
penalties  should  be  attached  to  an  act  which  the  imagina- 
tion can  easily  transfigure,  which  legal  enactments  can 
never  efficiently  control,  and  to  which  the  most  violent 
passions  may  prompt.  It  is  said,  too,  that  an  anathema 
which  drives  into  obscurity  all  evidences  of  sensual  pas- 
sions is  peculiarly  fitted  to  restrict  their  operation ;  for, 
more  than  any  other  passions,  they  are  dependent  on  the 
imagination,  which  is  readily  fired  by  the  sight  of  evil.  It 
is  added,  that  the  emphasis  with  which  the  vice  is  stigma- 
t  ised  produces  a  corresponding  admiration  for  the  opposite 
virtue,  and  that  a  feeling  of  the  most  delicate  and  scru- 
pulous honour  is  thus  formed  among  the  female  popu- 
lation, which  not  only  preserves  from  gross  sin,  but  also 
dignifies  and  ennobles  the  whole  character. 

In  opposition  to  these  views,  several  considerations  of 
much  weight  havfe  been  urged.  It  is  argued  that,  how- 
ever persistently  society  may  ignore  this  form  of  vice,  it 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  301 

exists  nevertheless,  and  on  the  most  gigantic  scale,  and 
that  evil  rarely  assumes  such  inveterate  and  perverting 
forms  as  when  it  is  shrouded  in  obscurity  and  veiled  by  a 
hypocritical  appearance  of  unconsciousness.  The  existence 
in  England  of  unhappy  women,  sunk  in  the  very  lowest 
depths  of  vice  and  misery,  and  numbering  certainly  not 
less  than  fifty  thousand,1  shows  sufficiently  what  an  ap- 
palling amount  of  moral  evil  is  festering  uncontrolled, 
undiscussed,  and  unalleviated,  under  the  fair  surface  of  a 
decorous  society.  In  the  eyes  of  every  physician,  and 
indeed  in  the  eyes  of  most  continental  writers  who  have 
adverted  to  the  subject,  no  other  feature  of  English  life 
appears  so  infamous  as  the  fact  that  an  epidemic,  which 
is  one  of  the  most  dreadful  now  existing  among  mankind, 
which  communicates  itself  from  the  guilty  husband  to 
the  innocent  wife,  and  even  transmits  its  taint  to  her 
offspring,  and  which  the  experience  of  other  nations  con- 
clusively proves  may  be  vastly  diminished,  should  be 
suffered  to  rage  unchecked  because  the  legislature  refuses 
to  take  official  cognisance  of  its  existence,  or  proper 
sanitary  measures  for  its  repression.2  If  the  terrible  cen- 
sure which  English  public  opinion  passes  upon  every 
instance  of  female  frailty  in  some  degree  diminishes  their 
number,  it  does  not  prevent  them  from  being  extremely 

1  Dr.  Vintras,  in  a  remarkable  pamphlet  (London,  1867)  On  the  Repres- 
sion of  Prostitution,  shows  from  the  police  statistics  that  the  number  of 
prostitutes  knoicn  to  the  police  in  England  and  Wales,  in  18G4,  -was  49,370; 
and  this  is  certainly  much  below  the  entire  number.  These,  it  will  be  ob- 
served, comprise  only  the  habitual,  professional  prostitutes. 

3  Some  measures  have  recently  been  taken  in  a  few  garrison  towns. 
The  moral  sentiment  of  the  community,  it  appears,  would  be  shocked  if 
Liverpool  were  treated  on  the  same  principles  as  Portsmouth.  This  very 
painful  and  revolting,  but  most  important  subject  of  prostitution,  has  been 
treated  with  great  knowledge,  impartiality,  and  ability,  by  Parent-Ducha- 
telet,  in  his  famous  work  La  Prostitution  dans  la  ville  cle  Paris.  The  third 
edition  contains  very  copious  supplementary  accounts,  furnished  by  different 
doctors  in  diflerent  countries. 


302  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

numerous,  and  it  immeasurably  aggravates  the  suffering 
they  produce.  Acts  which  in  other  European  countries 
would  excite  only  a  slight  and  transient  emotion,  spread 
in  England,  over  a  wide  circle,  all  the  bitterness  of  un- 
mitigated anguish.  Acts  which  naturally  neither  imply 
nor  produce  a  total  subversion  of  the  moral  feelings,  and 
which,  in  other  countries,  are  often  followed  by  happy, 
virtuous,  and  affectionate  lives,  in  England  almost  in- 
variably lead  to  absolute  ruin.  Infanticide  is  greatly 
multiplied,  and  a  vast  proportion  of  those  whose  repu- 
tations and  lives  have  been  blasted  by  one  momentary 
sin,  are  hurled  into  the  abyss  of  habitual  prostitution — a 
condition  which,  owing  to  the  sentence  of  public  opinion 
and  the  neglect  of  legislators,  is  in  no  other  European 
country  so  hopelessly  vicious  or  so  irrevocable.1 

It  is  added,  too,  that  the  immense  multitude  who  are 
thus  doomed  to  the  extremity  of  life-long  wretchedness 
are  not  always,  perhaps  not  generally,  of  those  whose  dis- 
positions seem  naturally  incapable  of  virtue.  The  victims 
of  seduction  are  often  led  aside  quite  as  much  by  the  ar- 
dour of  their  affections,  and  by  the  vivacity  of  their  in- 
telligence, as  by  any  vicious  propensities.2  Even  in  the 
lowest  grades,  the  most  dispassionate  observers  have  de- 
tected remains  of  higher  feelings,  which,  in  a  different 

1  Parent-DucMtelet  has  given  many  statistics,  showing  the  very  large 
extent  to  which  the  French  system  of  supervision  deters  those  who  were 
about  to  enter  into  prostitution,  and  reclaims  those  who  had  entered  into 
it.  He  and  I  >r.  Vintni  concur  in  representing  English  prostitution  as 
about  the  most  degraded,  and  at  the  same  time  the  most  irrevocable. 

-  Ifolock,  in  her  amiable  but  rather  feeble  book,  called  A  Woman's 
■  il'nmt u,  baa  some  good  remarks  on  this  point  (pp.  291-293), 
which  fire  all  the  more  valuable,  as  the  authoress  has  not  the  faintest  sym- 
pathy with  any  opinions  concerning  the  character  and  position  of  women 
which  are  not  strictly  conventional.  She  notices  the  experience  of  Sunday 
School  mistresses,  that,  of  their  pupils  who  are  seduced,  an  extremely  large 
proportion  arc  '  of  the  very  best,  refined,  intelligent,  truthful,  and  affec- 
tionate/ 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  303 

moral  atmosphere,  and  under  different  moral  husbandry, 
would  have  undoubtedly  been  developed.1  The  statistics 
of  prostitution  show  that  a  great  proportion  of  those  who 
have  fallen  into  it  have  been  impelled  by  the  most  ex- 
treme poverty,  in  many  instances  verging  upon  starvation.2 
These  opposing  considerations,  which  I  have  very 
briefly,  indicated,  and  which  I  do  not  propose  to  discuss 
or  to  estimate,  will  be  sufficient  to  exhibit  the  magnitude 
of  the  problem.  In  the  Greek  civilisation,  legislators  and 
moralists  endeavoured  to  meet  it  by  the  cordial  recogni- 
tion of  two  distinct  orders  of  womanhood3 — the  wife, 
whose  first  duty  was  fidelity  to  her  husband ;  the  hetcera, 
or  mistress,  who  subsisted  by  her  fugitive  attachments. 
The  wives  of  the  Greeks  lived  in  almost  absolute  seclusion. 
They  were  usually  married  when  very   young.     Their 


1  See  the  very  singular  and  painful  chapter  in  Parent-Ducbfitelet,  called 
'Mceurs  et  Habitudes  des  Prostituees.'  He  observes  that  they  are  remark- 
able for  their  kindness  to  one  another  in  sickness  or  in  distress ;  that  they 
are  not  unfrequently  charitable  to  poor  people  who  do  not  belong  to  their 
class  j  that  when  one  of  them  has  a  child,  it  becomes  the  object  of  very 
general  interest  and  affection ;  that  most  of  them  have  lovers,  to  whom 
they  are  sincerely  attached  ;  that  they  rarely  fail  to  show  in  the  hospitals 
a  very  real  sense  of  shame  ;  and  that  many  of  them  entered  into  their  mode 
of  life  for  the  purpose  of  supporting  aged  parents.  One  anecdote  is  worth 
giving  in  the  words  of  the  author:  '  Un  medecin  n'entrant  jamais  dans 
leurs  salles  sans  oter  legerement  son  chapeau,  par  cette  seule  politesse  il  sut 
tellement  conquerirleur  confiance  qu'il  leur  faisait  faire  tout  ce  qu'il  voulait.' 
This  writer,  I  may  observe,  is  not  a  romance  writer  or  a  theorist  of  any 
description.  He  is  simply  a  physician  who  describes  the  results  of  a  very 
large  official  experience. 

'  i  Parent-Duchatelet  atteste  que  sur  trois  mille  creatures  perdues  trente- 
cinq  seulement  avaient  un  etat  qui  pouvait  les  nourrir,  et  que  quatorze  cents 
avaient  ete  precipitees  dans  cette  horrible  vie  par  la  misere.  Une  d'elles, 
quandelle  s'y  resolut,  n'avait  pas  mange  depuis  trois  jours.' — Legouve,  Hist, 
morale  des  Femmes,  pp.  322-323. 

3  Concerning  the  position  and  character  of  Greek  women  the  reader  may 
obtain  ample  information  by  consulting  Becker's  Charicles  (translated  by 
Metcalfe,  1845).  Kainneville,  La  Femme  dans  V  Antiqidte  (Paris,  18G5)  ; 
and  an  article  l  On  Female  Society  in  Greece/  in  the  twenty-second  volume 
of  the  Quarterly  Review. 


304  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

occupations  were  to  weave,  to  spin,  to  embroider,  to  super- 
intend the  household,  to  care  for  their  sick  slaves.  They 
lived  in  a  special  and  retired  part  of  the  house.  The  more 
wealthy  seldom  went  abroad,  and  never  except  when  ac- 
companied by  a  female  slave;  never  attended  the  public 
•tacles  ;  received  no  male  visitors  except  in  the  presence 
of  their  husbands,  and  had  not  even  a  seat  at  their  own 
tables  when  male  guests  were  there.  Their  pre-eminent 
virtue  was  fidelity,  and  it  is  probable  that  this  was  very 
strictly  and  very  generally  observed.  Their  remarkable  free- 
dom from  temptations,  the  public  opinion  which  strongly 
discouraged  any  attempt  to  seduce  them,  and  the  ample 
sphere  for  illicit  pleasures  that  was  accorded  to  the  other 
sex,  all  contributed  to  protect  it.  On  the  other  hand, 
living  as  they  did,  almost  exclusively  among  their  female 
slaves,  deprived  of  all  the  educating  influence  of  male 
society,  and  having  no  place  at  those  public  spectacles 
which  were  the  chief  means  of  Athenian  culture,  their 
minds  must  necessarily  have  been  exceedingly  contracted. 
Thucydidcs  doubtless  expressed  the  prevailing  sentiment 
of  his  countrymen  when  he  said  that  the  highest  merit 
of  woman  is  not  to  be  spoken  of  either  for  good  or  for 
evil,  and  Phidias  illustrated  the  same  feeling  when  he 
represented  the  heavenly  Aphrodite  standing  on  a  tor- 
toise, typifying  thereby  the  secluded  life  of  a  virtuous 
woman.1 

In  their  own  restricted  sphere  their  lives  were  probably 
not  unhappy.  Education  and  custom  rendered  the  purely 
domestic  life  that  was  assigned  to  them  a  second  nature, 
and  it  must  in  most  instances  have  reconciled  them  to 
the  extra-matrimonial  connections  in  which  their  hus- 
bands too  frequently  indulged.     The  prevailing  mannere 

1  Plutarch,  Conj.  Prac 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  805 

were  very  gentle.  Domestic  oppression  is  scarcely  ever 
spoken  of ;  the  husband  lived  chiefly  in  the  Public  place  ; 
causes  of  jealousy  and  of  dissension  could  seldom  occur, 
and  a  feeling  of  warm  affection,  though  not  a  feeling  of 
equality,  must  doubtless  have  in  most  cases  sponta- 
neously arisen.  In  the  writings  of  Xenophon  we  have  a 
charming  picture  of  a  husband  who  had  received  into  his 
arms  his  young  wife  of  fifteen,  absolutely  ignorant  of 
the  world  and  of  its  ways.  He  speaks  to  her  with  extreme 
kindness,  but  in  the  language  that  would  be  used  to  a 
little  child.  Her  task,  he  tells  her,  is  to  be  like  a  queen 
bee,  dwelling  continually  at  home  and  superintending 
the  work  of  her  slaves.  She  must  distribute  to  each 
their  tasks,  must  economise  the  family  income,  and  must 
take  especial  care  that  the  house  is  strictly  orderly — the 
shoes,  the  pots,  and  the  clothes  always  in  their  places. 
It  is  also,  he  tells  her,  a  part  of  her  duty  to  tend  her  sick 
slaves;  but  here  his  wife  interrupted  him,  exclaiming, 
1  Nay,  but  that  will  indeed  be  the  most  agreeable  of  my 
offices,  if  such  as  I  treat  with  kindness  are  likely  to  be 
grateful,  and  to  love  me  more  than  before.'  With  a  very 
tender  and  delicate  care  to  avoid  everything  resembling 
a  reproach,  the  husband  persuades  his  wife  to  give  up 
the  habits  of  wearing  high-heeled  boots,  in  order  to 
appear  tall,  and  of  colouring  her  face  with  vermilion  and 
white  lead.  He  promises  her  that  if  she  faithfully  per- 
forms her  duties  he  will  himself  be  the  first  and  most 
devoted  of  her  slaves.  He  assured  Socrates  that  when 
any  domestic  dispute  arose  he  could  extricate  himself 
admirably,  if  he  was  in  the  right ;  but  that,  whenever  \\e 
was  in  the  wrong,  he  found  it  impossible  to  convince  his 
wife  that  it  was  otherwise.1 

1  Xenophon,  Eeon.  ii. 


306  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

We  have  another  picture  of  lireek  married  life  in  the 
writings  of  Plutarch,  but  it  represents  the  condition  of 
the  Greek  mind  at  a  later  period  than  that  of  Xenophon. 
In  Plutarch  the  wife  is  represented  not  as  the  mere 
housekeeper,  or  as  the  chief  slave  of  her  husband,  but 
as  his  equal  and  his  companion.  He  enforces,  in  the 
strougest  terms,  reciprocity  of  obligations,  and  desires  that 
the  minds  of  women  should  be  cultivated  to  the  highest 
point.1  His  precepts  of  marriage,  indeed,  fall  little  if 
at  all  below  any  that  have  appeared  in  modern  days. 
His  letter  of  consolation  to  his  wife,  on  the  death  of 
their  child,  breathes  a  spirit  of  the  tenderest  affection. 
It  is  recorded  of  him  that,  having  had  some  dispute  with 
the  relations  of  his  wife,  she  feared  that  it  might  impair 
their  domestic  happiness,  and  she  accordingly  persuaded 
her  husband  to  accompany  her  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Mount 
Helicon,  where  they  offered  up  together  a  sacrifice  to 
Love,  and  prayed  that  their  affection  for  one  another 
might  never  be  diminished. 

In  general,  however,  the  position  of  the  virtuous  Greek 
woman  was  a  very  low  one.  She  was  under  a  perpetual 
tutelage :  first  of  all  to  her  parents,  who  disposed  of  her 
hand,  then  to  her  husband,  and  in  her  days  of  widowhood 
to  her  sons.  In  cases  of  inheritance  her  male  relations 
were  preferred  to  her.  The  privilege  of  divorce,  which 
she  possessed  equally  with  her  husband,  appears  to  have 
been  practically  almost  nugatory,  on  account  of  the  shock 
which  public  declarations  in  the  law  court  gave  to  the 
habits  which  education  and  public  opinion  had  formed. 
She  brought  with  her,  however,  a  dowry,  and  the  recog- 
nised necessity  of  endowing  daughters  was  one  of  the 
causes  of  those  frequent  expositions  which  were  perpe- 
trated with  so  little  blame.     The  Athenian  law  was  also 

1  Plot  ('<>tif.  Viae.  There  i.s  bIbo  do  extremely  beautiful  picture  of  the 
character  of  a  good  wife  in  Aristotle.     {Economics,  book  i.  cap.  vii. ) 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  307 

peculiarly  careful  and  tender  in  dealing  with  the  interests 
of  female  orphans.1  Plato  had  argued  that  women  were 
equal  to  men  ;  but  the  habits  of  the  people  were  totally 
opposed  to  this  theory.  Marriage  was  regarded  chiefly 
in  a  civic  light,  as  a  means  of  producing  citizens,  and  in 
Sparta  it  was  ordered  that  old  or  infirm  husbands  should 
cede  their  young  wives  to  stronger  men,  who  could  pro- 
duce vigorous  soldiers  for  the  State.  The  Lacedemonian 
treatment  of  women,  which  differed  in  many  respects  from 
that  which  prevailed  in  the  other  Greek  States,  while  it 
was  utterly  destructive  of  all  delicacy  of  feeling  or  action, 
had  undoubtedly  the  effect  of  producing  a  fierce  and 
masculine  patriotism ;  and  many  fine  examples  are  re- 
corded of  Spartan  mothers  devoting  their  sons  on  the 
altar  of  their  country,  rejoicing  over  their  deaths  when 
nobly  won,  and  infusing  their  own  heroic  spirit  into  the 
armies  of  the  people.  For  the  most  part,  however,  the 
names  of  virtuous  women  scarcely  appear  in  Greek 
history.  The  simple  modesty  which  was  evinced  by 
Phocion's  wife,  in  the  period  when  her  husband  occupied 
the  foremost  position  in  Athens,2  and  a  few  instances  of 
conjugal  and  filial  affection,  have  been  recorded ;  but  in 
general  the  only  women  who  attracted  the  notice,  of  the 
people  were  the  hetaBros,  or  courtesans.3 

In  order  to  understand  the  position  which  these  last 

1  See  Alexander's  History  of  Women  (London,  1783),  vol.  i.  p.  201. 

8  Plutarch,  Phocion. 

3  Our  information  concerning  the  Greek  courtesans  is  chiefly  derived 
from  the  thirteenth  book  of  the  Deijmosophists  of  Athenseus,  from  the 
letters  of  Alciphron,  from  the  Dialogues  of  Lucian  on  courtesans,  and  from 
the  oration  of  Demosthenes  against  Neaera.  See,  too,  Xenophon,  Memo* 
rabilia,  iii.  11;  and  among  modern  books,  Becker's  Charides.  Athena?  us 
was  an  Egyptian  whose  exact  date  was  unknown,  but  who  appears  to  have 
survived  Ulpian,  who  died  in  a.d.  228.  He  had  access  to,  and  gave  ex- 
tracts from,  many  works  on  this  subject,  which  have  now  perished.  Alci? 
phron  is  believed  to  have  lived  near  the  time  of  Lucian. 


308  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

nncd  in  Greek  life,  we  must  transport  ourselves  in 
thought  into  a  moral  latitude  totally  different  from  our 
own.  The  Greek  conception  of  excellence  was  the  full  and 
perfect  development  of  humanity  in  all  its  organs  and 
timet  ions,  and  without  any  tinge  of  asceticism.  Some 
parts  of  human  nature  were  recognised  as  higher  than 
others ;  and  to  suffer  any  of  the  lower  appetites  to  obscure 
the  mind,  restrain  the  will  and  engross  the  life,  was  ac- 
knowledged to  be  disgraceful ;  but  the  systematic  repres- 
sion of  a  natural  appetite  was  totally  foreign  to  Greek 
modes  of  thought.  Legislators,  moralists,  and  the  general 
voice  of  the  people,  appear  to  have  applied  these  principles 
almost  unreservedly  to  intercourse  between  the  sexes,  and 
the  most  virtuous  men  habitually  and  openly  entered  into 
relations  which  would  now  be  almost  universally  censured. 
The  experience,  however,  of  many  societies  has  shown 
that  a  public  opinion  may  accord,  in  this  respect,  almost 
unlimited  license  to  one  sex,  without  showing  any  cor- 
responding indulgence  to  the  other.  But  in  Greece,  a 
concurrence  of  causes  had  conspired  to  bring  a  certain 
section  of  courtesans  into  a  position  they  have  in  no 
other  society  attained.  The  voluptuous  worship  of 
Aphrodite  gave  a  kind  of  religious  sanction  to  their  pro- 
ion.  Courtesans  were  the  priestesses  in  her  temples, 
and  those  of  Corinth  were  believed  by  their  prayers  to 
have  averted  calamities  from  their  city.  Prostitution  is 
said  to  have  entered  into  the  religious  rites  of  Babylon, 
Biblis,  Cyprus,  and  Corinth,  and  these,  as  well  as  Miletus, 
Tenedoe,  L  and  Abydos  became  famous  for  their 

schools  of  vice,  which  grew  up  under  the  shadow  of  the 
temples.1 

1  Ja  Mothe  le  Vaycr  says  that  some  of  the  Latins  derived  venerari 
Venerea  exercere,   on  account  of  the  devotions  in  the  temple  of 
Venus  )— a  v-rv  strange  derivation. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  309 

In  the  next  place,  the  intense  aesthetic  enthusiasm  that 
prevailed,  was  eminently  fitted  to  raise  the  most  beautiful 
to  honour.  In  a  land  and  beneath  a  sky  where  natural 
beauty  developed  to  the  highest  point,  there  arose  a 
school  of  matchless  artists  both  in  painting  and  in  sculp- 
ture, and  public  games  and  contests  were  celebrated,  iu 
which  supreme  physical  perfection  was  crowned  by  an 
assembled  people.  In  no  other  period  of  the  world's 
history  was  the  admiration  of  beauty  in  all  its  forms  so 
passionate  or  so  universal.  It  coloured  the  whole  moral 
teaching  of  the  time,  and  led  the  chief  moralists  to  regard 
virtue  simply  as  the  highest  kind  of  supersensual  beauty. 
It  appeared  in  all  literature,  where  the  beauty  of  form 
and  style  was  the  first  of  studies.  It  supplied  at  once 
the  inspiration  and  the  rule  of  all  Greek  art.  It  led  the 
Greek  wife  to  pray,  before  all  other  prayers,  for  the 
beauty  of  her  children.  It  surrounded  the  most  beauti- 
ful with  an  aureole  of  admiring  reverence.  The  courtesan 
was  commonly  the  queen  of  beauty.  She  was  the  model 
of  the  statues  of  Aphrodite,  that  commanded  the  admira- 
tion of  Greece.  Praxiteles  was  acccustomed  to  repro- 
duce the  form  of  Phryne,  and  her  statue,  carved  in  gold, 
stood  in  the  temple  of  Apollo  at  Delphi ;  and  when  she 
was  accused  of  corrupting  the  youth  of  Athens,  her  ad- 
vocate, Hyperides,  procured  her  acquittal  by  suddenly 
unveiling  her  charms  before  the  dazzled  eyes  of  the 
assembled  judges.  Apelles  was  at  once  the  painter  and 
the  lover  of  Lai's,  and  Alexander  gave  him,  as  the  choicest 
gift,  his  own  favourite  concubine,  of  whom  the  painter 
had  become  enamoured  while  pourtraying  her.  The 
chief  flower-painter  of  antiquity  acquired  his  skill 
through  his  love  of  the  flower-girl  Glycera,  whom  he 
was  accustomed  to  paint  among  her  garlands.  Pindar 
and  Simonides  sang  the  praises  of  courtesans,  and  grave 


310  HISTORY  OF  EUROrEAN  MORALS. 

philosophers  made  pilgrimages  to  visit  them,  and  their 
names  were  known  in  every  city.1 

It  is  not  surprising  that,  in  such  a  state  of  thought  and 
fouling,  many  of  the  more  ambitious  and  accomplished 
women  should  have  betaken  themselves  to  this  career, 
nor  yet  that  they  should  have  attained  the  social  position 
which  the  secluded  existence  and  the  enforced  ignorance 
of  the  Greek  wives  had  left  vacant.  The  courtesan  was 
the  one  free  woman  of  Athens,  and  she  often  availed  her- 
self of  her  freedom  to  acquire  a  degree  of  knowledge 
which  enabled  her  to  add  to  her  other  charms  an  intense 
intellectual  fascination.  Gathering  around  her  the  most 
brilliant  artists,  poets,  historians,  and  philosophers,  she 
filing  herself  unreservedly  into  the  intellectual  and  aesthetic 
enthusiasms  of  her  time,  and  soon  became  the  centre  of 
a  literary  society  of  matchless  splendour.  Aspasia,  who 
was  os  famous  for  her  genius  as  for  her  beauty,  won  the 
passionate  love  of  Pericles.  She  is  said  to  have  instructed 
him  in  eloquence,  and  to  have  composed  some  of  his 
most  famous  orations,  she  was  continually  consulted  on 
affairs  of  state  ;  and  Socrates,  like  other  philosophers, 
attended  her  assemblies.  Socrates  himself  has  owned 
his  deep  obligations  to  the  instructions  of  a  courtesan 
named  Diotima.  The  courtesan  Leontium  was  among 
the  most  ardent  disciples  of  Epicurus.2 

Another  cause  probably  contributed  indirectly  to  the 

1  On  the  connection  of  the  courtesans  with  the  artistic  enthusiasm,  see 
K.-ioiil   Rochette,  Court  <l Arrhcologie,  pp.  278-279.    See,  too,  Atheneeus, 
1 :  Pliny,  Hid.  Nat.  xxxv.  40. 

tlf  mtv  curious  little  work  of  Menage,  Ilistoria  Mulicvum  Philo- 
sophantm  (Lugduni,  mdxc.)  ;  also  Rainneville,  La  Femme  dans  VAirfiquitc, 
I.  At  a  much  later  date  Lucian,  in  one  of  his  "works,  gives  a  most 
fascinating  description  of  the  beauty,  accomplishments,  generosity,  and 
even  modesty,  of  Panthea  of  Smyrna,  the  favourite  mistress  of  Lucius 
Verua. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  311 

elevation  of  this  class,  to  which  it  is  extremely  difficult 
to  allude  in  an  English  book,  but  which  it  is  impossible 
altogether  to  omit,  even  in  the  most  cursory  survey  of 
Greek  morals.  Irregular  female  connections  were  looked 
upon  as  ordinary  and  not  disgraceful  incidents  in  the 
life  of  a  good  man,  for  the  more  sensual  spirits, 
and  indeed  very  many  of  the  most  illustrious  men  in 
Greece,  sank  into  that  lower  abyss  of  unnatural  love, 
which  was  the  deepest  and  strangest  taint  of  Greek 
civilisation.  This  vice,  which  never  appears  in  the 
writings  of  Homer  and  Hesiod,  doubtless  arose  under  the 
influence  of  the  public  games,  which,  accustoming  men 
to  the  contemplation  of  absolutely  nude  figures,1  awoke 
an  unnatural  passion,2  totally  remote  from  all  modern 
.feelings,  but  which  in  Greece  it  was  regarded  as  heroic 
to  resist.3  The  popular  religion  in  this,  as  in  other 
cases,  was  made  to  bend  to  the  new  vice.  Hebe,  the 
cup-bearer  of  the  gods,  was  replaced  by  Ganymede,  and 

1  A  single  small  garment,  called  the  Z&tTfta,  was  at  first  in  use;  but 
it  was  discarded,  first  of  all  by  the  Lacedemonians,  and  afterwards  by 
the  other  Greeks.  There  are  three  curious  memoirs  tracing  the  history 
of  the  change,  by  M.  Burette,  in  the  Hist,  de  VAcademie  royale  des  Inscrip- 
tions, tome  i. 

2  On  the  causes  of  paiderastia  in  Greece,  see  the  remarks  of  Mr.Grote  in 
the  review  of  the  Symposium,  in  his  great  work  on  Plato.  The  whole  subject 
is  very  ably  treated  by  M.  Maury,  Hist,  des  Jielir/ions  de  la  Grecc  antique, 
tome  iii.  pp.  35-39.  Many  facts  connected  with  it  are  collected  by  D61- 
linger,  in  his  Jew  and  Gentile,  and  by  Chateaubriand,  in  his  Eludes  histo- 
riques.  The  chief  original  authority  for  this,  or  for  all  other  forms  of 
Greek  sensual  vice,  is  the  thirteenth  book  of  Athenaeus,  a  book  of  very 
painful  interest  in  the  history  of  morals. 

3  Plutarch,  in  his  Life  of  Ayesilaus,  gives  us  a  vivid  picture  of  the  intense 
self-control  manifested  by  that  great  man,  in  refraining  from  gratifying  a  pas- 
sion he  had  conceived  for  a  boy  named  Megabetes,  which  Maximus  Tyrius 
says  deserved  greater  praise  than  the  heroism  of  Leonidas.  (Diss,  xxv.) 
Diogenes  Laertius,  in  his  Life  of  Zeno,  the  founder  of  Stoicism,  the  most 
austere  of  all  ancient  sects,  praises  that  philosopher  for  being  but  little 
addicted  to  this  vice. 

54 


312  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

the  worst  vices  of  earth  were  transported  to  Olympus.1 
Artists  sought  to  reflect  the  passion  in  their  statues  of  the 
Hermaphrodite,  of  Bacchus,  and  the  more  effeminate 
V  polio;  moralists  were  known  to  praise  it  as  the  bond 
of  friendship,  and  it  was  spoken  of  as  the  inspiring  enthu- 
siasm of  the  heroic  Thcban  legion  of  Epaminondas.2  In 
general,  however,  it  was  stigmatised  as  unquestionably  a 
vice,  but  it  was  treated  with  a  levity  we  can  now  hardly 
conceive.  We  can  scarcely  have  a  better  illustration  of 
the  extent  to  which  moral  ideas  and  feelings  have 
changed,  than  the  met  that  the  two  first  Greeks  who 
were  considered  worthy  of  statues  by  their  fellow- 
countrymen,  are  said  to  have  been  Harmodius  and  Aristo- 
geiton,  who  were  united  by  an  impure  love,  and  who 
were  glorified  for  a  political  assassination.3 

It  is  probable  that  this  cause  conspired  with  the  others 
to  dissociate  the  class  of  courtesans  from  the  idea  of 
supreme  depravity  with  which  they  have  usually  been 
connected.  The  great  majority,  however,  were  sunk  in 
this,  as  in  all  other  ages,  in  abject  degradation,4  com- 
paratively few  attained  the  condition  of  heteerse,  and 
even  of  these,  it  is  probable  that  the  greater  number 


1  Some  examples  cf  the  ascription  of  this  vice  to  the  divinities  are  given 

bj  Clem.  Alex.  Admonitio  ad  Centes.    Socrates  is  said  to  have  maintained 

that  Jupiter  loved  Ganymede  for  his  wisdom,  as  his  name  is  derived  from 

fi  m  and  /"/'""',  to  be  delighted  with  prudence.     (Xenophon,  Banquet.) 

disaster  of  Canute  was  ascribed  to  the  jealousy  of  Juno  because  a 

:iful  boy  was  introduced  into  the  temple  of  Jupiter.     (Lactantius,  Intt. 

Div.  ii.  17.) 

3  See  a  curious  passage  in  Athenians,  xiii.  78.  It  is  elaborately  vindicated 
in  a  very  revolting  book  on  different  kinds  of  love,  ascribed  (it  is  said  falsely) 
to  Lncian.     Soph  iullv  noted  for  his  propensity  to  it. 

.  :. .  ///,'.  Nat  xxxiv.  '.». 

ample   evidence  of  this  in  Athenams,  and  in  the  Dialogues  of 
L'irian  on  the  courtesans.     See,  too,  Terence,  The  Eunuch,  act  v.  scene  4, 
|     .I  from  the  Greek.     The  majority  of  the  class  were  not  called 
hetaera?,  but  vaptwu. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  313 

exhibited  the  characteristics  which  in  all  ages  have 
attached  to  their  class.  Faithlessness,  extreme  rapacity, 
and  extravagant  luxury,  were  common  among  them ;  but 
yet  it  is  unquestionable  that  there  were  many  exceptions. 
The  excommunication  of  society  did  not  press  upon  or 
degrade  them ;  and  though  they  were  never  regarded 
with  the  same  honour  as  married  women,  it  seems  gene- 
rally to  have  been  believed  that  the  wife  and  the  cour- 
tesan had  each  her  place  and  her  function  in  the  world, 
and  her  own  peculiar  type  of  excellence.  The  courtesan 
Leama,  who  was  a  friend  of  Harmodius,  died  in  torture 
rather  than  reveal  the  conspiracy  of  her  friend,  and  the 
Athenians,  in  allusion  to  her  name,  caused  the  statue  of 
a  tongueless  lioness  to  be  erected  to  commemorate  her 
constancy.1  The  gentle  manners  and  disinterested  affec- 
tion of  a  courtesan  named  Bacchis  were  especially  re- 
corded, and  a  very  touching  letter  paints  her  character, 
and  describes  the  regret  that  followed  her  to  the  tomb.2 
In  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  his  pictures  of  Greek 
life,  Xenophon  describes  how  Socrates,  having  heard  of 
the  beauty  of  the  courtesan  Theodota,  went  with  his  dis- 
ciples to  ascertain  for  himself  whether  the  report  was 
true ;  how  with  a  quiet  humour  he  questioned  her  about 
the  sources  of  the  luxury  of  her  dwelling,  and  how  he 
proceeded  to  sketch  for  her  the  qualities  she  should 
cultivate  in  order  to  attach  her  lovers.  She  ought,  he 
tells  her,  to  shut  the  door  against  the  insolent,  to  watch 


1  Plutarch,  Be  Garrulitate;  Pirn.  Hist.  Nat.  xxxiv.  19.  The  feat  of 
biting  out  their  tongues  rather  than  reveal  secrets,  or  yield  to  passion,  is 
ascribed  to  a  suspiciously  large  number  of  persons.  Menage  cites  five  be- 
sides Lerena.     {Hid.  Midler.  Phi'os.  pp.  104-108.) 

2  See,  upon  Bacchis,  several  of  the  letters  of  Alciphron,  especially  the 
very  touching  letter  (x.)  on  her  death,  describing  her  kindness  and  dis- 
interestedness. Athenoeus  (xiii.  66)  relates  a  curious  anecdote  illustrating 
these  aspects  of  her  character. 


314  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

her  lovers  in  sickness,  to  rejoice  greatly  when'they  succeed 
in  anything  honourable,  to  love  tenderly  those  who  love 
her.  Having  carried  on  a  cheerful  and  perfectly  unem- 
barrassed conversation  with  her,  with  no  kind  of  reproach 
on  his  part,  either  expressed  or  implied,  and  with  no 
trace  either  of  the  timidity  or  effrontery  of  conscious  guilt 
upon  hers,  the  best  and  wisest  of  the  Greeks  left  his 
iss  with  a  graceful  compliment  to  her  beauty.1 
My  task  in  describing  this  aspect  of  Greek  life  has 
been  an  eminently  unpleasing  one,  and  I  should  cer- 
tainly not  have  entered  upon  even  the  baldest  and  most 
guarded  disquisition  on  a  subject  so  difficult,  painful,  and 
delicate,  had  it  not  been  absolutely  indispensable  to  a 
history  of  morals  to  give  at  least  an  outline  of  the  pro- 
gress that  has  been  effected  in  this  sphere.  What  I  have 
written  will  sufficiently  explain  why  Greece,  which  was 
Fertile,  probably  beyond  all  other  lands,  in  great  men, 
-  BO  remarkably  barren  of  great  women.  It  will  show, 
too,  that  though  chastity  and  sensuality  were  regarded,  as 
among  ourselves,  as  respectively  the  higher  and  the  lower 
sides  of  our  nature,  the  degree  of  license  which  it  was 
thought  advisable  to  accord  to  the  latter  was  widely 
different  from  what  modern  public  opinion  would  sanc- 
ti<  >n.  The  Christian,  doctrine,  that  it  is  criminal  to  gratify 
a  powerful  and  a  transient  physical  appetite,  except 
under  the  condition  of  a  lifelong  contract,  was  altogether 
unknown.  Strict  duties  were  imposed  upon  Greek  wives. 
Dutie-  were  imposed  at  a  later  period,  though  less  strictly, 
upon  the  husband.  Unnatural  love  was  stigmatised,  but 
with  a  levity  of  censure  which  to  a  modern  mind  appears 
inexpressibly  revolting.  Some  slight  legal  disqualifica- 
tions rested  upon  the  whole  class  of  hcta3ra3,  and,  though 

1  Xenophon,  Mcmorab.  iii.  11. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  315 

more  admired,  they  were  less  respected  than  women  who 
had  adopted  a  domestic  life ;  but  a  combination  of  cir- 
cumstances had  raised  them,  in  actual  worth  and  in 
popular  estimation,  to  an  unexampled  elevation,  and  an 
aversion  to  marriage  became  very  general,  and  illicit 
connections  were  formed  with  the  most  perfect  frankness 
and  publicity. 

If  we  now  turn  to  the  Eomaii  civilisation,  we  shall 
find  that  some  important  advances  had  been  made  in 
the  condition  of  women.  The  virtue  of  chastity  may, 
as  I  have  shown,  be  regarded  with  justice  in  two  dif- 
ferent ways.  The  utilitarian  view,  which  commonly 
prevails  in  countries  where  a  political  spirit  is  more 
powerful  than  a  religious  spirit,  regards  marriage  as  the 
ideal  state,  and  to  promote  the  happiness,  sanctity,  and 
security  of  this  state  is  the  main  object  of  all  its  pre- 
cepts. The  mystical  view  which  rests  upon  the  feeling  of 
shame  that  is  naturally  attached  to  sensual  indulgences, 
and  which,  as  history  proves,  has  prevailed  especially 
where  political  sentiment  is  very  low  and  religious  senti- 
ment very  strong,  regards  virginity  as  its  supreme  type, 
and  marriage  as  simply  the  most  pardonable  declension 
from  ideal  purity.  It  is,  I  think,  a  very  remarkable  fact, 
that  at  the  head  of  the  religious  system  of  Eome  we  find 
two  sacerdotal  bodies  which  appear  respectively  to  typify 
these  ideas.  The  Flamens  of  Jupiter  and  the  Vestal  Vir- 
gins were  the  two  most  sacred  orders  in  Eome.  The 
ministrations  of  each. were  believed  to  be  vitally  important 
to  the  State.  Each  could  officiate  only  within  the  walls 
of  Eome.  Each  was  appointed  with  the  most  imposing 
ceremonies.  Each  was  honoured  with,  the  most  pro- 
found reverence.  But  in  one  important  respect  they 
differed.  The  Vestal  was  the  type  of  virginity,  and  her 
chastity  was  guarded  by  the  most  terrific  penalties.     The 


31«  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

Flam  on,  on  the  other  hand,  was  the  representative  of 
nan  marriage  in  its  strictest  and  purest  form.  He 
was  necessarily  married.  His  marriage  was  celebrated 
with  the  most  solemn  rites.  It  could  only  be  dissolved 
by  death.  If  his  wife  died,  he  was  degraded  from  his 
office.1 

Of  these  two  orders,  there  can  be  no  question  that  the 
Flamen  was  the  most  faithful  expression  of  the  Roman 
society.  The  Roman  religion  was  essentially  domestic, 
and  it  was  a  main  object  of  the  legislator  to  surround 
marriage  with  every  circumstance  of  dignity  and  so- 
lemnity. Monogamy  was,  from  the  earliest  times,  strictly 
enjoined,  and  it  was  one  of  the  great  benefits  that  have 
lilted  from  the  expansion  of  Roman  power,  that  it 
made  this  type  dominant  in  Europe.  In  the  legends  of 
early  Rome  we  have  ample  evidence  both  of  the  high  moral 
mate  of  women,  and  of  their  prominence  in  Roman 
life.  The  tragedies  of  Lucretia  and  of  Virginia  display  a 
delicacy  of  honour,  a  sense  of  the  supreme  excellence  of 
unsullied  purity,  which  no  Christian  nation  could  surpass. 
The  legends  of  the  Sabine  women  interceding  between 
their  parents  and  their  husbands,  and  thus  saving  the 
infant  republic,  and  of  the  mother  of  Coriolanus  averting 
by  her  prayers  the  ruin  impending  over  her  country, 
entitled  women  to  claim  their  share  in  the  patriotic  glories 
of  Rome.  Temples  were  even  erected  to  commemorate 
their  acts.  A  temple  of  Venus  Calva  wras  the  record  of 
the  devotion  of  Roman  ladies,  who,  in  an  hour  of  danger, 
cut  off  their  long  tresses  to  make  bowstrings  for  the 
soldiers.2  Another  temple  preserved  to  all  posterity  the 
memory  of  the 'filial  piety  of  that  Roman  girl  who,  when 
her  mother  was  condemned  to  be  starved  to  death,  ob- 

1  On  tli»-  Flamens,  we  A.nlus  QelL  Nbct.  x.  15. 

*  Capitolinu.s,  Marimmut  Junior. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  317 

tained  permission  to  visit  her  in  prison,  and  was  discovered 
feeding  her  from  her  breast.1 

The  legal  position,  however,  of  the  Eoman  wife  was  for 
a  long  period  extremely  low.  The  Eoman  family  was 
constituted  on  the  principle  of  the  absolute  authority  of 
its  head,  who  had  a  power  of  life  and  death  both  over 
his  wife  and  over  his  children,  and  who  could  repudiate  the 
former  at  will.  Neither  the  custom  of  gifts  to  the  father 
of  the  bride,  nor  the  custom  of  dowries  appears  to  have 
existed  in  the  earliest  period  of  Eoman  history ;  but  the 
father  disposed  absolutely  of  the  hand  of  his  daughter,  and 
sometimes  even  possessed  the  power  of  breaking  off  mar- 
riages that  had  been  actually  contracted.2  In  the  forms  of 
marriage,  however,  which  were  usual  in  the  earlier  periods 
of  Eome,  the  absolute  power  passed  into  the  hands  of  the 
husband,  and  he  had  the  right,  in  some  cases,  of  putting 
her  to  death.3  Law  and  public  opinion  combined  in  mak- 
ing matrimonial  purity  most  strict.  For  five  hundred 
and  twenty  years,  it  was  said,  there  was  no  such  thing 
as  a  divorce  in  Eome,4  and  even  after  this  example,  for 
many  years  the  marriage  tie  was  regarded  as  absolutely 
indissoluble.5  Manners  were  so  severe,  that  a  senator  was 
censured  for  indecency  because  he  had  kissed  his  wife  in 
the  presence  of  their  daughter.6  It  was  considered  in  a 
high  degree  disgraceful  for  a  Eoman  mother  to  delegate  to 

1  Pliny,  Hist  Nat  vii.  36. 

"  This  appears  from  the  first  act  of  the  Stichus  of  Plautus.  I  should 
imagine  this  cannot  have  applied  to  the  marriage  of  confarreatio.  The 
power  appears  to  have  become  quite  obsolete  during  the  empire,  but  the 
first  legal  act  (which  was  rather  of  the  nature  of  an  exhortation  than  of  a 
command)  against  it  was  issued  by  Antoninus  Pius,  and  it  was  only  defi- 
nitely abolished  under  Diocletian.  (Laboulaye,  Jiccherchcs  sur  la  condition 
civile  ct  politique  desfemmes,  pp.  10-17.) 

8  Aul.  Gell.  Noct  x.  23. 

4  Val.  Maximus,  ii.  1.  §  4  ;  Aul.  Gellius,  Nod.  iv.  3. 

5  This  is  noticed  by  Plautus.  6  Ammianus  Marcellinus,  xxviii.  4. 


818  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

a  nurse  the  duty  of  suckling  her  child.1  Sumptuary  laws 
regulated  with  the  most  minute  severity  all  the  details  of 
domestic  economy.2  The  courtesan  class,  though  proba- 
bly numerous  and  certainly  uncontrolled,  were  regarded 
with  much  contempt.  The  disgrace  of  publicly  professing 
themselves  members  of  it  was  believed  to  be  a  sufficient 
punishment,3  and  an  old  law,  which  was  probably  intended 
fee  teach  in  symbol  the  duties  of  married  life,  enjoined  that 
no  such  person  should  touch  the  altar  of  Juno.4  It  was 
related  of  a  certain  axlile,  that  he  failed  to  obtain  redress 
for  an  assault  which  had  been  made  upon  him,  because 
it'had  occurred  in  a  house  of  ill-fame,  in  which  it  was  dis- 
graceful for  a  Roman  magistrate  to  be  found.5  The  sanctity 
of  female  purity  was  believed  to  be  attested  by  all  nature. 
The  most  savage  animals  became  tame  before  a  virgin.0 
Wlien  a  woman  walked  naked  round  a  field,  caterpillars 
and  all  loathsome  insects  fell  dead  before  her.7  It  was 
said  that  drowned  men  floated  on  their  backs,  and 
drowned  women  on  their  faces ;  and  this,  in  the  opinion 
of  Eoman  naturalists,  was  due  to  the  superior  purity  of 
the  latter.8 

It  was  a  remark  of  Aristotle,  that  the  superiority  of  the 
Greeks  to  the  barbarians  was  shown,  amongst  other  things, 
in  the  fact  that  the  Greeks  did  not,  like  other  nations, 
regard  their  wives  as  slaves,  but  treated  them  as  help- 
mates and  companions.     A  Eoman  writer  has  appealed, 

1  Tacitus,  I)e  Oratorilu*,  xxviii.  2  See  Aulus  Gellius,  Koat.  ii.  24, 

3  ' More  inter  Vetera  recepto,  qui  satis  posnarum  advorsum  impudicas  m 
ipsa  profe^sione  flagitii  credebant.'— Tacitus,  Annal  ii.  85. 

4  Aul.  QelL  iv.  -'5.     .luno  was  the  goddess  of  marriage. 

5  Ibid.  iv.  II. 

0  The  well-known  superstition  about  the  lion,  &c,  becoming  docile  before 
a  virgin  is,  I  better*,  as  old  as  Roman  times.  St.  Ladore  mentions  thai 
rhin<  b      red  to  be  captured  by  young  girls  being  put  in  their 

«av  to  fasHnatfl  them,    |  Legendre,  Trails  de  r Opinion,  tonic  ii  p.  .'55.) 

'  Pliny,  Bid.  Kat  xxviii.  23.  8  Ibid.  vii.  18. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  319 

on  the  whole  with  greater  justice,  to  the  treatment  of 
wives  by  his  fellow  countrymen,  as  a  proof  of  the  superi- 
ority of  Eoman  to  Greek  civilisation.  He  has  observed 
that,  while  the  Greeks  kept  their  wives  in  a  special  quarter 
in  the  interior  of  their  houses,  and  never  permitted  them 
to  sit  at  banquets  except  with  their  relatives,  or  to  see  any 
male  except  in  the  presence  of  a  relative,  no  Eoman  ever 
hesitated  to  lead  his  wife  with  him  to  the  feast,  or  to 
place  the  mother  of  the  family  at  the  head  of  his  table.1 
Whether,  in  the  period  when  wives  were  completely  sub- 
ject to  the  rule  of  their  husbands,  much  domestic  oppres- 
sion occurred,  it  is  now  impossible  to  say.  A  temple 
dedicated  to  a  goddess  named  Yiriplaca,  whose  mission 
was  to  appease  husbands,  was  worshipped  by  Eoman 
women  on  the  Palatine,2  and  a  strange  and  improbable,  if 
not  incredible  story,  is  related  by  Livy,  of  the  discovery, 
during  the  Eepublic,  of  a  vast  conspiracy  by  Eoman  wives 
to  poison  their  husbands.3  On  the  whole,  however,  it  is 
probable  that  the  Eoman  matron  was  from  the  earliest 
period  a  name  of  honour  ;4  that  the  beautiful  sentence  of 
a  jurisconsult  of  the  empire,  who  defined  marriage  as  a 
lifelong  fellowship  of  all  divine  and  human  rights,5  ex- 
pressed most  faithfully  the  feelings  of  the  people,  and  that 
female  virtue  shone  in  every  age  conspicuously  in  Eoman 
biographies.6 

1  '  Quern  enim  Itomanorum  pudet  uxorem  ducere  in  conTivium  ?  aut  cujus 
materfamilias  non  prim um  locum  tenet  tedium,  atque  in  celebritate  veraa- 
tur?  quod  multo  fit  aliter  in  Gra3cia.  Nam  neque  in  convivium  sidhibetur, 
nisi  propinquorum,  neque  sedet  nisi  in  inleriore  parte  allium  quae  ijijnec- 
contis  appellatur,  quo  nemo  accedit,  nisi  propinqua  cognatione  conj  111101118.' — 
Corn.  Nepos,  prsefat. 

2  Val.  Max.  ii.  1.  §  6.  s  Liv.  viii.  is. 

4  See  Val.  Max.  ii.  1. 

5  '  Nuptite  sunt  conj unctio  maris  et  feminse,  et  consortium  omnia  vita 
divini  et  liumani  juris  communicatio.' — Modestinus. 

6  Livy  xxxiv.  5.  There  is  a  fine  collection  of  legends  or  histories  of 
heroic  women  (but  chiefly  Greek)  in  Clem.  Alexand.  Strom,  iv.  VJ. 


BIO  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

I  have  already  enumerated  the  chief  causes  of  that 
complete  dissolution  of  Eoman  morals  which  began  shortly 
after  the  runic  wars,  which  contributed  very  largely  to 
the  destruction  of  the  Eepublic,  and  which  attained  its 
climax  under  the  Ciesars.  There  are  few  examples  in 
history  of  a  revolution  pervading  so  completely  every 
sphere  of  religious,  domestic,  social,  and  political  life. 
Philosophical  scepticism  corroded  the  ancient  religions. 
An  inundation  of  Eastern  luxury  and  Eastern  morals  sub- 
merged all  the  old  habits  of  austere  simplicity.  The  civil 
wars  and  the  empire  degraded  the  character  of  the 
people,  and  the  exaggerated  prudery  of  republican  man- 
ners only  served  to  make  the  rebound  into  vice  the  more 
irresistible.  In  the  fierce  outburst  of  ungovernable  and 
almost  frantic  depravity  that  marked  this  evil  period,  the 
violations  of  female  virtue  were  infamously  prominent. 
The  vast  multiplication  of  slaves,  which  is  in  every  age 
peculiarly  fatal  to  moral  purity  ;  the  fact  that  a  great 
proportion  of  those  slaves  were  chosen  from  the  most 
voluptuous  provinces  of  the  empire  ;  the  games  of  Flora, 
in  which  races  of  naked  courtesans  were  exhibited  ;  the 
pantomimes,  which  derived  their  charms  chiefly  from  the 
audacious  indecencies  of  the  actors  ;  the  influx  of  the  Greek 
and  Asiatic  hetasra?  who  were  attracted  by  the  wealth  of 
the  metropolis  ;  the  licentious  paintings  which  began  to 
adorn  every  house ;  the  rise  of  Baia3,  which  rivalled  the 
luxury  and  surpassed  the  beauty  of  the  chief  centres  of 
Asiatic  vice,  combining  with  the  intoxication  of  great 
iltli  suddenly  acquired,  with  the  disruption, through 
many  causes,  of  all  the  ancient  habits  and  beliefs,  and  with 
the  tendency  to  pleasure  which  the  closing  of  the  paths  of 
honourable  political  ambition,  by  the  imperial  despotism, 
naturally  produced,  had  all  their  part  in  preparing  those 
orgies  of  vice  which   the  writers  of  the  empire  reveal. 


»> 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  821 

Most  scholars  will,  I  suppose,  retain  a  vivid  recollection 
of  the  new  insight  into  the  extent  and  wildness  of  human 
guilt  which  they  obtained  when  they  first  opened  the 
pages  of  Suetonius  or  Lampridius  ;  and  the  sixth  Satire 
of  Juvenal  paints  with  a  fierce  energy,  though  probably 
with  the  natural  exaggeration  of  a  satirist,  the  extent  to 
which  corruption  had  spread  among  the  women.  It  was 
found  necessary,  under  Tiberius,  to  make  a  special  law 
prohibiting  members  of  noble  houses  from  enrolling  them- 
selves as  prostitutes.1  The  extreme  coarseness  of  the 
Eoman  disposition  prevented  sensuality  from  assuming 
that  83$thetic  character  which  had  made  it  in  Greece 
the  parent  of  Art,  and  had  very  profoundly  modified  its 
influence,  while  the  passion  for  gladiatorial  shows  often 
allied  it  somewhat  unnaturally  with  cruelty.  There  have 
certainly  been  many  periods  in  history  when  virtue  was 
more  rare  than  under  the  Ccesars ;  but  there  has  probably 
never  been  a  period  when  vice  was  more  extravagant  or 
uncontrolled.  Young  emperors  especially,  who  were  sur- 
rounded by  swarms  of  sycophants  and  panders,  and  who 
often  lived  in  continual  dread  of  assassination,  plunged 
with  the  most  reckless  and  feverish  excitement  into  every 
variety  of  abnormal  lust.  The  reticence  which  has 
always  more  or  less  characterised  modern  society  and 
modern  writers  was  unknown,  and  the  unblushing,  un- 
disguised obscenity  of  the  Epigrams  of  Martial,  of  the 
Eomances  of  Apuleius  and  Petronius,  and  of  some  of  the 
Dialogues  of  Lucian,  reflected  but  too  faithfully  the  spirit 
of  their  time. 

There  had  arisen,  too,  partly  through  vicious  causes, 
and  partly,  I  suppose,  through  the  unfavourable  influence 
which  the  attraction  of  the  public  institutions  exercised  on 

1  Tacitus,  Annal.  ii.  85.     This  decree  was  on  account  of  a  patrician  latlv 
named  Vistilia  having  so  enrolled  herself. 


822  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

domestic  life,  a  great  and  general  indisposition  towards 
marriage,  which  Augustus  attempted  in  vain  to  arrest  by 
his  laws  against  celibacy,  and  by  conferring  many  pri- 
vileges on  the  fathers  of  three  children.1  A  singularly 
curious  speech  is  preserved,  which  is  said  to  have  been 
delivered  on  this  subject  shortly  before  the  close  of  the 
Republic,  by  Metellus  Numidicus,  in  order,  if  possible,  to 
overcome  this  indisposition.  'If,  Romans,'  he  said,  'we 
could  live  without  wives,  we  should  all  keep  free  from  that 
source  of  trouble  ;  but  since  nature  has  ordained  that 
men  can  neither  live  sufficiently  agreeably  with  wives,  nor 
at  all  without  them,  let  us  consult  the  perpetual  endur- 
ance of  our  race  rather  than  our  own  brief  enjoyment.'2 

In  the  midst  of  this  torrent  of  corruption  a  great  change 
was  passing  over  the  legal  position  of  Roman  women. 
They  had  at  first  been  in  a  condition  of  absolute  subjec- 
tion or  subordination  to  their  relations.  They  arrived, 
during  the  empire,  at  a  point  of  freedom  and  dignity 
which  they  subsequently  lost,  and  have  never  altogether 
regained.  The  Romans  admitted  three  kinds  of  mar- 
riage — the  '  confarreatio,'  which  was  accompanied  by  the 
most  awful  religious  ceremonies,  was  practically  indis- 
soluble, and  was  jealously  restricted  to  patricians ;  the 
coemptio,'  which  was  purely  civil,  which  derived  its  name 

1  ])i<»n  Cassius,  liv.  10,  hi.  10. 

2  '  Si  sine  uxore  poasemus,  Quirites,  esse,  omnes  ea  molestia  careremus  ;  sed 
qunniam  ita  natura  tradidit,  ut  nee  cum  illis  satis  commode  nee  sine  illis 
ullo  modd  vivi  poseit,  saluti  perpeture  potius  quani  brevi  voluptati  consulen- 
(111111." — Aulus  Gelliua,  Noct.  i.  0.  Some  of  the  audience,  tfe  are  told,  thought 
that,  in  exhorting  to  matrimony,  the  speaker  should  have  concealed  its 
undoubted  evils.  It  was  decided,  however,  that  it  was  more  honourable  to 
t.ll  the  whole  truth.  Stobams  (SeutentuB)  has  preserved  a  number  of 
barth  and  often  heartless  sayings  about  wives,  that  were  popular  among  the 

ks.     It  was  a  saying  of  a  Greek  poet,  that  'marriage  brings  only  two 
happy  days — the  day  when  the  husband  first  clasps  his  wife  to  his  breast, 
and  the  day  when  he  lays  her  in  the  tomb  ;'  and  in  Rome  it  became  a  pro- 
irg,  that  a  wife  was  only  good 'in  thalanio  w\  in  tuniulo.' 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  323 

from  a  symbolical  sale,  and  which,  like  the  preceding  form, 
gave  the  husband  complete  authority  over  the  person  and 
property  of  his  wife  ;  and  the  « usus,'  which  was  effected  by 
a  simple  declaration  of  a  determination  to  cohabit.  This 
last  form  of  marriage  became  general  in  the  empire,  and 
it  had  this  very  important  consequence,  that  the  woman 
so  married  remained,  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  in  the  family 
of  her  father,  and  was  under  his  guardianship,  not  under 
the  guardianship  of  her  husband.  But  the  old  patria 
potestas  had  become  completely  obsolete,  and  the  prac- 
tical effect  of  the  general  adoption  of  this  form  of  mar- 
riage was  the  absolute  legal  independence  of  the  wife. 
With  the  exception  of  her  dowry,  which  passed  into  the 
hands  of  her  husband,  she  held  her  property  in  her  own 
right ;  she  inherited  her  share  of  the  wealth  of  her  father, 
and  she  retained  it  altogether  independently  of  her  hus- 
band. A  very  considerable  portion  of  Eoman  wealth 
thus  passed  into  the  uncontrolled  possession  of  women. 
The  private  man  of  business  of  the  wife  was  a  favourite 
character  in  the  comedians,  and  the  tyranny  exercised  by 
rich  wives  over  their  husbands — to  whom  it  is  said  they 
sometimes  lent  money  at  high  interest — a  continual  theme 
of  satirists.1 

A  complete  revolution  had  thus  passed  over  the  consti- 
tution of  the  family.  Instead  of  being  constructed  on  the 
principle  of  autocracy,  it  was  constructed  on  the  principle 
of  coequal  partnership.  The  legal  position  of  the  wife 
had  become  one  of  complete  independence,  while  her 
social   position   was   one  of  great   dignity.     The  more 

1  Friedlander,  Hist,  des  Mceurs  vomerine*,  tome  i.  pp.  360-304.  On  tho 
great  influence  exercised  by  Eoman  ladies  on  political  affairs  some  remark- 
able passages  are  collected  in  Denis,  Hist,  des  Idees  Morales,  tome  ii.  pp.  98- 
99.  This  author  is  particularly  valuable  in  all  that  relates  to  the  history 
of  domestic  morals.  The  Asinariusoi  Plautus,  and  some  of  the  epigrams  of 
Martial,  throw  much  light  upon  this  subject. 


824  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

conservative  spirits  were  naturally  alarmed  at  the  change, 
and  two  measures  were  taken  to  arrest  it.  The  Oppian 
law  was  designed  to  restrain  the  luxury  of  women ;  but, 
in  spite  of  the  strenuous  exertions  of  Cato,  this  law  was 
dily  repealed.1  A  more  important  measure  was  the 
Voconian  law,  which  restricted  within  certain  very 
narrow  limits  the  property  which  women  might  inherit; 
but  public  opinion  never  fully  acquiesced  in  it,  and  by 
several  legal  subterfuges  its  operation  was  partially 
evaded:8 

Another  and  a  still  more  important  consequence  re- 
sulted from  the  changed  form  of  marriage.  Being  looked 
upon  simply  as  a  civil  contract,  entered  into  for  the  hap- 
piness of  the  contracting  parties,  its  continuance  depended 
upon  mutual  consent.  Either  party  might  dissolve  it  at 
will,  and  the  dissolution  gave  both  parties  a  right  to 
tarry.  There  can  be  no  question  that  under  this 
tem  the  obligations  of  marriage  were  treated  with 
extreme  levity.  We  find  Cicero  repudiating  his  wife 
Terentia,  because  he  desired  a  new  dowry;3  Augustus 
compelling  the  husband  of  Livia  to  repudiate  her  when 
she  was  already  pregnant,  that  he  might  marry  her  him- 
self;4 Cato  ceding  his  wife,  with  the  consent  of  her  father, 
to  his  friend  Hortensius,  and  resuming  her  after  his 
death  ;fi  Maecenas  continually  changing  his  wife  ;6  Sem- 
pronius  Sophus  repudiating  his  wife,  because  she  had 

1  See  the  very  remarkable  discussion  about  this  repeal  in  Livy,  lib.  xxxiv. 
.•ap.  1-8. 

■  >u\t<,  Hid.  Morale \dei  Femmvs,y\y>.  23-20.  St.  Augustine  denounced 

this  law  as  the  most  unjust  that  could  be  mentioned  or  even  conceived. 

quid  iniquius  dici  ant  cogitari  possit,  ignore1 — St.  Aug.  I)e  Cio. 

ii.  L'l  — a  curious  illustration  of  the  difference  between  the  habits  of 

thought  of  bit  time  and  those  of  the  middle  ages,  when  daughters  werti 

habitually  MCfiAoed  without  a  protest,  by  the  feudal  laws. 

3  riufarrli,  (;'..  4  Tacit.  Ann.  i.  10. 

6  Plutanh,  Otto;  LnCAO,  Pharml.  ii.  '       •  Seuec.  Ep.  cxiv. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  325 

once  been  to  the  public  games  without  his  knowledge ; * 
Paulus  iEmilius  taking  the  same  step  without  assigning 
any  reason,  and  defending  himself  by  saying,  '  My  shoes 
are  new  and  well  made,  but  no  one  knows  where  they 
pinch  me.'2  Nor  did  women  show  less  alacrity  in  repu- 
diating their  husbands.  Seneca  denounced  this  evil  with 
especial  vehemence,  declaring  that  divorce  in  Eome  no 
longer  brought  with  it  any  shame,  and  that  there  were 
women  who  reckoned  their  years  rather  by  their  husbands 
than  by  the  consuls.3  Christians  and  Pagans  echoed  the 
same  complaint.  According  to  Tertullian,  '  divorce  is 
the  fruit  of  marriage.'4  Martial  speaks  of  a  woman  who 
had  already  arrived  at  her  tenth  husband ; 5  Juvenal,  of 
a  woman  having  eight  husbands  in  five  years.0  But  the 
most  extraordinary  recorded  instance  of  this  kind  is  re- 
lated by  St.  Jerome,  who  assures  us  that  there  existed  at 
Eome  a  wife  who  was  married  to  her  twenty- third 
husband,  she  herself  being  his  twenty-first  wife.7 

These  are,  no  doubt,  extreme  cases ;  but  it  is  un- 
questionable that  the  stability  of  married  life  was  very 
seriously  impaired.  It  would  be  easy,  however,  to  ex- 
aggerate the  influence  of  legal  changes  in  affecting  it.  In 
a  purer  state  of  public  opinion  a  very  wide  latitude  of 
divorce  might  probably  have  been  allowed  to  both  parties, 
without  any  serious  consequence.  The  right  of  repudia- 
tion, which  the  husband  had  always  possessed,  was,  as  we 
have  seen,  in  the  Eepublic  never  or  very  rarely  exercised. 
Of  those  who  scandalised  good  men  by  the  rapid  recur- 
rence of  their  marriages,  probably  most,  if  marriage  was 

i  Val.  Max.  vi.  3. 

2  Plutarch,  Paul.  JEmtl.     It   is  not  quite  clear  whether  this  remark  was 
made  by  Paulus  himself. 

3  Sen.  de  Benef.  iii.  1G.     See,  too,  Ep,  xcv.  Ad  lleiv.  xvi. 

4  Apol.  6.  b  Epi(j.  vi.  7. 
•  Juv.  Sat  vi.  230.                                                           T  Bp.  2. 


326  .      HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

indissoluble,  would  have  refrained  from  entering  into  it, 
and  would  have  contented  themselves  with  many  informal 
connections,  or,  if  they  had  married,  would  have  gratified 
their  love  of  change  by  simple  adultery.     A  vast  wave  of 

,  uption  had  flowed  in  upon  Eome,  and  under  any 
system  of  law  it  would  have  penetrated  into  domestic  life. 
Laws  prohibiting  all  divorce  have  never  secured  the 
purity  of  married  life  in  ages  of  great  corruption,  nor  did 
the  latitude  which  was  accorded  in  imperial  Eome  prevent 
the  existence  of  a  very  large  amount  of  female  virtue. 

I  have  observed  in  a  former  chapter,  that  the  moral 
contrasts  which  were  shown  in  ancient  life  surpass  those 
of  modern  societies,  in  which  we  very  rarely  find  clusters 
of  heroic  or  illustrious  men  arising  in  nations  that  are  in 
general  very  ignorant  or  very  corrupt.  I  have  endea- 
voured to  account  for  this  fact  by  showing  that  the  moral 
ncies  of  antiquity  were  in  general  much  more  fitted  to 
develope  virtue  than  to  repress  vice,  and  that  they  raised 
noble  natures  to  almost  the  highest  conceivable  point  of 
excellence,  while  they  entirely  failed  to  coerce  or  to 
attenuate  the  corruption  of  the  depraved.  In  the  female 
life  of  Imperial  Eome  we  find  these  contrasts  vividly  dis- 
played. There  can  be  no  question  that  the  moral  tone 
of  the  sex  was  extremely  low — lower,  probably,  than  in 
France  under  the  Eegency,  or  in  England  under  the 
Eestoration — and  it  is  also  certain  that  frightful  excesses 
of  unnatural  passion,  of  which  the  most  corrupt  of  modern 
courts  present  no  parallel,  were  perpetrated  with  but  little 
concealment  on  the  Palatine.  Yet  there  is  probably  no 
period  in  which  examples  of  conjugal  heroism  and  fide- 
lity appear  more  frequently  than  in  this  very  age,  in  which 
marriage  was  most  free  and  in  which  corruption  was  so 
general.  Much  simplicity  of  manners  continued  to  co- 
exist with  the  excesses  of  an  almost  unbridled  luxury. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  327 

Augustus,  we  are  told,  used  to  make  his  daughters  and 
grand-daughters  weave  and  spin,  and  his  wife  and  sister 
made  most  of  the  clothes  he  wore.1  The  skill  of  wives  in 
domestic  economy,  and  especially  in  spinning,  was  fre- 
quently noticed  in  their  epitaphs.2  Intellectual  culture 
was  much  diffused  among  them,3  and  we  meet  with  seve- 
ral noble  specimens  in  the  sex,  of  large  and  accomplished 
minds  united  with  all  the  gracefulness  of  intense  woman- 
hood, and  all  the  fidelity  of  the  truest  love.  Such  were 
Cornelia,  the  brilliant  and  devoted  wife  of  Pompey  ; 4 
Marcia,  the  friend,  and  Helvia,  the  mother  of  Seneca. 
The  Northern  Italian  cities  had  in  a  great  degree  escaped 
the  contamination  of  the  times,  and  Padua  was  especially 
noted  for  the  chastity  of  its  women.5  In  an  age  of  extra- 
vagant sensuality  a  noble  lady,  named  Mallonia,  plunged 
her  dagger  in  her  heart  rather  than  yield  to  the  embraces 
of  Tiberius.6  To  the  period  when  the  legal  bond  of 
marriage  was  most  relaxed  must  be  assigned  most  of  those 
noble  examples  of  the  constancy  of  Eoman  wives,  which 
have  been  for  so  many  generations  household  tales  among 
mankind.  Who  has  not  read  with  emotion  of  the  tender- 
ness and  heroism  of  Porcia,  claiming  her  right  to  share  in 
the  trouble  which  clouded  her  husband's  brow ;  how, 
doubting  her  own  courage,  she  did  not  venture  to  ask 
Brutus  to  reveal  to  her  his  enterprise  till  she  had  secretly 
tried  her  power  of  endurance  by  piercing  her  thigh  with  a 

1  Sueton.  Aug.  Charlemagne,  in  like  manner,  made  his  daughters  work 
in  wool.     (Eginhardus,  Vit.  Kar.  Mag.  xix.) 

2  Friedlander,  Maiurs  romaines  du  regno  iCAvguste  a  la  Jin  des  Antoninx 
(trad,  franc.),  tome  i.  p.  414. 

3  Much  evidence  of  this  is  collected  by  Friedliinder,  tome  i.  pp.  387-395. 

4  Plutarch,  Pompeius. 

5  Martial,  xi.  16,  mentions  the  reputation  of  the  women  of  Padua  for 
virtue.  The  younger  Pliny  also  notices  the  austere  and  antique  virtue  of 
Brescia  (Brixia). — Ep.  i.  14. 

6  Suet.  Tiberius,  xlv. 

55 


S28  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

knife  ;  how  once,  and  but  once  in  his  presence,  her  noble 
spirit  failed,  when,  as  she  was  about  to  separate  from  him 
for  the  last  time,  her  eye  chanced  to  fall  upon  a  picture 
of  the  parting  interview  of  Hector  and  Andromache?1 
Paulina,  the  wife  of  Seneca,  opened  her  own  veins  in 

I  r  to  accompany  her  husband  to  the  grave ;  when 
much  blood  had  already  flowed,  her  slaves  and  freedmen 
bound  her  wounds,  and  thus  compelled  her  to  live ;  but 
the  Romans  ever  after  observed  with  reverence  the  sacred 
pallor  of  her  countenance — the  memorial  of  her  act.2 
When  Paatus  was  condemned  to  die  by  his  own  hand, 
those  who  knew  the  love  which  his  wife  Arria  bore  him, 
and  the  heroic  fervour  of  her  character,  predicted  that  she 
would  not  long  survive  him.  Thrasea,  who  had  married 
her  daughter,  endeavoured  to  dissuade  her  from  suicide 
by  saying,  '  If  I  am  ever  called  upon  to  perish,  would  you 
wish  your  daughter  to  die  with  me  ?  '  She  answered, '  Yes, 
if  she  will  have  then  lived  with  you  as  long  and  as  hap- 
pily as  I  with  Partus.'  Her  friends  attempted,  by  care- 
fully watching  her,  to  secure  her  safety,  but  she  dashed 
her  head  against  the  wall  with  such  force  that  she  fell 
upon  the  ground,  and  then,  rising  up,  she  said,  '  I  told  you 
I  would  find  a  hard  way  to  death  if  you  refuse  me  an 
easy  way.'  All  attempts  to  restrain  her  were  then  aban- 
doned, and  her  death  was  perhaps  the  most  majestic  in 
antiquity.  rectus  for  a  moment  hesitated  to  strike  the 
fatal  blow  ;  but  his  wife,  taking  the  dagger,  plunged  it 
deeply  in  her  own  breast,  and  then  drawing  it  out,  gave  it, 
all  reeking  as  it  was,  to  her  husband,  exclaiming,  with 
her  dying  breath,  '  My  Partus,  it  does  not  pain.'  ° 

The  form  of  the  elder  Arria  towers  grandly  above 
her  fellows,  but  many  other  Roman  wives  in  the  days  of 

1  Plutarch,  Sm',us.  3  Tacit.  Annul  xv.  G3-G4. 

9  •  Facte,  non  dolet.'  -  riio.  Ep.  iii.  1G  ;  Martial,  Ep.  i.  11. 


THE  POSITION   OF  WOMEN.  329 

the  early  Csesars  and  Domitian  exhibited  a  very  similar 
fidelity.  Over  the  dark  waters  of  the  Euxine,  into  those 
unknown  and  inhospitable  regions  from  which  the  Eoman 
imagination  recoiled  with  a  peculiar  horror,  many  noble 
ladies  freely  followed  their  husbands,  and  there  were 
some  wives  who  refused  to  survive  them.1  The  younger 
Arria  was  the  faithful  companion  of  Thrasea  during  his 
heroic  life,  and  when  he  died  she  was  only  persuaded  to 
live  that  she  might  bring  up  their  daughters.2  She  spent 
the  closing  days  of  Domitian  in  exile,3  while  her  daughter, 
who  was  as  remarkable  for  the  gentleness  as  for  the  dig- 
nity of  her  character,4  went  twice  into  exile  with  her  hus- 
band Helvidius,  and  was  once  banished,  after  his  death,  for 
defending  his  memory.5  Incidental  notices  in  historians, 
and  a  few  inscriptions  which  have  happened  to  survive, 
show  us  that  such  instances  were  not  uncommon,  and  in 
the  Eoman  epitaphs  that  remain,  no  feature  is  more  re- 
markable than  the  deep  and  passionate  expressions  of 
conjugal  love  that  continually  occur.0  It  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  find  a  more  touching  image  of  that  love,  than  the 
medallion  which  is  so  common  on  the  Eoman  sarcophagi, 
in  which  husband  and  wife  are  represented  together,  each 
with  an  arm  thrown  fondly  over  the  shoulder  of  the  other, 
united  in  death  as  they  had  been  in  life,  and  meeting  it 
with  an  aspect  of  perfect  calm,  because  they  were  com- 
panions in  the  tomb. 

1  Tacit.  Annal,  xvi.  10-11 ;  Hist.  i.  3.     See,  too,  Fricdlander,  tome  i. 
p.  406. 

3  Tacit.  Ann.  xvi.  34. 

3  Pliny  mentions  her  return  after  the  death  of  the  tyrant  {JEp.  iii.  11). 

4  l  Quod  paucis  datum  est,  non  minus  amabilis  quam  veneranda.'— Flin. 
JEp.  vii.  19. 

5  See  Plin.  Ep.  vii.  10.     Dion  Cassius  and  Tacitus  relate  the  exiles  of 
Helvidius,  who  appears  to  have  been  rather  intemperate  and  unreasonable. 

H  Friedlander  gives  many  and  most  touching  examples,   tome  i.  pp. 
410-414. 


830  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

Ill  the  latter  days  of  the  Pagan  Empire  some  measures 
were  taken  to  repress  the  profligacy  that  was  so  prevalent. 
Domitian  enforced  the  old  Scantinian  law  against  un- 
natural love.1  Vespasian  moderated  the  luxury  of  the 
court ;  Macrinus  caused  those  who  had  committed  adul- 
tery to  be  bound  together  and  burnt  alive.'2  A  practice 
of  men  and  women  bathing  together  was  condemned  by 
Hadrian,  and  afterwards  by  Alexander  Severus,  but  was 
only  finally  suppressed  by  Constantino .  Alexander  Se- 
verus and  Philip  waged  an  energetic  war  against  pandars.3 
The  extreme  excesses  of  this,  as  of  most  forms  of  vice, 
were  probably  much  diminished  after  the  accession  of  the 
Antonines ;  but  Borne  continued  to  be  a  centre  of  very 
great  corruption  till  the  combined  influence  of  Christianity, 
the  removal  of  the  court  to  Constantinople,  and  the  im- 
poverishment that  followed  the  barbarian  conquests,  in  a 
-ure  corrected  the  evil. 

Among  the  moralists,  however,  some  important  steps 
were  taken.  One  of  the  most  important  was  a  very 
clear  assertion  of  the  reciprocity  of  that  obligation  to 
fidelity  in  marriage  which  in  the  early  stages  of  society 
had  been  imposed  almost  exclusively  upon  wives.4  The 
legends  of  Clytemnestra  and  of  Medea  reveal  the  feel- 
ings of  fierce  resentment  which  were  sometimes  pro- 
duced among  Greek  wives  by  the  almost  unlimited 
indulgence  that  was  accorded 'to  their  husbands;5  and 

iot.  Dom.  viii.  2  Capitolinus,  Macrinus. 

I.  mpridius,  A.  Sevenm, 

4  In  the  oration  against  Nee?ra,  which  is  ascribed  to  Demosthenes,  hut 
U  of  doubtful  genuineness,  the  license  accorded  to  husbands  is  spoken 
of  as  a  matter  of  course  :  \  We  keep  mistresses  for  our  pleasure,  concubines 
for  constant  attendance,  and  wives  to  bear  us  legitimate  children,  and  to  be 
our  faithful  housekeepers.' 

*  There  is  a  remarkable  passage  on  the  feelings  of  wives,  in  different 
nations,  upon  this  point,  in  Athenceus,  xiii.  3.  See,  too,  Plutarch,  Con}. 
Viae. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  331 

it  is  told  of  Andromache,  as  the  supreme  instance  of 
her  love  of  Hector,  that  she  cared  for  his  illegitimate 
children  as  much  as  for  her  own.1  In  early  Borne,  the 
obligations  of  husbands  were  never,  I  imagine,  altogether 
unfelt,  but  they  were  rarely  or  never  enforced,  nor  were 
they  ever  regarded  as  bearing  any  kind  of  equality  to 
those  imposed  upon  the  wife.  The  term  adultery,  and  all 
the  legal  penalties  connected  with  it,  were  restricted  to  the 
infractions  by  a  wife  of  the  •nuptial  tie.  Among  the 
many  instances  of  magnanimity  recorded  of  Eoman  wives, 
few  are  more  touching  than  that  of  Tertia  iEmilia,  the 
faithful  wife  of  Scipio.  She  discovered  that  her  husband 
had  become  enamoured  of  one  of  her  slaves ;  but  she  bore 
her  pain  in  silence,  and  when  he  died  she  gave  liberty  to 
her  captive,  for  she  could  not  bear  that  she  should  remain 
in  servitude  whom  her  dear  lord  had  loved.2 

Aristotle  had  clearly  asserted  the  duty  of  husbands  to 
observe  in  marriage  the  same  fidelity  as  they  expected 
from  their  wives,3  and  at  a  later  period  both  Plutarch  and 
Seneca  enforced  it  in  the  strongest  and  most  unequivocal 
manner.4    The  degree  to  which,  in  theory  at  least,  it  won 

1  Euripid.  Andromache. 

2  Valer.  Max.  vi.  7,  §  1.  Some  very  scandalous  instances  of  cynicism 
on  the  part  of  Roman  husbands  are  recorded.  Thus,  Augustus  had  many 
mistresses,  'Quae  [virgines]  sibi  undique  etiam  ab  uxore  conquirerentur.' — 
Sueton.  Aug.  lxxi.  When  the  wife  of  Verus,  the  colleague  of  Marcus  Au- 
relius,  complained  of  the  tastes  of  her  husband,  he  answered,  '  Uxor  enini 
dignitatis  nomen  est,  non  voluptas.' — Spartian.  Verus. 

3  Aristotle,  Econom.  i.  4-8-9. 

4  Plutarch  enforces  the  duty  at  length,  in  his  very  beautiful  work  on 
marriage.  In  case  husbands  are  guilty  of  infidelity,  he  recommends  their 
wives  to  preserve  a  prudent  blindness,  reflecting  that  it  is  out  of  respect 
for  them  that  they  choose  another  woman  as  the  companion  of  their  intem- 
perance. Seneca  touches  briefly,  but  unequivocally,  on  the  subject :  '  Scis 
improbum  esse  qui  ab  uxore  pudicitiam  exigit,  ipse  alienarum  corruptor 
uxorum.  Scis  ut  illi  nil  cum  adultero,  sic  nihil  tibi  esse  debere  cum  pel- 
lice.' — Ep.  xciv.  '  Sciet  in  uxorem  gravissim  m  esse  genus  injuria,  habere 
pellicem.' — Ep.  xcv. 


380  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

its  way  iii  Roman  life  is  shown  by  its  recognition  as 
a  legal  maxim  by  Ulpian,1  and  by  its  appearance  in  a 
formal  judgment  of  Antoninus  Pius,  who,  while  issuing, 
at  the  request  of  a  husband,  a  condemnation  for  adultery 
against  a  guilty  wife,  appended  to  it  this  remarkable  con- 
dition :  '  Provided  always  it  is  established  that  by  your 
life  you  gave  her  an  example  of  fidelity.  It  would  be 
unjust  that  a  husband  should  exact  a  fidelity  he  does  not 
himself  keep.'2 

Another  change,  which  may  be  dimly  descried  in  the 
later  Pagan  society,  was  a  tendency  to  regard  purity 
rather  in  a  mystical  point  of  view,  as  essentially  good, 
than  in  the  utilitarian  point  of  view.  This  change  resulted 
chiefly  from  the  rise  of  the  JNeoplatonic  and  Pythagorean 
philosophies,  which  concurred  in  regarding  the  body, 
witli  its  passions,  as  essentially  evil,  and  in  representing 
all  virtue  as  a  purification  from  its  taint.  Its  most  im- 
portant consequence  was  a  somewhat  stricter  view  of 
pre-nuptial  unchastity,  which  in  the  case  of  men,  and 
when  it  was  not  excessive,  and  did  not  take  the  form  of 
adultery,  had  previously  been  uncensured,  or  was  looked 
upon  with  a  disapprobation  so  slight  as  scarcely  to 
amount  to  censure.  The  elder  Cato  had  expressly  justi- 
fied it,3  and  Cicero  has  left  us  an  extremely  curious 
judgment  on  the  subject,  which  shows  at  a  glance  the  feel- 
ings of  the  people,  and  the  vast  revolution  that,  under  the 
influence  of  Christianity,  has  been  effected  in  at  least  the 
professions  of  mankind.     '  If  there  be  any  one,'  he  says, 

1  '  Periniquum  enim  videtur  esse,  ut  pudieitiam  vir  ab  uxore  exigat, 
quam  ipse  dod  exhibeai.' — Cod.  Just.  Dig.  xlviii.  o-13. 

2  Quoted  by  St.  Augustine,  De  Couj.  Adult,  ii.  19.  Plautus,  long  before, 
had  made  one  of  his  characters  complain  of  the  injustice  of  the  laws  which 
punished  unchaste  wives  but  not  uncha.-lf  husbands;  and  lie  asks  why, 
since  every  honest  woman  is  contented  with  one  husband,  should  not  every 
honest  man  be.  contented  with  one  wile  ?     (Mcnaiur,  Act  iv.  tccne  o.) 

*  Horace,  Hat.  i.  2. 


THE  POSITION   OF  WOMEN.  333 

■  who  thinks  that  young  men  should  be  altogether  re- 
strained from  the  love  of  courtesans,  he  is  indeed  very 
severe.  I  am  not  prepared  to  deny  his  position  ;  but  he 
differs  not  only  from  the  license  of  our  age,  but  also  from 
the  customs  and  allowances  of  our  ancestors.  When, 
indeed,  was  this  not  done  ?  When  was  it  blamed  ?  When 
was  it  not  allowed  ?  When  was  that  which  is  now  law- 
ful not  lawful  ? ' \  Epictetus,  who  on  most  subjects  was 
among  the  most  austere  of  the  stoics,  recommends  his 
disciples  to  abstain,  'as  far  as  possible,'  from  prenup- 
tial  connections,  and  at  least  from  those  which  were 
adulterous  and  unlawful,  but  not  to  blame  those  who  were 
less  strict.2  The  feeling  of  the  Eomans  is  curiously  exem- 
plified in  the  life  of  Alexander  Severus,  who,  of  all  the 
emperors,  was  probably  the  most  energetic  in  legislating 
against  vice.  When  appointing  a  provincial  governor, 
he  was  accustomed  to  provide  him  with  horses  and 
servants,  and,  if  he  was  unmarried,  with  a  concubine, 
'  because,'  as  the  historian  very  gravely  observes,  '  it  was 
impossible  that  he  could  exist  without  one.'  3 

What  was  written  among  the  Pagans  in  opposition  to 

1  '  Verum  si  quis  est  qui  etiam  meretriciis  amoribus  interdictum  juventuti 
putet,  est  ille  quidem  valde  severus ;  negare  non  possum  ;  sed  abhorret 
non  modo  ab  hujus  ssecnli  licentia,  verum  etiam  a  majorum  consuetudine 
atque  concessis.  Quando  enim  hoc  factum  non  est  ?  Quando  reprehensum  ? 
Quando  non  permissum  ?  Quando  denique  fuit  ut  quod  licet  non  liceret  ?  ' — 
Cicero,  Pro  Ccclio,  cap.  xx.  The  whole  speech  is  well  worthy  of  the  atten- 
tion of  those  who  would  understand  Roman  feelings  on  these  matters ; 
but  it  should  be  remembered  that  it  is  the  speech  of  a  lawyer  defending  a 
dissolute  client. 

2  \Upi  a-ppoCKnct)  tiQ  cvvcifiiv  7rfti>  yapov  ica6aptvrtoi\  anTO/jivy  Of,  wwopifio* 
t(TTt,  /asroX if a-rlor,  p)  fiiv  rot  iira\Qif^  yivov  r«7<;  yowjuroir,  jtiqoi  ftrycrtxoV, 
mjot  TroXXayoj)  ro,  "On  ovtoq  ov  \py,  vapiiiipt. — Enchir.  xxxiii. 

8  '  Et  si  uxores  non  haberent,  singulas  concubinas,  quod  sine  his  esse 
non  possent.' — Lampridius,  A.  Scrims.  We  have  an  amusing  pic-lure  of  the 
common  tone  of  people  of  the  world  on  this  matter,  in  the  speech  Apuleiua 
puts  into  the  mouth  of  the  gods,  remonstrating  with  Venus  for  being  angry 
because  her  son  formed  a  connection  with  Psyche.     (Metam.  lib.  v.) 


834  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

these  views  was  not  much,  but  it  is  worthy  of  notice,  as 
illustrating  the  tendency  that  had  arisen.  Musonius  Eufus 
distinctly  and  emphatically  asserted  that  no  union  of 
the  sexes  other  than  marriage  was  permissible.1  Dion 
Ghrysostom  desired  prostitution  to  be  suppressed  by 
law.  The  ascetic  notion  of  the  impurity  even  of 
marriage  may  be  faintly  traced.  Apollonius  of  Tyana 
lived,  on  this  ground,  a  life  of  celibacy.2  Zenobia  re- 
fused to  cohabit  with  her  husband,  except  so  far  as  was 
necessary  for  the  production  of  an  heir.3  Hypatia  is  said, 
like  many  Christian  saints,  to  have  maintained  the  un- 
natural position  of  a  virgin  wife.4  The  belief  in  the 
impurity  of  all  corporeal  things,  and  of  the  duty  of  rising 
ve  them,  was  in  the  third  century  strenuously  enforced.5 
Marcus  Aurelius,  and  Julian  were  both  admirable  repre- 
sentatives of  the  best  Pagan  spirit  of  their  time.  Each 
of  them  lost  his  wife  early,  each  was  eulogised  by  his 
biographer  for  the  virtue  he  manifested  after  her  death ; 
but  there  is  a  curious  and  characteristic  difference  in 
the  forms  which  that  virtue  assumed.  Marcus  Aurelius, 
we  are  told,  did  not  wish  to  bring  into  his  house  a  step- 
mother to  rule  over  his  children,  and  accordingly  took  a 
concubine.6  Julian  ever  after  lived  in  perfect  continence.7 
The  foregoing  facts,  which  I  have  given  in  the  most 
condensed  form,  and  almost  unaccompanied  by  criticism 
or  by  comment,  will  be  sufficient,  I  hope,  to  exhibit  the 

1  Preserved  by  Stobfeus.     See  Denis,  Hist,  des  Idces  morales  dans  T  An- 
tif/uifr,  tome  ii.  pp.  184-166,  149-160. 

1  Philos.  ApoL  i.  IS.    When  a  Baying  of  Pythagoras,  'that  a  man  should 
only  have  commerce  with   his  own  wife,'  was  quoted,  he  said  that  this 
concerned  others. 
•   %  TrebelHna  l'<»lli<>,  Zenobia, 

4  TMsifl  asserted  by  an  anonymous  writer  quoted  by  Suidas.   See  Menage, 
Wii/i,  ruin  VhQo9opharwn%  p.  58. 

Plotinoa,  1st  Eon.  vi.  6.  6  Capitolinus,  M.  Aurelius. 

7  Amm.  Marcell.  xxv.  4. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  335 

state  of  feeling  of  the  Eoraans  on  this  subject,  and  also 
the  direction  in  which  that  feeling  was  being  modified. 
Those  who  are  familiar  with  this  order  of  studies  will 
readily  understand  that  it  is  impossible  to  mark  out 
with  precision  the  chronology  of  a  moral  sentiment ;  but 
there  can  be  no  question  that  in  the  latter  days  of  the 
Eoman  Empire  the  perceptions  of  men  on  this  subject 
became  more  subtle  and  more  refined  than  they  had 
previously  been,  and  it  is  equally  certain  that  the  Oriental 
philosophies  which  had  superseded  stoicism,  largely  in- 
fluenced the  change.  Christianity  soon  constituted  itself 
the  representative  of  the  new  tendency.  It  regarded 
purity  as  the  most  important  of  all  virtues,  and  it  strained 
to  the  utmost  all  the  vast  agencies  it  possessed,  to  enforce 
it.  In  the  legislation  of  the  first  Christian  emperors  we 
find  many  traces  of  a  fiery  zeal.  Panders  were  con- 
demned to  have  molten  lead  poured  down  their  throats. 
In  the  case  of  rape,  not  only  the  ravisher,  but  even  the 
injured  person,  if  she  consented  to  the  act,  was  put  to 
death.1  A  great  service  was  done  to  the  cause  both  of 
purity  and  of  philanthropy,  by  a  law  which  permitted 
actresses,  on  receiving  baptism,  to  abandon  their  profes- 
sion, which  had  been  made  a  form  of  slavery,  and  was 
virtually  a  slavery  to  vice.2  Certain  musical  girls,  who 
were  accustomed  to  sing  or  play  at  the  banquets  of  the 
rich,  and  who  were  regarded  with  extreme  horror  by  the 
Fathers,  were  suppressed,  and  a  very  stringent  law  forbade 
the  revival  of  the  class.8 


1   Cod.  Theod.  lib.  ix.  tit.  24.  2  Cod.  Theod.  lib.  xv.  tit.  7. 

3  '  Fidicinam  nulli  liceat  vel  emere  vel  docere  vel  vendere,  vel  conviviis 
out  spectaculis  adhibere.  Nee  cuiquam  aut  delectationis  desiderio  erudita 
feminea  aut  music®  artis  studio  liceat  habere  mancipia.' — Cod.  Theod.  xv.  7, 
10.  This  curious  law  was  issued  in  a.d.  385.  St.  Jerome  said  these  musicians 
were  the  chorus  of  the  devil,  and  quite  as  dangerous  as  the  sirens.  6eo 
the  comments  on  the  law. 


330  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

Side  by  side  with  the  civil  legislation,  the  penitential 
islation  of  the  Church  was  exerted  in  the  same  direc- 
tion.  Sins  of  unchastity  probably  occupy  a  larger  place 
than  any  other  in  its  enactments.  The  cases  of  unna- 
tural love,  and  of  mothers  who  had  made  their  daughters 
courtesans,  were  punished  by  perpetual  exclusion  from 
communion,  and  a  crowd  of  minor  offences  were  severely 
visited.  The  ascetic  passion  increased  the  prominence 
of  this  branch  of  ethics,  and  the  imaginations  of  men 
were  soon  fascinated  by  the  pure  and  noble  figures  of 
the  virgin  martyrs  of  the  Church,  who,  in  the  hour 
of  martyrdom,  on  more  than  one  occasion  fully  equalled 
the  courage  of  men,  while  they  sometimes  mingled 
with  their  heroism  traits  of  the  most  exquisite  feminine 
gentleness.  For  the  patient  endurance  of  excruciating 
physical  suffering,  Christianity  produced  no  more  sublime 
figure  than  Blandina,  the  poor  servant-girl  who  was 
martyred  at  Lyons ;  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  in  all 
history  a  more  touching  picture  of  natural  purity  than  is 
contained  in  one  simple  incident  of  the  martyrdom  of 
St.  Perpetua.  It  is  related  of  that  saint  that  she  was 
condemned  to  be  slaughtered  by  a  wild  bull,  and  as  she 
fell  half  dead  from  its  horns  upon  the  sand  of  the  arena, 
it  was  observed  that  even  in  that  awful  moment  her 
virgin  modesty  was  supreme,  and  her  first  instinctive 
movement  was  to  draw  together  her  dress,  which  had 
been  torn  in  the  assault.1 

1  Ruinart,  Act.  S.  Perpetua.  These  acts  are,  I  believe,  generally  re- 
garded as  authentic.  There  is  nothing1  more  instructive  in  history  than 
to  trace  the  same  moral  feelings  through  different  ages  and  religions; 
and  I  am  able  in  this  case  to  present  the  reader  with  an  illustration  of  their 
permanence,  which  I  think  somewhat  remarkable.  The  younger  Pliny  give! 
in  one  of  his  letters  a  most  dreadful  account  of  the  execution  of  Cornelia, 
a  vestal  virgin,  by  the  order  o/  Domitian.  She  was  buried  alive  for  inceM  ; 
but  her  innocence  appears  In  bate  been  generally  believed  ;  and  she  had  been 
condemned  unheard,  mid  in  her  absence.     As  she  was  being  lowered  iuLo 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  337 

A  crowd  of  very  curious  popular  legends  also  arose, 
which,  though  they  are  for  the  most  part  without  much 
intrinsic  excellence,  have  their  importance  in  history,  as 
showing  the  force  with  which  the  imaginations  of  men 
were  turned  in  this  direction,  and  the  manner  in  which 
Christianity  was  regarded  as  the  great  enemy  of  the 
passions  of  the  flesh.  Thus,  St.  Jerome  relates  an  in- 
credible story  of  a  young  Christian  being,  in  the  Diocle- 
tian persecution,  bound  with  ribands  of  silk  in  the 
midst  of  a  lovely  garden,  surrounded  by  everything 
that  could  charm  the  ear  and  the  eye,  while  a  beau- 
tiful courtesan  assailed  him  with  her  blandishments, 
against  which  he  protected  himself  by  biting  out  his 
tongue  and  spitting  it  in  her  face.1  Legends  are 
recounted  of  young  Christian  men  assuming  the  garb 
and  manners  of  libertines,  that  they  might  obtain 
access  to  maidens  who  had  been  condemned  to  vice, 
exchanging  dresses  with  them,  and  thus  enabling  them 
to  escape.2  St.  Agnes  was  said  to  have  been  stripped 
naked   before   the    people,  who  all   turned  away  their 

the  subterranean  cell  her  dress  was  caught  and  deranged  in  the  descent. 
She  turned  round  and  drew  it  to  her,  and  when  the  executioner  stretched 
out  his  hand  to  assist  her,  she  started  back  lest  he  should  touch  her,  for  this, 
according  to  the  received  opinion,  was  a  pollution  j  and  even  in  the  supreme 
moment  of  her  agony  her  vestal  purity  shrank  from  the  unholy  contact. 
(Plin.  Bp.  iv.  11.)  If  we  now  pass  back  several  centuries,  we  find  Eiui- 
pides  attributing  to  Polyxena  a  trait  precisely  similar  to  that  which  was 
attributed  to  Perpetua.  As  she  fell  beneath  the  sword  of  the  executioner, 
it  was  observed  that  her  last  care  was  that  she  might  fall  with  decency. 

>'/  be  Kctl  dviiOKOvo'  (i/jwt,' 
zoWrjv  Trpovoiav  tlxtv  tbaxh^Q  irttnh'j 
KpvKTovo'  a  KpviTTiiv  oft/tar'  apa'ivwv  xptaw. 

Euripides,  Ilec.  566-68. 

1  Vita  Fault. 

2  St.  Ambrose  relates  an  instance  of  this,  which  he  says  occurred  at  An- 
tioch  {Be  Virrjinibus,  lib.  ii.  cap.  iv.).  When  the  Christian  youth  was 
beino-  led  to  execution,  the  girl  whom  he  had  saved  reappeared  and  died 
with  him.  Eusebius  tells  a  very  similar  story,  but  places  the  scene  at 
Alexandria. 


$38  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

9  except  one  young  man,  who  was  instantly  turned 
blind.1  The  sister  of  St.  Gregory  of  Nyssa  was  afflicted 
with  a  cancer  in  her  breast,  but  could  not  bear  that 
a  surgeon  should  see  it,  and  was  rewarded  for  her 
modesty  by  a  miraculous  cure.2  To  the  fabled  zone  of 
beauty  the  Christian  saints  opposed  their  zones  of  chastity, 
which  extinguished  the  passion  of  the  wearer,  or  would 
only  meet  around  the  pure.3  Daemons  were  said  not  un- 
irequently  to  have  entered  into  the  profligate.  The  gar- 
ment of  a  girl  who  was  possessed  was  brought  to  St. 
Pachomius,  and  he  discovered  from  it  that  she  had  a  lover.4 
A  courtesan  accused  St.  Gregory  Thaumaturgus  of  having 
been  her  lover,  and  having  refused  to  pay  her  what  he 
had  promised.  He  paid  the  required  sum,  but  she  was 
immediately  possessed  by  a  daemon.5  The  efforts  of  the 
saints  to  reclaim  courtesans  from  the  path  of  vice  created 
a  large  class  of  legends.  St.  Mary  Magdalene,  St.  Maiy 
of  Egypt,  St.  Afra,  St.  Pelagia,  St.  Thais,  and  St,  Theodota, 
in  the  early  Church,  as  well  as  St.  Marguerite  of  Cortona, 
and  Clara  of  Rimini,  in  the  middle  ages,  had  been  cour- 
tesans.6 St.  Vitalius  was  said  to  have  been  accustomed 
every  night  to  visit  the  dens  of  vice  in  his  neighbourhood, 
to  give  the  inmates  money  to  remain  without  sin  for  that 

1  See  Ceillier,  Hist,  des  Auteurs  cedes,  tome  iii.  p.  523. 

■  Ibid,  tome  viii.  pp.  204-207. 

s  Among  the  Irish  saints  St.  Colman  is  said  to  have  had  a  girdle  which 
would  only  meet  around  the  chaste,  and  was  long  preserved  in  Ireland  as  a 
relic  (Oolgfcn,  Ada  Sanctorum  Htbernic.  (Louvain,  1G45),  vol.  i.  \\  246)  : 
and  St.  FarWBUfl  a  girdle  that  extinguished  lust.  (Ibid.  p.  202.)  The 
girdle  of  St  Thomas  Aquinas  seems  to  have  had  some  miraculous  pro- 
pertiefl  <>f  this  kind.  (See  his  life  in  the  Bollandists,  Sept.  20.)  Among 
both  the  Greeki  and  Romans  it  was  customary  for  the  bride  to  be  girt 
with  a  girdle  which  the  bridegroom  unloosed  in  the  nuptial  bed,  and  hence 
'zonam  ml\  ere '  became  a  proverbial  expression  for  'pudicitinm  mulieria 
imininuere.'  (Nieupoort,  De  Ritibw  Bdmanarum,  p.  470;  Alexander's 
7  of  Women,  rot  ii.  p.  o00.) 

4   1  'it.  &  Pachom.  (IJosweyde).     6  See  his  Life,  by  Gregory  of  Nyesa. 

1  .V  little  book  has  been  written  on  these  legends  by  M.  Charles  de 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  339 

night,  and  to  offer  up  prayers  for  their  conversion.1  It  is 
related  of  St.  Serapion,  that  as  he  was  passing  through 
a  village  in  Egypt  a  courtesan  beckoned  to  him.  He 
promised  at  a  certain  hour  to  visit  her.  He  kept  his 
appointment,  but  declared  that  there  was  a  duty  which 
his  order  imposed  on  him.  He  fell  down  on  his  knees 
and  began  repeating  the  Psalter,  concluding  every  psalm 
with  a  prayer  for  his  hostess.  The  strangeness  of  the 
scene,  and  the  solemnity  of  his  tone  and  manner,  overawed 
and  fascinated  her.  Gradually  her  tears  began  to  flow. 
She  knelt  beside  him  and  began  to  join  in  his  prayers. 
He  heeded  her  not,  but  hour  after  hour  continued  in 
the  same  stern  and  solemn  voice,  without  rest  and  with- 
out interruption,  to  repeat  his  alternate  prayers  and  psalms, 
till  her  repentance  rose  to  a  paroxysm  of  terror,  and  as 
the  grey  morning  streaks  began  to  illumine  the  horizon, 
she  fell  half  dead  at  his  feet,  imploring  him  with  broken 
sobs  to  lead  her  anywhere  where  she  might  expiate  the 
sins  of  her  past.2 

But  the  services  rendered  by  the  ascetics  in  imprinting 
on  the  minds  of  men  a  profound  and  enduring  conviction 
of  the  importance  of  chastity,  though  extremely  great, 
were  seriously  counterbalanced  by  their  noxious  influence 
upon  marriage.  Two  or  three  beautiful  descriptions  of 
this  institution  have  been  culled  out  of  the  immense 
mass  of  the  patristic  writings ; 3  but  in  general,  it  would  be 

Bussy,  called  Les  Courtisanes  saintes.  There  is  said  to  be  some  doubt  about 
St.  Afra;  for  while  her  acts  represent  her  as  a  reformed  courtesan,  St.  Fortu- 
natus,  in  two  lines  he  has  devoted  to  her,  calls  her  a  virgin.  (Ozanam, 
Etudes  german.  tome  ii.  p.  8.) 

1  See  the  Vit.  Sancti  Joannis  Bleemosynarii  (Bosweyde). 

3  Tillemont,  tome  x.  pp.  61-G2.  There  is  also  a  very  picturesque  legend 
of  the  manner  in  which  St.  Paphnutius  converted  the  courtesan  Thais. 

s  gee  especially,  Tertullian,  Ad  JJxorem.  It  was  beautifully  said  at  a 
later  period,  that  woman  was  not  taken  from  the  head  of  man,  for  she  was 
not  intended  to  be  his  ruler,  nor  from  his  feet,  for  she  was  not  intended 


340  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

difficult  to  conceive  anything  more  coarse  or  more  repnl- 
than  the  manner  in  which  they  regarded  it.1  The 
relation  which  nature  lias  designed  for  the  noble  purpose 
of  repairing  the  ravages  of  death,  and  which,  as  Linnasus 
has  shown,  extends  even  through  the  world  of  flowers, 
was  invariably  treated  as  a  consequence  of  the  fall  of 
Adam,  and  marriage  was  regarded  almost  exclusively  in 
its  lowest  aspect.  The  tender  love  which  it  elicits,  the 
holy  and  beautiful  domestic  qualities  that  follow  in  its 
train,  were  almost  absolutely  omitted  from  consideration.2 
The  object  of  the  ascetic  was  to  attract  men  to  a  life  of 
virginity,  and  as  a  necessary  consequence,  marriage  was 
treated  as  an  inferior  state.  It  was  regarded  as  being 
necessary,  indeed,  and  therefore  justifiable,  for  the  propa- 
gation of  the  species,  and  to  free  men  from  greater  evils ; 
but  still  as  a  condition  of  degradation  from  which  all 
who  aspired  to  real  sanctity  could  fly.  To  '  cut  down  by 
the  axe  of  Virginity  the  wood  of  Marriage,'  was,  in  the 
energetic  language  of  St.  Jerome,  the  end  of  the  saint;3 
and  if  he  consented  to  praise  marriage,  it  was  merely 
because  it  produced  virgins.4  Even  when  the  bond  had 
been  formed,  the  ascetic  passion  retained  its  sting.     We 

to  be  liia  slave,  but  from  h;s  side,  for  she  was  to  be  his  companion  and  his 
!t.     (  Peter  Lombard,  Smten.  lib.  ii.  dis.  18.) 

1  The  reader  may  find  many  passages  on  this  subject  in  Barbeyrac,  Morale 
ties  Ih'es,  ii.  §  7;  iii.  §  8  ;  iv.  §  81-36 ;  vi.  §  81  ;  xiii.  §  2-8. 

2  'It  is  remarkable  bow  rarely,  if  ever  (I  cannot  call  to  mind  an 
instance),  in  the  discussions  of  the  comparative  merits  of  marriage  and 
celibacy  tht  BOeia]  advantages  appear  to  have  occurred  to  the  mind.  ...  It 

jir- tied  with  relation  to  the  interests  and  the  perfection  of  the  indi- 
vidual m>u1  ;  and  even  with  regard  to  that,  the  writers  seem  almost  uncon- 
Bciotu  softening  and  humanising  effect  of  the  natural  affections,  the 

beauty  of  parental  tenderness  ancj  iilial  love.'— Milnian'sJJi^.  of  Christianity, 
vol  iii.  p.  190. 

3  'Tempus  bieve  est,  et  jam  securis  ad  radices  arborum  posita  est,  qu» 
silvani  lejjis  et  nuptiarimi  eviingelica  castitate  succidat' — Ep.  exxiii. 

1  'Loudo  Miptia-,  laudo  conjngiiim,  aed  quia  niihi  virgines  generant.'— 
I  xii 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  341 

have  already  seen  how  it  embittered  other  relations  ot 
domestic  life.  Into  this,  the  holiest  of  all,  it  infused  a 
tenfold  bitterness.  Whenever  any  strong  religious  fervour 
fell  upon  a  husband  or  a  wife,  its  first  effect  was  to  make 
a  happy  union  impossible.  The  more  religious  partner 
immediately  desired  to  live  a  life  of  solitary  asceticism, 
or  at  least,  if  no  ostensible  separation  took  place,  an  un- 
natural life  of  separation  in  marriage.  The  immense 
place  this  order  of  ideas  occupies  in  the  hortatory 
writings  of  the  fathers,  and  in  the  legends  of  the  saints, 
must  be  familiar  to  all  who  have  any  knowledge  of  this 
department  of  literature.  Thus — to  give  but  a  very  few 
Bxamples — St.  Nilus,  when  he  had  already  two  children, 
was  seized  with  a  longing  for  the  prevailing  asceticism, 
and  his  wife  was  persuaded,  after  many  tears,  to  consent 
to  their  separation.1  St.  Amnion,  on  the  night  of  his 
marriage,  proceeded  to  greet  his  bride  with  an  harangue 
upon  the  evils  of  the  married  state,  and  they  agreed,  in 
consequence,  at  once  to  separate.2  St.  Melania  laboured 
long  and  earnestly  to  induce  her  husband  to  allow  her  to 
desert  his  bed,  before  he  would  consent.3  St.  Abraham 
ran  away  from  his  wife  on  the  night  of  his  marriage.4 
St.  Alexis,  according  to  a  somewhat  later  legend,  took 
the  same  step,  but  many  years  after  returned  from 
Jerusalem  to  his  father's  house,  in  which  his  wife  was 
still  lamenting  her  desertion,  begged  and  received  a 
lodging  as  an  act  of  charity,  and  lived  there  despised, 
unrecognised,  and  unknown  till  his  death.5     St.  Gregory 

1  See  Ceillier,  Auteurs  cedes,  xiii.  p.  147.  2  Socrates,  iv.  28. 

3  Palladius,  EM.  Laus.  cxix.  4   Vit.  S.  Abr.  (Rosweydc),  cap.  i. 

5  I  do  not  know  when  this  legend  first  appeared.  I  know  it  from  two 
sources.  M.  Littre  mentions  having  found  it  in  a  French  MS.  of  the 
eleventh  century  (Littre,  Lea  Brirbores,  pp.  I«8-124>;  and  it  also  forma 
the  subject  of  a  very  curious  fresco,  I  imagine  of  n  somewbal  earlier  date, 
which  was  discovered,  within  the  last  few  years,  in  the  subterranean  church 


34l>  HISTORY   OF   EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

of  Nys$a — who  was  so  unfortunate  as  to  be  married — 
wrote  a  glowing  eulogy  of  virginity,  in  the  course  of 
which  lie  mournfully  observed,  that  this  privileged  state 
could  never  be  his.  lie  resembled,  he  assures  us,  an  ox 
that  was  ploughing  a  field,  the  fruit  of  which  he  must 
never  enjoy  ;  or  a  thirsty  man,  who  was  gazing  on  a  stream 
of  which  he  never  can  drink ;  or  a  poor  man,  whose 
poverty  seems  the  more  bitter  as  he  contemplates  the 
wealth  of  his  neighbours ;  and  he  proceeded  to  descant 
in  feeling  terms  upon  the  troubles  of  matrimony.1 
Nominal  marriages,  in  which  the  partners  agreed  to  shun 
the  marriage  bed,  became  not  uncommon.  The  enrpe- 
ror  Henry  II.,  Edward  the  Confessor,  of  England,  and 
Alphonso  II.  of  Spain,  gave  examples  of  it.  A  very 
famous  and  rather  picturesque  history  of  this  kind  is 
related  by  Gregory  of  Tours.  A  rich  young  Gaul,  named 
Injuriosus,  led  to  his  home  a  young  bride  to  whom  he 
was  passionately  attached.  That  night,  she  confessed  to 
him  with  tears,  that  she  had  vowed  to  keep  her  virginity, 
and  that  she  regretted  bitterly  the  marriage  into  which 
her  love  for  him  had  betrayed  her.  He  told  her  that 
they  should  remain  united,  but  that  she  should  still  ob- 
e  her  vow ;  and  he  fulfilled  his  promise.  When,  after 
ral  years,  she  died,  her  husband,  in  laying  her  in  the 
tomb,  declared  with  great  solemnity,  that  he  restored 
her  to  God  as  immaculate  as  he  had  received  her;  and 
then  a  smile  lit  up  the  face  of  the  dead  woman,  and  she 
.  •  Why  do  you  tell  that  which  no  one  asked  you  ? ' 
husband  soon  afterwards  died,  and  a  wall,  which  had 
been  built  to  separate  his  tomb  from  that  of  his  wife,  was 
]( moved  by  the  angels.2 

of  St.  Clement  at  Rome.     An  account  of  it  is  given  by  Father  Mullooly, 
littl<!  book  about  the  Church. 
1  l)e   Vinjin.  cij).  iii.  9  Greg.  TttT.  i.  42. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  343 

The  extreme  disorders  which  such  teaching  produced 
in  domestic  life,  and  also  the  extravagancies  which  grew 
up  among  some  heretics,  naturally  alarmed  the  more  judi- 
cious leaders  of  the  Church,  and  it  was  ordained  that 
married  persons  should  not  enter  into  an  ascetic  life, 
except  by  mutual  consent.1  The  ascetic  ideal,  however, 
remained  unchanged.  To  abstain  from  marriage,  or  in 
marriage  to  abstain  from  a  perfect  union,  was  regarded 
as  a  proof  of  sanctity,  and  marriage  was  viewed  in  its 
coarsest  and  most  degraded  form.  The  notion  of  its  im- 
purity took  many  forms,  and  exercised  for  some  centuries 
an  extremely  wide  influence  over  the  Church.  Thus,  it 
was  the  custom  during  the  middle  ages  to  abstain  from 
the  marriage  bed  during  the  night  after  the  ceremony,  in 
honour  of  the  sacrament.2  It  was  expressly  enjoined  that 
no  married  persons  should  participate  in  any  of  the  great 
Church  festivals,  if  the  night  before  they  had  lain  together, 
and  St.  Gregory  the  Great  tells  of  a  young  wife  who  was 
possessed  by  a  daemon,  because  she  had  taken  part  in  a 
procession  of  St.  Sebastian,  without  fulfilling  this  condi- 
tion.3 The  extent  to  which  the  feeling  on  the  subject  was 
carried  is  shown  by  the  famous  vision  of  Alberic  in  the 
twelfth  century,  in  which  a  special  place  of  torture,  con- 
sisting of  a  lake  of  mingled  lead,  pitch,  and  resin  is  repre- 
sented as  existing  in  hell  for  the  punishment  of  married 
people  who  had  lain  together  on  Church  festivals  or  fast 
days.4 

Two  other  consequences  of  this  way  of  regarding 
marriage  were  a  very  strong  disapproval  of  second  mar- 
riages, and  a  very  strong  desire  to  secure  celibacy  in  the 
clergy.     The  first  of  these  notions  had  existed,  though  in 

1  The  regulations  on  this  point  are  given  at  length  in  Bingham. 

2  Mnratori,  Antirh.  Ital.  diss.  xx.  3  St.  Greg.  Dial  i.  10. 
4  Delepierre,  L'Eiifcr  dicrU  par  ceux  qui  font  vu,  pp.  44-50. 

56 


/ 


344  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 


a  very  different  form,  and  connected  with  very ' different 
motive-,  among  the  early  Romans,  who  were  accustomed, 
we  are  told,  to  honour  with  the  crown  of  modesty  those 
who  were  content  with  one  marriage,  and  to  regard  many 
marriages  as  a  sign  of  illegitimate  intemperance.1  This 
Opinion  appears  to  have  chiefly  grown  out  of  a  very  deli- 
and  touching  feeling  which  had  taken  deep  root  in 
the  Roman  mind,  that  the  affection  a  wife  owes  her 
husband  is  so  profound  and  so  pure,  that  it  must  not 
cease  even  with  his  death  ;  that  it  should  guide  and  con- 
secrate all  her  subsequent  life,  and  that  it  never  can  be 
transferred  to  another  object.  Virgil,  in  very  beautiful 
lines,  puts  this  sentiment  into  the .  mouth  of  Dido ; 2  and 
several  examples  are  recorded  of  Roman  wives,  sometimes 
in  the  prime  of  youth  and  beauty,  upon  the  death  of  their 
husbands,  devoting  the  remainder  of  their  lives  to  retire- 
ment, and  to  the  memory  of  the  dead.3  Tacitus  held  up 
the  Germans  as  in  this  respect  a  model  to  his  countrymen,4 
and  the  epithet  'univiraj'  inscribed  on  many  Roman  tombs 
shows  how  this  devotion  was  practised  and  valued.5  The 
family  of  Camillus  was  especially  honoured  for  the  absence 
of  second  marriages  among  its  members.6  '  To  love  a 
wife  when  living,'  said  one  of  the  latest  of  Roman  poets, 
'  is  a  pleasure  ;  to  love  her  when  dead  is  an  act  of  reli- 
gion.' 7  In  the  case  of  men,  the  propriety  of  abstaining 
from  second  marriages  was  probably  not  felt  as  strongly 
as  in  the  case  of  women,  and  what  feeling  on  the  subject 
ted  was  chiefly  due  to  another  motive — affection  for 

1  Val.  Max.  ii.  1.  §  3. 

2  '  Die  meos,  primus  qui  me  sibi  junxit,  amores 

Ali-tulit;  ille  habeat  secu'm,  servetque  sepulchro.' — JEn.  iv.  28. 
- ,  the  wives  of  Lucan,  Drusus,  and  Pompey. 
Tacit.  Qernum.  xix. 

I  nedliinder,  tome  i.  p.  4 1 1 .  6  Ilieron.  Ep.  liv. 

'Uxorem  vivam  amare  voluptas; 
Defunctam  religio.' — Sutius,  Sylo,  v.  in  proceinio. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  346 

the  children,  whose  interests  it  was  thought  might  be 
injured  by  a  stepmother.1 

The  sentiment  which  thus  recoiled  from  second  mar- 
riages passed  with  a  vastly  increased  strength  into  ascetic 
Christianity,  but  it  was  based  upon  altogether  different 
grounds.  The  first  change,  we  may  observe,  is  that  an 
affectionate  remembrance  of  the  husband  has  altogether 
vanished  from  the  motives  of  the  abstinence.  In  the  next 
place,  we  may  remark  that  these  writers,  in  perfect  con- 
formity with  the  extreme  coarseness  of  their  views  about 
the  sexes,  almost  invariably  assumed  that  the  motive  to 
second  or  third  marriages  must  be  simply  the  force  of 
the  animal  passions.  The  Montanists  and  the  Novatians' 
absolutely  condemned  second  marriages.2  The  orthodox 
pronounced  them  lawful,  on  account  of  the  weakness  of 
human  nature,  but  they  viewed  them  with  the  most  em- 
phatic disapproval,3  partly  because  they  considered  them 
manifest  signs  of  incontinence,  and  partly  because  they 
regarded  them  as  incompatible  with  the  doctrine  of  mar- 
riage being  an  emblem  of  the  union  of  Christ  with  the 
Church.  The  language  of  the  Fathers  on  this  subject 
appears  to  a  modern  mind  most  extraordinary,  and,  but 
for  their  distinct  and  reiterated  assertion  that  they  con- 
sidered  these   marriages  permissible,4  would  appear  to 

1  By  one  of  the  laws  of  Charondas  it  was  ordained  that  those  who 
cared  so  little  for  the  happiness  of  their  children  as  to  place  a  stepmother 
over  them,  should  be  excluded  from  the  councils  of  the  State.  (Diod.  Sic. 
xii.  12.) 

3  Tertullian  expounded  the  Montanist  view  in  his  treatise,  Be  Monogamia. 

3  A  full  collection  of  the  statements  of  the  Fathers  on  this  subject  is 
given  by  Perrone,  Be  Matrimonio,  lib.  iii.  Soec.  I. ;  and  by  Natalie  Alexander, 
Hist.  Eccles.  Stec.  II.  dissert.  18. 

4  Thus,  to  give  but  a  single  instance,  St.  Jerome,  who  was  one  of  their 
strongest  opponents,  says  :  'Quidigitur?  damnamus  secunda  matrimonia  ? 
Minime,sed  prima  laudamus.  Abjicimus  de  ecclesia  digamos?  absit;  sed 
monogamos  ad  continentiam  provocamus.  In  area  Noe  ncn  solum  munda 
eed  et  immunda  fuerunt  animalia.' — Ep.  exxiii. 


840  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

amount  to  a  peremptory  condemnation.  Thus — to  give 
but  a  few  samples — bigamy,  or  second  marriage,  is  de- 
I  >ed  by  Athanagoras  as  '  a  decent  adultery  ; ' x  '  fornica- 
tion/ according  to  Clement  of  Alexandria,  'is  a  lapse 
from  one  marriage  into  many.'2  'The  first  Adam,'  said 
St.  Jerome,  '  had  one  wife  ;  the  second  Adam  had  no 
Wife.  They  who  approve  of  bigamy  hold  forth  a  third 
Adam,  who  was  twice  married,  whom  they  follow.'3 
1  Consider,'  he  again  says,  '  that  she  who  has  been  twice 
married,  though  she  be  an  old,  and  decrepit,  and  poor 
Woman;  is  not  deemed  worthy  to  receive  the  charity  of  the 
Church.  But  if  the  bread  of  charity  is  taken  from  her, 
how  much  more  that  bread  which  descends  from  heaven  !' 4 
Digamists,  according  to  Crimen,  '  are  saved  in  the  name 
of  Christ,  but  are  by  no  means  crowned  by  him.' 5  '  By 
this  text,'  said  St.  Gregory  Nazianzen,  speaking  of  St. 
Paul's  comparison  of  marriage  to  the  union  of  Christ  with 
the  Church,  c  second  marriages  seem  to  me  to  be  re- 
proved. If  there  are  two  Christs  there  may  be  two 
husbands  or  two  wives.  If  there  is  but  one  Christ,  one 
Head  of  the  Church,  there  is  but  one  flesh — a  second  is 
repelled.  But  if  he  forbids  a  second,  what  is  to  be  said 
of  third  marriages  ?  The  first  is  law,  the  second  is  pardon 
and  indulgence,  the  third  is  iniquity ;  but  he  who  exceeds 
this  number  is  manifestly  bestial.'6  The  collective  judg- 
ment of  the  ecclesiastical  authorities  on  this  subject  is 
shown  by  the  rigid  exclusion  of  bigamists  from  the  priest- 
hood, and  from  all  claim  to  the  charity  of  the  Church,  and 
by  the  decrees  of  more  than  one  Council,  which  ordained 
that  a  period  of  penance  should  be  imposed  upon  all 
who  married  a  second  time,  before  they  were  admitted  to 

1  In  Lcr/at.  8  Strom,  lib.  ili. 

•  Contra  Jovin.  i.  4  Ibid.     See,  too,  Ep.  cxxm. 

*  Horn.  xvii.  in  Luc.  •  Or.-tt.  x\xi 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  347 

communion.1  One  of  the  canons  of  the  Council  of  Illiberis, 
in  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  century,  while  in  general 
condemning  baptism  by  laymen,  permitted  it  in  case  of 
extreme  necessity ;  but  provided  that  even  then  it  was 
indispensable  that  the  officiating  layman  should  not  have 
been  twice  married.2  Among  the  Greeks  fourth  mar- 
riages were  at  one  time  deemed  absolutely  unlawful,  and 
much  controversy  was  excited  by  the  emperor  Leo  the 
Wise,  who,  having  had  three  wives,  had  taken  a  mistress, 
but  afterwards,  in  defiance  of  the  religious  feelings  of 
his  people,  determined  to  raise  her  to  the  position  of  a 
wife.3 

The  subject  of  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy,  in  which  the 
ecclesiastical  feelings  about  marriage  were  also  shown,  is 
an  extremely  large  one,  and  I  shall  not  attempt  to  deal 
with  it,  except  in  a  most  cursory  manner.4  There  are 
two  facts  connected  with  it,  which  every  candid  student 
must  admit.  The  first  is,  that  in  the  earliest  period 
of  the  Church,  the  privilege  of  marriage  was  freely 
accorded  to  the  clergy.  The  second  is,  that  a  notion  of 
the  impurity  of  marriage  existed,  and  it  was  felt  that  the 
clergy,  as  pre-eminently  the  holy  class,  should  have  less 
license  than   laymen.     The  first  form  this   feeling  took 

1  See  on  this  decree,  Perrone,  Be  Matr.  iii.  §  1,  art.  1 ;  Natalis  Alex- 
ander, Hist.  Eccles.  §  ii.  dissert.  18.  The  penances  are  said  not  to  imply- 
that  the  second  marriage  was  a  sin,  but  that  the  moral  condition  that  made 
it  necessary  was  a  had  one. 

2  Cone.  Illib.  can.  xxxviii.  Bingham  thinks  the  feeling  of  the  Council 
to  have  been,  that  if  baptism  was  not  administered  by  a  priest,  it  should  at 
all  events  be  administered  by  one  who  might  have  been  a  priest. 

3  Perrone,  Be  Matrimonio,  tome  iii.  p.  102. 

4  This  subject  has  recently  been  treated  with  very  great  learning  and  with 
admirable  impartiality  by  an  American  author,  Mr.  Henry  C.  Lea,  in  his 
History  of  Sacerdotal  Celibacy  (Philadelphia,  1867),  which  is  certainly  one 
of  the  most  valuable  works  that  America  has  produced.  Since  the  greet 
history  of  Dean  Milman,  I  know  no  work  in  English  which  has  thrown 
more  li^ht  on  the  moral  condition  of  the  middle  ages,  and  none  which  is 


348  HISTORY   OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

appears  to  have  been  the  strong  conviction  that  a  second 
marriage  of  a  priest,  or  the  marriage  of  a  priest  with  a 
widow,  was  unlawful  and  criminal.1  This  belief  seems 
to  have  existed  from  the  earliest  period  of  the  Church, 
and  was  retained  with  great  tenacity  and  unanimity 
through  many  centuries.  In  the  next  place,  we  find,  from 
an  extremely  early  date,  an  opinion  prevailing  first  of  all, 
that  it  was  an  act  of  virtue,  and  then  that  it  was  an  act  of 
duty,  for  priests  after  ordination  to  abstain  from  cohabiting 
with  their  wives.  The  Council  of  Nice  refrained,  at  the 
advice  of  Paphnutins,  who  was  himself  a  scrupulous  celi- 
bate, from  imposing  this  last  rule  as  a  matter  of  necessity; 2 
but  in  the  course  of  the  fourth  century  it  was  a  recognised 
principle  that  clerical  marriages  were  criminal.  They 
were  celebrated,  however,  habitually,  and  usually  with 
the  greatest  openness.  The  various  attitudes  assumed  by 
the  ecclesiastical  authorities  in  dealing  with  this  subject 
form  an  extremely  curious  page  of  the  history  of  morals, 
and  supply  the  most  crushing  evidence  of  the  evils  which 
have  been  produced  by  the  system  of  celibacy.  I  can  at 
present,  however,  only  refer  to  the  vast  mass  of  evidence 
which  has  been  collected  on  the  subject,  derived  from  the 


more  fitted  to  dispel  the  gross  illusions  concerning  that  period  which 
Positive'  writers,  and  writers  of  a  certain  ecclesiastical  school,  have  conspired 
to  sustain. 

1  See  Lea,  p.  3G.  The  command  of  St.  Paul,  that  a  bishop  or  deacon 
should  be  the  husband  of  one  wife  (1  Tim.  iii.  2-12)  was  believed  by  all 

Ht  and  by  many  modern  commentators  to  be  prohibitory  of  second 
marringes ;  ami  tin-  view  is  somewhat  confirmed  by  the  widows  who  were 
to  be  honoured  and  supported  by  the  Church,  being  only  those  who  had 
but  once  married  (1  Tim.  v.  9).     See  Pressense,  Hist,  des  trait  premier* 

'<■*  (lre  serie),  tome  ii.  p.  233.  Among  the  Jews  it  was  ordained  that 
the  high  priest  should  not  marry  a  widow.     (Levit.  xxi.  13-14.) 

2  Socrates,  II.  A'  i.  I  I.  The  Council  of  Illiberis  (can.  xxxiii.)  had  or- 
dained this,  hut  both  th»'  precepts  and  the  practice  of  divines  varied  greatly. 
A  brilliant  summary  of  the  chief  facts  is  given  in  Miliuan's  History  of 
Early  Christianity,  vol.  iii.  pp.  277-282. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  349 

writings  of  Catholic  divines  and  from  the  decrees  of  Catho- 
lic Councils  during  the  space  of  many  centuries.  It  is  a 
popular  illusion,  which  is  especially  common  among  writers 
who  have  little  direct  knowledge  of  the  middle  ages,  that 
the  atrocious  immorality  of  monasteries,  in  the  century  be- 
fore the  Eeformation,  was  a  new  fact,  and  that  the  ages 
when  the  faith  of  men  was  undisturbed,  were  ages  of  great 
moral  purity.  In  fact,  it  appears  from  the  uniform  tes- 
timony of  the  ecclesiastical  writers,  that  the  ecclesiastical 
immorality  of  the  eighth  and  three  following  centuries  was 
little  if  at  all  less  outrageous  than  in  any  other  period,  while 
the  Papacy,  during  almost  the  whole  of  the  tenth  century, 
was  held  by  men  of  infamous  lives.  Simony  was  nearly 
universal.1  Barbarian  chieftains  married  at  an  early  age, 
and,  totally  incapable  of  restraint,  occupied  the  leading 
positions  in  the  Church,  and  gross  irregularities  speedily 
became  general.  An  Italian  bishop  of  the  tenth  century 
epigrammatically  described  the  morals  of  his  time,  when  he 
declared,  that  if  he  were  to  enforce  the  canons  against 
unchaste  people  administering  ecclesiastical  rites,  no  one 
would  be  left  in  the  Church  except  the  boys  ;  and  if  he 
were  to  observe  the  canons  against  bastards,  these  also 
must  be  excluded.2  The  evil  acquired  such  magnitude, 
that  a  great  feudal  clergy,  bequeathing  the  ecclesiastical 
benefices  from  father  to  son,  appeared  more  than  once 
likely  to  arise.3  A  tax  called  '  Cullagium,'  which  was 
in  fact  a  license  to  clergymen  to  keep  concubines,  was 
during  several  centuries  systematically  levied  by  princes.4 


1  See,  on  the  state  of  things  in  the  tenth  and  eleventh  century,  Lea,  pp. 
162-192. 

2  Eatherius,  quoted  by  Lea,  p.  151. 

3  See  some  curious  evidence  of  the  extent  to  which  the  practice  of  the 
hereditary  transmission  of  ecclesiastical  offices  was  carried,  in  Lea,  pp.  149, 
150,  2GG,*299,  .330. 

*  Lea,  pp.  271  292,422. 


350  HISTORY  OF  EUROrEAjN    MOKALS. 

tetimea  the  evil,  by  its  very  extension,  corrected  itself. 

stly  marriages  were  looked  upon  as  normal  events  not 

implying  any  guilt,  and  in  the  eleventh  century  several 

instances  are  recorded  in  which  the  fact  was  not  regarded 

any  impediment  to  the  power  of  working  miracles.1 
But  this  was  a  rare  exception.  From  the  earliest  period 
a  long  succession  of  Councils  as  well  as  such  men  as  St. 
Boniface,  St.  Gregory  the  Great,  St.  Peter  Damiani,  St. 
Dunstan,  St.  Anselm,  Hildebrand,  and  his  successors  in  the 
Popedom,  denounced  priestly  marriage  or. concubinage  as 
an  atrocious  crime,  and  the  habitual  life  of  the  priests 
was,  in  theory  at  least,  generally  recognised  as  a  life 
of  sin. 

It  was  not  surprising  that,  having  once  broken  their 
vow-  and  begun  to  live  what  they  deemed  a  life  of  habi- 
tual sin,  the  clergy  should  soon  have  sunk  far  below  the 
level  of  the  laity.  We  may  not  lay  much  stress  on  such 
isolated  instances  of  depravity  as  that  of  Pope  John 
XXIII.,  who  was  condemned  for  incest,  among  many 
other  crimes,  and  for  adultery  ;2  or  the  abbot-elect  of  St. 
Augustine,  at  Canterbury,  who  in  1171  was  found,  on  in- 
vestigation, to  have  seventeen  illegitimate  children  in  a 
single  village;3  or  an  abbot  of  St.  Pelayo,  in  Spain,  who 
in  1130  was  proved  to  have  kept  no  less  than  seventy 
concubines ; 4  or  Henry  III.  Bishop  of  Liege,  who  was 
deposed  in  1274  for  having  sixty-five  illegitimate  chil- 
dren ; 6  but  it  is  impossible  to  resist  the  evidence  of  a 
long  chain  of  Councils  and  ecclesiastical  writers,  who  con- 
spire  in  depicting  far  greater  evils  than  simple  concu- 
binage. It  was  observed,  that  when  the  priests  actually 
took  wives,  the  knowledge  that  these  connections  were 
illegal  was  peculiarly  fatal  to  their  fidelity,  and  bigamy 

■.  pp.  180-187.  "  ll.i.l.  ,..  3  Ibid.  p.  290. 

«  Ibid.  p.  •  Ibid.  p.  84ft 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  351 

and  extreme  mobility  of  attachments  were  especially 
common  among  them.  The  writers  of  the  middle  ages 
are  full  of  accounts  of  nunneries  that  were  like  brothels, 
of  the  vast  multitude  of  infanticides  within  their  walls, 
and  of  that  inveterate  prevalence  of  incest  among  the 
clergy,  which  rendered  it  necessary  again  and  again  to 
issue  the  most  stringent  enactments  that  priests  should 
not  be  permitted  to  live  with  their  mothers  or  sisters. 
Unnatural  love,  which  it  had  been  one  of  the  great  ser- 
vices of  Christianity  almost  to  eradicate  from  the  world, 
is  more  than  once  spoken  of  as  lingering  in  the  monas- 
teries ;  and  shortly  before  the  Eeformation,  complaints 
became  loud  and  frequent  of  the  employment  of  the  con- 
fessional for  the  purposes  of  debauchery.1  The  measures 
taken  on  the  subject  were  very  numerous  and  severe.  At 
first,  the  evil  chiefly  complained  of  was  the  clandestine 
marriage  of  priests,  and  especially  their  intercourse  with 
wives  they  had  married  previous  to  their  ordination  ;  and 
several  Councils  issued  their  anathemas  against  priests 
*  who  had  improper  relations  with  their  wives  ;'  and  rules 
were  made  that  priests  should  always  sleep  in  the  pre- 
sence of  a  subordinate  clerk  ;  and  that  they  should  only 
meet  their  wives  in  the  open  air  and  before  at  least  two 
witnesses.  Men  were,  however,  by  no  means  unanimous 
in  their  way  of  regarding  this  matter.  Synesius,  when 
elected  to  a  bishopric,  had  at  first  declined,  boldly  alleg- 
ing as  one  of  his  reasons,  that  he  had  a  wife  whom  he 
loved  dearly,  and  who,  he  hoped,  would  bear  him  many 
sons,  and  that  he  did  not  mean  to  separate  from  her  or 
visit  her  secretly  as  an  adulterer.2  A  bishop  of  Laon,  at 
a  later  date,  who  was  married  to  a  niece  of  St.  Eemy, 

1  The  reader  may  find  the  most  ample  evidence  oi'  these  positions  in  Lea. 
See  especially  pp.  138,  141,  153,  155,  260,  344. 

2  Synesius,  Ep.  cv. 


862  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

and  who  had  remained  with  his  wife  till  after  he  had 
»n  and  a  daughter,  quaintly  expressed  his  penitence 
by  naming  them  respectively  Latro  and  Yulpecula.1 
St.  Gregory  the  Great  describes  the  virtue  of  a  priest, 
who,  through  motives  of  piety,  had  discarded  his 
wife.  As  he  lay  dying,  she  hastened  to  him  to  watch 
the  bed  which  for  forty  years  she  had  not  been  allowed 
to  share,  and  bending  over  what  seemed  the  inanimate 
form  of  her  husband,  she  tried  to  ascertain  whether 
any  breath  still  remained,  when  the  dying  saint,  col- 
lecting his  last  energies,  exclaimed,  '  Woman,  begone ; 
take  away  the  straw  ;  there  is  fire  yet.' 2  The  destruc- 
tion of  priestly  marriage  is  chiefly  due  to  Hililebrand, 
who  pursued  this  object  with  the  most  untiring  reso- 
lution. Finding  that  his  appeals  to  the  ecclesiastical 
authorities  and  to  the  civil  rulers  were  insufficient,  he 
boldly  turned  to  the  people,  exhorted  them,  in  defiance 
of  all  Church  traditions,  to  withdraw  their  obedience  from 
married  priests,  and  kindled  among  them  a  fierce  fana- 
ticism of  asceticism,  which  speedily  produced  a  fierce 
persecution  of  the  offending  pastors.  Their  wives,  in 
immense  numbers,  were  driven  forth  with  hatred  and 
with  scorn,  and  many  crimes,  and  much  intolerable  suf- 
fering, followed  the  disruption.  The  priests  sometimes 
strenuously  resisted.  At  Cambrai,  in  a.d.  1077,  they 
burnt  alive  as  a  heretic  a  zealot  who  was  maintaining 
the  doctrines  of  Hildebrand.  In  England,  half  a  century 
later,  they  succeeded  in  surprising  a  Papal  legate  in  the 
arms  of  a  courtesan,  a  few  hours  after  he  had  delivered  a 
fierce  denunciation   of  clerical  unchastity.3     But   Papal 

1  Lea,  p.  122.  St.  Augustine  hid  named  hU  illegitimate  son  Adeodatus, 
or  the  Gift  of  God,  and  bad  made  him  i  principal  interlocutor  in  one  of  hi* 
religious  dialogues.  2  Dialog,  iv.  11. 

3  This  is  mentioned  by  Henry  of  Huntingdon,  who  was  a  contemporary. 
(Lea,  p.  l 


POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  863 

resolution  supported  by  popular  fanaticism  won  the  vic- 
tory. Pope  Urban  II.  gave  license  to  the  nobles  to 
reduce  to  slavery  the  wives  of  priests  who  obstinately 
refused  to  abandon  them,  and  after  a  few  more  acts  of 
severity  priestly  marriage  became  obsolete.  The  extent, 
however,  of  the  disorders  that  still  existed,  is  shown  by 
the  mournful  confessions  of  ecclesiastical  writers,  by  the 
uniform  and  indignant  testimony  of  the  poets  and  prose 
satirists  who  preceded  the  Eeformation,  by  the  atrocious 
immoralities  disclosed  in  the  monasteries  at  the  time  of 
their  suppression,  and  by  the  significant  prudence  of  many 
lay  Catholics,  who  were  accustomed  to  insist  that  their 
priest  should  take  a  concubine  for  the  protection  of  the 
families  of  his  parishioners.1 

It  is  scarcely  possible  to  conceive  a  more  demoralising 
influence  than  a  priesthood  living  such  a  life  as  I  have  de- 
scribed. In  Protestant  countries,  where  the  marriage  of 
the^clergy  is  fully  recognised,  it  has,  indeed,  been  pro- 
ductive of  the  greatest  and  the  most  unequivocal  benefits. 
Nowhere,  it  may  be  confidently  asserted,  does  Christianity 

1  The  first  notice  of  this  very  remarkable  precaution  is  in  a  canon  of 
the  Council  of  Palencia  (in  Spain)  held  in  1322,  which  anathematises  lay- 
men who  compel  their  pastors  to  take  concubines.  (Lea,  p.  324.)  Sleidan 
mentions  that  it  was  customary  in  some  of  the  Swiss  cantons  for  the  pa- 
rishioners to  oblige  the  priest  to  select  a  concubine  as  a  necessary  precau- 
tion for  the  protection  of  his  female  parishioners.  (Ibid.  p.  355  )  Sarpi, 
in  his  Hist  of  the  Council  of  Trad,  mentions  (on  the  authority  of  Zuinglius) 
this  Swiss  custom.  Nicolas  de  Clemangis,  a  leading  member  of  the  Coun- 
cil of  Constance,  declared  that  this  custom  had  become  very  common,  that 
the  laity  were  now  firmly  persuaded  that  priests  never  lived  a  life  of  real 
celibacy,  and  that,  where  no  proofs  of  concubinage  were  iound,  they  always 
assumed  the  existence  of  more  serious  vice.  The  passage  (which  had  been 
quoted  by  Bayle)  is  too  remarkable  to  be  omitted.  '  Taceo  de  fornica- 
tionibus  et  adulteriis  a  quibus  qui  alieni  sunt  probro  ceteris  ac  ludibrio  esse 
solent,  spadonesque  aut  sodomitse  appellantur;  denique  laici  usque  adeo 
persuasum  habent  nullos  cselibes  esse,  ut  in  plerisque  parochiis  non  aliter 
velint  presbyterum  tolerare  nisi  concubinam  habeat,  quo  vel  sic  suis  sit 
consultum  uxoiibus,  qua3  nee  sic  quidem  usquequaque  sunt  extra  periculuni.' 
Nic.  de  Clem.  De  Prccsul.  Simoniac.     (Lea,  p.  386.) 


So4  HISTORY   OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

a -nine  a  more  beneficial  or  a  more  winning  form,  than  in 
those  gentle  clerical  households  which  stud  our  land,  con- 
stituting, as  Coleridge  said,  '  the  one  idyll  of  modern  life,' 
the  most  perfect  type  of  domestic  peace,  and  the  centres  of 
civilisation  in  the  remotest  village.  Notwithstanding  some 
to  narrowness  and  professional  bigotry,  notwithstand- 
ing some  unworthy,  but  half  unconscious  mannerism, 
which  is  often  most  unjustly  stigmatised  as  hypocrisy,  it 
would  be  difficult  to  find  in  any  other  quarter  so  much 
happiness  at  once  diffused  and  enjoyed,  or  so  much 
virtue  attained  with  so  little  tension  or  struggle.  Com- 
bining with  his  sacred  calling  a  warm  sympathy  with  the 
intellectual,  social,  and  political  movements  of  his  time, 
possessing  the  enlarged  practical  knowledge  of  a  father 
of  a  family,  and  entering  with  a  keen  zest  into  the  occu- 
pations and  the  amusements  of  his  parishioners,  a  good 
clergyman  will  rarely  obtrude  his  religious  convictions 
into  secular  spheres,  but  yet  will  make  them  apparent  in 
all.  They  will  be  revealed  by  a  higher  and. deeper  moral 
tone,  by  a  more  scrupulous  purity  in  word  and  action, 
by  an  all-pervasive  gentleness,  which  refines,  and  softens, 
and  mellows,  and  adds  as  much  to  the  charm  as  to  the 
excellence  of  the  character  in  which  it  is  displayed.  In 
visiting  the  sick,  relieving  the  poor,  instructing  the  young, 
and  discharging  a  thousand  delicate  offices  for  which 
a  woman's  tact  is  especially  needed,  his  wife  finds  a 
sphere  of  labour  which  is  nt  once  intensely  active  and 
intensely  feminine,  and  her  example  is  not  less  beneficial 
than  her  ministrations. 

Among  the  Catholic  priesthood,  on  the  other  hand, 

where   the   vow   of  celibacy   is    faithfully   observed,   a 

character  of  a  different  type  is  formed,  which  with  very 

grave  and  deadly  faults  combines  some  of  the  noblest 

nancies   to  which  humanity  can  attain.     Separated 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  365 

from  most  of  the  ties  and  affections  of  earth,  viewing  life 
chiefly. through  the  distorted  medium  of  the  casuist  or 
the  confessional,  and  deprived  of  those  relationships 
which  more  than  any  others  soften  and  expand  the 
character,  the  Catholic  priests  have  been  but  too  often 
conspicuous  for  their  fierce  and  sanguinary  fanaticism, 
and  for  their  indifference  to  all  interests  except  those  of 
their  Church ;  while  the  narrow  range  of  their  sympathies, 
and  the  intellectual  servitude  they  have  accepted,  render 
them  peculiarly  unfitted  for  the  office  of  educating  the 
young,  which  they  so  persistently  claim,  and  which,  to 
the  great  misfortune  of  the  world,  they  were  long  per- 
mitted to  monopolise.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  no  other 
body  of  men  have  ever  exhibited  a  more  single-minded 
and  unworldly  zeal,  refracted  by  no  personal  interests, 
sacrificing  to  duty  the  dearest  of  earthly  objects,  and  con- 
fronting with  undaunted  heroism  every  form  of  hardship, 
of  suffering,  and  of  death. 

That  the  middle  ages,  even  in  their  darkest  periods, 
produced  many  good  and  great  men  of  the  latter  type  it 
would  be  unjust  and  absurd  to  deny.  It  can  hardly, 
however,  be  questioned  that  the  extreme  frequency  of 
illicit  connections  among  the  clergy  tended  during  many 
centuries  most  actively  to  lower  the  moral  tone  of  the 
laity,  and  to  counteract  the  great  services  in  the  cause  of 
purity  which  Christian  teaching  had  undoubtedly  effected. 
The  priestly  connections  were  rarely  so  fully  recognised 
as  to  enable  the  mistress  to  fill  a  position  like  that  which 
is  now  occupied  by  the  wife  of  a  clergyman,  and  the 
spectacle  of  the  chief  teachers  and  exemplars  of  morals 
living  habitually  in  an  intercourse  which  was  acknow- 
ledged to  be  ambiguous  or  wrong,  must  have  acted  most 
injuriously  upon  every  class  of  the  community.  Asceti- 
cism, proclaiming  war  upon  human  nature,  produced  a 


356  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

revulsion  towards  its  extreme  opposite,  and  even  when  it 

d  in  act  it  was  frequently  detrimental  to  the 

parity  of  mind     An  impure  chastity  was  fostered,  which 

.inually  looked  upon  marriage  in  its  coarsest  light, 
treated  the  propagation  of  the  species  as  its  one  legitimate 
end,  and  exercised  a  peculiarly  perverting  influence  upon 
the  imagination.  The  exuberant  piety  of  wives  who 
desired  to  live  apart  from  their  husbands  often  drove  the 
latter  into  serious  irregularities.1  The  notion  of  sin  was 
introduced  into  the  dearest  of  relationships,2  and  the 
whole  subject  was  distorted  and  degraded  by  priestly  celi- 
bates. It  was  one  of  the  great  benefits  of  Protestantism 
that  it  did  much  to  banish  these  modes  of  thought  and 

ing  from  the  world,  and  to  restore  marriage  to  its  sim- 
plicity and  its  dignity.  We  have  a  gratifying  illustration 
ctf  the  extent  to  which  an  old  superstition  has  declined,  in 
the  fact  that  when  Goldsmith,  in  his  great  romance,  desired 
to  depict  the  harmless  eccentricities  of  his  simple-minded 
and  unworldly  viear,  he  represented  him  as  maintaining 
that  opinion  concerning  the  sinfulness  of  the  second  mar- 
riage of  a  clergyman,  which  was  for  many  centuries  uni- 
versal in  the  Church. 

Another  injurious   consequence,  resulting,  in  a  great 

1  This  was  energetically  noticed  by  Luther,  in  his  famous  sermon  'De 

Mntrimonio."  and  BOme   of  the  Catholic  preachers  of  an  earlier  period  had 

-;nii''  complaint     See  a  curious  passage  from  a  contemporary  of 

IJoccaccio,  quot»<l  by  Heroy,  Let  Libret  prScheursf  p.  loo.  '  Vast  numbers  of 

in  theil  wives  under  the  influence  of  the  ascetic  enthu- 

iatm  which  Flildebrand  created.' — Lea,  p.  254, 

3  '  ({nando  eniro  lervata  tide  fchori  causa  prolis  conjures  conveniunt  sic 

c.>itii»  nt  culpam  n<m  haheat    Quandovero  deficiente  bono  prolis 

iiM-ninnt  causa  incontinentia-  non  sic  excusatur  ut  non 

habeat  culpnin.  ilem.  .  .  .  Item  hoc  quod  conjugati  victi  concupis- 

I  iituntiir  invio-m,  ultra  necessitatem  liberos  procreandi,  ponam   in  his 

quotidia  dicimus  Dinutte  nobis  debita  nostra,  .  .  .  Undeinsen- 

tenti  i  legUiir  "omnis  srdentior  am  ator  propria  uxorii 

*dult-  Uetit  lib.  iv.  dist.  31. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  357 

measure,  from  asceticism,  was  a  tendency  to  depreciate  ex- 
tremely the  character  and  the  position  of  women.  In  this 
tendency  we  may  detect  in  part  the  influence  of  the  earlier 
Jewish  writings,  in  which  it  is  probable  that  most  im- 
partial observers  will  detect  evident  traces  of  the  com- 
mon oriental  depreciation  of  women.  The  custom  of 
purchase-money  to  the  father  of  the  bride  was  ad- 
mitted. Polygamy  was  authorised,1  and  practised  by  the 
wisest  man  on  an  enormous  scale.  A  woman  was  regarded 
as  the  origin  of  human  ills.  A  period  of  purification  was 
appointed  after  the  birth  of  every  child ;  but,  by  a  very 
significant  provision,  it  was  twice  as  long  in  the  case  of  a 
female  as  of  a  male  child.2  '  The  badness  of  men,'  a 
Jewish  writer  emphatically  declared,  '  is  better  than  the 
goodness  of  women.'3  The  types  of  female  excellence 
exhibited  in  the  early  period  of  Jewish  history  are  in 
general  of  a  low  order,  and  certainly  far  inferior  to  those 
of  Eoman  history  or  Greek  poetry ;  and  the  warmest 
eulogy  of  a  woman  in  the  Old  Testament  is  probably  that 
which  w^as  bestowed  upon  her  who,  with  circumstances 
of  the  most  aggravated  treachery,  had  murdered  the 
sleeping  fugitive  who  had  taken  refuge  under  her  roof. 

The  combined  influence  of  the  Jewish  writings,  and  of 
that  ascetic  feeling  which  treated  women  as  the  chief 
source  of  temptation  to  man,  was  shown  in  those  fierce 
invectives  against  this  sex,  which  form  so  conspicuous 
and  so  grotesque  a  portion  of  the  writings  of  the  Fathers, 
and  which  contrast  so  curiously  with  the  adulation  be- 
stowed upon  particular  members  of  the  sex.  Woman 
was  represented  as  the  door  of  hell,  as  the  mother  of  all 

1  Many  wives,  however,  were  forbidden.  (Deut.  xvii.  17.)  Polygamy  is 
said  to  have  ceased  among  the  Jews  after  the  return  from  the  Babylonish 
captivity. — Whewell's  Elements  of  Morality,  book  iv.  eh.  v. 

2  Levit.  xii.  1-5.  3  Eccle^a^ticus,  xlii.  14. 


God  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

human  iDa     She  should  be  ashamed  at  the  very  thought 
that  \\-(  .man.    She  should  live  in  continual  penance, 

on  account  of  the  curses  she  has  brought  upon  the  world. 

should  be  ashamed  of  her  dress,  for  it  is  the  memorial 

of  her  fall.     She  should  be  especially  ashamed  of  her 

beauty,  for  it  is  the  most  potent  instrument  of  the  daemon. 

I  beauty  was  indeed  perpetually  the  theme  of  ec- 

ast'ual  denunciations,  though  one  singular  exception 

OS  to  have  heeo  made;  for  it  has  been  observed  that 

in  the  middle  ages  the  personal  beauty  of  bishops  was 

continually  noticed  upon  their  tombs.1     Women  were 

i  forbidden  by  a  provincial  Council,  in  the  sixth 
century,  on  account  of  their  impurity,  to  receive  the 
Eucharist  into  their  naked  hands.2  Their  essentially  sub- 
ordinate position  was  continually  maintained. 

It  ia  probable  that  this  teaching  had  its  part  in  deter- 
mining the  principles  of  legislation  concerning  the  sex. 

Pagan  laws  during  the  empire  had  been  continually 

aling  t lie  old  disabilities  of  women,  and  the  legislative 
movement  in  their  favour  continued  with  unabated  force 
from  Constant ine  to  Justinian,  and  appeared  also  in  some 
of  the  early  laws  of  the  barbarians.3  But  in  the  whole 
isktiou  women  were  placed  in  a  much  lower 
legal  position  than  in  the  Pagan  empire.4   '  In  addition  to 


1  This  curious  fact  is  noticed  by  Le  Blant,  Inscriptions  chrcticnncs  de 
xcvii-xcviii. 

b  Council  of  Auxerre  (a.d.  578),  can.  36. 
the  last  t\v.»  chapters  of  Troplong,  Influencfa  du  Christianisme  tntr  le 
.  however,  which  is  written  much    more   in   the   spirit  of  an 
than  in  that  of  an  historian),  and  Legouve*,  pp.  27-29. 

ting  to  property,  the  position  of  women  in  feudal- 
ism wa<  a  low  one.  'Tout  m..  B  aumanbir,  'peut  battre  aa  femme 
quand  ellc  n<-  v.-ut  pai  <>!  mmandement,  qu  quand  elle  le  niaudit, 
"it  (jiiund  i  i  ii  que  ce  soit  modrivment  et  sans  que  mort 
s'ensuive,'  quoted  by  Lagourf,  p.  IK  I  Jontrasl  with  this  the  saying  of  the 
elder  Cato:  'A  man  who  beats  his  wife  or  his  children  lays  impious  hands 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  S59 

the  personal  restrictions  which  grew  necessarily  out  of  the 
Catholic  doctrines  concerning  divorce,  and  the  subordina- 
tion of  the  weaker  sex,  we  find  numerous  and  stringent 
enactments,  which  rendered  it  impossible  for  women  to 
succeed  to  any  considerable  amount  of  property,  and 
which  almost  reduced  them  to  the  alternative  of. marriage 
or  a  nunnery.1  The  complete  inferiority  of  the  sex  was 
continually  maintained  by  the  law,  and  that  generous 
public  opinion  which  in  Eome  had  frequently  revolted 
against  the  injustice  done  to  girls,  in  depriving  them  of 
the  greater  part  of  the  inheritance  of  their  fathers,  totally 
disappeared.  Wherever  the  canon  law  has  been  the  basis 
of  legislation,  we  find  laws  of  succession  sacrificing  the 
interests  of  daughters  and  of  wives,2  and  a  state  of  public 
opinion  which  has  been  formed  and  regulated  by  these 
laws ;  nor  was  any  serious  attempt  made  to  abolish  them 
till  the  close  of  the  last  century.  The  French  revolution- 
ists, though  rejecting  the  proposal  of  Sieyes  and  Condorcet 
to  accord  political  emancipation  to  women,  established  at 
least  an  equal  succession  of  sons  and  daughters,  and  thus 
initiated  a  great  reformation  of  both  law  arid  opinion, 
which  sooner  or  later  must  traverse  the  world. 

In  their  efforts  to  raise  the   standard  of  purity,  the 


on  that  which  is  most  holy  and  most  sacred  in  the  world.' — Plutarch,  Mar- 
cus Cato. 

1  See  Legouve,  pp.  29—38  ;  Maine's  Ancient  Law,  pp.  154-159. 

2  i  No  society  which  preserves  any  tincture  of  Christian  institutions  is 
likely  to  restore  to  married  women  the  personal  liberty  conferred  on  them 
by  the  middle  Roman  law :  but  the  proprietary  disabilities  of  married  females 
stand  on  quite  a  different  basis  from  their  personal  incapacities,  and  it  i3  by 
keeping  alive  and  consolidating  the  former  that  the  expositors  of  the  canon 
law  have  deeply  injured  civilisation.  There  are  many  vestiges  of  a  struggle 
between  the  secular  and  ecclesiastical  principles ;  but  the  canon  law  nearly 
everywhere  prevailed.' — Maine's  Ancient  Laiv,  p.  153.  I  may  observe  that 
the  Russian  law  was  early  very  favourable  to  the  proprietary  rights  of  mar- 
ried women.  See  a  remarkable  letter  in  the  Memoirs  of  the  Princess  Dasch- 
kaiv  (edited  by  Mrs.  Bradford  :  London,  LS40),  vol.  ii.  p.  404. 

57 


MO  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

Christian  teachers  derived  much  assistance  from  the  in- 
stalls and  the  conquests  of  the  barbarians.  The  dis- 
solution of  vast  retinues  of  slaves,  the  suspension  of  most 
public  games,  and  the  general  impoverishment  that  fol- 
lowed the  invasions,  were  all  favourable  to  the  cause  of 
ehastity;  and  in  respect  of  this  virtue  the  various  tribes 
of  barbarians,  however  violent  and  lawless,  were  far 
superior  to  the  more  civilised  community.  Tacitus,  in 
a  very  famous  work,  '  had  long  before  pourtrayed  in 
the  most  flattering  colours  the  purity  of  the  Germans. 
Adultery,  he  said,  was  very  rare  among  them.  The 
adulteress  was  driven  from  the  house  with  shaven  hair, 
and  beaten  ignominiously  through  the  village.  Neither 
youth,  nor  beauty,  nor  wealth  could  enable  a  woman  who 
was  known  to  have  sinned  to  secure  a  husband.  Poly- 
gamy '  tricted  to  the  princes,  who  looked  upon 
a  plurality  of  wives  rather  as  a  badge  of  dignity  than  as 
a  gratification  of  the  passions.  Mothers  invariably  gave 
i  their  own  children.  Infanticide  was  forbidden. 
Widows  were  not  allowed  to  remarry.  The  men  feared 
captivity,  much  more  for  their  wives  than  for  themselves ; 
they  believed  that  a  sacred  and  prophetic  gift  resided 
in  women;  they  consulted  them  as  oracles,  and  followed 
their  counsels.1 

It  is  generally  believed,  and  it  is  not  improbable,  that 
itua  in  this  work  intended  to  reprove  the  dissolute 
habits  of  his  fellow  countrymen,  and  considerably  over- 
coloured  the  virtue  of  the  barbarians.  Of  the  sub- 
stantial justice,  however,  of  his  picture  we  have  much 
Balvian,  who,  about  three  centuries  later,  wit- 
nessed and  described  the  manners  of  the  barbarians  who 
had  triumphed  over  the  empire,  alt. -ted  in  the  strongest 
language  the  contrast  which  their  chastity  presented  to 

1  Germonia,  cnp.  ix.  xviii.-xx. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  361 

the  vice  of  those  whom  they. had  subdued.1  The  Scan- 
dinavian mythology  abounds  in  legends  exhibiting  the 
clear  sentiment  of  the  heathen  tribes  on  the  subject  of 
purity,  and  the  awful  penalties  threatened  in  the  next 
world  against  the  seducers.2  The  barbarian  women  were 
accustomed  to  practise  medicine  and  to  interpret  dreams, 
and  they  also  very  frequently  accompanied  their  hus- 
bands to  battle,  rallied  their  broken  forces,  and  even 
themselves  took  part  in  the  fight.3  Augustus  had  dis- 
covered that  it  was  useless  to  keep  barbarian  chiefs  as 
hostages,  and  that  the  one  way  of  securing  the  fidelity  of 
traitors  was  by  taking  their  wives,  for  these,  at  least,  were 
never  sacrificed.  The  grandest  instances  of  Eoman  female 
heroism  scarcely  surpassed  some  which  were  related  of 
uncivilised  Germans,  or  of  semicivilised  Gauls.  When 
Marius  had  vanquished  an  army  of  the  Teutons,  their 
wives  besought  the  conqueror  to  permit  them  to  become  the 
servants  of  the  Yestal  Virgins,  in  order  that  their  honour, 
at  least,  might  be  secure  in  slavery.  Their  request  was 
refused,  and  that  night  they  all  perished  by  their  own 
hands.4  A  powerful  noble  once  solicited  the  hand  of  a 
Gaulish  lady  named  Gamma,  who,  faithful  to  her  husband, 
resisted  all  his  entreaties.  Eesolved  at  any  hazard  to 
succeed,  he  caused  her  husband  to  be  assassinated,  and 
when  she  took  refuge  in  the  temple  of  Diana,  and  enrolled 
herself  among  her  priestesses,  he  sent  noble  after  noble 
to  induce  her  to  relent.  After  a  time,  he  ventured  him- 
self into  her  presence.  She  feigned  a  willingness  to  yield, 
but  told  him  it  was  first  necessary  to  make  a  libation  to 
the  goddess.     She  appeared  as  a  priestess  before  the  altar, 

1  De  Guhernatione  Dei.  m 

8  See,  for  these  legends,  Mallet's  Northern  Antiqtiities. 

3  Tacitus,  Germ.  9 ;  Hist.  iv.  18 ;  Xiphilin.  lxxi.  3 ;  Amra.  Marcellinus, 
XV.  12  ;  Vopiscus,  Aurelius;  Florus,  iii.  8. 

4  Valer.  Max.  vi.  1 ;  Ilierou.  Ep.  cxxiii. 


3C2  HISTORY   OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

bearing  in   her   hand  a   cup   of  wine,   which   she  had 
poisoned.     Bhe  drank  half  of  it  herself,  handed  the  re- 

inder  to  her  guilty  lover,  and  when  he  had  drained 
the  cup  to  the  clregs,  burst  into  a  fierce  thanksgiving, 
thai  id  been  permitted  to  avenge,  and  was  soon  to 

rejoin,  her  murdered  husband.1     Another  and  still  more 

naikable  instance  of  conjugal  fidelity  was  furnished  by 

nilish  woman  named  Epponina.     Her  husband,  Julius 

inns,  had  rebelled  against  Vespasian;  he  was  conquered, 
and  might  easily  have  escaped  to  Germany,  but  could  not 

ll  bo  abandon  his  young  wife.     He  retired  to  a  villa  of 

own,  concealed  himself  in  subterranean  cellars  that 

were  below  it,  and  instructed  a  freedman  to  spread  the 

report  that  lie  had  committed  suicide,  while,  to  account 

for  the  disappearance  of  his  body,  he  set  fire  to  the  villa 

lonina.  hearing  of  the  suicide,  for  three  days  lay  pros- 

te  on  the  ground  without  eating.  At  length  the 
freedman  came  to  her,  and  told  her  that  the  suicide  was 

gned.  She  continued  her  lamentations  by  day,  but 
visited  her  husband  by  night.  She  became  with  child, 
but  owing,  it  la  said,  to  an  ointment,  she  succeeded  in  con- 
cealing her  state  from  her  friends.  When  the  hour  of 
parturition  was  at  hand,  she  went  alone  into  the  cellar, 
and  without  any  assistance  or  attendance  was  delivered 
horn  she  brought  up  underground.     For  nine 

ma  she  fulfilled  her  task,  when  Sabinus  was  discovered, 
and,  to  the  lasting  disgrace  of  Vespasian,  was  executed  in 
spite  of  the  supplications  of  his  wife,  who  made  it  her  last 
request  that  she  might  be  permitted  to  die  with  him.2 

The  moral  purity  of  the  barbarians  was  of  a  kind 
altogether  different  from  that  which  the  ascetic  movement 

1  r  Vin. 

\ipliilin.  Ixvi.  10 ;  Tar-it.  Hid.  iv.  G7.    The  name 
rf  thU  heroic  wife  i»  giren  in  three  different  forms. 


THE  POSITION   OF  WOMEN.  363 

inculcated.  It  was  concentrated  exclusively  upon  mar- 
riage. It  showed  itself  in  a  noble  conjugal  fidelity ;  but 
it  was  little  fitted  for  a  life  of  celibacy,  and  did  not,  as  we 
have  seen,  prevent  excessive  disorders  among  the  priest- 
hood. The  practice  of  polygamy  among  the  barbarian 
kings  was  also  for  some  centuries  unchecked,  or  at  least 
unsuppressed  by  Christianity.  The  kings  Caribert  and 
Chilperic  had  both  many  wives  at  the  same  time.1 
Clothaire  married  the  sister  of  his  first  wife  daring  the 
lifetime  of  the  latter,  who,  on  the  intention  of  the  king 
being  announced,  is  reported  to  have  said,  'Let  my  lord 
do  what  seemeth  good  in  his  sight,  only  let  thy  servant 
live  in  thy  favour.' 2  Theodebert,  whose  general  good- 
ness of  character  is  warmly  extolled  by  the  episcopal 
historian,  abandoned  his  first  wife  on  account  of  an 
atrocious  crime  which  she  had  committed,  took,  during 
her  lifetime,  another,  to  whom  he  had  previously  been 
betrothed,  and  upon  the  death  of  this  second  wife,  and 
while  the  first  was  still  living,  took  a  third,  whom,  how- 
ever, at  a  later  period  he  murdered.3  St.  Columbanus 
was  expelled  from  Gaul  chiefly  on  account  of  his  denun- 
ciations of  the  polygamy  of  King  Thierry.4  Dagobert 
had  three  wives,  as  well  as  a  multitude  of  concubines.5 
Charlemagne  himself  had  at  the  same  time  two  wives, 
and  he  indulged  largely  in  concubines.0  After  this 
period  examples  of  this  nature  became  rare.  The  popes 
and  the  bishops  exercised  a  strict  supervision  over 
domestic   morals,   and   strenuously,    and   in   most  cases 

1  On  the  polygamy  of  the  first,  see  Greg1.  Tur.  iv.  26  ;  on  the  polygamy  of 
Chilperic,  Greg.  Tur.  iv.  28 ;  v.  14. 

2  Greg.  Tur.  iv.  3.  3  Ibid,  iii.  25-27,  3G. 
4  Fredegarius,  xxxvi.  5  Ibid.  lx. 

6  Eginhardus,  Vit.  Kar.  Mag.  xviii.  Charlemagne  had,  according  to 
Eginhard,  four  wives,  but,  as  far  as  I  can  understand,  only  two  at  the  same 
time. 


3G4  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

successfully,  opposed  the  attempts  of  kings  and  nobles  to 
idiate  their  wives. 

But  notwithstanding  these  startling  facts,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  general  purity  of  the  barbarians  was  from  the 
r  to  that  of  the  later  Eomans,  and  it  appears  in 
many  of  their  laws.  It  has  been  very  happily  observed,1 
that  the  high  value  placed  on  this  virtue  is  well  illustrated 
by  the  fact  that  in  the  Salic  Code,  while  a  charge  of 

nrardice  falsely  brought  against  a  man  was  only  punished 
by  a  line  of  three  solidi,  a  charge  of  unchastity  falsely 
brought  against  a  woman  was  punished  by  a  fine  of  forty- 
live.  The  Teutonic  sentiment  was  shown  in  a  very  stern 
legislation  against  adultery  and  rape,2  and  curiously 
minute  precautions  were  sometimes  taken  to  guard  against 
them.  A  law  of  the  Spanish  Visigoths  prohibited  surgeons 
from  bleeding  any  free  woman  except  in  the  presence  of 
hei-  husband,  her  nearest  relative,  or  at  least  of  some 
properly  appointed  witness,  and  a  Salic  law  imposed  a 
of  fifteen  pieces  of  gold  upon  any  one  who  impro- 
pressed  her  hand.3 

Under  the  influence  of  Christianity,  assisted  by  the 
barbarians,  a  vast  change  passed  gradually  over  the 
World     The  vice  we  are  considering  was  probably  more 

■" ;  it  certainly  assumed  less  extravagant  forms,  and 
it  waa  screened  from  observation  with  a  new  modesty. 
The  theory  of  morals  had  become  clearer,  and  the  prac- 
tice was  somewhat  improved.  The  extreme  grossness  of 
literature  had  disappeared,  and  the  more  glaring  violations 
were  always  censured  and  often  repressed. 
nitential   discipline,  and  the  exhortations  of  the 

U  fern  History,  \<>1.  i.  pp.  (51-02. 
Milninn's    /  Christianity,  vol.  i.  ]>.   9(33:  Lejiouve,  Hint. 

I 

•,  on  these  laws,  Lord  Karnes  On  Womm  ;   Legouvd,  p.  57. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  365 

pulpit,  diffused  abroad  an  immeasurably  higher  sense  of 
the  importance  of  purity  than  Pagan  antiquity  had  known. 
St.  Gregory  the  Great,  following  in  the  steps  of  some 
Pagan  philosophers,1  strenuously  urged  upon  mothers 
the  duty  of  themselves  suckling  their  children ;  and 
many  minute  and  stringent  precepts  were  made  against 
extravagances  of  dress  and  manners.  The  religious  in- 
stitutions of  Greece  and  Asia  Minor,  which  had  almost 
consecrated  prostitution,  were  for  ever  abolished,  and 
the  courtesan  sank  into  a  lower  stage  of  degradation. 

Besides  these  changes,  the  duty  of  the  reciprocal  fidelity 
in  marriage  was  enforced  with  a  new  earnestness.  The 
contrast  between  the  levity  with  which  the  frailty  of  men 
has  in  most  ages  been  regarded,  and  the  extreme  severity 
with  which  women  who  have  been  guilty  of  the  same 
offence  have  generally  been  treated,  forms  one  of  the 
most  singular  anomalies  in  moral  history,  and  appears 
the  more  remarkable  when  we  remember  that  the  tempta- 
tion usually  springs  from  the  sex  which  is  so  readily 
pardoned,  that  the  sex  which  is  visited  with  such  crush- 
ing penalties  is  proverbially  the  most  weak,  and  that,  in 
the  case  of  women,  but  not  in  the  case  of  men,  the  vice 
is  very  commonly  the  result  of  the  most  abject  misery 
and  poverty.  For  this  disparity  of  censure  several  reasons 
have  been  assigned.  The  offence  can  be  more  surely  and 
easily  detected,  and  therefore  more  certainly  punished, 
in  the  case  of  women  than  of  men ;  and  as  the  duty  of 
providing  for  his  children  falls  upon  the  father,  the  intro- 
duction into  the  family  of  children  who  are  not  his  own 
is  a  special  injury  to  him,  while  illegitimate  children 
who  do  not  spring  from  adultery  will  probably,  on  ac- 
count'of  their  father  having  entered  into  no  compact  to 
support  them,  ultimately  become  criminals  or  paupers, 

1  Favorinus  had  strongly  urged  it.     (Aul.  Gell.  Noct.  xii.  1.) 


SGG  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN   MORALS. 

and  therefore  a  burden  to  society.1  It  may  be  added,  I 
think,  that  several  causes  render  the  observance  of  this 

tue  more  difficult  for  one  sex  than  for  the  other;  that 
its  violation,  when  every  allowance  has  been  made  for 
the  moral  degradation  which  is  a  result  of  the  existing 
condition  of  public  opinion,  is  naturally  more  profoundly 
prejudicial  to  the  character  of  women  than  of  men,  and 

■  that  much  of  our  feeling  on  these  subjects  is  due  to 
laws  and  moral  systems  which  were  formed  by  men,  and 
were  in  the  first  instance  intended  for  their  own  protection. 
The  passages  in  the  Fathers,  asserting  the  equality  of 
the  obligation  of  chastity  imposed  upon  both  sexes,  are 
Ingly  unequivocal;2  and  although  the  doctrine 
itself  had  been  anticipated  by  Seneca  and  Plutarch,  it  had 
probably  never  before,  and  has  never  since,  been  so  fully 
realised  aa  in  the  early  Church.     It  cannot,  however,  be 

I  that  the  conquest  has  been  retained.     At  the  present 

hough  the  standard  of  morals  is  far  higher  than 

in  Pagan  Home,  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the  in- 

the  censure  which  is  bestowed  upon  the  two 

s  is  not  as  great  as  in  the  days  of  Paganism,  and  that 

[uality  is  continually  the  cause  of  the  most  shameful 
and  the  most  pitiable  injustice.  In  one  respect,  indeed, 
a  great  retrogression  resulted  from  chivalry,  and  long 
survived  its  decay.  The  character  of  the  seducer,  and 
especially  of  the   passionless   seducer   who   pursues  his 

1  These  tan  the  reasons  given  by  Multhus,  On  Population,  book  iii.  ch.  ii. 

*  St.  Augustine  (1><  Cay'.  A<hdt.  ii.  19)  maintains  that  adultery  is  even 

more  criminal  in  the  man  than  in  the  woman.     St.  Jerome  has  an  impressive 

pawage  on  the  subject :    'Alias  tout  lege&  C&aarum,  aliie  Christi ;   aliud 

pH].innn8.  aliud  Pauloa  Dostri  precept    Apud  illos  viris  impudicitire  frsma 

tur  ct  soto  8tupro  atque  adulterio  condemnflto  passim  per  lupanaiia 

•t  nncillulas  libido  permittitur,  quasi  culpam  di-rnitas  faciat  non  voluntas. 

I  nosquod  dob  Licet  feminii  a3que  non  licet  viris ;  el  eadem  serrittia  pari 

:;  "tur.'— Ep.    .xxvii.      St.    Chrysostom   writes   in   a  similar 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  367 

career  simply  as  a  kind  of  sport,  and  under  the  influence 
of  no  stronger  motive  than  vanity  or  a  spirit  of  adventure, 
and  who  designates  his  successes  in  destroying  the  honour 
of  women  his  conquests,  has  been  glorified  and  idealised 
in  the  popular  literature  of  Christendom  in  a  manner  to 
which  we  can  find  no  parallel  in  antiquity.  When  we 
reflect  that  the  object  of  such  a  man  is  by  the  coldest 
and  most  deliberate  treachery  to  blast  the  lives  of  innocent 
women ;  when  we  compare  the  levity  of  his  motive  with 
the  irreparable  injury  he  inflicts;  and  when  we  remember 
that  he  can  only  deceive  his  victim  by  persuading  her  to 
love  him,  and  can  only  ruin  her  by  persuading  her  to 
trust  him,  it  must  be  owned  that  it  would  be  difficult 
to  conceive  a  cruelty  more  wanton  and  more  heartless,  or 
a  character  combining  more  numerous  elements  of  infamy 
and  of  dishonour.  That  such  a  character  should  for  many 
centuries  have  been  the  popular  ideal  of  a  vast  section  of 
literature,  that  it  should  have  been  the  continual  boast  of 
those  who  most  plume  themselves  upon  their  honour,  is 
assuredly  one  of  the  most  mournful  facts  in  history,  and 
it  represents  a  moral  deflection  certainly  not  less  than 
was  revealed  in  ancient  Greece  by  the  position  that  was 
assigned  to  the  courtesan. 

The  fundamental  truth,  that  the  same  act  can  never  be 
at  once  venial  for  a  man  to  demand,  and  infamous  for  a 
woman  to  accord,  though  nobly  enforced  by  the  early 
Christians,  has  not  passed  into  the  popular  sentiment  of 
Christendom.  The  mystical  character,  however,  which 
the  Church  imparted  to  marriage  has  been  extremely  in- 
fluential. Partly  by  raising  marriage  into  a  sacrament, 
and  partly  by  representing  it  as,  in  some  mysterious  and 
not  very  definable  sense,  an  image  of  the  union  of  Christ 
with  His  Church,  a  feeling  was  fostered  that  a  lifelong 
union  of  one  man  and  one  woman  is,  under  all  circum- 


3C8  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

stances,  the  single  form  of  intercourse  between  the  sexes 
which  is  not  illegitimate  ;  and  this  conviction  has  acquired 
tlif  foBCe  «>i' a  primal  moral  intuition. 

There  can,  I  think,  be  little  doubt  that,  in  the  stringency 
with  which  it  is  usually  laid  down,  it  rests  not  upon  the 
law  of  nature,  but  upon  positive  law,  although  unassisted 
nature  is  sufficient  to  lead  men  many  steps  in  its  direction. 
isidering  the  subject  simply  in  the  light  of  unaided 
reason,  two  rules  comprise  the  whole  duty  of  man.  He 
must  abstain  from  whatever  injures  happiness  or  de- 
grades character.  Under  the  first  head,  lie  must  include 
the  more  remote  as  well  as  the  immediate  consequences 
of  his  act.  He  must  consider  how  his  partner  will  be 
affected  by  the  union,  the  light  in  which  society  will  view 
the  connection,  the  probable  position  of  the  children  to 
be  born,  the  effect  of  these  births,  and  also  the  effect  of 
his  example  upon  the  well-being  of  society  at  large. 
Some  of  the  elements  of  this  calculation  vary  in  different 
stages  of  society.  Thus,  public  opinion  in  one  age  will 
reprobate,  and  therefore  punish,  connections  which,  in 
another  age,  are  fully  sanctioned  ;  and  the  probable  posi- 
tion of  the  children,  as  well  as  the  effect  of  the  births 
upon  society,  will  depend  greatly  upon  particular  and 
national  circumstances. 

Under  the  second  head  is  comprised  the  influence  of 
this  intercourse  in  clouding  01  developing  the  moral 
feelings,  lowering  or  elevating  the  tone  of  character,  ex- 
citing or  allaying  the  aberrations  of  the  imagination, 
incapacitating  men  for  pure  affections  or  extending  their 
range,  making  the  animal  part  of  our  nature  more  or  less 
predominant  We  know,  by  the  intuition  of  our  moral 
nature,  that  this  predominance  is  always  a  degraded, 
though  it  is  not  always  an  unhappy  condition.  We  also 
know  that  it  is  a  law  of  our  being,  that  powerful  and 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  3G9 

beautiful  affections,  which  had  before  been  latent,  are 
evoked  in  some  particular  forms  of  union,  while  other 
forms  of  union  are  peculiarly  fitted  to  deaden  the  affec- 
tions and  to  pervert  the  character. 

In  these  considerations  we  have  ample  grounds  for 
maintaining  that  the  lifelong  union  of  one  man  and  of 
one  woman  should  be  the  normal  or  dominant  type  of 
intercourse  between  the  sexes.  We  can  prove  that  it  is 
on  the  whole  most  conducive  to  the  happiness,  and  also 
to  the  moral  elevation,  of  all  parties.  But  beyond  this 
point  it  would,  I  conceive,  be  impossible  to  advance, 
except  by  the  assistance  of  a  special  revelation.  It  by 
no  means  follows  that  because  this  should  be  the  domi- 
nant type  it  should  be  the  only  one,  or  that  the  interests 
of  society  demand  that  all  connections  should  be  forced 
into  the  same  die.  Connections,  which  were  confessedly 
only  for  a  few  years,  have  always  subsisted  side  by  side 
with  permanent  marriages ;  and  in  periods  when  public 
opinion,  acquiescing  in  their  propriety,  inflicts  no  ex- 
communication on  one  or  both  of  the  partners,  when 
these  partners  are  not  living  the  demoralising  and  degrad- 
ing life  which  accompanies  the  consciousness  of  guilt, 
and  when  proper  provision  is  made  for  the  children  who 
are  born,  it  would  be,  I  believe,  impossible  to  prove  by 
the  light  of  simple  and  unassisted  reason,  that  such  con- 
nections should  be  invariably  condemned.  It  is  extremely 
important,  both  for  the  happiness  and  for  the  moral  well- 
being  of  men,  that  lifelong  unions  should  not  be  effected 
simply  under  the  imperious  prompting  of  a  blind  appetite. 
There  are  always  multitudes  who,  in  the  period  of  their 
lives  when  their  passions  are  most  strong,  are  incapable 
of  supporting  children  in  their  own  social  rank,  and  who 
would  therefore  injure  society  by  marrying  in  it,  but  are 


870  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

nevertheless  perfectly  capable  of  securing  an  honourable 
career  for  their  illegitimate  children  in  the  lower  social 
sphere  to  which  they  would  naturally  belong.  Under 
the  conditions  I  have  mentioned,  these  connections  are 
not  injurious,  but  beneficial  to  the  weaker  partner  ;  they 
soften  the  differences  of  rank,  they  stimulate  social  habits, 
and  they  do  not  produce  upon  character  the  degrading 
effect  of  promiscuous  intercourse,  or  upon  society  the  in- 
jurious effects  of  imprudent  marriages,  one  or  other 
of  which  will  multiply  in  their  absence.  In  the  immense 
variety  of  circumstances  and  characters,  cases  will  always 
appear  in  which,  on  utilitarian  grounds,  they  might  seem 
advisable. 

It  is  necessary  to  dwell  upon  such  considerations  as 
these,  if  we  would  understand  the  legislation  of  the  Pagan 
Empire  or  the  changes  that  were  effected  by  Christianity. 
The  legislators  of  the  empire  distinctly  recognised  these 
connections,  and  made  it  a  main  object  to  authorise,  dig- 
nify, and  regulate  them.  The  unlimited  licence  of  divorce 
practically  included  them  under  the  name  of  marriage, 
while  that  name  sheltered  them  from  stigma,  and  pre- 
vented many  of  the  gravest  evils  of  unauthorised  unions. 
The  word  concubine  also,  which  in  the  republic  had  the 
same  signification  as  among  ourselves,  represented  in  the 
empire  a  strictly  legal  union — an  innovation  which  was 
chiefly  due  to  Augustus,  and  was  doubtless  intended  as 
part  of  the  legislation  against  celibacy,  and  also,  it  may  be, 
as  a  corrective  of  the  licentious  habits  that  were  general. 
This  union  was  in  essentials  simply  a  form  of  marriage, 
for  he  who,  having  a  concubine,  took  to  himself  either  a 
wife  or  another  concubine,  was  legally  guilty  of  adultery. 
Like  the  commonest  form  of  marriage,  it  was  consum- 
mated without  any  ceremony,  and  was  dissoluble  at  will. 
Its  peculiarities  were  that  it  was  contracted  between  men 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  871 

of  patrician  rank  and  freedwomcn,  who  were  forbidden 
by  law  to  intermarry;  that  the  concubine,  though  her 
position  was  perfectly  recognised  and  honourable,  did 
not  share  the  rank  of  her  partner,  that  she  brought  no 
dowry,  and  that  her  children  followed  her  rank,  and 
were  excluded  from  the  rank  and  the  inheritance  of  their 
father.1 

.  Against  these  notions  Christianity  declared  a  direct 
and  implacable  warfare,  which  was  imperfectly  reflected 
in  the  civil  legislation,  but  appeared  unequivocally  in  the 
writings  of  the  Fathers,  and  in  most  of  the  decrees  of  the 
Councils.2  It  taught,  as  a  religious  dogma,  invariable,  in- 
flexible, and  independent  of  all  utilitarian  calculations,  that 
all  forms  of  intercourse  of  the  sexes,  other  than  lifelong 
unions,  were  criminal.  By  teaching  men  to  regard  this 
doctrine  as  axiomatic,  and  therefore  inflicting  severe  so- 
cial penalties  and  deep  degradation  on  transient  connec- 
tions, it  has  profoundly  modified  even  their  utilitarian 
aspect,  and  has  rendered  them  in  most  countries  furtive 
and  disguised.  There  is  probably  no  other  branch  of 
ethics  which  has  been  so  largely  determined  by  special 

1  See  Troplong,  Influence  du  Christianisme  sur  le  Droit,  pp.  239-251. 

2  We  find,  however,  traces  of  toleration  of  the  early  Roman  concubines  in 
Christianity  for  some  time.  Thus,  a  Council  of  Toledo  decreed,  '  Si  quis 
habens  uxorem  fidelis  concubinam  habeat  non  communicet.  Creterum  is  qui 
non  habet  uxorem  et  pro  uxore  concubinam  habet  a  communione  non  repel- 
latur,  tantum  ut  unius  mulieris,  aut  uxoris  aut  concubinse  ut  ei  placuerit, 
sit  conjunctione  contentus.' — 1  Can.  17.  St.  Isidore  said,  '  Christiano  non 
dicam  piurimas  sed  nee  duas  simul  habere  licitum  est,  nisi  imam  tantum 
aut  uxorem,  aut  certo  loco  uxoris,  si  conjux  deest,  concubinam.' — Apud 
Gratianum,  diss.  4.  Quoted  by  Natalis  Alexander,  Hist.  Hccles.  Sssc.  I.  diss. 
29.  Mr.  Lea  (Hist,  of  Sacerdotal  Celibacy,  pp.  203-205)  has  devoted  an  ex- 
tremely interesting-  note  to  tracing  the  history  of  the  word  concubine  through 
the  middle  ages.  He  shows  that  even  up  to  the  thirteenth  century  a  con- 
cubine was  not  necessarily  an  abandoned  woman.  The  term  was  applied  to 
marriages  that  were  real,  but  not  officially  recognised.  Coleridge  notices 
a  remarkable  instance  of  the  revival  of  this  custom  in  German  history. — 
Notes  on  English  Divines  (ed.  1853)-,  vol.  i.  p.  221. 


HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

dogmatic  theology,  and  there  is  none  which  would  be  so 
ly  affected  by  its  decay. 

As  a  part  of  the  same  movement,  the  purely  civil  mar- 
riage of  the  later  Pagan  Empire  was  gradually  replaced 
by  religious  marriages.  There  is  a  manifest  propriety  in 
invoking  a  divine  benediction  upon  an  act  which  forms 
so  important  an  epoch  in  life,  and  the  mingling  of  a  re- 
ligious ceremony  impresses  a  deeper  sense  of  the  solem- 
nity of  the  contract.  The  essentially  religious  and  even 
mystical  character  imparted  by  Christianity  to  marriage 
rendered  the  consecration  peculiarly  natural,  but  it  was 
only  very  gradually  that  it  came  to  be  looked  upon  as 
absolutely  necessary.  As  I  have  already  noticed,  it  was 
long  dispensed  with  in  the  marriage  of  slaves  ;  and  even 
in  the  case  of  freemen,  though  generally  performed,  it 
waa  not  made  compulsory  till  the  tenth  century.1  In  ad- 
dition to  its  primary  object  of  sanctifying  marriage,  it  be- 
came  in  time  a  powerful  instrument  in  securing  the 
authority  of  the  priesthood,  who  were  able  to  compel 
men  to  submit  to  the  conditions  they  imposed  in  the  for- 
mation of  the  most  important  contract  of  life,  and  the 
modern  authorisation  of  civil  marriages  as  well  as  the 
general  diminution  of  the  power  of  the  Catholic  priest- 
hood over  domestic  life,  have  been  among  the  most 
severe  blows  ecclesiastical  influence  has  undergone. 

The  absolute  sinfulness  of  divorce  was  at  the  same  time 
strenuously  maintained  by  the  Councils,  which  in  this,  aa 
in  many  other  points,  differed  widely  from  the  civil  law. 
-tantine  restricted  it  to  three  cases  of  crime  on  the 
part  of  the  husband,  and  three  on  the  part  of  the  wife; 
but  the  habit-  of  tha  people  were  too  strong  for  his  enact- 
ments, and  alter  one  or  two  changes  in  the  law,  the  full 

1  Legouvd,  p.  191). 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  373 

latitude  of  divorce  reappeared  in  the  Justinian  Code.  The 
Fathers,  on  the  other  hand,  though  they  hesitated  a  little 
about  the  case  of  a  divorce  which  followed  an  act  of 
adultery  on  the  part  of  the  wife,1  had  no  hesitation  what- 
ever in  pronouncing  all  other  divorces  to  be  criminal, 
and  periods  of  penitential  discipline  were  imposed  upon 
Christians  who  availed  themselves  of  the  privileges  of  the 
civil  law.2  For  many  centuries  this  duality  of  legislation 
continued.  The  barbarian  law  restricted  divorce  by 
imposing  severe  fines  on  those  who  repudiated  their 
wives.  Charlemagne  pronounced  divorce  to  be  criminal, 
but  did  not  venture  to  make  it  penal,  and  he  practised  it 
himself.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Church  threatened  with 
excommunication,  and  in  some  cases  actually  launched 
its  thunders  against,  those  who  were  guilty  of  it.  It  was 
only  in  the  twelfth  century  that  the  victory  was  definitely 
achieved,  and  the  civil  law,  adopting  the  principle  of  the 
canon  law,  prohibited  all  divorce.3 

I  do  not  propose  in  the  present  work  to  examine  how 
far  this  total  prohibition  has  been  for  the  happiness  or 
the  moral  well-being  of  men.  I  will  simply  observe  that, 
though  it  is  now  often  defended,  it  was  not  originally 
imposed  in  Christian  nations  upon  utilitarian  grounds, 
but  was  based  upon  the  sacramental  character  of  mar- 
riage, upon  the  belief  that  it  was  the  special  symbol  of 
the  perpetual  union  of  Christ  with  His  Church,  and  upon 
a  well-known  passage  in  the  Gospels.     The  stringency  of 

1  See  some  curious  passages  in  Troplong,  pp.  222-223.  The  Fathers  seem 
to  have  thought  dissolution  of  marriage  was  not  lawful  on  account  of  the 
adultery  of  the  husband,  but  that  it  was  not  absolutely  unlawful,  though  not 
commendable,  for  a  husband  whose  wife  had  committed  adultery  to  remarry. 

2  Some  of  the  great  charities  of  Fabiola  were  performed  as  penances,  on 
nccount  of  her  crime  in  availing  herself  of  the  legislative  permission  of 
divorce. 

3  Laboulnye,  Heclierches  sur  la  Condition  civile  et  j-olitique  des  Femmes, 
pp.  152-158. 


074  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

the  catholic  doctrine,  which  forbids  the  dissolution  of 
marriage  even  in  the  case  of  adultery,  has  been  con- 
siderably relaxed  by  modern  legislation,  and  there  can,  I 
think,  be  little  doubt  that  further  steps  will  yet  be  taken 
in  the  same  direction;  but  the  vast  change  that  was 
effected  in  both  practice  and  theory  since  the  unlimited 
uce  of  the  Pagan  Empire  must  be  manifest  to  all. 

It  was  essential,  or  at  least  very  important,  that  a 
union  which  was  so  solemn  and  so  irrevocable  should  be 
freely  contracted.  The  sentiment  of  the  Roman  patriots 
towards  the  close  of  the  republic  was,  that  marriage 
should  be  regarded  as  a  means  of  providing  children  for 
the  State,  and  should  be  entered  into  as  a  matter  of  duty 
with  that  view,  and  the  laws  of  Augustus  had  imposed 
many  disqualifications  on  those  who  abstained  from  it. 
Both  of  these  inducements  to  marriage  passed  away 
under  the  influence  of  Christianity.  The  popular  induce- 
ment disappeared  with  the  decline  of  civic  virtues.  The 
laws  were  rescinded  under  the  influence  of  the  ascetic 
enthusiasm  which  made  men  regard  the  state  of  celibacy 
as  pre-eminently  holy. 

There  was  still  one  other  important  condition  to  be 
attained  by  theologians  in  order  to  realise  their  ideal 
type  of  marriage.  It  was  to  prevent  the  members  of 
the  Church  from  intermarrying  with  those  whose  reli- 
llfl  opinions  differed  from  their  own.  Mixed  marriages, 
it  lias  been  truly  said,  may  do  more  than  almost  any 
other  influence  to  assuage  the  rancour  and  the  asperity 
of  sects,  and  they  have  therefore  always  been  bitterly 
opposed  by  theologians.  It  must  be  added,  however, 
that  a  considerable  measure  of  tolerance  must  have  been 
attained  before  they  become  possible.  In  a  union 
in  which  each  partner  believes  and  realises  that  the  other 
is  doomed  to  an  eternity  of  misery  there  can  be  no  real 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  875 

happiness,  no  sympathy,  no  trust ;  and  a  domestic  agree- 
ment that  some  of  the  children  should  be  educated  in 
one  religion  and  some  in  the  other  would  be  impossible 
when  each  parent  believed  it  to  be  an  agreement  that 
some  children  should  be  doomed  to  hell. 

The  domestic  unhappiness  arising  from  differences  of 
belief  was  probably  almost  or  altogether  unknown  in  the 
world  before  the  introduction  of  Christianity ;  for  although 
differences  of  opinion  may  have  before  existed,  the  same 
momentous  consequences  were  not  attached  to  them.  It 
has  been  the  especial  bane  of  periods  of  great  religious 
change,  such  as  the  conversion  of  the  Eoman  Empire,  or 
the  Eeformation,  or  our  own  day,  when  far  more  serious 
questions  than  those  which  agitated  the  sixteenth  century 
are  occupying  the  attention  of  a  large  proportion  of 
thinkers  and  scholars,  and  when  the  deep  and  widening 
chasm  between  the  religious  opinions  of  most  highly  edu- 
cated men,  and  of  the  immense  majority  of  women,  is 
painfully  apparent.  While  a  multitude  of  scientific  dis- 
coveries, critical  and  historical  researches,  and  educa- 
tional reforms  have  brought  thinking  men  face  to  face 
with  religious  problems  of  extreme  importance,  women 
have  been  almost  absolutely  excluded  from  their  influ- 
ence. Their  minds  are  usually  by  nature  less  capable 
than  those  of  men  of  impartiality  and  suspense,  and  the 
almost  complete  omission  from  female  education  of  those 
studies  which  most  discipline  and  strengthen  the  intellect, 
increases  the  difference,  while  at  the  same  time  it  has 
been  usually  made  a  main  object  to  imbue  them  with  a 
passionate  faith  in  traditional  opinions,  and  to  preserve 
them  from  all  contact  with  opposing  views.  But  con- 
tracted knowledge  and  imperfect  sympathy  are  not  the 
sole  fruits  of  this  education.  It  has  always  been  the 
peculiarity  of  a  certain  kind  of  theological  teaching,  that 

58 


370  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

it  inverts  all  the  normal  principles  of  judgment,  and  abso- 
lutely destroys  intellectual  diffidence.     On  other  subjects 

find,  if  not  a  respect  for  honest  conviction,  at  least 

ie  Bense  of  the  amount  of  knowledge  that  is  requisite 
to  entitle  men  to  express  an  opinion  on  grave  contro- 
.  A  complete  ignorance  of  the  subject  matter  of  a 
dispute  rest  rains  the  confidence  of  dogmatism,  and  an 
ignorant  person  who  is  aware  that,  by  much  reading  and 
thinking  in  spheres  of  which  he  has  himself  no  knowledge, 
his  educated  neighbour  has  modified  or  rejected  opinions 
which  that  ignorant  person  had  been  taught,  will,  at  least, 
if  he  is  a  man  of  sense  or  modesty,  abstain  from  compas- 

.ating  the  benighted  condition  of  his  more  instructed 
friend  Hut  on  theological  questions  this  has  never  been 
so.  Unfaltering  belief  being  taught  as  the  first  of  duties, 
and  all  doubt  being  usually  stigmatised  as  criminal  or 
damnable,  a  state  of  mind  is  formed  to  which  we  find  no 
parallel  in  other  fields.  Many  men  and  most  women, 
though  completely  ignorant  of  the  very  rudiments  of  bib- 
lical criticism,  historical  research,  or  scientific  discoveries, 
though  they  have  never  read  a  single  page,  or  understood 
a  single  proposition  of  the  writings  of  those  whom  they 

denin,  and  have  absolutely  no  rational  knowledge 
either  of  the  arguments  by  which  their  faith  is  defended, 

i  >f  those  by  which  it  has  been  impugned,  will  never- 
theless adjudicate  with  the  utmost  confidence  upon  every 
polemical  question,  denounce,  hate,  pity,  or  pray  for  the 
conversion  of  all  who  dissent  from  what  they  have  been 
tau-lit.  assume,  as  a  matter  beyond  the  faintest  possibility 
of  doubt,  that  the  opinions  they  have  received  without 
enquiry  must  be  true,  and  that  the  opinions  which  others 
have  arrived  at  by  enquiry  must  be  false,  and  make  it  a 
main  object  of  their  lives  to  assail  what  they  call  heresy 
it)   every  way  in  their  power,  except  by  examining  the 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  377 

grounds  on  which  it  rests.  It  is  probable  that  the  great 
majority  of  voices  that  swell  the  clamour  against  every 
book  which  is  regarded  as  heretical,  are  the  voices  of 
those  who  would  deem  it  criminal  even  to  open  that  book, 
or  to  enter  into  any  real,  searching,  and  impartial  investi- 
gation of  the  subject  to  which  it  relates.  Innumerable 
pulpits  support  this  tone  of  thought,  and  represent,  with 
a  fervid  rhetoric  well  fitted  to  excite  the  nerves  and 
imaginations  of  women,  the  deplorable  condition  of  all 
who  deviate  from  a  certain  type  of  opinions  or  of  emo- 
tions ;  a  blind  propagandism  or  a  secret  wretchedness 
penetrates  into  countless  households,  poisoning  the  peace 
of  families,  chilling  the  mutual  confidence  of  husband  and 
wife,  adding  immeasurably  to  the  difficulties  which  every 
searcher  into  truth  has  to  encounter,  and  diffusing  far  and 
wide  intellectual  timidity,  disingenuousness,  and  hypocrisy. 
These  domestic  divisions  became  very  apparent  in  the 
period  of  the  conversion  of  the  Eoman  Empire,  and  a 
natural  desire  to  guard  intact  the  orthodoxy  and  zeal  of 
the  converts,  and  to  prevent  a  continual  discordance,  sti- 
mulated the  Fathers  in  their  very  vehement  denunciations 
of  all  mixed  marriages.  We  may  also  trace  in  these  de- 
nunciations the  outline  of  a  very  singular  doctrine,  which, 
was  afterwards  suffered  to  fall  into  obscurity,  but  was 
revived  in  the  last  century  in  England  in  a  curious  and 
learned   work   of   the   nonjuror   Dodwell.1      The   union 

1  '  A  discourse  concerning  the  obligation  to  marry  within  the  true  com- 
munion, following  from  their  style  (sic)  of  being  called  a  holy  seed.'  This 
rare  discourse  is  appended  to  a  sermon  against  mixed  marriages  by  Leslie. 
(London,  1702.)  The  reader  may  find  something  about  Dodwell  in  Macau- 
lay's  Hist,  of  England,  ch.  xiv.  ;  but  Macaulay,  who  does  not  appear  to  have 
known  of  Dodwell's  masterpiece — his  dissertation  Be  Paucitate  Martyrum, 
which  is  one  of  the  finest  specimens  of  criticism  of  his  lime — and  who  only 
knew  the  discourse  on  marriages  by  extracts,  has,  I  think,  done  a  good  deal 
of  injustice  to  him.  However,  I  have  not  read  his  book  about  organs, 
which  is  said  to  be  very  absurd. 


378  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

of  Christ  and  His  Church  had  been  represented  as  a 
marriage  ;  and  this  image  was  not  regarded  as  a  mere 
metaphor  or  comparison,  but  as  intimating  a  mysterious 
unity,  which,  though  not  susceptible  of  any  very  clear 
definition,  was  not  on  that  account  the  less  influential. 
Christians  were  the  '  limbs  of  Christ,'  and  for  them  to  join 
themselves  in  marriage  with  those  who  were  not  of  the 
Christian  fold  was  literally,  it  was  said,  a  species  of 
adultery  or  fornication.  The  intermarriage  of  the  Israel* 
.  the  chosen  seed  of  the  ancient  world,  with  the 
Gentiles,  had  been  described  in  the  Old  Testament  as  an 
act  of  impurity ; *  and  in  the  opinion  of  some  at  least  of 
the  Fathers,  the  Christian  community  occupied  towards 
the  unbelievers  a  position  analogous  to  that  which  the 
Jews  had  occupied  towards  the  Gentiles.  St.  Cyprian  de- 
nounces the  crime  of  those  '  who  prostitute  the  limbs  of 
Christ  in  marriage  with  the  Gentiles.'2  Tertullian  de- 
scribed the  intermarriage  as  fornication;3  and  after  the 
triumph  of  the  Church,  the  intermarriage  of  Jews  and 
Christians  was  made  a  capital  offence,  and  was  stigmatised 
by  the  law  as  adultery.4  The  civil  law  did  not  prohibit 
the  orthodox  from  intermarrying  with  heretics,  but 
many  councils  denounced  this  as  criminal  in  the  strongest 
terms. 

The  extreme  sanctity  attributed  to  virginity,  the  abso- 
lute condemnation  of  all  forms  of  sexual  connections  other 
than  marriage,  and  the  formation  and  gradual  realisation 

1  Dodwell  relies  mainly  upon  this  fact,  and  especially  upon  Ezra's  having" 
treated  these  marriages  as  essentially  null. 

9  '  Jungere  cum  infidelibtU  vinculum  matrimonii,  prostituere  gentilibus 
bra  Chri-ti.' — Cyprian,  J)o  Lapsis. 

*  '  Bmc  cinii  ita  tint,  fideles  Gentilium  matrimonia  subeuntes  stupri  reos 
esse  C  arcendos  ab  omni  lonnnunicatione  fratemitatis.' — Tort.  Ad 

< 

4  See  Ofl  tlii-  Law,  and  on  the  many  councils  which  condemned  the  mar- 
riage of  orthodox  with  heretic*,  Bingham,  Aatiq.  wii.  2,  §§  1-2. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  379 

of  the  Christian  conception  of  marriage  as  a  permanent 
union  of  a  man  and  woman  of  the  same  religious  opi- 
nions, consecrated  by  solemn  religious  services,  carrying 
with  it  a  deep  religious  signification,  and  dissoluble  only 
by  death,  were  the  most  obvious  signs  of  Christian  in- 
fluence in  the  sphere  of  ethics  we  are  examining.  Another 
very  important  result  of  the  new  religion  was  to  raise  to 
a  far  greater  honour  than  they  had  previously  possessed 
the  qualities  in  which  women  peculiarly  excel. 

There  are  few  more  curious  subjects  of  enquiry  than 
the  distinctive  differences  between  the  minds  and  cha- 
racters of  men  and  women,  and  the  manner  in  which  those 
differences  have  affected  the  ideal  types  of  different  ages, 
nations,  philosophies,  and  religions.  Physically,  men  have 
the  indisputable  superiority  in  strength,  and  women  in 
beauty.  Intellectually,  a  certain  inferiority  of  the  female 
sex  can  hardly  be  denied  when  we  remember  how  almost 
exclusively  the  foremost  places  in  every  department  of 
science,  literature,  and  art  have  been  occupied  by  men, 
how  infinitesimally  small  is  the  number  of  women  who 
have  shown  in  any  form  the  very  highest  order  of  genius, 
how  many  of  the  greatest  men  have  achieved  their  great- 
ness in  defiance  of  the  most  adverse  circumstances,  and 
how  completely  women  have  failed  in  obtaining  the  first 
position,  even  in  music  or  painting,  for  the  cultivation  of 
which  their  circumstances  would  appear  most  propitious. 
It  is  as  impossible  to  find  a  female  Eaphael,  or  a  female 
Handel,  as  a  female  Shakspeare  or  Newton.  Women  are 
intellectually  more  desultory  and  volatile  than  men,  they 
are  more  occupied  with  particular  instances  than  with 
general  principles;  they  judge  rather  by  intuitive  per- 
ceptions than  by  deliberate  reasoning  or  past  experience. 
They  are,  however,  usually  superior  to  men  in  nimble- 
ness  and  rapidity  of  thought,  and  in  the  gift  of  tact  or 


M  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

the  power  of  seizing  speedily  and  faithfully  the  finer  in- 
llexions  of  feeling,  and  they  have  therefore  often  attained 
eminence  as  conversationalists,  as  letter-writers, 
as  actresses,  and  as  novelists. 

Morally,  the  general  superiority  of  women  overmen 
1  think,  unquestionable.  If  we  take  the  somewhat 
coarse  and  inadequate  criterion  of  police  statistics,  we 
find  that,  while  the  male  and  female  populations  are  nearly 
the  same  in  number,  the  crimes  committed  by  men  are 
usually  rather  more  than  five  times  as  numerous  as  those 
committed  by  women;1  and  although  it  may  be  justly 
observed  that  men,  as  the  stronger  sex,  and  the  sex  upon 
whom  the  burden  of  supporting  the  family  is  thrown, 
have  more  temptations  than  women,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, on  the  other  hand,  that  extreme  poverty  which 
verges  upon  starvation  is  most  common  among  women, 
whose  means  of  livelihood  are  most  restricted,  and  whose 
earnings  are  smallest  and  most  precarious.  Self-sacrifice 
is  the  most  conspicuous  element  of  a  virtuous  and  religious 
eharacter,  and  it  is  certainly  far  less  common  among  men 
than  among  women,  whose  whole  lives  are  usually  spent 
in  yielding  to  the  will  and  consulting  the  pleasures  of 
another.  There  are  two  great  departments  of  virtue : 
the  impulsive,  or  that  which  springs  spontaneously  from 
the  emotions,  and  the  deliberative,  or  that  which  is  per- 
formed in  obedience  to  the  sense  of  duty  ;  and  in  both  of 
these  I  imagine  women   are   superior  to  men.      Their 

1  Many  curious  statistics  illustrating  this  fact  are  given  by  M.  Bonneville 
(I-  Mar.-an^rv — a  Portuguese  writer,  who  is  counsellor  of  the  Imperial  Court 
at  Paris — in  fail  J'Audr  mtr  In  MoraUU  c&npArte  tie  In  Femme  et  da  V Homme. 
(Paris,  1802.)  The  writer  would  have  done  better  if  he  had  not  maintained, 
in  Lawyer  fashion,  that  the  statistics  of  crime  are  absolutely  decisive  of  the 
question  of  the  comparative  morality  of  the  sexes,  and  also,  if  he  had  not 
thought  it  due  to  lii.s  official  potttlOD  to  talk  in  a  rather  grotesque  strain 
about  the  regeneration  and  gloriiication  of  the  sex  in  the  person  of  the 
Empress  Eugenie. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  381 

sensibility  is  greater,  they  are  more  chaste  both  in 
thought  and  act,  more  tender  to  the  erring,  more  com 
passionate  to  the  suffering,  more  affectionate  to  all  about 
them.  On  the  other  hand,  those  who  have  traced  the 
course  of  the  wives  of  the  poor,  and  of  many  who,  though 
in  narrow  circumstances,  can  hardly  be  called  poor,  will 
probably  admit  that  in  no  other  class  do  we  so  often  find 
entire  lives  spent  in  daily  persistent  self-denial,  in  the 
patient  endurance  of  countless  trials,  in  the  ceaseless 
and  deliberate  sacrifice  of  their. own  enjoyments  to  the 
well-being  or  the  prospects  of  others.  In  active  courage 
women  are  inferior  to  men.  In  the  courage  of  endurance 
they  are  commonly  their  superiors ;  but  their  passive 
courage  is  not  so  much  fortitude  which  bears  and  defies, 
as  resignation  which  bears  and  bends.  In  the  ethics  of 
intellect  they  are  decidedly  inferior.  To  repeat  an  ex- 
pression I  have  already  employed,  women  very  rarely 
love  truth,  though  they  love  passionately  what  they  call 
'  the  truth/  or  opinions  they  have  received  from  others, 
and  hate  vehemently  those  who  differ  from  them.  They 
are  little  capable  of  impartiality  or  of  doubt ;  their  think 
ing  is  chiefly  a  mode  of  feeling  ;  though  very  generous  in 
their  acts,  they  are  rarely  generous  in  their  opinions,  and 
their  leaning  is  naturally  to  the  side  of  restriction.  They 
persuade  rather  than  convince,  and  value  belief  rather  as 
a  source  of  consolation  than  as  a  faithful  expression  of  the 
reality  of  things.  They  are  less  capable  than '  men  of 
perceiving  qualifying  circumstances,  of  admitting  the 
existence  of  elements  of  good  in  systems  to  which  they 
are  opposed,  of  distinguishing  the  personal  character  of 
an  opponent  from  the  opinions  he  maintains.  Men  lean 
most  to  justice,  and  women  to  mercy.  Men  are  most 
addicted  to  intemperance  and  brutality,  women  to  fri- 
volity and  jealousy.     Men  excel  in  energy,  self-reliance, 


£1  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

perseverance, and  magnanimity;  women  in  humility,  gen- 
tleness, modesty,  and  endurance.  The  realising  imagina- 
tion which  causes  us  to  pity  and  to  love  is  more  sensitive 
in  women  than  in  men,  and  it  is  especially  more  capable 
of  dwelling  on  the  unseen.  Their  religious  or  devotional 
realisations  are  incontestably  more  vivid ;  and  it  is  pro- 
bable that,  while  a  father  is  most  moved  by  the  death  of 
a  child  in  his  presence,  a  mother  generally  feels  most  the 
death  of  a  child  in  some  distant  land.  But  though  more 
intense,  the  sympathies  of  women  are  commonly  less 
wide  than  those  of  men.  Their  imaginations  indivi- 
dualise more,  their  affections  are,  in  consequence,  con- 
centrated rather  on  leaders  than  on  causes ;  and  if  they 
care  for  a  great  cause,  it  is  generally  because  it  is  repre- 
sented by  a  great  man,  or  conected  with  some  one  whom 
they  love.  In  politics,  their  enthusiasm  is  more  naturally 
loyalty  than  patriotism.  In  history,  they  are  even  more 
inclined  than  men  to  dwell  exclusively  upon  biographical 
incidents  or  characteristics  as  distinguished  from  the 
march  of  general  causes.  In  benevolence,  they  excel  in 
charity,  which  alleviates  individual  suffering,  rather  than 
in  philanthropy,  which  deals  with  large  masses,  and  is 
more  frequently  employed  in  preventing  than  in  allaying 
calamity. 

It  was  a  remark  of Winckelmann  that  'the  supreme 
1  teauty  of  Greek  art  is  rather  male  than  female  ; '  and  the 
justice  of  this  remark  has  been  amply  corroborated  by 
the  greater  knowledge  we  have  of  late  years  attained  of 
the  works  of  the  Phidian  period,  in  which  art  achieved  its 
highest  perfection,  and  in  which,  at  the  same  time,  force 
and  freedom,  and  masculine  grandeur,  were  its  p're-emi- 
lM'iit  characteristics.  A  similar  observation  may  be  made 
of  the  moral  ideal  of  which  ancient  ait  was  simply  the 
exp.  In  antiquity  the  virtues  that  were  most  ad- 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  383 

mired  were  almost  exclusively  those  which  are  distinc- 
tively masculine.  Courage,  self-assertion,  magnanimity, 
and,  above  all,  patriotism,  were  the  leading  features  of  the 
ideal  type  ;  and  chastity,  modesty,  and  charity,  the  gentler 
and  the  domestic  virtues,  which  are  especially  feminine, 
were  greatly  undervalued.  With  the  single  exception  of 
conjugal  fidelity,  none  of  the  virtues  that  were  very  highly 
prized  were  virtues  distinctively  or  pre-eminently  feminine. 
With  this  exception,  nearly  all  the  most  illustrious  women 
of  antiquity  were  illustrious  chiefly  because  they  over- 
came the  natural  conditions  of  their  sex.  It  is  a  charac- 
teristic fact  that  the  favourite  female  ideal  of  the  artists 
appears  to  have  been  the  Amazon.1  We  may  admire  the 
Spartan  mother,  or  the  mother  of  the  Gracchi,  repressing 
every  sign  of  grief  when  their  children  were  sacrificed 
upon  the  altar  of  their  country,  we  may  wonder  at  the 
majestic  courage  of  a  Porcia  or  an  Arria,  but  we  extol 
them  chiefly  because,  being  women,  they  emancipated 
themselves  from  the  frailty  of  their  sex,  and  displayed  an 
heroic  fortitude  worthy  of  the  strongest  and  the  bravest 
of  men.  We  may  bestow  an  equal  admiration  upon 
the  noble  devotion  and  charity  of  a  St.  Elizabeth  of  Hun- 
gary, or  of  a  Mrs.  Fry,  but  we  do  not  admire  them  be- 
cause they  displayed  these  virtues,  although  they  were 
women,  for  we  feel  that  their  virtues  were  of  the  kind 
which  the  female  nature  is  most  fitted  to  produce.  The 
change  from  the  heroic  to  the  saintly  ideal,  from  the 
ideal  of  Paganism  to  the  ideal  of  Christianity,  was  a 
change  from  a  type  which  was  essentially  male  to  one 
which  was  essentially  feminine.  Of  all  the  great  schools 
of  philosophy  no  other  reflected  so  faithfully  the  Eoman 
conception  of  moral  excellence  as  Stoicism,  and  the  greatest 

1  See  Pliny,  Hist  Nat.  xxxiv.  19. 


384  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

Roman  exponent  of  Stoicism  summed  up  its  character 
in  -  sentence  when  he  pronounced  it  to  be  beyond 

all  other  sects  the  most  emphatically  masculine.1  On  the 
other  hand,  an  ideal  type  in  which  meekness,  gentleness, 
patience,  humility,  faith,  and  love  are  the  most  prominent 
ores,  is  not  naturally  male  but  female.  A  reason  pro- 
bably deeper  than  the  historical  ones  which  are  com- 
monly alleged,  why  sculpture  has  always  been  peculiarly 
Pbgao  and  painting  peculiarly  Christian,  may  be  found  in 
the  fact,  that  sculpture  is  especially  suited  to  represent 
male  beauty,  or  the  beauty  of  strength,  and  painting  fe- 
male beauty,  or  the  beauty  of  softness ;  and  that  Pagan 
sentiment  was  chiefly  a  glorification  of  the  masculine 
qualities  of  strength,  and  courage,  and  conscious  virtue, 
while  Christian  sentiment  is  chiefly  a  glorification  of  the 
fnninine  qualities  of  gentleness,  humility,  and  love.  The 
painters  whom  the  religious  feeling  of  Christendom  have 
recognised  as  the  most  faithful  exponents  ot  Christian 
sentiment  have  always  been  those  who  infused  a  large  mea- 
sure of  feminine  beauty  even  into  their  male  characters ; 
and  we  never,  or  scarcely  ever,  find  that  the  same  artist 
has  been  conspicuously  successful  in  delineating  both 
Christian  and  Pagan  types.  Michael  Angelo,  whose 
genius  loved  to  expatiate  on  the  sublimity  of  strength  and 
defiance,  failed  signally  in  his  representations  of  the 
Christian  ideal ;  and  Perugino  was  equally  unsuccessful 
when  he  sought  to  pourtray  the  features  of  the  heroes  of 
antiquity.2     The  position  that  was  gradually  assigned  to 

1  '  Tantum  inter  Stoicos,  Serene,  et  ceteros  sapientiam  professos  interesse, 
quantum  butst  foeminns  et  mares  non  immerito  dixerim.' — Be  Const. 
Sapient  is,  cap.  i. 

ik  i*  well  illustrated,   on  the  one  side,  by  the  most  repulsive  re- 
presentations of   Christ,  by  Michael  Angelo,  in  the  great  fresco  in  the 
I  (so  inferior  to  the  Christ  of  Orgag-na,   at  Pisa,  from  which 
it  was  partly  imitated),  and  iu  marble  in  the  Minerva  Church  at  Home  j  and, 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  385 

the  Virgin  as  the  female  ideal  in  the  belief  and  the  devo- 
tion of  Christendom,  was  a  consecration  or  an  expression 
of  the  new  value  that  was  attached  to  the  feminine 
virtues. 

The  general  superiority  of  women  to  men  in  the 
strength  of  their  religious  emotions,  and  their  natural 
attraction  to  a  religion  which  made  personal  attachment 
to  its  Founder  its  central  duty,  and  which  imparted  an 
unprecedented  dignity  and  afforded  an  unprecedented 
scope  to  their  characteristic  virtues,  account  for  the 
very  conspicuous  position  they  assumed  in  the  great 
work  of  the  conversion  of  the  Eoman  Empire.  In  no 
other  important  movement  of  thought  was  female  in- 
fluence so  powerful  or  so  acknowledged.  In  the  ages  of 
persecution  female  figures  occupy  many  of  the  foremost 
places  in  the  ranks  of  martyrdom,  and  Pagan  and  Chris- 
tian writers  alike  attest  the  alacrity  with  which  women 
flocked  to  the  Church,  and  the  influence  they  exercised 
in  its  favour  over  the  male  members  of  their  families. 
The  mothers  of  St.  Augustine,  St.  Chrysostom,  St.  Basil, 
St.  Gregory  Nazianzen,  and  Theodoret,  had  all  a  leading 
part  in  the  conversion  of  their  sons.  St.  Helena,  the 
mother  of  Constantine,  Flacilla,  the  wife  of  Theodosius 
the  Great,  St.  Pulcheria,  the  sister  of  Theodosius  the 
Younger,  and  Placidia,  the  mother  of  Valentinian  III.,  were 
among  the  most  conspicuous  defenders  of  the  faith.  In 
the  heretical  sects  the  same  zeal  was  manifested,  and  Arius, 
Priscillian,  and  Montanus  were  all  supported  by  troops 
of  zealous  female  devotees.  In  the  career  of  asceticism 
women  took  a  part  little  if  at  all  inferior  to  men,  while 
in  the  organisation  of  the  great  work  of  charity  they  were 

on  the  other  hand,  by  the  frescoes  of  Perugino,  at  Perugia,  representing  the 
great  sages  of  Paganism.  The  figure  of  Cato,  in  the  latter,  almost  approaches 
as  well  as  I  remember,  the  type  of  St.  John. 


B80  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

pre-eminent.  For  no  other  field  of  active  labour  are 
women  so  admirably  suited  as  for  this  ;  and  although  we 
may  trace  from  the  earliest  period,  in  many  creeds  and 
individual  instances  of  their  influence  in  allaying  the 
^uflcrings  of  the  distressed,1  it  may  be  truly  said  that 
their  instinct  and  genius  of  charity  had  never  before  the 
dawn  of  Christianity  obtained  full  scope  for  action.  Fa- 
biola,  Paula,  Melania,  and  a  host  of  other  noble  ladies 
devoted  their  time  and  fortunes  mainly  to  founding  and 
extending  vast  institutions  of  charity,  some  of  them  of  a 
kind  before  unknown  in  the  world.  The  empress  Fla- 
cilla  was  accustomed  to  tend  with  her  own  hands  the  sick 
in  the  hospitals,2  and  a  readiness  to  discharge  such  offices 
was  deemed  the  first  duty  of  a  Christian  wife.3  From  age 
to  age  the  impulse  thus  communicated  has  been  felt;  there 
has  been  no  period,  however  corrupt,  there  has  been  no 
Church,  however  superstitious,  that  has  not  been  adorned 


1  In  that  fine  description  of  a  virtuous  woman  which  is  ascribed  to  the 
mother  of  King  Lemuel,  we  read,  l  She  stretcheth  out  her  hand  to  the  poor  ; 
yea,  she  reacheth  forth  her  hands  to  the  needy.'  (Proverbs  xxxi.  20.)  I 
have  already  quoted  from  Xenophon  the  beautiful  description  of  the  Greek 
wife  tending  her  sick  slaves.  So,  too,  Euripides  represents  the  slaves  of 
Alcestis  gathering  with  tears  around  the  bed  of  their  dying  mistress,  who, 
even  then,  found  some  kind  word  for  each,  and  when  she  died,  lamenting 
her  as  their  second  mother.  (Eurip.  Alccst.)  In  the  servile  war  which  deso- 
lated Sicily  at  the  time  of  the  Punic  wars,  we  find  a  touching  trait  of  the 
fame  kind.  The  revolt  was  provoked  by  the  cruelties  of  a  rich  man  (named 
Damophilos)  and  his  wife,  who  were  massacred  with  circumstances  of  great 
atrocity  ;  but  the  slaves  preserved  their  daughter  entirely  unharmed,  for  she 
had  always  made  it  her  business  to  console  them  in  their  sorrow,  and  she 
bad  won  the  love  of  all.  (Diodor.  Sic.  Prog,  xxxiv.)  So,  too,  Marcia,  the 
used  to  suckle  her  young  slaves  from  her  breast.  (Plut. 
Mare.  Otto.)  I  may  add  the  well-known  sentiment  which  Virgil  puts  in 
the  mouth  of  Dido,  'Haud  ignara  mali  miseris  succurrere  disco.'  There 
are,  doubtle.38,  many  other  touches  of  the  same  kind  in  ancient  literature, 
some  of  which  may  occur  to  my  readers. 
i"odoret,  v.  L9. 

*   See  the  beautiful  description  of  the  functions  of  a  Christian  woman  in 
the  second  book  of  Tcrtullian,  Ad  Uxorcm. 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  387 

by  many  Christian  women  devoting  their  entire  lives  to 
assuaging  the  sufferings  of  men,  and  the  mission  of  charity 
.thus  instituted  has  not  been  more  efficacious  in  diminish- 
ing the  sum  of  human  wretchedness  than  in  promoting 
the  moral  dignity  of  those  by  whom  it  was  conducted. 

Among  the  Collyridian  heretics,  women  were  admitted 
to  the  priesthood.  Amoug  the  orthodox,  although  this 
honour  was  not  bestowed  upon  them,  they  received  a 
religious  consecration,  and  discharged  some  minor  eccle- 
siastical functions  under  the  name  of  deaconesses.1  This 
order  may  be  traced  to  the  Apostolic  period.2  It  con- 
sisted of  elderly  virgins,  who  were  set  apart  by  a  formal 
ordination,  and  were  employed  in  assisting  as  catechists 
and  attendants  at  the  baptism  of  women,  in  visiting  the 
sick,  ministering  to  martyrs  in  prison,  preserving  order 
in  the  congregations,  and  accompanying  and  presenting 
women  who  desired  an  interview  with  the  bishop.  It 
would  appear  -from  the  evidence  of  some  councils,  that 
abuses  gradually  crept  into  this  institution,  and  the  dea- 
conesses at  last  faded  into  simple  nuns,  but  they  were 
still  in  existence  in  the  East  in  the  twelfth  century. 
Besides  these,  widows,  when  they  had  been  but  once 
married,  were  treated  with  peculiar  honour,  and  were 
made  the  special  recipients  of  the  charity  of  the  Church. 
Women  advanced  in  years,  who,  either  from  their  single 
life  or  from  bereavement,  have  been  left  without  any  male 
protector  in  the  world,  have  always  been  peculiarly  de- 
serving of  commiseration.  With  less  strength,  and  com- 
monly with  less  means,  and  less  knowledge  of  the  world 
than  men,  they  are  liable  to  contract  certain  peculiarities 

1  See,  upon  the  deaconesses,  Bingham's  Christian  Antiquities,  hock  ii. 
ch.  22,  and  Ludlow's  Woman's  Work  in  the  Church.  The  latter  author 
argues  elaborately  that  the  '  widows '  were  not  the  same  as  the  deaconesses. 

2  Phoebe  (Rom.  xvi.  1)  is  described  as  a  diaKovoc. 


3S8  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

of  mind  and  manner  to  which  an  excessive  amount  of 
ridicule  has  been  attached,  and  age,  in  most  cases,  fur- 
nishes them  with  very  little  to  compensate  for  the  charms 
of  which  it  lias  deprived  them.  The  weight  and  dignity 
of  matured  wisdom  which  make  the  old  age  of  one  sex  so 
venerable,  are  more  rarely  found  in  that  of  the  other,  and 
even  physical  beauty  is  more  frequently  the  characteristic 
of  an  old  man  than  of  an  old  woman.  The  Church  la- 
boured steadily  to  cast  a  halo  of  reverence  around  this 
period  of  woman's  life,  and  its  religious  exercises  have 
done  very  much  to  console  and  to  occupy  it. 

In  accordance  with  these  ideas,  the  Christian  legislators 
contributed  largely  to  improve  the  legal  position  of 
widows  in  respect  to  property,1  and  Justinian  gave  mo- 
thers the  guardianship  of  their  children,  destroying  the 
Pagan  rule  that  guardianship  could  only  be  legally  exer- 
cised by  men.2  The  usual  subservience  of  the  sex  to 
ecclesiastical  influence,  the  numerous  instances  of  rich 
widows  devoting  their  fortunes,  and  mothers  their  sons, 
to  the  Church,  had  no  doubt  some  influence  in  securiim' 
the  advocacy  of  the  clergy,  but  these  measures  had  a  mani- 
importance  in  elevating  the  position  of  women  who 
have  had  in  Christian  lands,  a  great,  though  not,  I  think, 
altogether  a  beneficial  influence,  in  the  early  education  of 
their  sons. 

Independently  of  all  legal  enactments,  the  simple  change 
of  (he  ideal  type  by  bringing  specially  feminine  virtues 

1  A  very  able  writer,  who  takes  on  the  whole  an  unfavourable  view  of  the 
influence  of  Christianity  on  legislation,  says,  'The  provision  for  the  widow 
wns  attributable  to  the  exertions  of  the  Church,  which  never  relaxed  its  soli- 
citude for  tin-  interest*  of  wives  surviving  their  husbands,  winning,  perhaps, 
one  of  the  most  arduous  of  its  triumphs  when,  after  exacting  for  two  or 
thn-  -  promise  from  the  huebend  at  marriage  to  endow 

bit  wife,  it  at  :  led  in  engrafting  the  principle  of  dower  on  the 

customary  law  of  all  Western  Europe.'-— Maine'*  Amdent  Lam,  p.  l'24. 

•  6<  .. .-,  Ljhnnrc  du  (  hristumismc  mr  h  Droit,  pp.  .'508-310. 


THE  POSITION  OF   WOMEN.  389 

into  the  fore  front,  was  sufficient  to  elevate  and  ennoble 
the  sex.  The  commanding  position  of  the  mediaeval 
abbesses,  the  great  number  of  female  saints,  and  espe- ' 
cially  the  reverence  bestowed  upon  the  Virgin,  had  a 
similar  effect.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  Jews,  who,  of 
the  three  great  nations  of  antiquity,  certainly  produced  in 
history  and  poetry  the  smallest  number  of  illustrious 
women,  should  have  furnished  the  world  with  its  supreme 
female  ideal,  and  it  is  also  a  striking  illustration  of  the 
qualities  which  prove  most  attractive  in  woman,  that  one 
of  whom  we  know  nothing  except  her  gentleness  and  her 
sorrow  should  have  exercised  a  magnetic  power  upon 
the  world  incomparably  greater  than  was  exercised  by 
the*  most  majestic  female  patriots  of  Paganism.  Whatever 
may  be  thought  of  its  theological  propriety,  there  is,  I 
think,  little  doubt  that  the  Catholic  reverence  for  the 
Virgin  has  done  much  to  elevate  and  purify  the  ideal  of 
women,  and  to  soften  the  manners  of  men.  It  has  had 
an  influence  which  the  worship  of  the  Pagan  goddesses 
could  never  possess,  for  these  had  been  almost  destitute 
of  moral  beauty,  and  especially  of  that  kind  of  moral 
beauty  which  is  peculiarly  feminine.  It  supplied  in  a 
great  measure  the  redeeming  and  ennobling  element  in 
that  strange  amalgam  of  religious,  licentious,  and  military 
feeling  which  was  formed  around  women  in  the  age  of 
chivalry,  and  which  no  succeeding  change  of  habit  or 
belief  has  wholly  destroyed. 

It  can  hardly,  I  think,  be  questioned  that  in  the  great 
religious  convulsions  of  the  sixteenth  century,  the  femi- 
nine type  followed  Catholicism,  while  Protestantism  in- 
clined more  to  the  masculine  type.  Catholicism  alone 
retained  the  Virgin  worship,  which  at  once  reflected  and 
sustained  the  first.  The  skill  with  which  it  acts  upon 
the  emotions  by  music,  and  painting,  and  solemn  arete- 


890  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

toe,  and  imposing  pageantry,  its  tendency  to  appeal 
to  the  imagination  rather  than  to  the  reason,  and  to  foster 
modes  of  feeling  rather  than  modes  of  thought,  its  as- 

ion  of  absolute  and  infallible  certainty,  above  all,  the 
manner  in  which  it  teaches  its  votary  to  throw  himself 
perpetually  on  authority,  all  tended  in  the  same  direction. 
It  is  the  part  of  a  woman  to  lean,  it  is  the  part  of  a  man 
to  stand.  A  religion  which  prescribed  to  the  distracted 
mind  unreasoning  faith  in  an  infallible  Church,  and  to  the 
troubled  conscience  an  implicit  trust  in  an  absolving 
priesthood,  has  ever  had  an  especial  attraction  to  a  femi- 
nine mind.  A  religion  which  recognised  no  authority 
between  man  and  his  Creator,  which  asserted  at  once  the 
dignity  and  the  duty  of  private  judgment,  and  which, 
while  deepening  immeasurably  the  sense  of  individual  re- 
sponsibility, denuded  religion  of  meretricious  ornaments, 
and  of  most  aesthetic  aids,  is  pre-eminently  a  religion  of 
men.  Puritanism  is  the  most  masculine  form  that  Chris- 
ti;mity  has  yet  assumed.  Its  most  illustrious  teachers 
differed  from  the  Catholic  saints  as  much  in  the  moral 
type  they  displayed  as  in  the  system  of  doctrines  they 
held.  Catholicism  commonly  softens,  while  Protestantism 
strengthens  the  character;  but  the  softness  of  the  first 
often  degenerates  into  weakness,  and  the  strength  of  the 
second  into  hardness.  Sincerely  Catholic  nations  are  dis- 
tinguished for  their  reverence,  for  their  habitual  and  vivid 
perceptions  of  religious  things,  for  the  warmth  of  their 
emotions,  for  a  certain  amiability  of  disposition,  and  a 
certain  natural  courtesy  and  refinement  of  manner  that 
inexpressibly  winning.  Sincerely  Protestant  nations 
distinguished  for  their  love  of  truth,  for  their  firm 
sense  of  duty,  for  the  strength  and  the  dignity  of  their 
character.  Loyalty  and  humility,  which  are  especially 
feminine,  flourish  chiefly  in  the  first ;   liberty  and  self- 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  391 

assertion  in  the  second.  The  first  are  most  prone  to 
superstition,  and  the  second  to  fanaticism.  Protestantism, 
by  purifying  and  dignifying  marriage,  conferred  a  great 
benefit  upon  women  ;  but  it  must  be  owned  that  neither 
in  its  ideal  type,  nor  in  the  general  tenor  of  its  doctrines 
or  devotions,  is  it  as  congenial  to  their  nature  as  the  reli- 
gion it  superseded. 

Its  complete  suppression  of  the  conventual  system  was 
also,  I  think,  very  far  from  a  benefit  to  women  or  to  the 
world.  It  would  be  impossible  to  conceive  any  institu- 
tion more  needed  than  one  which  would  furnish  a  shelter 
for  the  many  women  who,  from  poverty,  or  domestic 
unhappmess,  or  other  causes,  find  themselves  cast  alone 
and  unprotected  into  the  battle  of  life,  which  would  secure 
them  from  the  temptations  to  gross  vice,  and  from  the 
extremities  of  suffering,  and  would  convert  them  into 
agents  of  active,  organised,  and  intelligent  charity.  Such 
an  institution  would  be  almost  free  from  the  objections 
that  may  justly  be  urged  against  monasteries,  which  with- 
draw strong  men  from  manual  labour,  and  it  would  largely 
mitigate  the  difficulty  of  providing  labour  and  means  of 
livelihood  for  single  women,  which  is  one  of  the  most 
pressing,  in  our  own  day  one  of  the  most  appalling,  of 
social  problems.  Most  unhappily  for  mankind,  this  noble 
conception  was  from  the  first  perverted.  Institutions  that 
might  have  had  an  incalculable  philanthropic  value  were 
based  upon  the  principle  of  asceticism,  which  makes  the 
sacrifice,  not  the  promotion,  of  earthly  happiness  its  aim, 
and  binding  vows  produced  much  misery  and  not  a  little 
vice.  The  convent  became  the  perpetual  prison  of  the 
daughter  whom  a  father  was  disinclined  to  endow,  or  of 
young  girls  who,  under  the  impulse  of  a  transient  enthu- 
siasm, or  of  a  transient  sorrow,  took  a  step  which  they 
never  could  retrace,  and  useless  penances  and  contemptible 

59 


31'.1  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

superstitions  wasted  the  energies  that  might  have  been 
most  beneficially  employed.  Still  it  is  very  doubtful 
whether,  even  in  the  most  degraded  period,  the  convents 
did  not  prevent  more  misery  than  they  inflicted,  and  in 
the  Sisters  of  Charity  the  religious  orders  of  Catholicism 
have  produced  one  of  the  most  perfect  of  all  the  types  of 
Womanhood.  There  is,  as  I  conceive,  no  fact  in  modern 
history  more  deeply  to  be  deplored  than  that  the  Re- 
formers, who  in  matters  of  doctrinal  innovations  were 
often  so  timid,  should  have  levelled  to  the  dust,  instead  of 
attempting  to  regenerate,  the  whole  conventual  system  of 
Catholicism. 

The  course  of  these  observations  has  led  me  to  trans- 
gress the  limits  assigned  to  this  history.  It  has  been, 
however,  my  object  through  this  entire  work  to  exhibit 
not  only  the  nature  but  also  the  significance  of  the  moral 
facts  I  have  recorded,  by  showing  how  they  have  affected 
the  subsequent  changes  of  society.  I  will  conclude  this 
chapter,  and  this  work,  by  observing  that  of  all  the  de- 
partments of  ethics  the  questions  concerning  the  relations 
of  the  sexes  and  the  proper  position  of  women,  are  those 
upon  the  future  of  which  there  rests  the  greatest  uncer- 
tainty. History  tells  us  that  as  civilisation  advances,  the 
charity  of  men  becomes  at  once  warmer  and  more  expan- 

,  their  habitual  conduct  both  more  gentle  and  more 
temperate,  and  their  love  of  truth  more  sincere;  but  it 
also  warns  us  that  in  periods  of  great  intellectual  enlight- 
enment, and  of  great  social  refinement,  the  relations  of 
the  sexes  have  often  been  most  anarchical.  It  is  impos- 
le  to  deny  that  the  form  which  these  relations  at  pre- 

|  assume  has  been  very  largely  affected  by  special 
religious  teaching,  which,  for  good  or  for  ill,  is  rapidly 
waning  in  the  sphere  of  government,  and  also,  that  cer- 


THE  POSITION  OF  WOMEN.  393 

tain  recent  revolutions  in  economical  opinion  and  indus- 
trial enterprise  have  a  most  profound  bearing  upon  the 
subject.  The  belief  that  a  rapid  increase  of  population 
is  always  eminently  beneficial,  which  was  long  accepted 
as  an  axiom  by  both  statesmen  and  moralists,  and  was 
made  the  basis  of  a  large  part  of  the  legislation  of  the 
first  and  of  the  decisions  of  the  second,  has  now  been 
replaced  by  the  directly  opposite  doctrine,  that  the  very 
highest  interest  of  society  is  not  to  stimulate  but  to  re- 
strain multiplication,  diminishing  the  number  of  marriages 
and  of  children.  In  consequence  of  this  belief,  and  of  the 
many  factitious  wants  that  accompany  a  luxurious  civili- 
sation, a  very  large  and  increasing  proportion  of  women 
are  left  to  make  their  way  in  life  without  any  male  pro- 
tector, and  the  difficulties  they  have  to  encounter  through 
physical  weakness  have  been  most  unnaturally  and  most 
fearfully  aggravated  by  laws  and  customs  which,  resting 
on  the  old  assumption  that  every  woman  should  be  a 
wife,  habitually  deprive  them  of  the  pecuniary  and  edu- 
cational advantages  of  men,  exclude  them  absolutely 
from  very  many  of  the  employments  in  which  they  might 
earn  a  subsistence,  encumber  their  course  in  others  by  a 
heartless  ridicule  or  by  a  steady  disapprobation,  and  con- 
sign, in  consequence,  many  thousands  to  the  most  extreme 
and  agonising  poverty,  and  perhaps  a  still  larger  number 
to  the  paths  of  vice.  At  the  same  time  a  momentous 
revolution,  the  effects  of  which  can  as  yet  be  but  imper- 
fectly descried,  has  taken  place  in  the  chief  spheres  of 
female  industry  that  remain.  The  progress  of  machinery 
has  destroyed  its  domestic  character.  The  distaff  has 
fallen  from  the  hand.  The  needle  is  being  rapidly  super- 
seded, and  the  work  which,  from  the  days  of  Homer  to 
the  present  century,  was  accomplished  in  the  centre  of  the 


394  HISTORY  OF  EUROPEAN  MORALS. 

family,  has  been  transferred  to  the  crowded  manufac- 
tory.1 

The  probable  consequences  of  these  things  are  among 
the  most  important  questions  that  can  occupy  the  moral- 
ist or  the  philanthropist,  but  they  do  not  fall  within  the 
province  of  the  historian.  That  the  pursuits  and  educa- 
tion of  women  will  be  considerably  altered,  that  these 
alterations  will  bring  with  them  some  modifications  of  the 
type  of  character,  and  that  the  prevailing  moral  notions 
concerning  the  relations  of  the  sexes  will  be  subjected  in/ 
many  quarters  to  a  severe  and  hostile  criticism,  may 
safely  be  predicted.  Many  wild  theories  will  doubtless 
be  propounded.  Some  real  ethical  changes  may  perhaps 
be  effected,  but  these,  if  I  mistake  not,  can  only  be  within 
definite  and  narrow  limits.  He  who  will  seriously  reflect 
upon  our  clear  perceptions  of  the  difference  between 
purity  and  impurity,  upon  the  laws  that  govern  our  affec- 
tions, and  upon  the  interests  of  the  children  who  are  born, 
may  easily  convince  himself  that  in  this,  as  in  all  other 
spheres,  there  are  certain  eternal  moral  landmarks  which 
never  can  be  removed. 


1  The  results  of  this  change  have  heen  treated  by  Miss  Parkes,  in  her 
truly  admirable  little  book  called  Essays  on  Woman's  Work,  better  than 
by  any  other  writer  with  whom  I  am  acquainted. 


INDEX. 


INDEX. 


ABO 

ABORTION,  diversities  of  moral 
judgment  respecting,  i.  94.  His- 
tory of  the  practice  of,  ii.  22,  26 

Abraham  the  Hermit,  St.,  ii.  117 

Acacius,  his  ransom  of  Persian  slaves, 
ii-  77 

Adultery,  laws  concerning,  ii.  331 

JEschylus,  his  views  of  human  nature, 
i.  206.  His  violation  of  dramatic 
probabilities,  241 

Affections,  the,  all  forms  of  self-love, 
according  to  some  Utilitarians,  i.  9. 
Subjugation  of  the,  to  the  reason, 
taught  by  the  Stoics,  &c,  186,  197. 
Considered  by  the  Stoics  as  a  disease, 
198.  Evil  consequences  of  the  sup- 
pression of  the  affections,  201.  Cul- 
tivated by  the  eclectic  school  of  philo- 
sophy, 255 

Africa,  sacrifices  of  children  to  Saturn 
in,  ii.  33.  Effect  of  the  conquest  of 
Genseric  of,  87 

Agapse,  or  love  feasts,  of  the  Christians, 
how  regarded  by  the  pagans,  i.  441  ; 
ii.  85.  Excesses  of  the,  and  their 
suppression,  159 

Agnes,  St.,  legend  of,  ii.  338 

Agricultural  pursuits,  history  of  the 
decline  of,  in  Italy,  i.  281.  Efforts 
to  relieve  the  agriculturists,  283 

Albigenses,  their  slow  suicides,  ii.  53 

Alexander  the  Great :  effect  of  his  ca- 
reer on  Greek  cosmopolitanism,  i.  242 

Alexandria,  foundation  of,  i.  242.  Effect 
of  the  increasing  importance  of,  on 
Roman  thought,  338.  The  Decian 
persecution  at,  480.  Excesses  of  the 
Christian  sects  of,  ii.  208,  209,  note 

Alexis,  St.,  his  legend,  ii.  341 

Alimentus,  Cincius,  his  work  written 
in  Greek,  i.  243 

Almsgiving,  effects  of  indiscriminate,  ii. 
96.97 


ANI 

Amafanius,  wrote  the  first  Latin  work 
on  philosophy,  i.  184,  note 

Ambrose,  St.,  his  miraculous  dream,  i. 
403.  His  dissection  of  the  pagan 
theory  of  the  decline  of  the  Roman 
empire,  435.  His  ransom  of  Ita- 
lians from  the  Goths,  ii.  76.  His 
commendation  of  disobedience  to  pa- 
rents, 141 

American  Indians,  suicide  of  the,  ii. 
57 

Amnion,  St.,  his  refusal  to  wash 
himself,  ii.  117.  Deserts  his  wife, 
341 

Amour,  William  de  St.,  his  denuncia- 
tion of  the  mendicant  orders,  ii. 
102 

Amphitheatres,  history  and  remains  of 
Roman,  i.  290 

Amusements,  in  different  communities, 
i.  119 

Anaxagoras,  his  remark  on  the  death  of 
his  son,  i.  201.  His  remark  on 
Heaven  as  his  true  country,  211.  His 
passive  life,  350 

Anchorites.  See  Ascetics  ;  Monasti- 
cism. 

Angelo,  Michael,  in  what  he  failed,  ii. 
384 

Anglo-Saxon  nations,  their  virtues  and 
vices,  i.  160,  161 

Animals,  lower,  Egyptian  worship  of, 
defended  by  an  Egyptian  priest,  174, 
note.  Humanity  to  animals  probably 
first  advocated  by  Plutarch,  258.  Ani- 
mals employed  in  the  arena  at  Rome, 
297.  Instances  of  kindness  to,  306, 
307.  Legends  of  the  connection  of  the 
saints  and  the  animal  world,  ii.  171. 
Pagan  legends  of  the  intelligence  of 
animals,  171,  172.  Legislative  pro- 
tection of  them,  172.  Views  as  to 
the   souls   of  animals,    172.     Moral 


806 


INDEX, 


ANT 

duty  of  kindness  to  animals  taught 
by  pagans,  176.  Legends  in  the  lives 
the  saints  in  connection  with 
animals,  179.  Progress  in  modern 
timet  of  humanity  to  animals,  182 

Antigonus  of  Socho,  his  doctrine  of  vir- 
i.  192,  note 

Antioeh,  charities  of,  ii.   86.     Its  cx- 
te  vice  and  asceticism,  162 

Antisthenes.  his  scepticism,  i.  170 

Antoninus,  the  philosopher,  his  predic- 
tion, i.  453 

Antoninus  the  Pious,  his  death-bed,  i. 
218.  His  leniency  towards  the  Chris- 
tians, 466,  467.  Forged  letter  of, 
467,  note.     His  charity,  ii.  82 

Antony,  St.,  his  flight  into  the  desert, 
ii.  109.  His  mode  of  life,  117.  His 
dislike  to  knowledge,  123.  Legend  of 
his  visit  to  Paul  the  hermit,  166, 167 

Aphrodite,  the  Greek  ideal  of  the  ce- 
il and  earthly,  i.  109 

Apollonius  of  Tyana,  his  conversation 
with  an  Egyptian  priest  respecting 
the  Greek  ami  Egyptian  modes  of 
worshipping  the  deity,  i.  174,  note. 
Miracles  attributed  to  him,  395.  His 
humanity  to  animals,  ii.  175 

Apollonius,  the  merchant,  his  dispensary 
for  monks,  ii.  86 

Apuleius,  his  condemnation  of  suicide,  i. 
'2-1.  His  disquisition  on  the  doc- 
trine of  da?mons,  343.  Practical  form 
of  his  philosophy,  349.  Miracles  at- 
tributed to  him,  396.  His  defence  of 
tooth-powder,  ii.  1.37 

Arch ytas  of  Tarentum,  his  speech  on  the 
evils  of  sensuality,  i.  21 1,  note 

Argos,  story  of  the  sons  of  the  priestess 
of  Juno  at,  i.  217 

Arians,  their  charges  against  the  Catho- 
lics, i.  444,  note 

Aristides,  his  gentleness,  i.  240 

racy  of  Pome,  effects  of  the  de- 
M  ruction  of  the  power  of  the,  on  the 
cosmopolitan  spirit  of  the  Romans,  i. 
246 

•)•',  his  admission  of  the  practice 

of  abortion,  i.  94.     Emphasis  with 

which  ho  dwelt  upon   the  utility  of 

;e,    129.      His  patriotism,   211. 

II ii  condemnation  of   suicide,  224. 

-  opinions  as  to  the  duties  of  1 1 
t<>  !  .  'J41 

Arius.  death  of,  ii.  209 

Aruolius,  his  notice  of  tho  miracles  of 
Christ,  i.  399 

Arrian,  his  humanity  to  animals,  ii.  176 

Arsenius,  St.,  his  penances,  ii.  114,  122, 


ATT 

note.  His  anxiety  to  avoid  distrac- 
tions, 133,  note 

Ascetics,  estimate  of  the,  of  the  dread- 
ful nature  of  a  sin,  i.  117.  Decline 
of  asceticism  and  evanescence  of  the 
moral  notions  of  which  it  was  the  ex- 
pression, 117.  Condition  of  society 
to  which  it  belongs,  136.  Decline  of 
the  ascetic  and  saintly  qualities  with 
civilisation,  136.  Causes  of  the  as- 
cetic movement,  ii.  108.  Rapid  ex- 
tension of  the  movement,  110-112. 
Astounding  penances  attributed  to  the 
saints  of  the  desert,  114-116.  Mise- 
ries and  joys  of  the  hermit  life,  120, 
et  seq.  Dislike  of  the  monks  to  know- 
ledge, 123.  Their  hallucinations,  124. 
Relations  of  female  devotees  with  the 
anchorites,  127,  128.  Ascetic  life, 
ways  in  which  the  ascetic  mode  of 
life  affected  both  the  ideal  type  and 
realised  condition  of  morals,  130,  et 
scq.  Extreme  animosity  of  the  as- 
cetics to  everything  pagan,  145.  De- 
cline of  the  civic  virtues  caused  by 
asceticism,  148.  Moral  effects  of  as- 
ceticism on  self-sacrifice,  164.  Moral 
beauty  of  some  of  the  legends  of  the 
ascetics,  166.  Legends  of  the  connec- 
tion between  the  saints  and  the 
animal  world,  171.  Practical  form 
of  asceticism  in  tho  West,  188.  In- 
fluence of  asceticism  on  chastity,  338, 
339.  And  on  marriage,  339.  And  on 
the  estimate  of  women,  356 

Asia  Minor,  destruction  of  the  churches 
of,  ii.  15 

Asella,  story  of  her  asceticism,  ii.  141 

Aspasia,  tho  Athenian  courtesan,  ii. 
310 

Asses,  feast  of,  ii.  184 

Association,  Hartley's  doctrine  of,  i.  23. 
Enlargement  of  tho  Utilitarian  school 
by  the  doctrine,  23.  Trace  of  it 
amongst  the  ancients,  23.  Locke's 
phrase  '  association  of  ideas,'  23.  The 
doctrino  closely  anticipated  by  Hut- 
cheson,  23.  Gay's  principles,  24. 
Expansion  .and  elaboration  of  Hart- 
ley s great  work,  25.  Illustrations  of 
the  system  of  association,  26-30.  The 
theory,  how  tar  selfish,  31.  Tho  essen- 
tial and  characteristic  feature  of  con- 
science wholly  unaccounted  for  by  the 
association  of  ideas,  68 

Astrology,  belief  in,  rapidly  gaining 
ground  in  tho  time  of  tho  elder  Pliny, 
i.  179,  and  note 

Atticus,  his  suicide,  i.  226,  and  note 


INDEX. 


AUG 

Augustine,  St.,  on  original  sin,  i.  220, 
221.  His  belief  in  contemporary 
miracles,  402.  His  work  on  the 
decline  of  the  Eoman  empire,  435. 
His  condemnation  of  virgin  suicides, 
ii.  50 

Augustus,  the  Emperor,  his  solemn  de- 
gradation of  the, statue  of  Neptune, 
i.  178.  His  mode  of  discouraging 
celibacy,  245.  Miraculous  stories 
related  of  him,  273.  His  super- 
stition, 390.  Advice  of  Maecenas  to 
him,  425.  His  consideration  for  the 
religious  customs  of  the  Jews,  432 

Aulus  Gellius,  his  account  of  the  rhe- 
toricians, i.  332.  Compared  with  Hel- 
vetius,  332.  Account  of  his  journal, 
334 

Aurelius.  Marcus,  on  a  future  state,  i. 
193.  On  posthumous  fame,  196.  De- 
nied that  all  vices  are  the  same,  202, 
note.  On  the  sacred  spirit  dwelling  in 
man,  209.  His  submissive  gratitude, 
210.  His  practical  application  of  the 
precepts  of  the  Stoics,  213.  His 
wavering  views  as  to  suicide,  225. 
His  charity  to  the  human  race,  254. 
Mild  and  more  religious  spirit  of 
his  stoicism,  259,  260.  His  constant 
practice  of  self-examination,  263. 
His  life  and  character,  263-269. 
Compared  and  contrasted  with  Plu- 
tarch's, 267.  His  discouragement  of 
the  games  of  the  arena,  303.  His 
humanity,  308.  His  disbelief  of  ex- 
orcism, 408.  His  law  against  reli- 
gious terrorism,  448.  His  persecu- 
tion of  the  Christians,  467,  469.  His 
benevolence,  ii.  82.  His  view  of  war, 
273 

Austin,  Mr.,  his  view  of  the  foundation 
of  the  moral  law,  i.  17,  note.  His  ad- 
vocacy of  the  unselfish  view  of  the 
love  we  ought  to  bear  to  God,  18,  note. 
Character  of  his  '  Lectures  on  Juris- 
prudence,' 22,  note 
Avarice,  association  of  ideas  to  the  pas- 
sion of,  i.  26 
Avitus,  St.,  legend  of,  ii.  169 


BABYLAS,  St.,  miracles  performed  by 
his  bones,  i.  406,  and  note.     His 
death,  ii.  10 
Bacchus,  suppression  of  the  rites  of,  at 

Eome,  i  427 
Bacon,  Lord,  great  movement  of  modern 
thought  caused  by,  i.  130.  His  objec- 
tion to  the  Stoics'  view  of  death,  213 


BEN 

Bacon,  Eoger,  his  life  and  works,  ii. 
223 

Bain,  Mr.,  on  pleasure,  i.  12,  note.  His 
definition  of  conscience,  30,  note 

Balbus,  Cornelius,  his  elevation  to  the 
consulate,  i.  245 

Baltus  on  the  exorcists,  i.  405,  note 

Baptism,  Augustinian  doctrine  of,  i.  98 

Barbarians,  causes  of  the  conversion  of 
the,  i.  436 

Basil,  St.,  his  hospital,  ii.  85.  His 
labours  for  monachism,  113 

Bassus,  Ventidius,  his  elevation  to  the 
consulate,  i.  245 

Bathilda,  Queen,  her  charity,  ii.  260 

Bear-gardens  in  England,  ii.  186,  note. 

Beauty,  analogies  between  virtue  and,  i. 
79.  Their  difference,  80.  Diversi- 
ties existing  in  our  judgments  of  vir- 
tue and  beauty,  81.  Causes  of  these 
diversities,  81.  Virtues  to  which  we 
can,  and  to  which  we  cannot,  apply 
the  term  beautiful,  84,  85.  Pleasure 
derived  from  beauty  compared  with 
that  from  the  grotesque,  or  eccentric, 
87.  The  prevailing  cast  of  female 
beauty  in  the  north,  contrasted  with 
the  southern  type,  151,  152.  Admi- 
ration, of  the  Greeks  for  beautv,  ii. 
309 

Bees,  regarded  by  the  ancients  as  em- 
blems or  models  of  chastity,  i.  Ill, 
note 

Beggars,  causes  of  vast  numbers  of,  ii. 
100.  Old  English  laws  for  the  sup- 
pression of  mendicancy,  102.  En- 
actments against  them  in  various  parts 
of  Europe,  104. 

Benedict,  St.,  his  system,  194. 

Benefices,  military  use  of,  ii.  286. 

Benevolence  ;  Hutcheson's  theory  of 
the  moral  '  sense  ; '  and  that  all  virtue 
is  resolved  into  benevolence,  i.  4.  Dis- 
cussions in  England,  in  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries,  as  to  the 
existence  of,  20.  Shaftesbury,  Hut- 
cheson,  and  others,  20.  Enlargement  of 
the  Utilitarian  school  by  the  recog- 
nition of  benevolence,  21, 22.  Various 
views  of  the  source  from  which  it 
springs,  22.  Association  of  ideas 
producing  the  feeling  of,  27.  Hart- 
■  ley  on  benevolence  quoted,  28,  note. 
Impossibility  of  benevolence  becoming 
a  pleasure  if  practised  only  with  a 
view  to  that  end,  37.  Application  to 
benevolence  of  the  theory,  that  the 
moral  unity  of  different  ages  is  a  unity 
not  of  standard  but  of  tendency,  103. 


400 


INDEX. 


BEN 

Influenced  by  our  imaginations,  138, 
189.  gnised  by  the  Stoics, 

198,  'J .'1.  202 
Bentham,  Jeremy,  his  opinions  as  to 
the  reasons  or  motives  of  human 
actions,  i.  8,  note.  On  the  pleasures 
and  pains  of  piety  quoted,  9,  note. 
On  charity,  10,  note.  His  views  as  to 
•te.  His  view  of  the 
sanctions  of  morality,  20,  and  note,  22. 
Throws   benevolence    as     much     as 

Sinto    the    background,     22. 
akes  no    use    of  the    doctrine    of 

association,  25,  note.     His  definition 

of  conscience,  30,  note.     On  interest 

and  disinterestedness,  32,   33,  note. 

On  the  value  and  purity  of  a  pleasure, 

92,  note 
Besarion,  St.,  his  penances,  ii.  115 
Biography,     relative      importance     of, 

among  Christians  and  Pagans,  183 
Bland ina,  martyrdom  of,  i.  470 
Blesilla,  story  of  her  slow  suicide,  ii.  50 
Blondel,  his  denunciation  of  the  forge- 
ries of  the  Sibylline  books,  i.  401 
Boadicea.  her  suicide,  ii.  57 
Bolingbroke's    '  Reflections   on    Exile,' 

ta  of,  i.  212,  note 
Bona  Den,  story  and  worship  of,  i.  96, 

note.  Popularity  of  herworship  among 

the  Romans,  l<>9,  411 
Boniface,   St.,   his  missionary  labours, 

ii.  261 
Bonnet,  his  philosophy,  i.  73 
Bossuet,  his  advocacy  of  the  selfish  view 

of  the  love  we  should  bear  to  God, 

i.  19,  note 
Brephotrophia,  in  the  early  church,  ii.  34 
Brotherhood,   effect  of  Christianity   in 

promoting,  ii.  65 
Brown,  his  opinion  as  to  the  reason  or 

motive    for    the   practice  of   virtue, 

quoted,   i.   8,  note.     On  theological 
litarianism,  16,  note 
Brunehaut.  Queen,  her  crimes,  approved 

of  by  the  Pope,  ii.  250,   251.     Her 

end. 
Brum-  -lunate  usury,!.  203, 204 

mas,  his  remarks  on  morals, 
',  note.  On  the  differences  betwei  Q 

mental   and   physical   pleasures,    92, 

note.    Hi  the  comparative 

influence  of  intellectual  and  moral 
tin.  loo,  note 
uvening  the,  to 

Christianity,  ii.  191 
Bull-bait intr  in  Knghind,  ii.  186,  note  • 
Buth  :  |  lintaiiis  the  reality  of 

the  existence  of  benevolence  in  our 


CAT 

nature,  i.  20,  21,  note.  His  view  of 
the  pleasure  to  be  derived  from  virtue, 
33,  note.  His  analysis  of  moral  judg- 
ments, 77.  His  view  and  definition 
of  conscience,  85 
Byzantine  Empire,  general  sketch  of  the 
moral  condition  of  the,  ii.  13-15. 
Moral  condition  of  the  empire  during 
the  Christian  period,  156 


CJEDMON,  story  of  the  origin  of  his 
1  Creation  of  the  World,'  ii.  217 

Caesar,  Julius,  denies  the  immortality 
of  the  soul,  i.  191,  192.  His  con- 
demnation of  suicide,  224.  His  colonial 
policy,  246.  His  multiplication  of 
gladiatorial  shows,  289 

Caligula,  his  intoxication  with  his  im- 
perial dignity,  i.  274.  His  supersti- 
tious fears,  390 

Calvinists:  tendency  of  the  Supralap- 
sarian  to  deny  the  existence  of  a  moral 
sense,  i.  18,  note 

Camma,  conjugal  fidelity  of,  ii.  361 

Capital  punishment,  aversion  to,  ii.  41. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  on  self-sacrifice,  i.  58, 
note.  Tho  influence  of  conscience  on 
the  happiness  of  men,  64 

Carneades,  his  expulsion  from  Rome 
proposed  by  Cato,  i.  424 

Carpocrates,  licentiousness  of  the  fol- 
lowers of,  i.  443 

Carthage,  effect  of  the  destruction  of,  on 
the  decadence  of  Borne,  i.  177.  The 
Decian  persecution  at,  480 

Carthaginians,  the,  amongst  tho  most 
prominent  of  Latin  writers,  i.  218 

Cassius,  the  tyrannicide,  his  suicide,  i. 
226 

Castellio,  his  exposure  of  tho  forgeries 
of  the  Sibylline  books,  i.  401 

Catacombs,  the,  i.  481,  483 

Catholicism,  Roman,  the  system  of  edu- 
cation adopted  by,  contrasted  with 
that  of  the  English  public  schools, 
i.  118.  Conflict  of  the  priests  with 
political  economists  on  the  subject  of 
early  marriages,  118, 119.  The  teach- 
ing of,  on  many  points  the  extreme 
antithesis  of  that  of  the  pagan  philo- 
sophers, 219.  Its  view  of  death,  220, 
221.  Little  done  by  it  for  humanity 
to  animals,  ii.  183, 188.  Influence  on 
despotism,  198.  Its  total  destruction  of 
religions  liberty,  206-212.  Causes  of 
its  indiflferenco  to  truth  in  its  litera- 
ture, 2/55.  Protestantism  contrasted 
with  it,  390 


INDEX. 


401 


CAT 

Cato,  liis  refusal  to  consult  the  oracles, 
i.  174,  note.  His  Stoicism,  195.  His 
inhumanity  to  his  slaves,  203.  His 
study  of  the  '  Phsedon '  the  night  he 
committed  suicide,  224.  His  oppo- 
sition to  Greek  philosophy,  243.  His 
view  of  pre-nuptial  chastity,  ii.  332 
Cattle  plague,  theological  notions  re- 
specting the,  i.  379. 
Catullus,  on  the  death  of  a  sparrow,  ii. 

175,  note 
Cautinus,  Bishop,  his  drunkenness,  ii. 

250 
Celibacy  among  the  ancients,  i.  109. 
The  Catholic  monastic  system,  111. 
How  discouraged  by  Augustus,  245. 
Celibacy  the  primal  virtue  of  the 
Christians  of  the  fourth  and  fifth 
centuries,  ii.  130.  Effect  of  this  upon 
moral  teaching,  130,  131.  History 
of  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy,  347- 
35G 
Celsus  calls  the  Christians  Sibyllists,  i. 

400.  And  jugglers,  408 
Celts,  Spanish,  their  worship  of  death, 
i.  217,  218.  Causes  of  their  passion 
for  suicide,  218,  note.  Their  lamen- 
tations on  the  birth  of  men,  218,  note 
Censors,  Roman,  minute  supervision  of 

the,  i.  177 
Character,  influence  of,  on  opinion,  i. 
181.  Governed  in  a  great  measure  by 
national  circumstances,  181. 
Chariot  races,  passion  for,  at  Constanti- 
nople, ii.  39 
Charity,  a  form  of  self-love,  according 
to  the  Utilitarians,  i.  9,  and  note. 
Impossibility  of  charity  becoming  a 
pleasure  if  practised  only  with  a  view 
to  that  end,  37.  The  product  of 
intellectual  culture,  140.  Range, 
depth,  and  beauty  of  the  charity 
of  the  Stoics,  201.  Cicero's  emphatic 
assertion  of  the  duty,  253.  Exer- 
tions of  the  Christians  in  the 
cause  of  charity,  ii.  80,  84.  Inade- 
quate place  given  to  this  movement 
in  history,  90.  Christian  charity,  in 
what  it  consists,  78.  Laws  of  the 
Romans,  78.  Pagan  examples  of 
charity,  83.  Noble  enthusiasm  of  the 
Christians  in  the  cause  of  charity,  83, 
84.  Charity  enjoined  as  a  matter  of 
justice,  86.  Theological  notions  of 
charity,  91,  96,  97.  Evils  of  Catholic 
charity,  98-100.  Legends  respecting 
the  virtue,  260,  and  note 
Charlemagne,  his  law  respecting  Sun- 
day, ii.  259.     Eascination  exercised 


CHR 

by  him  over  the  popular  imagination, 

287,  288.     Hispohgamy,  363 
Charles  V.,  the  Emperor,  his  law  against 

beggars,  ii.  104 
Charles  Martel,  his  defeat  of  the  Ma- 

hommedans  at  Poictiers,  ii.  289 
Charondas,  law  of,  on  second  marriages, 

ii.  345 
Chastity,  in  Utilitarian  systems,  i.  12, 

51.  Sketch  of  the  history  of,  106-110. 

The  Catholic  monastic  system,  111. 

Modern  judgments  of,  ii.  299,  300. 

Cato's  views,  332.     Egyptian  views, 

334.     Services  of  the  ascetics  in  en- 
forcing the  duty  of  chastity,  337-339 
Children,  charge  of  murdering  infants 

among  the  early  Christians,  i.  444. 

Abortion,  ii.  22-26.     Infanticide,  2G. 

Exposed     children — foundlings,    34. 

Institutions  of  the  Romans    for  the 

benefit  of  children,  82 
Chilon,  his  closing  hours,  i.  218 
Cholera,  theological  notions  respecting 

the,  i.  378. 
Christian  and  pagan  virtues  compared, 

i.  200 
Christianity  ;  distinctions  between  the 
pagan  and  Christian  conceptions  of 
death,  i.  219.  The  importance  of 
Christianity  not  recognised  by  pagan 
writers,  357.  Causes  of  this,  359.  Ex- 
amination of  the  theory  which  ascribes 
part  of  the  teaching  of  the  later  pagan 
moralists  to  Christian  influence,  361. 
Theory  which  attributes  the  conversion 
of  Rome  to  evidences  of  miracles,  368. 
Opinion  of  the  pagans  of  the  credu- 
lity of  the  Christians,  369.  Incapa- 
city of  the  Christians  of  the  third 
century  forjudging  historic  miracles, 
399.  And  for  judging  prophecies, 
399,  400.  Contemporary  miracles 
represented  as  existing  among  them, 
401.  Christian  miracles  had  probably 
little  weight  with  the  pagans,  409. 
Progress  of  Christianity  to  what  due, 
410,  412.  Singular  adaptation  of  it  to 
the  wants  of  the  time,  412.  Heroism 
it  inspired,  415.  Explanation  of  the 
conversion  of  the  Roman  Empire,  418. 
Account  of  the  persecutions  of  the 
Christians,  420.  Reasons  why  the 
Christians  were  more  persecuted  than 
the  Jews,  428,  431,  433.  The  first 
cause  of  the  persecution  of  the  Chris- 
tians, 432.  Charges  of  immorality 
brought  against  them.  440.  Due  in 
a  great  measure  \o  Jews  and  here- 
tics, 442,  443.     The  disturbance  of 


402 


INDEX. 


CHR 

domestic  life  caused  by  female  conver- 
sions, 444.  Antipathy  of  the  Romans 
system  which  employed 
religious  terrorism,  447.  Chris- 
tian intolerance  of  pagan  worship, 
449.  And  of  diversity  of  beliefs, 
•i.'.i  158.  History  of  the  persecutions, 
456.  Nero's,  456.  Domitian's,  458. 
Condition  of  the  Christians  under  the 
Antonines,  461.  Become  profoundly 
obnoxious  to  the  people,  464.  Mar- 
cus Aurelius,  467,  469.  Introduction 
of  Christianity  into  France,  470,  and 
note.  Attitude  of  the  rulers  towards 
it  from  M.  Aurelius  to  Decius,  479, 
et  seq.  Condition  of  the  Church  on 
the  eve  of  the  Decian  persecution,  477. 
Gallus,482.  Valerian,  483.  Gallienus, 
484.  Erection  of  churches  in  the  Em- 
pire, 486.  Persecutions  of  Diocletian 
andGalerius,  487.  End  of  the  persecu- 
tions, 492.  Massacre  of  Christians  in 
Phrygia,  493.  Moral  efficacy  of  the 
Christian  sense  of  sin,  ii.  3.  Dark 
views  of  human  nature  not  common  in 
v  Chuivh,  5.  The  penitential 
7.  Empire  Christianity  at- 
tained  in  eliciting  disinterested  en- 

•:i.  9.  <  beat  purity  of  the  early 
Christians,  10-12.  The  promise  of 
the  Church  for  many  centuries  falsi- 
fied, 13.  The  first  consequence  of 
Christianity  a  new  sense  of  the  sanc- 
tity of  human  life,  19.  Influence  in 
the  protection  of  infant  life,  22-34. 
In  the  suppression  of  gladiatorial 
shows,  37.  Its  effect  upon  persecu- 
tions, 43,  et  s(q.  The  penal  code  not 
lightened  by  it,  45.  Condemnation 
of  suicide,  46.  The  second  con- 
sequence of  Christianity  to  teach  uni- 
versal brotherhood,  65.  Slavery, 
65-70.  Ransom  of  captives,  76. 
Charity,  78.  Exertions  of  the  Chris- 
tians in  the  cause  of  charity,  80,  84. 

vertions  when  the  Empire  was 
subverted,  86,  88.  Theological  no- 
tions concerning  insanity,  91-95. 
Almsgiving,  96-98.  Beneficial  effect 
of  Christianity  in  supplying  pure 
images  to  the  imagination,  103. 
Summary  of  the  philanthropic  achiove- 
i  Christianity,  107.  Wars 
in  which  tho  ascetic  modo  of  life 
affected  l»>th  the  ideal  type  and  real- 

:i<liti-m  of  morals,  130,  ct  seq. 
History  of  the  relationsof  Christianity 
to  the  civic  virtue-,  l  id.  Improve- 
ments effected  by  Christianity  on  the 


CI? 

morals  of  the  people,  163.  Attitude 
of  Christianity  to  the  barbarians,  189. 
How  it  achieved  the  conversion  of 
them,  190-192.  Tendency  of  the 
barbarians  to  adulterate  it,  192. 
Legends  of  the  conflict  between  the 
old  gods  and  the  new  faith,  193. 
Fierce  hatred  of  rival  sects,  and  total 
destruction  of  religious  liberty,  206- 
212.  Polytheistic  and  idolatrous 
form  of  Christianity  in  mediaeval 
times,  243.  The  doctrine  of  purga- 
tory, 246.  Benefits  conferred  by  the 
monasteries,  257-259.  The  obser- 
vance of  Sunday,  259.  Influence  of 
Christianity  upon  war,  269,  274. 
Upon  the  consecration  of  secular 
rank,  276,  ct  seq.  Upon  the  condi- 
tion of  women,  335,  et  seq.  Strong 
assertion  of  the  equality  of  obliga- 
tion in  marriage,  365,  366.  Rela- 
tion of  Christianity  to  the  female 
virtues,  379,  et  seq. 

Chrysippus  on  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  i.  192 

Chrysostom,  St.,  his  labours  for  mona- 
chism,  ii.  113.  His  treatment  of  his 
mother,  140 

Cicero  on  the  evidence  of  a  Divine  ele- 
ment within  us,  i.  57,  note.  His  de- 
finition of  conscience,  80.  His  con- 
ception of  the  Deity,  172.  His  opinion 
of  the  popular  beliefs,  173.  Instance 
of  his  love  of  truth,  185,  note.  His 
desire  for  posthumous  reputation,  194, 
note.  His  declaration  as  to  virtue 
concealing  itself  from  the  world,  195. 
His  belief  in  tho  immortality  of  the 
soul,  215.  His  view  of  death,  216, 
217.  His  complacency  on  the  ap- 
proach of  death,  218.  His  concep- 
tion of  suicide,  224.  His  mainte- 
nance of  the  doctrine  of  universal 
brotherhood,  25:J.  How  he  regarded 
the  games  of  tho  arena.  803,  His 
friendship  with  his  frcedmia  Tiro, 
323.  His  remarks  on  charity,  ii.  84. 
His  rules  respecting  almsgiving,  98 

Circumcelliones,  atrocities  of  the,  ii.  4  1. 
Their  custom  of  provoking  martyr- 
dom, 52 

Civic  virtues,  predominance  accorded  to, 
in  ancient  ethics,  i.  211 

Civilisation,  refining  influence  of,  on 
taste,  i.  81.  Pleasures  of  a  civilised 
and  semi-civilised  society  compared, 
89.  Views  of  -M  ill  and  Buckle  on  the 
comparative  influence  of  intellec- 
tual and  moral  agencies  in,  105,  note 


INDEX. 


403 


CLA 

Effect  of  education  in  diminishing 
cruelty,  and  producing  charity,  140. 
Moral  enthusiasm  appropriate  to  dif- 
ferent stages  of  civilisation,  142.  In- 
crease of  veracity  with  civilisation, 
1 43.  Each  stage  of  civilisation  specially 
appropriate  to  some  virtue,  154 

Clarke,  on  moral  judgments,  i.  78 

Classical  literature,  preservation  of,  ii. 
212.  Manner  in  which  it  was  regarded 
by  the  church,  213-216 

Claudius,  his  delight  in  gladiatorial 
shows,  i.  296.  His  decree  as  to  slaves, 
325 

Claver,  Father,  his  remark  on  some  per- 
sons who  had  delivered  a  criminal 
into  the  hands  of  justice,  i.  42,  note. 

Cleanthes,  his  suicide,  i.  224 

Clemency,  Seneca's  distinction  between 
it  and  pity,  i.  199 

Clemens  of  Alexandria,  on  the  two 
sources  of  all  the  wisdom  of  antiquity, 
i.  366.  How  he  regarded  the  Si- 
bylline books,  400.     On  wigs,  ii.  158 

Clemens,  Flavius,  put  to  death,  i.  460 

Cleombrotus,  his  suicide,  i.  224,  note 

Clergy,  corruption  of  the,  from  the  fourth 
century,  ii.  159,  251.  Submission  of 
the  Eastern,  but  independence  of  the 
Western,  clergy  to  the  civil  power, 
280-4.    History  of  their  celibacy,  347 

Climate,  effects  of,  in  stimulating  or 
allaying  the  passions,  i.  151 

Clotaire,  his  treatment  of  Queen  Brune- 
haut,  ii.  253 

Clotilda,  her  conversion  of  her  husband. 
i.  436;  ii.  191 

Clovis,  his  conversion  i.  436;  ii.  191. 
Gregory  of  Tours'  account  of  his  acts, 
254,  255 

Cock-fighting  among  the  ancients  and 
moderns,  ii.  174,  and  note,  186,  note 

Cock-throwing,  ii.  174,  note,  186,  note 

Coemgenus,  St.,  legend  of,  ii.  118,  note 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  his  remarks  on  the 
practice  of  virtue  as  a  pleasure,  i.  29, 
note.  His  admiration  for  Hartley, 
29,  note.  On  the  binding  ground  of 
the  belief  of  God  and  a  hereafter,  i. 
57 

Colman,  St.,  his  animal  companions,  ii. 
180.     His  girdle,  338,  note 

Colonies,  Eoman,  the  cosmopolitan  spi- 
rit forwarded  by  the  aggrandisement 
of  the,  i.  246 

Colosseum,  the,  i.  291.  Games  at  the 
dedication  of  the,  297 

Columbanus,  St.,  his  missionary  labours, 
ii.  261 


COU 

Comedy.  Eoman,  short  period  during 
which  it  flourished,  i.  293 

Comet,  a  temple  erected  by  the  Romans 
in  honour  of  a,  i.  391 

Commodus,  his  treatment  of  the  Chris- 
tians, i.  471 

Compassion,  theory  that  it  is  the  cause 
of  our  acts  of  barbarity,  i.  73,  74 

Concubines,  Eoman,  ii.  370 

Concupiscence,  doctrine  of  the  Fathers 
respecting,  ii.  298 

Condillac,  cause  of  the  attractiveness  of 
utilitarianism  to,  i.  73.  Growth  of 
his  sensual  school  out  of  Locke's  phi- 
losophy, i.  122,  note 

Confessors,  power  of  the,  in  the  early 
Church,  i.  414,  and  note 

Congo,  Helve tius  on  a  custom  of  the 
people  of,  i.  105,  note 

Conquerors,  causes  of  the  admiration 
of,  i.  96,  97 

Conscience,  association  of  ideas  generat- 
ing, i.  28.  Eecognised  by  the  disciples 
of  Hartley,  29.  Definitions  of 
Hobbes,  Locke,  Bentham,  and  Bain, 
29,  note,  30,  note.  The  rewards  and 
punishments  of  conscience,  62-64. 
Unique  position  of,  in  our  nature, 
85.  As  defined  by  Cicero,  the  Stoics, 
St.  Paul,  and  Butler,  85 

Consequences,  remote,  weakness  of  the 
utilitarian  doctrine  of,  i.  43-45 

'  Consolations,'  literature  of,  leading  to- 
pics of,  i.  215 

Constantine,  the  Emperor,  his  founda- 
tion of  the  empire  of  the  East,  ii.  13. 
His  humane  policy  towards  children, 
31,  32.  His  sanction  of  the  gladia- 
torial shows,  37.  His  laws  miti- 
gating the  severity  of  punishments, 
45.  His  treatment  of  slaves,  68.  His 
law  respecting  Sunday,  259.  Magni- 
ficence of  his  court  at  Constantinople, 
280 

Conventual  system,  effect  of  the  sup- 
pression of  the,  on  women,  ii.  391 

Cordeilla,  or  Cordelia,  her  suicide,  ii. 
57 

Corinth,  effect  of  the  conquest  of,  on 
the  decadence  of  Eome,  i.  177 

Cornelia,  a  vestal  virgin,  incident  of 
her  execution,  ii.  336 

Cornelius,  the  bishop,  martyrdom  of,  i. 
483 

Cornutus,  his  disbelief  in  a  future 
state,  i.  193 

Corporations,  moral  qualities  of,  i.  160 

Councils  of  the  Church,  character  of 
the,  ii.  209,  note 


404 


INDEX. 


COU 

Courtesans,  Greek,  ii.  303.  Causes  of 
tlu-ir  elevation,  308-311.  How  re- 
garded by  the  Romans,  318 

Cousin,  Victor,   his    criticism    of   the 
•h  moralists,  i.    76,   note.    His 
objection  against  Locke,  76,  note 

Grantor,  originates  tho  literature  of 
•Consolations,'  i.  215 

,tit:s  Cordus,  trial  of,  i.  476,  note 

Crime,  value  attached  by  the  monks  to 
intarj  compensations  for,  ii.  226. 
logos  of  Crimea  of  the  seventh 
century,  251-253 

Criminals,  causes  of  our  indulgent 
judgment  of,  i.  141 

Critical  spirit,  the,  destroyed  by  Neo- 
platonism,  i.  350 

Cromaziano,  his  history  of  suicide,  i. 
228,  note 

Cruelty,  origin  and  varieties  of,  i.  138, 
140.  Cruelty  to  animals,  utilitarian 
doctrine  concerning,  47,  48 

Crusius,  his  adherence  to  the  opinion  of 
Ockham  as  to  the  foundation  of  tho 
moral  law,  i.  17.  note 

Cud  worth,  Iris  analysis  of  moral  judg- 
ments, i.  77 

Cullagium,  a  tax  levied  on  the  clergy, 
ii.  :■ 

Cumberland,  Bishop,  his  unselfish  view 
of  virtue,  i.  19  note 

Cynics,  account  of  the  later,  i.  328 

Cyprian.  St.,  his  evasion  of  persecution 
by  flight,  i.  481.  His  exile  and 
martyrdom,  484 

Cyzicus  deprived  of  its  freedom,  i.  274 


D.KMOXS,  Apuleius'  disquisition  on 
tho  doctrine  of,  i.  343.  The  doc- 
trine supersedes  the  Stoical  natural- 
ism, i.  351.  The  da?rnons  of  tho 
Greeks  and  Romans,  i.  404.  And  of 
tho  Christians,  405 
Dale,  Van,  his  denial  of  tho   supt •rna- 

tural  character  of  tho  oracles,  i.  398 
It.  ;>d,  Roman  worship  of  the,  i.  176 

.  calmness  with  which  some  men 
of  dull  and  animal  natures  can  meet, 
i.    91.     Frame  of  mind  in  which   a 
:  should  approach  death,  accord- 
ing to  Epictetns,  205.    Preparation 
death  ono  of  the  chief  ends  of  the 
philosophy  of  the  ancients,  213.     Ba- 
ft' view  of, 
ib  legend  of  t lie  islands 
of  lit'.-  and  dentli,  L'l  I.     The  litera- 
ture of  '  Consolations,'   215.     Death 
not  regarded  by  the  philosoph 


DOW 

penal,  216.  Popular  terrors  of  death, 
216,  217.  Instances  of  tranquil  pagan 
deaths,  218.  Distinctions  between 
tho  pagan  and  Christian  conceptions 
of  death,  219 

Debate,  value  of  the  practice  of,  i. 
145 

Decius,  persecution  of  the  Christians 
under,  i.  477,  478 

Defoe,  Daniel,  his  tract  against  beggars, 
ii.  104,  and  note 

Delphi,  oracle  of,  its  description  of  the 
best  religion,  i.  175 

Deogratias,  his  ransom  of  prisoners,  ii. 
77 

Despotic  monarchs,  shape  which  their 
anxiety  to  improve  mankind  takes,  i. 
265 

Despotism,  Helvetius'  remarks  on  the 
moral  effects  of,  i.  135,  note.  In  what 
it  consists,  ii.  276 

Diagoras,  his  denial  of  the  existence  ol 
the  gods,  i.  170 

Dion  Chrysostom,  his  denunciation  of 
images  of  the  Deity,  i.  174,  175, 
note.     His  life  and  works,  331 

Diodorus,  the  philosopher,  his  suicide, 
i.  227 

Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  on  the  creed 
of  the  Romans,  i.  175,  176 

Disinterestedness,  Bentham's  remarks 
on,  quoted,  i.  32,  33,  note 

Disposition,  what  constitutes,  according 
to  the  theory  of  association,  i.  30 

Divination,  a  favourite  subject  Of  Roman 
ridicule,  i.  174.  Belief  of  the  ancients 
in,  386 

Divorce,  unbounded  liberty  of,  among 
the  Romans,  ii.  324-326.  Con- 
demned by  tho  Church,  371,  372 

Doceta?,. their  tenets,  ii.  109 

Dog-star,  legend  of  the,  ii.  172 

Dolphin,  legends  of  the,  ii.  172,  and 
note 

Domestic  laws,  Roman,  changes  in,  i. 
315,  316 

Domestic  virtues,  destruction  of  the,  by 
the  ascetics,  ii.  133 

Domitilhi,  banishment  of,  i.  460 

Domitian,  his  law  respecting  suicide,  i. 
230,  Anecdote  of  his  cruelty,  306. 
His  law  as  to  slaves,  326.  11  is  per- 
secution of  the  Stoics  and  Christians, 
458,  469 

Domnina,  her  suicide  with  her  daugh- 
ters, ii.  49 

Donatasts,  their  Intolerance,  ii.  207 
Dowry  of  women,  rise  of  the,  ii.  293, 

and  note 


INDEX. 


405 


DRE 

Dreams,  opinions  of  the  Romans  con- 
cerning, i.  390,  and  note 

Dumont,  M.,  on  vengeance  quoted,  i.  42, 
note 

Duty,  theory  of  morals  must  explain 
what  is,  and  the  notion  of  there  being 
such  a  thing  as,  i.  5.  Paley  on  the 
difference  between  it  and  prudence, 
16,  note.  Distinction  between  natural 
duties  and  those  resting  on  positive 
law,  95.     Duty  a  distinct  motive,  189 

Dwarfs,  combats  of,  in  the  arena,  i.  298 


EARTHQUAKES,  how  regarded,  by 
the  ancients,  i.  392.  Cause  of 
persecutions  of  the  Christians,  434 

Easter  controversy,  bitterness  of  the, 
ii.  211 

Eclectic  school  of  philosophy,  rise  of 
the,  i.  255.  Its  influence  on  the  Stoics, 
258 

Eclipses,  opinions  of  the  ancients  con- 
cerning, i.  389,  390 

Education,  importance  ascribed  to,  by 
the  theory  of  the  association  of  ideas, 
i.  30.  Contrast  between  that  adopted 
by  the  Catholic  priesthood  and  that 
of  the  English  public  schools,  118. 
Its  influence  on  the  benevolent  feel- 
ings, 139,  140.  Two  distinct  the- 
ories of  education,  to  strengthen  the 
will  and  to  guide  the  desires,  197 

Egypt,  the  cradle  of  monachism,  ii.  112. 
The  Mohammedan  conquest  of,  152. 
Triumphs  of  the  Catholics  in,  208 

Egyptians,  their  reverence  for  the  vul- 
ture, i.  Ill,  note.  Their  kindness  to 
animals,  307.  Contrast  of  the  spirit 
of  their  religion  with  that  of  the 
Greeks,  344.  Difference  between  the 
Stoical  and  Egyptian  pantheism,  344 

Elephants,  legends  of,  ii.  171 

Emperors,  Roman,  degradation  of  the 
apotheosis  of  the,  i.  178,  272 

Empire,  universal,  dangers  of,  i.  280 

Endura,  the  Albigensian  practice  of, 
ii.  53 

England,  national  virtues  and  vices  of, 
i.  160,  161.  Ancient  amusements 
of,  ii.  185,  186,  note. 

Ephrem,  St.,  his  charity,  ii.  86 

Epictetus,  his  disbelief  in  a  future  state, 
i.  193.  His  life  and  works,  193,  194, 
and  note.  On  the  frame  of  mind  in 
which  a  man  should  approach  death, 
205.  His  view  of -the  natural  virtue 
of  man,  208.  On  suicide,  225,  232, 
note.     On  universal  brotherhood,  254. 


His  stoicism  tempered  by  a  milder 
and  more-  religious  spirit,  258,  260. 
His  remarks  on  national  religious 
beliefs,  431 

Epicureans,  their  faith  preserved  un- 
changed at  Athens,  i.  134,  and  note. 
Their  scepticism,  170.  Roman  Epi- 
cureans, 170,  171.  Epicureanism 
the  expression  of  a  type  of  character 
different  to  Stoicism,  180,  181.  But 
never  became  a  school  of  virtue  in 
Rome,  184.  Destructive  nature  of 
its  functions,  185,  186.  Esteemed 
pleasure  as  the  ultimate  end  of  our 
actions,  196.  Encouraged  physical 
science,  203.  Their  doctrine  as  to 
suicide,  226,  and  note 

Epicurus,  the  four  canons  of,  i.  14. 
Vast  place  occupied  by  his  system  in 
the  moral  history  of  man,  1 80.  Great 
perfection  of  his  character,  184,  185, 
note.  Lucretius'  praise  of  him,  207. 
His  view  of  death,  216.  Recent  dis- 
covery of  one  of  his  treatises  at  Her- 
culaneum,  216,  note 

Epidemics,  theological  notions  respect- 
ing, i.  378 

Epiphanius,  St.,  his  miraculous  stories, 
i.  402.  His  charges  against  the 
Gnostics,  443.  Legend  of  him  and 
St.  Hilarius,  ii.  169 

Epponina,  story  of  her  conjugal  fidelitv, 
ii.  362 

Error,  the  notion  of  the  guilt  of,  con- 
sidered abstractedly,  ii.  202-5 

Essenes,  virginity  their  ideal  of  sanc- 
tity, i.  112;  ii.  108 

Euhemerus,  his  theory  of  explanation 
of  the  prevailing  legends  of  the  gods, 
i.  171 

Euphrates  the  Stoic,  his  answer  to 
Pliny  the  Younger,  i.  212.  Has  per- 
mission from  Hadrian  to  commit  sui- 
cide, 230,  note 

Euphraxia,  St.,  ii.  117 

Euripides,  beauty  of  the  gentler  virtues 
inculcated  by  the  plays  of,  i.  240 

Europe,  disappearance  of  the  small 
states  from  the  map  of,  i.  155 

Eusebius,  on  the  allegorical  and  mythical 
interpretations  of  Paganism,  i.  171, 
note.  His  account  of  the  Christian 
persecutions,  i.  492 

Eusebius,  St.,  his  penances,  ii.  115 

Eustathius,  condemnation  of,  by  the 
council  of  Gangra,  ii.  140 

Evagrius,  his  inhumanity  to  his  parents, 
ii.  133 

Evil,  views  of  Hoblos  and  the    Utili- 


406 


INDEX. 


EXC 

tarians  of  the  essence  and  origin  of, 
i.  8-10 

■  •nee,  supreme,  how  far  it  is  condu- 
»,  i.  57 
mmnnication,  penalties  of,  ii.  8 

Excursion  train,  instance  of  the  advan- 
-  ami  disadvantages  of  an,  i  120, 
LSI 

Executioners,  always  regarded  as  un- 
holy, i.  41 

Exorcism,  among  the  early  Christians, 
i.  401,  404.  Origin  of  the  notions  of 
possession  and  exorcism,  404.  Jews 
the  principal  exorcists,  404.  Belief  of 
the  early  Christians  in,  406.  Con- 
tempt of  the  pagans  for  it,  408. 
Ulpian's  law  against  exorcists,  408. 
Probable  explanation  of  possession 
and  exorcism,  409.  Speedy  decline  of 
exorcism,  409.  The  practice  probably 
had  no  appreciable  influence  in  pro- 
voking persecution  of  the  Christians, 
446 

Experience,  general  statement  of  the 
doctrine  which  bases  morals  upon, 
i.  5 

I^ABIANUS,  martyrdom  of,  i.  476 
Fabiola,   founded  the  lirst  public 

hospital,  ii.  85 
Fabins,  his  self-sacrifice,  i.  195 
Fabios   Pictor,   his   works   written   in 

Greek,  i.  243 
Faculty,  moral,  the  term,  i.  77 
Fairies,  belief  in,  i.  370,  371 
Fatalism,  JEscbylus  the  poet  of,  i.  206 
Felicitas,  St.,  her  martyrdom,  i.  472.  In 

prison,  ii.  10 
Fenelon,  on  the  unselfish  love  we  should 

bear  to  God,  i.  19,  note 
Fetishism,  latent,  the  root  of  a  great 

part  of  our  opinions,  i.  372 
Fidelia;,  accident  at  the  amphitheatre  at, 

i.  291 
Fights,  sham,  in  Italy  in  the  middle 

ages,  ii.  40 

regarded  by  the  ancients   as   an 

emblem  of  virginity,  i.  Ill,  note 
Fi.-h,  symbol  of  the  early  Christians,  i. 

400 
Flamens  of  Jupiter,  ii.  315 
Flora,  games  of,  i.  292 
Forethought,  brought  into  a  new  posi- 
tion by  industrial  habits,  i.  147 
Foundlinps,  hospitals  for,  ii.  26,  vote,  34. 

In  ancient  times,  30,  31.     Adv 

ries  of,  106,  and  note 
France,  condition  of,  under  the  Merovin- 
gian kings,  ii.  250 


GLA 

Francis  of  Assisi,  St.,  story  of  his  death 

from  asceticism,  ii.  52.    His  kindness 

to  animals,  183 
Franks,    cause   of  their  conversion,    i. 

436 
Fredegonde,  Queen,  her  crimes,  ii.  250, 

251 
Freedmen,  influence  of,  at  Rome,  i.  246. 

Condition   of    the   freedmen   of  the 

Romans,  249 
Frenchmen,    the  chief  national  virtue* 

and  causes  of  their  influence  in  Europe, 
.  i.  160.    Compared  with  Anglo-Saxoh 

nations,  160.   Their  amusements,  116 
Friendship,  Utilitarian  view  of,  i.  10 


GALERIUS,  his  persecution  of  the 
Christians,  i.  487,  490.  His  illness, 
491.  Relents  towards  the  Christians, 
491 

Galibeans,  their  indifference  to  death,  i. 
417,  note 

Gall,  St.,  legend  of,  ii.  194.  His  mis- 
sionary labours,  261 

Gallienus,  proclaims  toleration  to  the 
Christians,  i.  484,  486 

Gallus,  the  Emperor,  persecutions  of 
the  Christians  under,  i.  482 

Gambling-table,  moral  influence  of  the, 
i.  155 

Gaul,  introduction  of  Christianity  into, 
i.  470.  Foundation  of  the  monastic 
system  in,  ii.  113.  Long  continuance 
of  polvgamy  among  the  kings  of, 
363 

Gay,  his  view  of  the  origin  of  human 
actions,  quoted,  i.  8,  note.  His  sug- 
gestion of  the  theory  of  association, 
24 

Georgo  of  Cappadocia,  his  barbarity,  ii. 
208 

Genseric,  effect  of  his  conquest  of  Africa 
upon  Italy,  ii.  87.  His  capture  of 
Rome,  88 

Germanicus,  the  Emperor,  fury  of  the 
populace  with  the  gods,  in  consequence 
of  the  death  of,  i.  178 

Germanus,  St.,  his  charity,  ii.  260 

Germany,  conversion  of,  to  Christianity, 
ii.  261.  Marriage  customs  of  the 
early  Germans,  294.  Their  chastity, 
360,361 

'Garvasitts,  St.,  recovery  of  his  remains, 
i.  403 

Girdles  of  chastity,  ii.  338,  note 

Gladiatorial  shows,  influence  of  Chris- 
tianity on  the  suppression  of,  i.  37. 
Reasons  why  tho   Romans   saw   no- 


INDEX. 


407 


GNO 

thing  criminal  in  them,  104.  History 
and  effect  on  the  Romans -of,  287-300. 
How  regarded  by  moralists  and  histo- 
rians. 301.  The  passion  for  them  not 
inconsistent  with  humanity  in  other 
spheres,  305 

Gnostics,  accusations  against  the,  by  the 
early  fathers,  i.  443.  Their  tenets,  ii. 
109 

God,  the  Utilitarian  view  of  the  good- 
ness of,  i.  9,  and  note.  Question  of 
the  disinterestedness  of  the  love  we 
should  bear  to,  18,  19.  Our  know- 
ledge of  Him  derived  from  our  own 
moral  nature,  57.  Early  traces  of  an 
all-pervading  soul  of  nature  in  Greece, 
169,  170.  Philosophic  definitions  of 
the  Deity,  170,  note.  Pantheistic  con- 
ception of  by  the  Stoics  and  Pla- 
tonists,  171.  Recognition  of  Pro- 
vidence by  the  Roman  moralists, 
207.  Two  aspects  under  which  the 
Stoics  worshipped  the  Divinity — pro- 
vidence and  moral  goodness,  208 

Gods,  the,  of  the  ancients,  i.  169,  et 
seq.  Euhemerus'  theory  of  the  ex- 
planation of  the  prevailing  legends 
of  the  gods,  171.  Views  of  Cicero 
of  the  popular  beliefs,  173.  Opinions 
of  the  Stoics,  of  Ovid,  and  of  Horace, 
174.  Nature  of  the  gods  of  th 
Romans,  176.  Decline  of  Romau 
reverence  for  the  gods,  177,  178 

Good,  pleasure  equivalent  to,  according 
to  the  Utilitarians,  i.  8,  note,  9 

Gracchi,  colonial  policy  of  the,  i.  246 

Grazers,  sect  of,  ii.  116 

Greeks,  ancient,  their  callous  murder  of 
children,  i.  46,  47.  Low  state  of 
female  morality  among  them,  107. 
Their  enforcement  of  monogamy, 
107.  Their  view  of  the  sanctity  of 
chastity,  108,  109.  Celibacy  of  some 
of  their  priests  and  priestesses, 
109.  Early  traces  of  a  religion  of 
nature,  169.  Universal  providence 
attributed  to  Zeus,  169.  Scepticism 
of  the  philosophers,  169,  170.  Im- 
portance of  biography  and  the 
moral  teaching  of  the,  183.  Dif- 
ference between  the  teaching  of  the 
Roman  moralists  and  the  Greek 
poets,  206.  Their  fables  on  death, 
and  scenes  of  infernal  torments, 
216,  217.  Greek  suicides,  224. 
Gentleness  and  humanity  of  the 
Greek  character,  240.  Influence  of 
the  union  of  the  Greek  and  Roman 
civilisation  on  the  Roman  character, 
60 


HAP 

240,  241.  The  Greek  spirit  at  first 
as  far  removed  from  cosmopolitanism 
as  that  of  Rome,  241.  Causes  of 
Greek  cosmopolitanism,  242.  Ex- 
tent of  Greek  influence  at  Rome,  242. 
Gladiatorial  shows  among  them,  292. 
Spirit  of  their  religion  contrasted 
with  that  of  the  Egyptians,  344. 
Their  strong  intolerance  of  foreign 
religious,  432.  Condition  and  fall  of 
their  empire  of  the  East,  ii.  13-15. 
Their  practice  of  infanticide,  27-29. 
Their  treatment  of  animals,  174. 
Their  treatment  of  prisoners  taken 
in  war,  272,  273.  Their  marriage 
customs,  293.  Women  in  the  poetic 
age,  294.  Peculiarity  of  Greek  feel- 
ing on  the  position  of  women,  297, 
298.  Unnatural  forms  assumed  by 
vice  amongst  them,  311 

Gregory  the  Great,  his  contempt  for 
Pagan  literature,  ii.  213,  note.  His 
attitude  towards  Phocas,  279 

Gregory  of  Nyssa,  St., '  his  eulogy  of 
virginity,  ii.  342 

Gregory  of  Tours,  manner  in  which  he 
regarded  events,  ii.  254-256,  277 

Grotesque,  or  eccentric,  pleasure  derived 
from  the,  compared  with  that  from 
beauty,  i.  87 

Gundebald,  his  murders  approved  of  by 
his  bishop,  ii.  251 

Gunpowder,  importance  of  the  invention 
of,  i.  131 

Guy,  Brother,  his  society  for  protection 
and  education  of  children,  ii.  35,  and 
note 

HADRIAN,  the  Emperor,  his  view  of 
suicide,  i.  230.  Gives  Euphrates 
permission  to  destroy  himself,  230, 
note.  His  laws  respecting  slaves, 
326.  His  leniency  towards  Christian- 
ity, 466.     His  benevolence,  ii.  82 

Hair,  false,  opinions  of  the  Fathers  on, 
ii.  158 

Hall,  Robert,  on  theological  Utilita- 
rianism, i.  16,  note 

*  Happiness,  the  greatest,  for  the  greatest 
number,'  theory  of  the,  i.  3.  The 
pursuit  of  the,  of  others,  Hutcheson's 
theory  of,  revealed  to  us  by  a  '  moral 
sense,'  4.  Happiness  the  sole  end  of 
human  actions,  according  to  the  Utili- 
tarians, 8,  note.  The  best  man  seldom 
the  happiest,  70.  Mental  compared 
with  physical  happiness  90.  Influ- 
ence of  health  and  temperament  on 
happiness,  90,  and  note 


408 


INDEX. 


EAR 

Hartley,  his  doctrine  of  association,  i. 

23.    Goleridge'i  admiration  for  him, 

.nimal  food,   50,  note. 

Bis  attempt  to  evade  the  conclusion 

to  which  his  view  leads,  quoted,  68, 

note.    His  definition  of  conscience,  84 

he  orator  of  death,  i.  227 

;.ibalus,   his   blasphemous  orgies, 

II.il.  monkish  visionsof,ii.  234, 253, note. 
Glimpses  of  the  infernal  regions  fur- 
nished by  the  'Dialogues'  of  St. 
Gregory,  235.  Modern  publications 
on  this  subject.  237,  note 

Helvetius,  on  the  origin  of  human 
actions,  i.  8,  note.  On  customs  of 
the  people  of  Congo  and  Siam, 
105,  note.  Compared  with  Aulas 
Gellius,  332.  Account  of  him  and 
his  works,  333 

Herbert  of  Cherbury,  Lord,  his  profes- 
sion of  the  doctrine  of  innate  ideas,  i. 
128 

Hercules,  meaning  of,  according  to  the 
Stoics,  i.  171 

Hereford,  Nicholas  of,  his  opposition  to 
indiscriminate  alms,  ii.  102 

v,  punishment  of  death  for,  i.  100  ; 
ii.  i 

Ilennits.    See  Asceticism  ;  Monasticism 

HeiOUAn,  tho  Utilitarian  theory  unfa- 
vourable to,  i.  68.  War,  the  school  of 
heroism,  182 

Hilarius,  St.,  legend  of  him  and  St. 
Kpiphanius,  ii.  169 

Hildebrand,  his  destruction  of  priestly 
marriage,  ii.  351 

Hippopotamus,  legend  of  the,  ii.  171 

Historical  literature,  scantiness  of,  after 
the  fall  of  the  Roman  empire,  ii.  249 

Hobbes.  Thomas,  his  opinions  concern- 
ing the  essence  and  origin  of  virtue,  i. 
7,  8,  note.     His  view  of  the  origin  of 
human  actions,  quoted,  8,  note.     His 
irks  on  the  goodness  which  we 
apprehend   in   God,   quoted,  9,  note. 
And  on  reverence,  9,  note.  On  charity, 
9,  10,  note.     On  pity,  10,  note.     Re- 
view of  the  system  of  morals  of  his 
school,  11.     His  tho  first  great  im- 
ps to  moral  philosophy  in   Eng- 
His  extreme   selfish- 

' -.   i '.».  ■■■■' .     Ills  denial 

••.ility    Of    the    exigence   of 

,21.      His   definition 

of  conscience,  29,  note.    Hist  1  icory  of 

compassion,  74,  note 

lloli.i  ince  of,  to  the  servile 

classes,  ii.  258 


IMA 

Homer,  his  views  of  human  nature  and 
man's  will,  i.  206 

Horace,  his  ridicule  of  idols,  i.  174. 
His  description  of  the  just  man,  207 

Hospitality  enjoined  by  the  Romans,  ii. 
84 

Hospitals,  foundation  of  the  first,  ii.  85, 
86 

Human  life,  its  sanctity  recognised  by 
Christianity,  ii.  19.  Gradual  acquire- 
ment of  this  sense,  19 

Human  nature,  false  estimate  of,  of  the 
Stoics,  i.  202.     Composition  of,  202 

Hume,  David,  his  theory  of  virtue,  i.  4. 
Misrepresented  by  many  writers,  4. 
His  recognition  of  the  reality  of  bene- 
volence in  our  nature,  20,  2 1 ,  note.  His 
comment  on  French  licentiousness  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  51,  note.  His 
analysis  of  the  moral  judgments,  78. 
Lays  the  foundation  for  a  union  of 
the  schools  of  Clarke  and  Shaftes- 
bury, 78 

Humility,  new  value  placed  upon  it  by 
monachism,  ii.  196,  199 

Hutchesott,  Francis,  his  doctrino  of  a 
'moral  sense,'  i.  4.  Establishes  the 
reality  of  the  existence  of  benevolence 
in  our  nature,  20.  His  analysis  of 
moral  judgments,  78 

Hypatia,  murder  of,  ii.  208.  A  virgin 
wife,  334 


TAMBLICHUS,    his     philosophy,    i. 

1  ■  351 

Ideas,  confused  association  of,  and 
the  anomalies  arising  from  it,  i.  96, 
97.  Question  whether  our,  are  derived 
exclusively  from  sensation  or  whether 
they  spring  in  part  from  the  mind  it- 
self, 127.  Tho  latter  theory  repre- 
sented by  the  Platonic  doctrine  of 
pro-existence,  127.  Doctrino  of  in- 
nate ideas,  127 

Idols  and  idolatry,  views  of  the  Roman 
philosophers  of,  i.  174.  Discussion 
between  Apollonius  of  Tynna  and  an 
Bgyptian  priest  respecting,  171,  note. 
Idols  forbidden  by  Numa,  175,  note. 
Plutarch  on  the  vanity  of,  175,  note 

Ignatius,  St.,  his  martyrdom,  i.  465 

[gnis  fatuus,  legend  of  the,  ii.  238,  vote 

Imagination,  sins  of,  i.  46.  Relation  of 
the  benevolent  feelings  to  it,  138,  L39. 
Deficiency  of  imagination  the  cause 
of  the  exeat  majority  of  unchari- 
table, judgments,  iKi-112.  Feeble- 
ness of  the  imagination  a  source  of 


INDEX. 


409 


JMP 

legends  and  myths,  372.  Beneficial 
effects  of  Christianity  in  supplying 
pure  images  to  the  imagination,  ii. 
105 

Imperial  system  of  the  Romans,  its 
effect  on  their  morals,  i.  272.  Apo- 
theosis of  the  emperors,  272 

India,  ancient,  admiration  for  the  schools 
of,  i.  242 

Inductive,  ambiguity  of  the  term,  as 
applied  to  morals,  i.  75 

Industrial  truth,  characteristics  of,  i. 
144.  Influence  of  the  promotion  of 
industrial  life  upon  morals,  145-147 

Infanticide,  history  of  the  practice  of, 
ii.  26.  Efforts  of  the  Church  to  sup- 
press it,  31.  Roman  laws  relating 
to,  33.     Causes  of,  in  England,  302 

Infants,  Augustinian  doctrine  of  the 
damnation  of  unbaptized,  i.  98,  99. 
The  Sacrament  given  to,  in  the  early 
Church,  ii.  6 

Insanity,  alleged  increase  of,  ii.  64. 
Theological  notions  concerning,  91. 
The  first  lunatic  asylums,  92 

Insurance  societies  among  the  poor  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  ii.  83 

Intellectual  progress,  its  relations  to 
moral  progress,  i.  156-15S 

Interest,  self-,  human  actions  governed 
exclusively  by,  according  to  the 
Utilitarians,  i.  8,  and  note.  Summai'y 
of  the  relations  of  virtue  and  public 
and  private,  121 

Intuition,  rival  claims  of,  and  utility  to 
be  regarded  as  the  supreme  regulator 
of  moral  distinctions,  i.  1,2.  Various 
names  by  which  the  theory  of  intui- 
tion is  known,  2,  3.  Views  of  the 
moralists  of  the  school  of,  3.  Summary 
of  their  objections  to  the  utilitarian 
theory,  i.  70.  The  intuitive  school, 
75,  76.  Doctrines  of  Butler,  Adam 
Smith,  and  others,  77-79.  Analogies 
of  beauty  and  virtue,  79.  Distinc- 
tions between  the  higher  and  lower 
parts  of  our  nature,  85.  Moral  judg- 
ments, and  their  alleged  diversities, 
93.  General  moral  principles  alone 
revealed  by  intuition,  102.  Intuitive 
morals  not  unprogressive,  105,  106. 
Difficulty  of  both  the  intuitive  and 
utilitarian  schools  in  finding  a  fixed 
frontier  line  between  the  lawful  and 
the  illicit,  120,  121.  The  intuitive 
and  utilitarian  schools  each  related 
to  the  general  condition  of  society, 
127.  Their  relations  to  metaphysical 
schools,  128,  129.     And  to  the  Ba- 


JEW 

conian  philosophy,  130.  Contrasts 
between  ancient  and  modern  civilisa- 
tions, 131,  132.  Practical  conse- 
quences of  the  opposition  between 
the  two  schools,  133 

Inventions,  the  causes  which  accelerate 
the  progress  of  society  in  modern 
times,  i.  131 

Ireland,  why  handed  over  by  the  Pope 
to  England,  ii.  230 

Irenseus,  his  belief  that  all  Christians 
had  the  power  of  working  miracles, 
i.  402 

Irish,  characteristics  of  the,  i.  144-145. 
Their  early  marriages  and*  national 
improvidences,  153.  Absence  of  moral 
scandals  among  the  priesthood,  153. 
Their  legend  of  the  islands  of  life  and 
death,  214.  Thoir  missionary  labours, 
ii.  261.  Their  perpendicular  burials, 
268 

Isidore,  St.,  legend  of,  ii.  217 

Isis,  worship  of,  at  Romo,  i.  411.  Sup- 
pression of  the  worship,    427,  428 

Italians,  characteristics  of  the,  i,  144,  145, 
151 

Italy,  gigantic  development  of  mendi- 
cancy in,  ii.  104.  Introduction  of 
monachism  into,  113 


JAMES,  the  Apostle,  Eusebius  account 
of  him,  ii.  Ill 

James,  St.,  of  Venice,  his  kindness  to 
animals,  ii.  182 

Jenyns,  Soame,  his  adherence  to  the 
opinion  of  Ockham,  i.  1 7,  note 

Jerome,  St.,  on  exorcism,  i.  406.  On 
the  clean  and  unclean  animals  in  the 
ark,  ii.  111.  Legend  of,  123.  En- 
couraged inhumanity  of  ascetics  to 
their  relations,  143.  His  legend  of 
SS.  Paul  and  Antony,  167 

Jews,  their  law  regulating  marriage 
and  permitting  polygamy,  i.  106. 
Their  treatment  of  suicides,  230,  note. 
Influence  of  their  mannors  and  creed 
at  Rome,  248,  360.  Became  the  prin- 
cipal exorcists,  404,405,  note.  Spread 
of  their  creed  in  Rome,  410.  Reasons 
why  they  were  persecuted  less  than 
the  Christians,  428,  433.  How  re- 
garded by  the  pagans,  and  how  the 
Christians  were  reg.irded  by  the  Jews, 
412.  Charges  of  immorality  brought 
against  the  Christians  by  tho  Jews, 
443.  Domitian's  taxation  of  them, 
459.  Their  views  of  tlu-  position  of 
women,  ii.  357 


410 


INDEX. 


JOF 

Joffre,  Juan  Gilaberto.his  foundation  of 
a  lunatic  asylum  in  Valencia,  ii.  95 

John,  St..  at  Patmos,  i.  460 

una,  story  of,  ii.  136 

John  XXIII.,  Pope,  his  crimes,  ii. 
350 

Johnson,   Dr.,    his    adherence    to    tho 
:oii  dt  Ockham,  i.  17,  note 

Julian,  the  Emperor,  his  tranquil  death, 
i.  219,  and  note.  Refuses  the  lan- 
guage of  adulation,  271.  His  attempt 
to  resuscitate  paganism,  351.  Attitude 
of  "the  Church  towards  him,  ii.  277. 

Joy  at  his  death,  278 

Julien  l'Hospitalicr,  St.,  legend  of,  ii.  89, 
note 

Jupiter  Ammon,  fountain  of,  deemed 
miraculous,  i.  389,  and  note 

Justinian,  his  laws  respecting  slavery, 
ii.  69 

Justin  Martyr,  his  recognition  of  the 
excellence  of  many  parts  of  the  pagan 
writings,  i.  365.  His  '  seminal  logos,' 
365.  On  tho  Sibylline  books,  400. 
Cause  of  his  conversion  to  Christian- 
ity, 411.     His  martyrdom,  469 

Juvenal,  on  the  natural  virtue  of  man, 
i.  20' 


KAJQ2S,  Lord,  on   our  moral  judg- 
ments, i.  78.     Notices  the  analo- 
gies lift  ween  our  moral  and  sesthetical 
'inents,  79 

-  evil,  ceremony  of  touching  for 
i.  386,  note 


LABIENUS,   his  works  destroyed,  i. 
476. 
1.     ■  .:;tius,    character   of   his   treatise, 

i.  493 
Lsetorius,  story  of,  i.  273 

ling  condemned  by  the  monks  of 

•',  ii.  122,  note 

Law,  Soman,  greatly  extended  byStoic- 

.    i.    812.      Recognised  a  law  of 

ore,  812.     Its  principles  of  equity 

derived,    from    Stoicism,     313.      Its 

i-n  age  not  Christian,  but  pagan, 

Lawyers,  position  occupied  by,  Enlitera- 
tor*  tent  time,  i.  137,  note 

Legacies  forbidden  tot]  .  160. 

Power  of  making  bequests  to  the 
cler 

Leibnitz,    <•  ural    or    innate 

ri  of  man,  i.  [25; 

Leo  the   If  Pope,   his  compact 


MAC 

with  Pepin,  ii.  282.  Account  of  him, 
282 

Leonardo  da  Vinci,  his  kindness  to 
animals,  ii.  183,  note 

Licentiousness,  French,  Hume's  com- 
ments on,  i.  51,  note 

Literature,  revolution  in  the'ascendancy 
in,  taking  place  in  England,  i.  136, 
note.  Position  occupied  by  lawyers 
in  literature,  137,  note.  The  monas- 
teries considered  as  a  receptacle  of 
literature,  ii.  216 

Locke,  John,  his  view  of  moral  good 
and  moral  evil,  quoted,  i.  8,  note. 
His  theological  utilitarianism,  1 6,  note. 
His  view  of  the  sanctions  of  morality, 
20.  His  invention  of  tho  phrase 
'  association  of  ideas,'  23.  His 
definition  of  conscience,  30,  note. 
Cousin's  objections  against  him,  76, 
note.  His  refutation  of  the  doctrine 
of  a  natural  moral  sense,  128,  129. 
Controversies  as  to  his  moaning  on 
this  point,  128,  note.  Rise  of  the 
sensual  school  out  of  his  philosophy, 
128,  note.  Famous  formulary  of  his 
school,  129 

Lombard,  Peter,  character  of  his  'Sen- 
tences,' ii.  240.  His  visions  of  hea- 
ven and  hell,  241 

Longinus,  his  suicide,  i.  231 

Love  terms  in  Greek,  in  vogue  with  tho 
Romans,  i.  244,  note 

Loyalty,  tho  earliest  form  of  moral 
enthusiasm,  i.  142 

Luean,  failure  of  his  courage  under 
torture,  i.  204.  His  sycophancy, 
204.     His  cosmopolitanism,  254 

Lucius,  the  bishop,  martyrdom  of,  i. 
483 

Lucretius,  his  scepticism,  i.  171.  His 
disbelief  in  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  i.  192,  note.  His  praise  of 
Epicurus,  207.  His  suicide,  226. 
On  a  bereaved  cow,  ii.  ]7-"> 

Lunatic  asylums,  the  first,  ii.  64 

Luther's  wife,  her  remark  on  the  sen- 
suous creed  she  had  let';,  i.  53 

Lyons,  persecution  of  the  Christians  at, 
i.  401) 


MACARIUS.St,  miracle  attributed  to, 
ii.  42.  His  penances,  115,  116.  Le- 
gend of  his  visit  to  an  enchanted 
garden,  168.  Other  legends  of  him, 
168,  169,  181,  288 
Macedonia,  effect  of  tho  conquest  of,  on 
tho  decadence  of  Rome,  i.  177 


INDEX. 


411 


MAC 

Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  theory  of  morals 
advocated  by,  i.  5.  Fascination  of 
Hartley's  doctrine  of  association  over 
his  mind,  29 

Macrina   Cselia,     her  volence     to 

children,  ii.  82 

Macrinus,  persuades  the  Emperor 
Valerian  to  persecute  the  Christians, 
i.  483 

Magdalen  asylums,  adversaries  of,  ii. 
105,  and  note 

Mahommedans,  their  condemnation  of 
suicide,  ii.  56.  Produces  lunatic 
asylums,  94.  Their  religion,  266. 
Effects  of  their  military  triumphs  on 
Christianity,  267 

Mallonia,  virtue  of,  ii.  327 

Malthas,  on  charity,  ii.  97,  note 

Mandeville,  his  '  Enquiry  into  the  Ori- 
gin of  Moral  Virtue.'  His  thesis  that 
'  private  vices  are  public  benefits,' 
7.  His  opposition  to  charity  schools, 
ii.  104 

Manicheans,  their  tenets,  ii.  109.  Their 
prohibition  of  animal  food,  177 

Manillas,  his  conception  of  the  Deity,  i. 
172 

Manufactures,  influence  upon  morals,  i. 
145 

Marcellinus,  Tullius,  his  self-destruc- 
tion, i.  234 

Marcia,  mistress  of  Commodus,  her  in- 
fluence in  behalf  of  toleration  to  the 
Christians,  i.  471 

Marcian,  St.,  legend  of  the  visit  of  St. 
Avitus  to  him,  ii.  169 

Marcus,  St.,  story  of,  and  his  mother,  ii. 
137 

Marriage,  how  regarded  by  the  Jews, 
Greeks,  Komans,  and  Catholics,i.  106, 
107.  Statius'  picture  of  the  first  night 
of  marriage,  111,  note.  Reason  why 
the  ancient  Jews  attached  a  certain 
stigma  to  virginity,  112.  Conflict  of 
views  of  the  Catholic  priest  and  the 
political  economist  on  the  subject  of 
early  marriages,  118.  Eesults  in 
some  countries  of  the  difficulties  with 
which  legislators  surround  marriage, 
151.  Early  marriages  the  most  con- 
spicuous proofs  of  Irish  improvidence, 
151.  Influence  of  asceticism  on,  ii. 
339.  Notions  of  its  impurity,  343. 
Second  marriages,  343 

Marseilles,  law  of,  respecting  suicide,  i. 
230,  note.  Epidemic  of  suicide  among 
the  women  of,  ii.  58 

Martial,  sycophancy  of  his  epigrams,  i. 
204 


MIR 

Martin  of  Toum,  St.,  establishes  mona- 
chism  in  Gaul,  ii.  113 

Martyrdom,  glories  of,  to  the  early 
Christian,  i.  415.  Festivals  of  the 
martyrs,  415,  note.  Passion  for,  416. 
Dissipation  of  the  people  at  the  fes- 
tivals, ii.  159 

Mary,  St.,  of  Egypt,  ii.  118 

Mary,  the  Virgin,  veneration  of  the,  ii. 
389,  390 

Massilians,  wine  forbidden  to  women 
by  the,  i.  96,  note. 

Maternal  affection,  strength  of,  ii.  27, 
note. 

Maurice,  Mr.,  on  the  social  penalties  of 
conscience,  i.  62,  note. 

Mauricius,  Junius,  his  refusal  to  allow 
gladiatorial  shows  at  Vienna,  i.  303 

Maxentius,  instance  of  his  tyranny,  ii. 
49. 

Maximilianus,  his  martyrdom,  ii.  263 

Maximinius,  Emperor,  his  persecution 
of  the  Christians,  i.  472 

Maximus  of  Tyr,  account  of  him  and 
his  discourses,  i.  331.  His  defence  of 
the  ancient  creeds,  343.  Practical 
form  of  his  philosophy,  349 

Medicine,  possible  progress  of,  i.  166, 
167 

Melania,  St.,  her  bereavement,  ii.  10. 
Her  pilgrimage  through  the  Syrian 
and  Egyptian  hermitages,  128 

Milesians,  wine  forbidden  by  the,  to 
women  i.  96,  note 

Military  honour  pre-eminent  among  the 
Romans,i.l81,182.  History  of  the  de- 
cadence of  Roman  military  virtue,  284 

Mill,  J.,  on  association,  25,  note  et  seq. 

Mill,  J.  S„  quoted,  i.  8,  30,  49,  92,  105 

Minerva,  meaning  of,  according  to  the 
Stoics,  i.  171 

Miracles,  general  incredulity  on  the  sub- 
ject of,  at  the  present  time,  i.  368, 
370.  Miracles  not  impossible,  368. 
Established  by  much  evidence,  369. 
The  histories  of  them  always  decline 
with  education,  370.  Illustration  of 
this  in  the  belief  in  fairies,  370.  Con- 
ceptions of  savages,  371.  Legends, 
formation  and  decay  of,  372-374. 
Common  errors  in  reasoning  about 
miracles,  380.  Predisposition  to  the 
miraculous  in  some  states  of  society, 
385.  Belief  of  the  Romans  in  mi- 
racles, 386-391.  Incapacity  of  the 
Christians  of  the  third  century  for 
judging  historic  miracles,  399.  Con- 
temporary miracles  believed  in  by 
the  early  Christians,  401.     Exorcism 


412 


INDEX. 


MIS 

401.     Neither  past  nor  contemporary 
Christian  miracles  had  much  weight 
upon  the  pagans,  401 
nary  labours,  ii.  2G1 
Mithra,  worship  of,  in  Rome,  i.  411 
Molinoa,   his  opinion   on   the  love  we 
should  bear  to  God  condemned,  i.  19, 
note 

results  of  the  Catho- 
lic monastic  system,  i.  111.  Suicide 
of  monks,  ii.  66.  Exertions  of  the 
monks  in  the  cause  of  charity,  89. 
Causes  of  the  monastic  movement, 
108.  History  of  the  rapid  propaga- 
tion of  it  in  the  West,  194.  New 
value  placed  by  it  on  obedience  and 
humility,  196,  285.  Relation  of  it 
the  intellectual  virtues,  200.  The 
monasteries  regarded  as  the  recep- 
tacles of  learning,  212.  Fallacy  of 
attributing  to  the  monasteries  the 
ius  that  was  displayed  in  theology, 
221.  Other  fallacies  concerning  the 
services  of  the  monks,  221-225. 
Value  attached  by  monks  to  pecuniary 
compensations  for  crime,  226.  Causes 
of  their  corruption,  230.  Benefits  con- 
ferred by  the  monasteries,  257 
Monica,  St.,  i.  96,  note 

lishment  of,  ii.  294 
Monophysites,  the  cause,  to  some  ex- 
hammedan  conquest  of 
Egypt,  ii.  162 

nists,  their  tenets,  ii.  109 
Moral  distinctions,  rival  claims  of  intu- 
ition and  utility  to  be  regarded  as  the 
supreme  regulators  of,  i.  1 
Moral  judgments,  alleged  diversities  of, 
i.  93.     Are  frequently  due  to  intel- 
lectual causes,  94.     Instances  of  this 
in    usury    and    abortion,   94.     Dis- 
tinction betwoen  natural  duties  and 
others   resting  on  positive  law,   95. 
Ancient  customs  canonised  by  time, 
Anomalies  explained  by  a  con- 
doo  of  ideas,    96,   97. 
Moral  perceptions  overridden  by  posi- 
tive religions,  OS.     Instances  of  this 
in  transul'stantiation  and  the  Augus- 
linian   and   Calvinistic  doctrines    of 
iat  ion,  98,  99.     Genoral  moral 
principles  alone  revealed  by  intuition, 
102,     The  nond  unity  ox  different 
ages  is  therefore  a  unity  not  of  stan- 
i  1  nit  of  tendency,  103.     Appliea- 
of  this  theory  to  the  history  of 

ben  OS.    Reatona  why  acts 

regarded   in  one  age  as  criminal  are 
inuocent  in  another,  104.     Views  of 


MUT 

Mill  and  Bueklo  on  the  comparative 
influence  of  intellectual  and  moral 
agencies  in  civilisation,  105,  note. 
Intuitive  morals  not  unprogressive, 
105,  106.  Answers  to  miscellaneous 
objections  against  the  theory  of  natural 
moral  perceptions,  113.  Effect  of  the 
condition  of  society  on  the  standard, 
but  not  the  essence,  of  virtue,  114. 
Occasional  duty  of  sacrificing  higher 
duties  to  lower  ones,  114  et  seq. 
Summary  of  the  relations  of  virtue 
and  public  and  private  interest,  121. 
Two  senses  of  the  word  natural,  123 

Moral  law,  foundation  of  the,  according 
to  Ockham  and  his  adherents,  i.  17, 
and  note.  Various  views  of  the 
sanctions  of  morality,  20.  Utilitarian 
theological  sanctions,  54.  The  reality 
of  the  moral  nature  the  one  great 
question  of  natural  theology,  58. 
Utilitarian  secular  sanctions,  59.  The 
Utilitarian  theory  subversive  of  mo- 
ral it}',  68.  Plausibility  and  danger 
of  theories  of  unification  in  morals, 
73.  Our  knowledge  of  the  laws  of 
moral  progress  nothing  more  than 
approximate  or  general,  142 

'  Moral  sense,'  Hutcheson's  doctrine  of 
a,  i.  4. 

Moral  system,  what  it  should  be,  to  go- 
vern society,  i.  204 

Morals,  each  of  the  two  schools  of,  re- 
lated to  the  general  condition  of  so- 
ciety, i.  127.  Their  relations  to  me- 
taphysical schools,  128,  129.  And  to 
the  Eaconiau  philosophy,  130.  Con- 
trast between  ancient  and  modern 
civilisations,  130-132.  Causes  that 
lead  societies  to  elevato  their  moral 
standard,  and  determine  their  pre- 
ference of  some  particular  kind  of 
virtues,  135.  The  order  in  which 
moral  feelings  aro  doveloped,  136. 
Danger  in  proposing  too  absolutely 
a  single  character  as  a  model  to  which 
all  men  must  conform,  163.  Remarks 
on  moral  types,  164.  Results  to  bo 
expected  from  the  study  of  the  rela- 
tions between  our  physical  and  moral 
nature,  167.  Little  influence  of  Pagan 
religions  on  morals,  169 

Moralists,  business  of,  i.  2.  Their  dis- 
position to  resent  any  charge  against 
the  principles  they  advocate,  2 

More,  Henry,  his  doctrine  of  the  motive 
to  virtue,  i.  78 

MutOninS,  his  suicide,  i.  232 

Mutius,  history  of  him  and  his  son,  ii.l  33 


INDEX. 


413 


KYS 


Mysticism  of  the  Romans,  causes  pro- 
ducing, i.  337,  338 

Myths,  formation  of,  i.  373.  The  age  of 
myths  closed  by  education,  374 


"YTAPLES,   mania   for   suicide   at,    ii. 

1\      58 

Napoleon  the  Emperor,  his  order  of  the 
day  respecting  suicide,  i.  230,  note 

Nations,  causes  of  tho  difficulties  of 
effecting  cordial  international  friend- 
ships, i.  164 

Natural  moral  perceptions,  objections  to 
the  theory  of,  i.  121.  Two  senses  of 
the  word  natural,  123.  Reid,  Sedg- 
wick, and  Leibnitz  on  the  natural  or 
innate  powers  of  man,  125,  note. 
Locke's  refutation  of  the  doctrine  of 
a  natural  moral  sense,  129. 

Neoplatonism,  account  of,  i.  345.  Its 
destruction  of  the  active  duties  and 
critical  spirit,  350 

Neptune,  views  of  the  Stoics  of  the 
meaning  of  the  legends  of,  i.  171.  His 
statue  solemnly  degraded  by  Augustus, 
178 

Nero,  his  singing  and  acting,  i.  274.  His 
law  as  to  slaves,  326.  His  persecu- 
tion of  the  Christians,  456 

Newman,  Dr.,  on  venial  sin,  i.  115,  and 
note  on  pride,  ii.  199 

Nicodemus,  apocryphal  gospel  of,  ii.  224 

Nilus,  St.,  deserts  his  family,  ii.  341 

Nitria,  number  of  anchorites  in  the 
desert  of,  ii.  112 

Nolasco,  Peter,  his  works  of  mercy,  ii. 
77.  His  participators  in  the  Albi- 
gensian  massacres,  202 

Novatians,  their  tenets,  ii.  109 

Numa,  legend  of  his  prohibition  of  idols, 
i.  175,  note 


OATH,  sanctity  of  an,  among  the 
Romans,  i.  176 

Obedience,  new  value  placed  upon  it  by 
monachism,  ii.  196,  197,  285 

Obligation,  nature  of,  i.  66-68 

Ockham,  his  opinion  of  the  foundation 
of  the  moral  law,  i.  1 7  and  note 

Odin,  his  suicide,  ii.  57 

O'Neale,  Shane,  his  charity,  ii.  102 

Opinion,  influence  of  character  on,  i. 
180,  181 

Oracles,  refuted  and  ridiculed  by  Cicero, 
i.  173.  Plutarch's  defence  of  their 
bad  poetry,  173,  note.  Refusal  of 
Cato  and  the  Stoics  to  consult  them, 


PAS 
174.  Ridicule  of  the  Roman  wits  of 
them,  174.  Answer  of  the  oracle  of 
Delphi  as  to  the  best  religion,  175. 
Theory  of  the  oracles  in  the  «  De 
Divinatione'  of  Cicero,  391,  and  note. 
Van  Dale's  denial  of  their  super- 
natural character,  398.  Books  of 
oracles  burnt  under  the  republic  and 
empire,  476,  and  note 
Origen,  his  desire  for  martyrdom,  i.  415 
Orphanotrophia,  in  the  early  Church,  ii. 

31 
Otho,  the  Emperor,  hjs  suicide,  i.  231. 
Opinion  of  his  contemporaries  of  his 
act,  231,  note 
Ovid,  object  of  his  '  Metamorphoses,'  i. 
174.     His  condemnation  of  suicide, 
224,  225,  note.   His  humanity  to  ani- 
mals, ii.  175. 
Oxen,  laws  for  the  protection  of,  ii.  172 
Oxyrinchus,  ascetic  life  in  the  city  of, 
ji.  112. 


PACHOMIUS,    St.,   number   of    his 
monks,  ii.  112 
Psetus  and  Arria,  history  of,  ii.  328 
Pagan  religions,  their  feeble  influence  on 

morals,  i.  169 
Pagan     virtues,    the,     compared    with 

Christian,  i.  200 
Paiderastia,  the,  of  the  Greeks,  ii.  311 
Pain,  equivalent  to  evil,  according  to  the 

Utilitarians,  i.  8,  note 
Palestine,  foundation  of  monachism  in, 
ii.   113.     Becomes   a  hot-bed  of  de- 
bauchery, 161 
Paley,  on  the  obligation  of  virtue,  i.  14. 
On  the  difference  between  an  act  of 
prudence  and  an  act  of  duty,  16,  vote. 
On  the  love  we  ought  to  bear  to  God, 
18,  note.     Of  the  religious  sanctions 
of  morality,    20.     On  the  doctrine  of 
association,  i.  25,  note.     On  flesh  diet, 
i.  50,  note.  On  the  influence  of  health 
on   happiness,  i.   90,  note.     On  the 
difference  in  pleasures,  92,  note 
Pambos,  St.,  story  of,  123,  note 
Pammachus.  St.,  his  hospital,  n.  85 
Panaetius,  the  founder   of  the  Roman 
Stoics,  his  disbelief  in  the  immorta- 
lity of  the  soul,  i.  193 
Pandars,  punishment  of,  ii.  335 
Parents,  reason  why  the  murder  of,  was 

not  regarded  as  criminal,  i.  101 
Parthenon,  the,  at  Athens,  i.  108 
Pascal,  his  advocacy  of  piety  as  a  mat- 
ter of  prudence,  \.\l,notv.     His  ad- 
herence to  the  opinion  of  Ockham  aa 


414 


INDEX 


PAT 

to  the  foundation  of  the  moral  law, 
17,  ****.  His  thought  on  the  humi- 
liation created  by  deriving;  pleasure 

ain  amusements,  i.  83 

Patriotism,  period  when  it  flourished, 
i.  14_.  Peculiar  characteristic  of 
the  virtue,  186,  1ST.  Causes  of 
predominance  occasionally  ac- 
corded to  civic  virtues.  211.  Neglect 
or  discredit  into  which  they  have 
fallen  among  modern  teachers,  211. 
Cicero's  remarks  on  the  duty  of  every 
good  man.  212.  Unfortunate  relations 
of  Christianity  to  patriotism,  ii.  149. 
ngnanee  of  the  theological  to  the 
patriotic  spirit,  154. 

Paul,  St.,  his  definition  of  conscience, 
i.  85 

Paul,  the  hermit,  his  flight  to  the  desert, 
i.  109.  Legend  of  the  visit  of  St.  An- 
tony to  him,  167 

Paul.  St.  Vincent  de, his  foundling  hospi- 
ii.  36 

Paula,  story  of  her  asceticism  and  in- 
humanity, ii.  141,  142 

Paulina,  her  devotion  to  her  husband, 
ii.  328 

.  her  suicide,  ii.  49.     Her 
flight  to  the  desert,  129,  &rxd  note 
ius^ii.  236 

Peliean,  legend  of  the,  ii.  171 

Penances  of  the  saints  of  the  desert,  ii. 
114.  i 

Penitential  system,  the,  of  the  early 
church,  ii.  7,  8 

his  compact  with  Pope  Leo,  ii.  283 
inns  the  Cynic,  his  suicide,  i.  232 
Pericles,  his  humanity,  i.  240 

i:a.   St,  her  martyrdom,  i.    415, 
472;  ii.  336 

it  ions,  Catholic  doctrines  justify- 
.  100,  l<)l.   Why  Christianity  was 
not    crushed  by  them,  420.     Many 
causes  of  persecution,  420-422.    Bea- 
nos why  the  Christians  WOTS   more 
KlCUted   than  the  Jews,  428,  431, 
433.    Causes  of  the  persecutions,  432, 
.   of  the  persecutions, 
456  Donritian, 

Karens  Aurelius,  467, 
669.  Prom  If.  Aurelius  to  Decius, 
<y.  Callus,  i.  4S2.  Vale- 
rian, 483.  Diocletian  sad  Gale- 
rius,  487-492.  End  of  the  persecu- 
tions, 492.  Genera]  considerations 
on  tl 

d    ■ 
an  law,  in  favour  of  slaves,  i. 
*26 


PLA 

Petronius,  his  scepticism,  i.  171.  His 
suicide,  226.  His  condemnation  of 
the  show  of  the  arena,  i.  303 

Philip  the  Arab,  his  favour  to  Chris- 
tianity, i.  473 

Philosophers,  efforts  of  some,  to  restore 
the  moral  influence  of  religion  among 
the  Romans,  i.  17S.  The  true  moral 
teachers,  180 

Philosophical  truth,  characteristics  of, 
i.  145,  146.  Its  growth  retarded  by 
the  opposition  of  theologians,  146 

Philosoplvv,  causes  of  the  practical  cha- 
racter of  most  ancient,  i.  212.  Its 
fusion  with  religion,  352.  Opinions 
of  the  early  Church  concerning  the 
pagan  writings,  364.  Difference  be- 
tween the  moral  teaching  of  a  philo- 
sophy and  that  of  a  religion,  ii.  1. 
Its  impotency  to  restrain  vice,  4. 

Phocas,  attitude  of  the  Church  towards 
him,  ii.  279 

Phocion,  his  gentleness,  i.  240 

*a>s,  used  for  '  man,'  i.  349 

Phrynicus,  cause  of  his  exile,  i.  241 

Physical  science  affects  the  belief  in 
miracles,  376,  377 

Piety,  utilitarian  view  of  tho  causes  of 
the  pleasures  and  pains  of,  i.  9,  and 
note.  A  matter  of  prudence,  according 
to  theological  Utilitarianism,  17 

Tilate,  Pontius,  story  of  his  desire  to  en- 
rol Christ  among  the  Roman  gods,  i. 
456 

Pilgrimages,  evils  of,  ii.  161. 

Pior,  St.,  story  of,  ii.  137 

Pirates,  destruction  of,  by  Pompey,  i. 
247 

Pity,  a  form  of  self-love,  according  to 
some  Utilitarians,  i.  9, 10,  note,  Adam 
Smith's  theory,  10,  note.  Seneca's 
distinction  between  it  and  clemency, 
199.  Altar  to  Pity  at  Athens,  240, 
241.  History  of  Marcus  Aurelius' 
altar  to  Penelicentia  at  Pome,  241, 
vote 

Plato,  his  admission  bf  the  practice  of 
abortion,  i.  94.  Basis  of  his  moral 
system,  109.  Cause  of  tho  banish- 
ment of  the  poets  from  his  republic, 
169,  170.  His  theory  that  vice  is 
to  virtue  what  disease  is  to  health, 
188,  and  note.  Reason  for  his  advo- 
cacy of  community  of  wives,  211. 
condemnation  of  suicide,  223, 
224,  note,  lli^  remarks  on  universal 
brotherhood,  256.  His  inculcation  of 
the  practice  of  self-examination,  2G2 

Platonic  school,  its  ideal,  i.  342. 


INDEX. 


415 


PLA 

Platonists,  their  more  or  less  pantheistic 
conception  of  the  Deity,  i.  171.  Prac- 
tical nature  of  their  philosophy,  349. 
The  Platonic  ethics  again  in  the 
ascendant  in  Eome,  351. 
Pleasure  the  only  good,  according  to  the 
Utilitarians,  i.  8.  Illustrations  of 
the  distinction  between  the  higher 
and  lower  parts  of  our  nature  in  our 
pleasures,  85-87.  Pleasures  of  a 
civilised  compared  with  those  of  a 
semi-civilised  society,  89.  Compari- 
son of  mental  and  physical  pleasures, 
89,  90.  Distinction  in  kind  of  plea- 
sure, and  its  importance  in  morals, 
92,  93.  Neglected  or  denied  by  uti- 
litarian writers,  92,  note. 

Pliny,  the  elder,  on  the  probable  happi- 
ness of  the  lower  animals,  i.  89,  note. 
On  the  Deity,  172.  On  astrology 
179  and  note,  172,  note.  His  dis- 
belief in  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
192.  His  advocacy  of  suicide,  227. 
Never  mentions  Christianity,  357. 
His  opinion  of  earthquakes,  392. 
And  of  comets,  392.  His  facility  of 
belief,  393.  His  denunciation  of 
finger  rings,  157. 

Pliny,  the  younger,  his  desire  for  post- 
humous reputation,  i.  194  note.  His 
picture  of  the  ideal  of  Stoicism,  196. 
His  letter  to  Trajan  respecting  the 
Christians,  464.  His  benevolence, 
256,  ii.  82 

Plotinus,  his  condemnation  of  suicide, 
i.  225.     His  philosophy,  351 

Plutarch,  his  defence  of  the  bad  poetry 
of  the  oracles,  173,  note.  His  mode 
of  moral  teaching,  183.  Basis  of  his 
belief  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
215.  His  denunciation  of  the  effect 
of  the  superstitious  terrors  of  death 
upon  the  people,  217.  His  letter  on 
the  death  of  his  little  daughter,  256. 
May  justly  be  regarded  as  the  leader 
of  the  eclectic  school,  256.  His  philo- 
sophy and  works  compared  with  those 
of  Seneca,  256,  257.  His  treatise  on 
■  The  Signs  of  Moral  Progress,'  263. 
Compared  and  contrasted  with  Mar- 
cus Aurelius,  267.  How  he  regarded 
the  games  of  the  arena,  303.  His 
defence  of  the  ancient  creeds,  342. 
Practical  nature  of  his  philosophy, 
349.  Never  mentions  Christianity, 
357.  His  remarks  on  the  domestic 
system  of  the  ancients,  445.  On 
kindness  to  animals,  ii.  175, 177.  His 
picture  of  Greek  married  life,  306 


PRO 

Pluto,  meaning  of,  according  to  the 
Stoics,  i.  171 

Po,  miracle  of  the  subsidence  of  the 
waters  of  the,  i.  406  note 

Pcemen,  St.,  story  of,  and  of  his  mother, 
ii.  137.  Legend  of  him  and  the  lion, 
179 

Political  economy,  what  it  has  accom- 
plished respecting  almsgiving,  ii.  96 

Political  judgments,  moral  standard  of 
most  men  in,  lower  than  in  private 
judgments,  i.  158 

Political  truth,  or  habit  of  '  fair  play,' 
the  characteristic  of  free  communities, 
i.  145.  Highly  civilised  form  of 
society  to  which  it  belongs,  14fi.  Its 
growth  retarded  by  the  opposition  of 
theologians,  146 

Polybius,  his  praise  of  the  devotion  and 
purity  of  creed  of  theEomans,  i.  175, 
176 

Poly  carp,  St.,  martyrdom  of,  i.  469 

Polygamy,  long  continuance  of,  among 
the  kings  of  Gaul,  ii.  363 

Pompeii,  gladiatorial  shows  at,  i.  292 

Pompey,  his  destruction  of  the  pirates, 
i.  247.  His  multiplication  of  gladia- 
torial shows,  289 

Poor-law  system,  elaboration  of  the, 
ii.  103.  Its  pernicious  results,  103, 
105 

Poppsea,  Empress,  a  Jewish  proselyte,  i. 
410 

Porcia,  heroism  of,  ii.  327 

Porphyry,  his  condemnation  of  suicides, 
i.  22o.  His  description  of  philosophy, 
i .  346.    His  adoption  of  Neoplatonism, 

1  351 
Possevin,  his  exposure  of  the  Sibylline 

books,  i.  401 

Pothinus,  martyrdom  of,  i.  470 

Power,  origin  of  the  desire  of,  i.  24, 
26 

Praise,  association  of  ideas  leading  to 
the  desire  for  even  posthumous,  i. 
27 

Prayer,  reflex  influence  exercised  by, 
upon  the  minds  of  the  worshippers,  i. 
36,  37 

Preachers,  Stoic,  among  the  Eomans,  i. 
327,  328 

Pride,  contrasted  with  vanity,  i.  205. 
The  leading  moral  agent  of  Stoicism, 
i.  205 

Prometheus,  cause  of  the  admiration  be- 
stowed upon,  i.  35 

Prophecies,  incapacity  of  the  Christians 
of  the  third  century  for  judging  pro- 
phecies, i.  399,  400 


416 


INDEX. 


PRO 

Prophecy,  pi  ft  of,  attributed  to  the  vestal 
vagina  of  Rome,  i.  1 10.  And  in  India 
to  fixgias,  110,  note 

Prosperity,  some  crimes  conducive  to 
national,  i.  50.  Cases  of  Rome  and 
Prussia,  60,  note 

Prostitution,  ii.  299-303.  How  re- 
garded by  the  Romans,  334. 

Protagoras,  his  scepticism,  i.  170 

Protasius.  St.,  miraculous  discovery  of 
his  remains,  i.  403 

Prudentius,  on  tho  vestal  virgins  at  the 
gladiatorial  shows,  i.  291 

rv.  doctrine  of,  ii.  246-249. 

Pythagoras,  his  saying  as  to  truth  and 
doing  good,  i.  54.    Chastity  tho  lead- 
ing virtue  of  his   school,  109.      On 
fables  of  Hesiod  and  Homer,  169. 
His  belief  in  an  all-pervading  soul  of 

nature,  170.  His  condemnation  of 
suicide,  223.  Tradition  of  his  jour- 
ney to  India.  242,  note.  His  inculca- 
tion of  the  practice  of  self-examina- 
tion, 262.  His  opinion  of  earthquakes, 
392.  His  doctrine  of  kindness  to 
animals,  ii.  176. 


QUAKERS,  composed  with  some  of 
the  early  Christians, ii.  12,  andwote 
Quint ilian,  his  conception  of  the  Deity, 

i.  172 


EANK,   secular,   consecration   of,    ii. 
275,  ct  scq. 
Rape,  punishment  for,  ii.  335 
Redbreast)  legend  of  the,  ii.  238,  note 
Regulus,  the  story  of,  i.  224 

-  of  Ins   ethics,  i.   78.     His 
distinction  between   innate  faculties 
evolv.  d    by    experience   and    innate 
ideas  independent  of  experience,  125, 
note 
Religion,  theological  utilitarianism  sub- 
tl   natural,  i.   56-58.     Answer  of 
the  oracle  of  Delphi  as  to  the  best, 
17").     Difference  between  the   moral 
king  of  a  philosophy  and  that  of 
a  religion,  ii.  1.    Relations  between 
positive   religion   and   moral   entliu- 
i.  150 
Religions,  pagan,  their  small  influence 
on  morals,  i.  109.     Oriental,  passion 
for,  among  the  Romans,  337 
Religions  liberty  totally  destroyed  by 
the  Catholic,  ii.  206-212 

tanee  for  past  sin,  no  plai  i 
in  the  writings  of  the  ancients,  i.  205 


ROM 

Reputation,  how  valued  among  the  Ro- 
mans, i.  194,  195 

Resurrection  of  souls,  belief  of  the 
Stoics  in  the,  i.  173 

Revenge,  utilitarian  notions  as  to  the 
feeling  of,  i.  42,  and  note.  Circum- 
stances under  which  privatevengeance 
is  not  regarded  as  criminal,  i.  104 

Reverence,  utilitarian  views  of,  i.  9.  and 
note.  Causes  of  the  diminution  of 
the  spirit  of,  among  mankind,  148, 
149 

Rewards  and  punishments  in  a  future 
life,  doctrine  of,  destroyed  by  theo- 
logical utilitarianism,  i.  55 

Rhetoricians,  Stoical,  account  of  the,  of 
Rome,  i.  329. 

Ricci,  his  work  on  Mendicancy,  ii.  104 

Rochefoucauld,  La,  on  pity,  quoted,  i. 
10,  note.  And  on  friendship,  10,  11, 
note 

Rogantinus,  his  passive  life,  i.  350 

Roman  law,  its goldenagenot Christian, 
but  pagan,  ii.  44 

Romans,  abortion  how  regarded  by  the, 
i.  94.  Their  law  forbidding  women 
to  taste  wine,  95,  96,  note.  Reasons 
why  they  did  not  regard  the  gladia- 
torial shows  as  criminal,  104.  Their 
law  of  marriage  and  ideal  of  female 
morality,  107.  Their  religious  reve- 
rence for  domesticity,  109.  Sanctity 
of,  and  gifts  attributed  to,  their  vestal 
virgins,  109,  110.  Character  of  their 
cruelty,  140.  Compared  with  the 
modern  Italian  character  in  this  re- 
spect, 140.  Scepticism  of  their  philo- 
sophers, 170-176.  The  religion  of 
the  Romans  never  a  source  of  moral 
enthusiasm,  176.  Its  character- 
istics, 176,  177.  Causes  of  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  religious  reve- 
rence of  the  people,  177.  Efforts  of 
some  philosophers  and  emperors  to 
restore  the  moral  influence  of  reli- 
gion, 178.  Consummation  of  Roman 
degradation,  178.  Belief  in  astrolo- 
gical fatalism,  179,  180.  The  Stoical 
type  of  military  and  patriotic  enthu- 
siasm pre-eminently  Roman,  181-183, 
187.  Importance  of  biography  in 
their  moral  teaching,  181b  Epicu- 
reanism   never    became    a    school    of 

virtue  among  them.  184.  Unselfish 
love  of  country  of  the  Romans,  187. 
Character  of  Stoicism  in  the  worst 
period  of  tho  Roman  Empire,  191. 
Main  features  of  their  philosophy, 
194,    ct    scq.       Difference     between 


INDEX. 


417 


ROM 

the  Roman  moralists  and  the  Greek 
poets,  206.  The  doctrine  of  suicide 
the  culminating  point  of  Roman 
Stoicism,  234.  The  type  of  ex- 
cellence of  the  Roman  people,  236, 
237.  Contrast  between  the  activity 
of  Stoicism  and  the  luxury  of  Roman 
society,  238,  239.  Growth  of  a 
gentler  and  more  cosmopolitan  spirit 
in  Rome,  240.  Causes  of  this  change, 
240,  etseq.  Extent  of  Greek  influence 
at  Rome,  240.  The  cosmopolitan 
spirit  strengthened  by  the  destruction 
of  the  power  of  the  aristocracy,  244, 

245.  History  of  the  influence  of 
freedmen  in  the  state,  246.  Effect  of 
the  aggrandisement  of  the  colonies, 
the  attraction  of  many  foreigners  to 
Rome,  and  the  increased  facilities  for 
travelling,  on  the  cosmopolitan  spirit, 

246,  et  scq.  Foreigners  among  the 
most  prominent  of  Latin  writers,  248. 
Results  of  the  multitudes  of  emanci- 
pated slaves,  248,  249.  Endeavours 
of  Roman  statesmen  to  consolidate 
the  empire  by  admitting  the  conquered 
to  the  privileges  of  the  conquerors, 
251.  The  Stoical  philosophy  quite 
capable  of  representing  the  cosmopo- 
litan spirit,  253.  Influence  of  eclectic 
philosophy  on  the  Roman  Stoics,  258. 
Life  and  character  of  Marcus  Aurelius, 
263-269.  Corruption  of  the  Roman 
people,  270.  Causes  of  their  depra- 
vity, 270.  Decadence  of  all  the  con- 
ditions of  republican  virtue,  271. 
Effects  of  the  Imperial  system  on 
morals,  272-276.  Apotheosis  of  the 
emperors,  272.  Moral  consequences 
of  slavery,  277-  Increase  of  idleness 
and  demoralising  employment,  277. 
Increase  also  of  sensuality,  278.  De- 
struction of  all  public  spirit,  279.  The 
interaction  of  many  states  which  in 
new  nations  sustains  national  life  pre- 
vented by  universal  empire,  280.  The 
decline  of  agricultural  pursuits,  281. 
And  of  the  military  virtues,  284.  His- 
tory and  effects  of  the  gladiatorial 
shows,  287.  Other  Roman  amuse- 
ments, 292.  Effects  of  the  arena  upon 
the  theatre,  293.  Nobles  in  the  arena, 
300.  Effects  of  Stoicism  on  the  cor- 
ruption of  society,  309.  Roman  law 
greatly  extended  by  it,  312.  Change 
in  the  relation  of  Romans  to  provin- 
cials, 315.  Changes  in  domestic  le- 
gislation, 315.  Roman  slavery,  318- 
327.      The   Stoics  as   consolers,  ad- 


SAl 

visers,  and  preachers,  327.  The  Cy- 
nics and  rhetoricians,  328,  329.  De- 
cadence of  Stoicism  in  the  empire,  337. 
Causes  of  the  passion  for  Oriental  re- 
ligions, 337-339.  Neoplatonism,  345. 
Review  of  the  history  of  Roman  phi- 
losophy, 352-356.  History  of  the 
conversion  of  Rome  to  Christianity, 
357.  State  of  Roman  opinion  on  the 
subject  of  miracles,  388.  Progress  of 
the  Jewish  and  Oriental  religions  in 
Rome,  410,  411.  The  conversion  of 
the  Roman  empire  easily  explicable, 
418.  Review  of  the  religious  policy 
of  Rome,  423.  Its  division  of  reli- 
gion into  three  parts,  according  to 
Eusebius,  429.  Persecutions  of  the 
Christians,  432,  et  scq.  Antipathy  of 
the  Romans  to  every  religious  system 
which  employed  religious  terrorism, 
447.  History  of  the  persecutions, 
456.  General_  sketch  of  the  moral 
condition  of  the  Western  Empire,  ii. 
15.  Rise  and  progress  of  the  go- 
vernment of  the  Church  of  Rome, 
15,  16.  Roman  practice  of  infanti- 
cide, 29.  Their  relief  of  the  indi- 
gent, 78.  Distribution  of  corn,  78. 
Exertions  of  the  Christians  on  the 
subversion  of  the  empire,  87-  Inade- 
quate place  given  to  this  movement, 
90.  Horrors  caused  by  the  barbarian 
invasions  prevented  to  some  extent  by 
Christian  charity,  87-90.  Influence 
of  Christianity  in  hastening  the  fall 
of  the  Empire,  149,  150.  Roman 
treatment  of  prisoners  of  war,  272, 
273.  Despotism  of  the  pagan  empire, 
275.  Condition  of  women  under  the 
Romans,  315.    Their  concubines,  370 

Rome,  an  illustration  of  crimes  con- 
ducive to  national  prosperity,  i.  60. 
note.  Conversion  of,  357.  Three 
popular  errors  concerning  its  conver- 
sion, 360.  Capture  of  the  city  by  the 
barbarians,  ii.  88 

Rome,  modern,  main  object  and  results 
of  its  paternal  government,  118  note 

Romuald,  St.,  his  treatment  of  his 
father,  ii.  1-14 

Rope-dancing  of  the  Romans,  i.  308 


s 


IAT3INUS,    Saint,   his    penances,    i  . 


115 


Sacrament,  administration  of  the,  in  the 

early  Church,  ii.  6      • 
Saints,  the  seventh  century  the  age 

ii.  253 


418 


INDEX. 


SAL 

Vitus'  treatment  of  the  citi- 
zens of,  i. 

Sallust,  his  Stoicism  ami  rapacity,  i.  204 

Sanctuary,  right  of,  accorded  to  Chris- 
tian churches,  ii.  42 

Savage,  errors  into  which  the  deceptive 

appearance!  of  nature  doom  him,  i.  56. 

st  conceptions  formed  of  the  uni- 

7 1 .     The  ethics  of  savages, 

125,  126 

Scepticism  of  the  Greek  and  Roman 
philosophers,  i.  170-174.  Influence 
on  intellectual  progress,  ii.  205. 
The  tendency  of  character  to  govern 
opinion  always  recognised  by  tho 
Church,  206 

Scholastica,  St.,  tho  legend  of,  ii.  145, 
note 

Bdfi,  Clara,  the  first  Franciscan  nun,  ii. 
144 

Scotch  Puritans,  their  tolerance  of  amuse- 
ments compared  with  that  of  French- 
men, i.  119 

Sectarian  animosity,  chief  cause  of,  i. 
140 

i  vk,  Professor,  on  the  expansion 
of  the  natural  or  innate  powers  of 
men,  i.  125,  note 

Seducer,  character  of  the,  ii.  366,  367 
atment  of  his  daughter  by 
the  senate,  i.  110,  note 

Self-denial,  the  utilitarian  theory  unfa- 
vourable to,  i.  68 

Self-examination,  history  of  the  practice 
Of,  i.  261-263 

Lcrifice,  asceticism  the  great  school 
of,  ii.  164 

Seneca,  his  conception  of  the  Deity,  i. 
1  71,  note,  172.  His  distinction  be- 
tween tho  affections  and  diseases,  198, 
note.  And  between  clemency  and 
pity,  199.  His  virtues  and  vices,  i. 
•Jul.  His  view  of  the  natural  virtue 
Of  man  and  power  of  his  will,  208. 
EDfl  remarks  on  the  Sacred  Spirit 
dwelHng  in  man.  208,  209.  His  view 
of  death,  216.  His  tranquil  end,  218. 
-  suicide,  'J'Jo.  282.  His 
description  of  the  self-destruction 
of  a  friend,  234.  His  remarks 
on  universiil  brotherhood,  '-'•"> t.  His 
stoics]  hardnesf  tempered  by  new 
Bis  practice  of  self- 
faination,  262.  His  philosophy 
and  work-  compared  with  those  of 
Plutarch,  2-'><\.  257.    How  be  regarded 

•  - 
hortations  on  (He  treatment  of  skives, 
324.      Never  mentions   Christianity, 


SIS 

357.  Regarded  in  tho  middle  ages 
as  a  Christian,  362.  His  remarks  on 
religious  beliefs,  430 

Sensuality,  why  tho  Mahommedans  peo- 
ple Paradise  with  images  of,  i.  112. 
why  some  pagan  nations  deified  it, 
112.  Fallacy  of  judging  the  sensual- 
ity of  a  nation  by  the  statistics  of  its 
illegitimate  births,  ISO.  Influence  of 
climate  upon  public  morals,  151.  Of 
large  towns,  152.  And  of  early 
marriages,  153.  Absence  of  moral 
scandals  among  the  Irish  priesthood, 
153,  154.  Speech  of  Archytas  of 
Tarentum  on  the  evils  of,  211,  note. 
Increase  of  sensuality  in  Rome,  278. 
Abated  by  Christianity,  ii.  163.  The 
doctrine  of  the  Fathers  respecting 
concupiscence,  298 

Serapion,  tho  anthropomor?hite,  i.  53. 
Number  of  his  monks,  ii.  112.  Legend 
of  him  and  tho  courtesan,  339 

Sertorius,  his  forgery  of  auspicious 
omens,  i.  174 

Severus,  Alexander,  refuses  the  language 
of  adulation,  i.  274.  His  efforts 
to  restore  agricultural  pursuits,  283. 
Murder  of,  472.  His  leniency  to- 
wards Christianity,  472.  His  bene- 
volence, ii.  82 

Severus,  Cassius,  exile  of,  i.  476,  note 

Severus,  Septimus,  his  treatment  of  the 
Christians,  i.  471 

Sextius,  his  practice  of  self-examination, 
i.  262 

Shaftesbury,  maintains  the  reality  of 
the  existence  of  benevolence  in  our 
nature,  i.  20.     On  virtue,  78 

Sibylline  books,    forged    by    the    early 

Christiana,  i.  400,  401 

Silius  Italicus,  his  lines  commemorating 
the  passion  of  the  Spanish  Celts  for 
suicide,  i.  218,  note.  His  self-de- 
struction, 233 

Silvia,  her  filthiness,  ii.  117 

Simeon,  Bishop  of  Jerusalem,  his  mar- 
tyrdom, i.  465 

Simeon  Stylites,  St.,  his  penance,  ii. 
119.  His  inhumanity  to  his  parents, 
ii.  138 

Sin,  the  theological  doctrine  on  the  sub- 
ject, i.  115,  116.  Conception  of  tin* 
of  the  ancients,  205.  Original,  tamiht 
by  the  Catholic  church,  220,  221. 
Examination  of  the  utilitarian  doc- 
trine of  tho  remote  consequences  of 
secret  sins,  44,  45 

Sisoes,  the  abbot,  stories  of,  ii.  134, 
135 


INDEX. 


419 


SIX 

8ixtus,  Bishop  of  Rome,  his  martyr- 
dom, i.  481 

Sixtus  V.,  Pope,  his  efforts  to  suppress 
mendicancy,  ii.  103 

Slavery,  circumstances  under  which  it 
has  been  justified,  i.  104.  Origin  of 
the  word  servus,  according  to  the  Jus- 
tinian code  and  St.  Augustine,  104, 
note.  Crusade  of  England  against, 
161.  Character  of  that  of  the  Ro- 
mans, 248.  Moral  consequence  of  sla- 
very, 277.  Three  stages  of  slavery 
at  Rome,  318.  Review  of  the  con- 
dition of  slaves,  318-324.  Opinion 
of  philosophers  as  to  slavery,  324. 
Laws  enacted  in  favour  of  slaves, 
325.  Effects  of  Christianity  upon 
the  institution  of  slavery,  65.  .  Con- 
secration of  the  servile  virtues,  72. 
Impulse  given  to  manumission,  74. 
Serfdom  in  Europe,  74,  75,  note.  Ex- 
tinction of  slavery  in  Europe,  76. 
Ransom  of  captives,  76 

Smith,  Adam,  his  theory  of  pity,  quoted, 
i.  10,  note.  His  recognition  of  the 
reality  of  benevolence  in  our  nature, 
20.  His  analysis  of  moral  judgment, 
77 

Smyrna,  persecution  of  the  Christians 
at,  i.  469 

Socrates,  his  view  of  death,  i.  216.  His 
closing  hours,  218.  His  advice  to  a 
courtesan,  ii.  313 

Soul,  belief  of  the  Stoics  in  the  resur- 
rection of  the,  i.  173.  The  immortal- 
ity of  the  soul  resolutely  excluded 
from  the  teaching  of  the  Stoics,  191. 
Character  of  their  first  notions  on  the 
subject,  192.  The  belief  in  the  re- 
absorption  of  the  soul  in  the  parent 
Spirit,  192.  Belief  of  Cicero  and 
Plutarch  in  the  immortality  of  the, 
215.  But  never  adopted  as  a  motive 
by  the  Stoics,  215.  Increasing  belief 
in  the,  351.  Vague  belief  of  the 
Romans  in  the,  176 

Sospitra,  story  of,  i.  397 

Spain,  persecution  of  the  Christians  in, 
i.  491.  Almost  complete  absence  of 
infanticide  in,  ii.  27,  note.  The  first 
lunatic  asylums  in  Europe  established 
in,  94,  95 

Spaniards,  among  the  most  prominent  of 
Latin  writers,  i.  248.  Their  suicides, 
ii.  57 

Spartans,  their  intense  patriotism,  i. 
187.  Their  legislature  continually 
extolled  as  a  model,  211.  Condition 
of  their  women,  ii.  307 


STO 

Spinoza,  his  remark  on  death,  i.  213. 
Anecdote  of  him,  306 

Speculating  character,  characteristics  of 
the,  i.  146,  147 

Stael,  Madame  de,  on  suicide,  ii.  62 

Statius,  on  the  first  night  of  marriage, 
i.  Ill,  note 

Stewart,  Dugald,  on  the  pleasure  de- 
rived from  the  knowledge  or  the  pur- 
suits of  virtue,  i.  33,  note 

Stilpo,  his  scepticism  and  banishment, 
i.  170.  His  remark  on  his  ruin, 
201 

Stoics,  their  definition  of  conscience,  i. 
85.  Their  view  of  the  animation  of 
the  human  foetus,  94.  Their  system 
of  ethics  favourable  to  the  heroic 
qualities,  133,  134.  Historical  fact 
in  favour  of  the  system,  134.  Their 
belief  in  an  all-pervading  soul  of 
nature,  170.  Their  pantheistic  con- 
ception of  the  Deity,  171.  Their  con- 
ception and  explanation  of  the  pre- 
vailing legends  of  the  gods,  171. 
Their  opinion  as  to  the  final  destruc- 
tion of  the  universe  by  fire,  and  the 
resuscitation  of  souls,  173.  Their 
refusal  to  consult  the  oracles,  174. 
Stoicism  the  expression  of  a  type 
of  character  different  to  Epicurean- 
ism, 180,  181.  Rome  pre-eminently 
the  home  of  Stoicism,  181.  Ac- 
count of  the  philosophy  of  the  Stoics, 
186.  Its  two  essentials — the  un- 
selfish ideal  and  the  subjugation  of 
the  affections  to  the  reason,  186.  The 
best  example  of  the  perfect  severance 
of  virtue  and  interest,  190.  Their 
views  concerning  the  immortality  of 
the  soul,  191-193.  Taught  men  to 
sacrifice  reputation,  and  do  good  in  se- 
cret, 195.  And  distinguished  the  obli- 
gation from  the  attraction  of  virtue, 
196.  Taught  also  that  the  affections 
must  bo  subordinate  to  the  reason, 
197-201.  Their  false  estimate  of 
human  nature,  202.  Their  love  of 
paradox,    202.     Imperfect    lives    of 

.  many  eminent  Stoics,  203.  Their 
retrospective  teachings,  203.  Their 
system  unfitted  for  the  majority  of 
mankind,  204.  Compared  with  the 
religious  principle,  205.  The  cen- 
tral composition  of  this  philosophy, 
the  dignity  of  man,  205.  High  sense 
of  the  Stoics  of  the  natural  virtue  of 
man,  and  of  the  power  of  his  will, 
205,  206.  Their  recognition  of  Pro- 
vidence, 206,  207.     The  two  aspects 


420 


INDEX. 


snt 

under  which  they  worshipped  God, 
i.  Tho  Stoics  secured  from  quie- 
tism by  their  habits  of  public  life, 
-212.  Their  view  of  humanity, 
Their  preparations  for.  and 
view  of,  death.  213.  Their  teaching 
as  to  suicide,  223,  225,  et  srq.  Con- 
I  ho  activity  of  Stoicism 
and  the  luxury  of  Roman  luxury, 
238,  239.  The  Stoical  philosophy 
quite  capable  of  representing  the  cos- 
mopolitan spirit,  252,  253.  Stoicism 
not  capable  of  representing  the  sof- 
tening movement  of  civilisation,  255. 
Influence  of  the  eclectic  spirit  on  it, 
258.  Stoicism  becomes  more  es- 
sentially religious,  259.  Increas- 
ingly introspective  character  of  later 
Stoicism,  261.  Marcus  Aurelius  the 
best  example  of  later  Stoicism,  263- 
269.  Effects  of  Stoicism  on  the  cor- 
ruption of  Roman  society,  308,  309. 
It  raised  up  many  good  Emperors,  309. 
It  produced  B  noble  opposition  under 
the  worst  Emperors,  310.  It  greatly 
extended  Roman  law,  312.  The  Stoics 
consi.l.i  ed  as  tho  consolers  of  the 
suffering,  advisers  of  the  young,  and 
as  popular  preachers,  327.  Rapid 
decadence  of  Stoicism,  336,  337.  Dif- 
ference between  the  Stoical  and  Egyp- 
tian pantheism,  344.  Stoical  natu- 
ralism superseded  by  the  theory  of  dae- 
mons, 351.  Theory  that  the  writings 
of  the  Stoics  were  influenced  by 
Christianity  examined,  352.  Domi- 
tian's  persecution  of  them,  459 
Strozzi,  Philip,  his  suicide,  ii.  59 
Suffering,  a  courageous  endurance  of, 
probably  the  first  form  of  virtue  in 
savage  life,  i.  136 
Suicide,  attitude  adopted  by  Pagan 
philosophy  and  Catholicism  towards, 
l.  22:;.  //  .wy.  Eminent  suicides, 
226.  Epidemic  of  suicides  at  Alex- 
andria, 227.  And  of  girls  at  Miletus, 
;  if!'.  Grandeur  of  the  Stoical 
ideal  of  suicide,  228.  Influences  con- 
w.irds  suicide,  228.  Seneca's 
•i  .-el f-dest ruction, 

229,  230,  232.     Laws  respecting  it, 

230,  note.     Eminent  instances  of  self- 
ruetion,  231,  233.      The  concep- 
tion .  •_':;:;.     \,  .,- 

doctrine    concerning,  Ml. 
•   ihe   Christian    rondonwa- 
tion    of    the 

doctrine    on,   48,   vote. 
The  only  form  of,  permitted  in  the 


THE 

early  Church,  50.  Slow  suicides, 
51.  The  Circumcelliones,  52.  The 
Albigenses,  63.  Suicides  of  the 
Jews,  53.  Treatment  of  corpses 
of  suicides,  53.  Authorities  for  the 
history  of  suicides,  53,  note.  Reac- 
tion against  the  mediaeval  laws  on 
the  subject,  54.  Later  phases  of 
its  history,  57.  Self-destruction  of 
witches,  57.  Epidemics  of  insane 
suicide,  58.  Cases  of  legitimate  sui- 
cide, 59.  Suicide  in  England  and 
France,  62 

Sunday,  importance  of  the  sanctity  of 
the,  ii.  258,  259.  Laws  respecting  it, 
259 

Superstition,  possibility  of  adding  to 
the  happiness  of  man  by  the  diffusion 
of,  i.  52-54.  Natural  causes  which 
impel  savages  to  superstition,  i.  56. 
Signification  of  the  Greek  word  for, 
i.  216 

Swan,  the,  consecrated  to  Apollo,  i.  217 

Sweden,  cause  of  the  great  number  of 
illegitimate  births  in,  i.  151 

Swinburne;  Mr;,  on  annihilation,  i.  192, 
note 

Symmachus,  his  Saxon  prisoners,  i.  304 

Synesius.  legend  of  him  and  Evagrius, 
ii.  227.  Refuses  to  give  up  his  wife, 
351 

Syracuse,  gladiatorial  shows  at,  i.  291 


TACITUS,  his  doubts  about  the  ex- 
istence of  Providence,  i.  179,  note 
Taste,  refining  influence  of  cultivation 

on,  i.  81 
Taylor,  Jeremy,  on  hell,  ii.  239 
Telemaehus,  the  monk,  his  death  in  the 

arena,  ii.  39 
Telesphorus.  martyrdom  of,  i.  4  74 
Tertia  .Emilia,  story  of,  ii.  331 
Tertullian,  his  belief  in  <l;enions,  i.  406. 

And  challenge  to  tho  Pagans,  407 
Testament,  Old,  supposed  to  have  been 

the  source  of  pttgan  writings,  i.  366 
Thalasius,   his  hospital  for  blind  beg- 
gars, ii.  86 
Theatre,  scepticism  of  the  Etonians  ex- 
tended by  tho,  i.  178.     Effects  of  the 
gladiatorial  shows  upon  the,  293 
Theft,  reasons  why  some  savages  do  not. 
regard   it  as  criminal,  i.  104.    And 
for  the  Spartan  law  legalising  it,  104 
Tbeodebertj  Ins  polygamy,  ii.  363 
Theodoria    his   court   at  Ravenna,   ii. 
214,  and  note 


INDEX. 


421 


THE 


VIC 


Theodoras,  his  denial  of  the  existence 
of  the  gods,  i.  170 

Theodorus,  St.,  his  inhumanity  to  his 
mother,  ii.  136 

Theodosius  the  Emperor,  his  edict  for- 
bidding gladiatorial  shows,  ii.  37. 
Denounced  by  the  Ascetics,  148.  His 
law  respecting  Sunday,  259 

Theological  utilitarianism,  theories  of, 
i.    15-17 

Theology,  view  which  it  takes  of 
'  plagues  of  rain  and  water,'  and  of 
epidemics,  i.  378.  Sphere  of -induc- 
tive reasoning  in  theology,  379 

Theon,  St.,  legend  of,  and  the  wild 
beasts,  ii.  177 

Theurgy  rejected  by  Plotinns,  i.  351. 
All  moral  discipline  resolved  into,  by 
Iamblichus,  351 

Thrace,  celibacy  of  societies  of  men  in, 
i.  109 

Thrasea, mildness  of  his  Stoicism,  i.  259 

Thrasea  and  Arria,  history  of,  ii.  329 

Thriftiness  created  by  the  industrial 
spirit,  i.  146 

Tiberius  the  Emperor,  his  images  in- 
vested with  a  sacred  character,  i.  275. 
His  superstitions,  390,  and  note 

Timagenes,  exiled  from  tho  palace  by 
Tiberius,  i.  476,  note 

Titus,  the  Emperor,  his  tranquil  end,  i. 
218.  Instance  of  his  amiability,  304 

Tooth-powder,  Apuleius'  defence  of,  ii. 
158 

Torments,  future,  the  doctrine  of,  made 
by  the  monks  a  means  of  extorting 
money,  ii.  229.  Monastic  legends  of, 
233 

Tracy,  M.  de,  his  argument  for  the  moral 
importance  of  a  good  system  of  police, 
i.  135,  note 

Tragedy,  effects  of  the  gladiatorial  shows 
upon,  among  the  Romans,  i.  293 

Trajan,  the  Emperor,  his  gladiatorial 
shows,  i.  304.  Letter  of  Pliny  to, 
respecting  the  Christians,  464.  Tra- 
jan's answer,  465.  His  benevolence 
to  children,  ii.  81.  Legend  of  St. 
Gregory  and  the  Emperor,  223 

Transmigration  of  souls,  doctrine  of, 
of  the  ancients,  ii.  176 

Travelling,  increased  facilities  for,  of 
the  Romans,  i.  247 

Trinitarian  monks,  their  works  of  mercy, 
ii.  77 

Troubadours,  one  of  their  services  to 
mankind,  ii.  245 

*  Truce  of  God,'  importance  of  the,  ii. 
269 


Truth,  possibility  of  adding  to  the  hap- 
piness of  men  by  diffusing  abroad, 
or  sustaining,  pleasing  falsehoods, 
i.  54.  Saying  of  Pythagoras,  54. 
Growth  of,  with  civilisation,  143. 
Industrial,  political,  and  philosophi- 
cal, 144-146.  Relation  of  monachism 
to  the  abstract  love  of  truth,  ii.  200. 
Causes  of  the  mediaeval  decline  of  the 
love  of  truth,  225 

Tucker,  his  adoption  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  association  of  ideas,  i.  26,  note 

Turks,  their  kindness  to  animals,  i. 
306 

Types,  moral,  i.  164.  All  characters 
cannot  be  moulded  in  one  type,  166 


ULPIAN  on  suicide,  i.  230,  note 
Unselfishness  of  the  Stoics,  i.  186 

Usury,  diversities  of  moral  judgment 
respecting,  i.  94 

Utilitarian  school.  See  Morals  ;  Virtue ; 
Vice 

Utility,  rival  claims  of,  and  intuition  to 
be  regarded  as  the  supreme  regula- 
tors of  moral  distinctions,  i,  1,  2. 
Various  names  by  which  the  theory 
of  utility  is  known,  3.  Views  of  the 
moralists  of  the  school  of,  3,  et  seq. 


VALERIAN,  his  persecutions  of  the 
Christians,  i.  483 

Valerius  Maximus,  his  mode  of  moral 
teaching,  i.  183 

Vandals,  their  conquest  of  Africa,  ii. 
150 

Varro,  his  conception  of  the  Deity,  i. 
171.  His  views  of  popular  religious 
beliefs,  176 

Venus,  effect  of  the  Greek  worship  of, 
on  the  condition  of  women,  ii.  308 

Vespasian,  his  dying  jest,  i.  274.  Effect 
of  his  frugality  on  the  habits  of  the 
Romans,  310.  Miracle  attributed  to 
him,  369,  His  treatment  of  philoso- 
phers, 476,  note 

Vice,  Mandeville's  theory  of  the  origin 
of,  i.  7.  And  that  'private  vices 
were  pxiblic  benefits,'  7-  Views  of 
the  Utilitarians  as  to,  13.  The  de- 
grees of  virtue  and  vice  do  not  cor- 
respond to  the  degrees  of  utility,  or 
the  reverse,  41-43.  The  suffering 
caused  by  vice  not  proportioned  to 
its  criminality,  59-61.  Plato's  ethical 
theory  <>f  virtue  and  vice,  188.  Grote's 
summary  of  this  theory,    188,  note. 


422 


IXDEX. 


Conception  of  the  ancients  of  sin,  205. 

Mot  of  the  Christian  sense 

of  vice,  ii.  3,  4 

Virgil,  his  conception  of  the  Deity,  i. 

172.     His   epicurean  sentiment,  203, 

.    His  denunciations  of  suicide, 

22  1.     His  interest   in  animal  life,  ii. 

■ 

garded  by  the  Gtreeks, 

i.  108.     JEschyros'  prayer  to  Athene, 

108.  'I  tiro  emblems  of  vir- 

;U,  note.     Reason  why   the 

ancient  Jews  attached  a  certain  stigma 

:!ginity,  112.    Views  of  Es- 

112 

Virgini  inctity  and 

4buted  to    the,  i.  109,  110, 

utions  of,  433,  and  note. 

Reasons  ft>r  burying  them  alive,  ii. 

•it.     ll'\v  regarded  by  the  llomans, 

315 

Virtue,  Hume's  theory  of  the  criterion, 

:.tial  element;  and  object  of  tho 

pursuit    of,  i.   4.      Motive  to  virtue 

from  tlie  doetrino  which  bases  morals 

upon  experience.  0.     Mandeville's  the 

lowest    and   most    repulsive   form  of 

this   theory,     G,    7.      Views    of   tho 

•ice  and   origin  of  virtue  adopted 

bv    tho  school    of   Utilitarians,    7-9. 

Litarians  of.  13. 
(ciation  of  ideas  in  which  virtue 
becomes  the  supreme  object  of  our 
affections,  28.  Impossibility  of  vir- 
tue bringing  pleasure  if  practised 
only  with  that  end,  86,  37.  Tho 
utility  of  virtue  not  denied  by  intui- 
tive moralist*,  -id.  Tho  degrees  of 
virtue  and  \i. e  do  not  correspond  to 
the  degrees  of  utility,  or  the  reverie, 
4.  The  rewards  and  punishments  of 
con-  .  62.     The  si'lf'-compla- 

cency  of  virtuous  men,  67,  and  note. 
re  to  virtue,  according  to 
Shaftesbury  and    Henry    More,   78. 
Analogies  of   beauty  and  virtue,  78. 

,  so.    Diversil  ii 

istiiiLr  in  our  judgments  of  virtue  and 
B0,  81.      Virtues  to  which  we 
can  and  cannot  apply  the  term  beauti- 
ful, 81.    The  standard,  though  not  the 

essence,  of  virtue,  determined  by  the 
ety,  113.  Summary  of 

the  :  i  public  and 

priv  .  12] .     Kmphasis  with 

which  tho  utility  of  virtue  was  dwelt 

rowthofthe 

gentler  virtues  which  are  the  natural 
product  of  civilisation,   1  :> 7 .      I 


WAR 

of  the  virtue  of  truth,  industrial,  poli- 
tical, and  philosophical,  144.  Each 
Stage  of  civilisation  is  specially  appro- 
priate to  some  virtue,  154.  National 
virtues,  159.  Virtues  naturally  grouped 
together  aeeording  to  principles  of 
affinity  or  congruity,  161.  Distinctive 
beauty  of  a  moral  type,  161.  Rudi- 
mentary virtues  differing  in  different 
ages,  nations,  and  classes,  162,  163. 
Four  distinct  motives  leading  men  to 
virtue,  187-189.  Plato's  fundamental 
proposition  that  vice  is  to  virtue  what 
disease  is  to  health,  188.  Stoicism  the 
best  example  of  the  perfect  sever- 
ance of  virtue  and  self-interest,  190. 
Teachings  of  the  Stoics  that  virtue 
should  conceal  itself  from  the  world, 
195.  And  that  the  obligation  should 
be  distinguished  from  the  attraction 
of  virtue,  196.  The  eminent  charac- 
teristics of  pagan  goodness,  200.  All 
virtues  are  the  same,  according  to  the 
Stoics,  202.  Horace's  description  of 
a  just  man,  207.  Interested  and  dis- 
interested motives  of  Christianity  to 
virtue,  ii.  3.  Decline  of  tho  civic 
virtues  caused  by  asceticism,  148. 
Influence  of  this  change  on  moral 
philosophy,  155.  The  importance  of 
the  civic  virtues  exaggerated  by 
historians,  156.  Intellectual  virtues, 
200.  Relation  of  monaehism  to  these 
virtues.   200,  ct  seq. 

Vitalius,  St..  legend  of,  and  the  courte- 
san, ii.  338,  339 

Vivisection,  ii.  1 87-  Approved  by  Bacon, 
187,  note 

Volcanoes,  how  regarded  by  the  early 
monks,  ii.  234 

Vultures,  why  made  an  emblem  of 
nature  by  tho  Egyptians,  i.  Ill,  note 


Yf7"Ah\  its  moral  grandeur,  i.  97.  The 
t  T       school  of  the  heroic  virtues,  182. 

Difference  between  foreign  and  civil 
wars,  244,  245.  Antipathy  of  the  sarly 

Christians  to  a  military  life,  ii.  263. 
Belief  in  battle  being  tho  special 
sphere  of  Providential  interposition, 
261.  Effects  of  the  military  triumphs 
of  the  .'Mohammedans,  266.  In- 
fluences of  Christianity  upon  war 
-Mi -red.  'J'i'.t.  Improved  condition 
of  captives  taken  in  war,  271 
YVarburton,  on  morals,  i.  16,  note,  17, 
note 


INDEX. 


423 


WAT 

Waterland,  on  the  motives  to  virtue 
and  cause  of  our  love  of  God,  quoted, 
i.  9,  note,  16,  note 

Wealth,  origin  of  the  desire  to  possess, 
i.  24.  Associations  leading  to  the 
desire  for,  for  its  own  sake,  26 

Western  Empire,  general  sketch  of  the 
moral  condition  of  the,  ii.  15 

Widows,  care  of  the  early  church  for, 
ii.  388 

Wigs,  Clemens  of  Alexandria  and  Ter- 
tullian  on,  ii.  158 

Will,  freedom  of  the  human,  sustained 
and  deepened  by  the  ascetic  life,  ii. 
131 

Wine,  forbidden  to  women,  i,  95,  96, 
note 

Witchcraft,  belief  in  the  reality  of,  i. 
386.  Suicide  common  among  witches, 
ii.  57 

Wollaston,  his  analysis  of  moral  judg- 
ments, i.  78 

Women,  law  of  the  Eomans  forbidding 
women  to  taste  wine,  i.  95,  96,  note. 
Standards  of  female  morality  cf  the 
Jews,  Greeks,  and  Komans,  106,  107. 
Virtues  and  vices  growing  out  of  the 
relations  of  the  sexes,  150.  Female 
virtue,  150.  Effects  of  climate  on 
this  virtue,  151.  Of  large  towns, 
152.  And  of  early  marriages,  153. 
Eeason  for  Plato's  advocacy  of  com- 
munity of  wives,  211.  Plutarch's 
high  sense  of  female  excellence,  258. 
Eemale  gladiators  at  Eome,  298,  and 
note.  Eelations  of  female  devotees 
with  the  anchorites,  ii.  127,  136, 
160.  Their  condition  in  savage  life, 
292.  Cessation  of  the  sale  of  wives, 
292.  Eise  of  the  dowry,  293.  Es- 
tablishment of  monogamy,  294.  Doc- 
trine of  the  Fathers  as  to  concu- 
piscence, 298.  Nature  of  the  problem 
of  the  relations  of  the  sexes,  299. 
Prostitution,  2.99-301.  Eecognition 
in  Greece  of  two  distinct  orders  of 
womanhood  —  the  wife  and  the 
hetsera,  303.  Condition  of  Eoman 
women,  315,  et  seq.  Eise  among 
them  of  an  indisposition  to  mar- 
riage, 322.  Legal  emancipation 
of  women  in  Eome,  322.  TJn-. 
bounded  liberty  of  divorce,  324. 
Amount  of  female  virtue  in  Imperial 


ZEU 

Eome,  326-330.  Legislative  mea- 
sures to  repress  sensuality,  330.  To 
enforce  the  reciprocity  of  obligation  in 
marriage,  330.  And  to  censure  pros- 
titution, 334.  Influence  of  Christianity 
on  the  position  of  women,  335,  et  seq. 
Marriages,  339.  ^  Second  marriages, 
343.  Low  opinion  of  women  pro- 
duced by  asceticism,  357.  The  canon 
law  unfavourable  to  their  proprietary 
rights,  358,  359.  Barbarian  heroines 
and  laws,  361-364.  Doctrine  of 
equality  of  obligation  in  marriage, 
366.  The  duty  of  man  towards 
woman,  368.  Condemnation  of  tran- 
sitory connections,  371.  Eoman  con- 
cubines, 372.  The  sinfulness  of 
divorce  maintained  by  the  church, 
371-373.  Abolition  of  compulsory 
marriages,  374.  Condemnation  of 
mixed  marriages,  374,  375.  Educa- 
tion of  women,  375.  Eelation  of 
Christianity  to  the  female  virtues, 
379.  Comparison  of  male  and  female 
characteristics,  379.  The  Pagan  and 
Christian  ideal  of  woman  contrasted, 
383-385.  Conspicuous  part  of 
woman  in  the  early  Church,  385-387. 
Care  of  widows,  388.  Worship  of  the 
Virgin,  389,  390.  Effect  of  the  sup- 
pression of  the  conventual  system  on 
women,  391.  Eevolution  going  on 
in  the  employments  of  women,  393 


XENOCEATES,    his    tenderness,   ii. 
173 
Xenophanes,  his  scepticism,  i.  170 
Xenophon,  his  picture  of  Greek  married 
life,  ii.  305 


ZADOK,  the  founder  of  the  sect  of  the 
Sadducees,  his  inference  of  the  non* 

existence  of  a  future  world,  i.  193, 

note 
Zeno,  vast  place  occupied  by  his  system 

in  the  moral  history  of  man,  i.  180. 

His    suicide,  224.      His   inculcation 

of  the   practice  of  self-examination, 

262 
Zeus,  universal  providence  attributed  by 

the  Greeks  to,  i.  169 


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AN      I  M  P  O  R  T  A  NT     WORK. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  NAVY 

DURING  THE  REBELLION. 

By    ihe    Bey.    CHAS.   B.    BOYNTOIST,   D.    D., 

Professor  at  the  U.  S.  Naval  Academy,  and  Chaplain  of  the 
House  of  Representatives. 

TWO  VOLUMES.    8V0. 

ILLUSTRATED    WITH    NXJMIKROTJS    ENGRAVINGS. 

•  To  be  complete  in  two  elegant  octavo  volumes  of  about  five  hundred  pages  each 
embellished  and  illustrated  with  some  ten  full-page  Engravings  in  chromo  tints,°and  with 
the  same  number  of  full-page  Woodcuts,  Portraits  on  Steel  of  Distinguished  Officers 
and  numerous  Vignettes  from  Sketches  made  by  Commander  M.  B.  Woolset,  U.  S.  Navyj 
and  with  numerous  maps  and  charts  from  government  surveys  and  official  plans,  furnished 
for  this  work  exclusively. 

No  purely  fancy  sketches  find  a  place  in  the  work,  but  all  the  engravings  represent 
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Among  the  objects  of  great  interest  represented  are  the  following : 

THE  VARIOUS    NEW  FORMS   OF  ORDNANCE,  AND   THE  TYPE-SHIPS   OF   OUR    NAVY; 

so  arranged  as  to  show  the  wonderful  progress  made  in  Naval  Warfare  since  the  breaking  out 

of  the  Rebellion. 
THE  HARBOR   AND    RIVER   OBSTRUCTIONS. 

THE  TORPEDOES  IN  VARIOUS  FORMS  used  by  the  Rebels  for  the  destruction  of  our  Vessels 
REBEL  CASEMATES  Destroyed  by  U.  S.  Gunboats  "  Baron  de  Kalb  "  and  "  Louisville." 
THE  DAM    MADE  ACROSS  THE  RED  RIVER  to  Release  the  Fleet  of  Admiral  Porter. 
FORT  MORGAN;  showing  from  actual  measurement  the   place  where  tvery  shot  and  shell  struck 

and  the  effect  of  each. 

Every  desired  facility  has  been  extended  Dr.  Boynton  by  the  Navy  Department  for 
obtaining  information  from  original  and  reliable  sources,  as  will  appear  from  the  following 
letter  from  Secretary  Welles  : 

Navy  Department,  Washington,  9th  Dec,  1865. 
Rev.  C.  B.  Boynton,  D.  D.  :— 

Dear  Sir  : — I  have  been  made  acquainted  to  some  extent  with  the  plan  of  your  pro- 
posed History  of  the  Rebellion,  with  special  reference  to  the  part  taken  by  the  Navy  in 
suppressing  it,  and  with  pleasure  give  you  access  to  the  official  papers  and  records  of  the 
Department,  so  far  as  it  is  proper  to  make  public  use  of  them.  The  fullest  opportunity 
will  be  afforded  you  to  gather  information  from  original  sources,  as  well  as  to  verify  such 
facts  as  have  already  been  published.    Very  respectfully, 

GIDEON  WELLES,  Secretary  of  the  Navy. 

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iirected  the  operations  of  the  Navy,  and  to  those  who  so  successfully  guarded  our  long 
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LITERATURE  IN  LETTERS; 

OB, 

MANNEES,  AET,  CEITIOISM,  BIOGEAPHY,  HISTOEY  AND  MORALS, 

ILLUSTRATED   IN 

TIIE  CORRESPONDENCE  OF  EMINENT  PERSONS. 

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"  Such  letters,"  says  Lord  Bacon,  "  as  are  written  from  wise  men,  arc,  of  all  tho 
words  of  man,  in  my  judgment  the  best ;  for  they  are  more  natural  than  orations  and 
public  speeches,  and  more  advised  than  conferences  or  private  ones."  The  sources 
of  pleasure  an  1  instruction  to  be  found  in  the  private  correspondence  of  eminent  persons 
have  never  been  fully  explained;  much  less  have  they  been  rendered  accessible  to  the 
bulk  of  the  reading  public.  Our  language  abounds  in  letters  which  contain  the  most 
vivid  pictures  of  m  I  the  most  faithful  and  striking  delineations  of  character, 

which  arc  full  of  wit,  wisdom,  fancy,  useful  knowledge,  noble  and  pious  sentiment" — 
n  Preface. 
"The  i  Li  of  this  work  is  a  happy  one,  and  it  has  been  well  carried  out  by  the  ac- 
complished editor.     To  concentrate  in  one  compact  volume  the  cream  and  marrow 
of  a  hundred  different  letter-writers,  whose  epistles  fill  many  hundred  tomes,  involved 
course  of  reading  so  extensive  that  most  people  would  shrink  from 
iking  i:  ;  Dr.  Hdcombe,  however,  has  accomplished  the  task,  and  here  presents 
u-  with  the  golden  grain,  winnowed  from  the  masses  of  chaff  that  he  has  dared  to  en- 
counter in  hii  progress." — New  York  Times. 

ill  volume,  which,  by  the  way,  is  very  handsomely  issued  in  all  respects — is 
constructed  o.i  a  n  >\vl  plan,  with  entire  success.  The  work  is  divided  into  six  books: 
the  first  comprising  '  letters  of  gossip,  society,  and  manners  ; '  the  second  '  pleasantry, 
sentiment,  and  fancy  ; '  the  third  '  nature,  art,  and  travel ; '  the  fourth  *  those  of  public 
history  ; '  the  fifth  '  literary  biography,  anecdote,  and  criticism  ; '  and  the  sixth  '  moral 
.1  reflection,1  Thus  ft  will  bo  seen  that  we  have  here  the  most  interest* 
lei  of  Life,  treated  of  not  in  the  cold  form  of  essay,  but  in  special  letters  written 
warm  from  one  mind  to  another.  All  the  great  letter-writers  in  our  language  are  rep- 
resented whose  names  are  'household  words.1  " — Button  Journal. 

"This  is  one  of  the  most  charming  books  in  the  language.     Dr.  Holcombe  ha9 
«t  sprightly, racy,  readable  letters,  abounding  in  wit,  fancy,  anecdote,  al- 
to man,  wo  rents— just  the  reading  that  intelligent,  cultivated  people 
luiirc.     It  U  issue  I  ii   beautiful   dress,  and  will  easily  find  its  way  to  the  hands 
of  thousands  of  delighted  readers.11 — New  )'<>>•/,■  Observer. 

"  Thi  .|,,lv  interesting  work,  and  gives  an  insight  into  the  private  thoughts 

Bags  of  some  of  i  authors  and  prominent  men  and  women  of  the  last 

century.    The  sources  of  pleasure  and  Instruction  to  be  found  in  the  private  corre- 

nce  of  eminent  persons,  haw  never  been  rally  explored,  much  less  have  they  been 

•  lo  the  bulk  of  the  reading  public     His  task  has  been  a  laborious 

ad  eminently  mocessfttl      We  commend  the  volume  as  a  valuable  addition  to  tho 

m  publication!,  end  worthy  a  place  in  the  library  of  every  household."— 


«   V 


*JVl\   4U  kOOQ 


1 

1 

BJ 

71 

U 

1871 

v. 2 

Lecky,  William  Edward  Hartpole 
History  of  European  morals 
from  Augustus  to  Charlemagne 


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