Beacon Lights of History, Volume 04: Imperial Antiquity

The Goths, released from the restraints and fears which Theodosius imposed, renewed their ravages; and the effeminate soldiers of the Empire, who formerly had marched with a burden of eighty pounds, now threw away the heavy weapons of their ancestors, even their defensive armor, and of course made but feeble resistance. The barbarians advanced from conquering to conquer. Alaric, leader of the Goths, invaded Greece at the head of a numerous army. Degenerate soldiers guarded the pass where three hundred Spartan heroes had once arrested the Persian hosts, and fled as Alaric approached. Even at Thermopylae no resistance was made. The country was laid waste with fire and sword. Athens purchased her preservation at an enormous ransom. Corinth, Argos, and Sparta yielded without a blow, but did not escape the doom of vanquished cities. Their palaces were burned, their families were enslaved, and their works of art were destroyed.

Only one general remained to the desponding Arcadius,–Stilicho, trained in the armies of Theodosius, who had virtually intrusted to him, although by birth a Vandal, the guardianship of his children. We see in these latter days of the Empire that the best generals were of barbaric birth,–an impressive commentary on the degeneracy of the legions. At the approach of Stilicho, Alaric retired at first, but collecting a force of ten thousand men penetrated the Julian Alps, and advanced into Italy. The Emperor Honorius was obliged to summon to his rescue his dispirited legions from every quarter, even from the fortresses of the Rhine and the Caledonian wall, with which Stilicho compelled Alaric to retire, but only on a subsidy of two tons of gold. The Roman people, supposing that they were delivered, returned to their circuses and gladiatorial shows. Yet Italy was only temporarily delivered, for Stilicho,–the hero of Pollentia,–with the collected forces of the whole western Empire, might still have defied the armies of the Goths and staved off the ruin another generation, had not imperial jealousy and the voice of envy removed him from command. The supreme guardian of the western Empire, in the greatest crisis of its history, himself removes the last hope of Rome. The frivolous senate which Stilicho had saved, and the weak and timid emperor whom he guarded, were alike demented. Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat. In an evil hour the brave general was assassinated.

The Gothic king observing the revolutions at the palace, the elevation of incompetent generals, and the general security in which the people indulged, resolved to march to a renewed attack. Again he crossed the Alps, with a still greater army, and invaded Italy, destroying everything in his path. Without obstruction he crossed the Apennines, ravaged the fertile plains of Umbria, and reached the city, which for four hundred years had not been violated by the presence of a foreign enemy. The walls were then twenty-five miles in circuit, and contained so large a population that it affected indifference. Alaric made no attempt to take the city by storm, but quietly and patiently enclosed it with a cordon through which nothing could force its way,–as the Prussians in our day invested Paris. The city, unprovided for a siege, soon felt all the evils of famine, to which pestilence was naturally added. In despair, the haughty citizens condescended to sue for a ransom. Alaric fixed the price of his retreat at the surrender of all the gold and silver, all the precious movables, and all the slaves of barbaric birth. He afterwards somewhat modified his demands, but marched away with more spoil than the Romans brought from Carthage and Antioch.

Honorius intrenched himself at Ravenna, and refused to treat with the magnanimous Alaric. Again, consequently, he marched against the doomed capital; again invested it; again cut off supplies. In vain did the nobles organize a defence,–there were no defenders. Slaves would not fight, and a degenerate rabble could not resist a warlike and superior race. Cowardice and treachery opened the gates. In the dead of night the Gothic trumpets rang unanswered in the streets. The old heroic virtues were gone. No resistance was made. Nobody fought from temples and palaces. The queen of the world, for five days and nights, was exposed to the lust and cupidity of despised barbarians. Yet a general slaughter was not made; and as much wealth as could be collected into the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul was spared. The superstitious barbarians in some degree respected churches. But the spoils of the city were immense and incalculable,–gold, jewels, vestments, statues, vases, silver plate, precious furniture, spoils of Oriental cities,–the collective treasures of the world,–all were piled upon the Gothic wagons. The sons and daughters of patrician families became, in their turn, slaves to the barbarians. Fugitives thronged the shores of Syria and Egypt, begging daily bread. The Roman world was filled with grief and consternation. Its proud capital was sacked, since no one would defend it. "The Empire fell," says Guizot, "because no one belonged to it." The news of the capture "made the tongue of old Saint Jerome to cling to the roof of his mouth in his cell at Bethlehem. What is now to be seen," cried he, "but conflagration, slaughter, ruin,–the universal shipwreck of society?" The same words of despair came from Saint Augustine at Hippo. Both had seen the city in the height of its material grandeur, and now it was laid low and desolate. The end of all things seemed to be at hand; and the only consolation of the great churchmen of the age was the belief in the second coming of our Lord.

The sack of Rome by Alaric, A.D. 410, was followed in less than half a century by a second capture and a second spoliation at the hands of the Vandals, with Genseric at their head,–a tribe of barbarians of kindred Germanic race, but fiercer instincts and more hideous peculiarities. This time, the inhabitants of Rome (for Alaric had not destroyed it,–only robbed it) put on no airs of indifference or defiance. They knew their weakness. They begged for mercy.

The last hope of the city was her Christian bishop; and the great Leo, who was to Rome what Augustine had been to Carthage when that capital also fell into the hands of Vandals, hastened to the barbarian's camp. The only concession he could get was that the lives of the people should be spared,–a promise only partially kept. The second pillage lasted fourteen days and nights. The Vandals transferred to their ships all that the Goths had left, even to the trophies of the churches and ancient temples; the statues which ornamented the capital, the holy vessels of the Jewish temple which Titus had brought from Jerusalem, imperial sideboards of massive silver, the jewels of senatorial families, with their wives and daughters,–all were carried away to Carthage, the seat of the new Empire of the Vandals, A.D. 455, then once more a flourishing city. The haughty capital met the fate which she had inflicted on her rival in the days of Cato the censor, but fell still more ingloriously, and never would have recovered from this second fall had not her immortal bishop, rising with the greatness of the crisis, laid the foundation of a new power,–that spiritual domination which controlled the Gothic nations for more than a thousand years.

With the fall of Rome,–yet too great a city to be wholly despoiled or ruined, and which has remained even to this day the centre of what is most interesting in the world,–I should close this Lecture; but I must glance rapidly over the whole Empire, and show its condition when the imperial capital was spoiled, humiliated, and deserted.

The Suevi, Alans, and Vandals invaded Spain, and erected their barbaric monarchies. The Goths were established in the south of Gaul, while the north was occupied by the Franks and Burgundians. England, abandoned by the Romans, was invaded by the Saxons, who formed permanent conquests. In Italy there were Goths and Heruli and Lombards. All these races were Germanic. They probably made serfs or slaves of the old population, or were incorporated with them. They became the new rulers of the devastated provinces; and all became, sooner or later, converts to a nominal Christianity, the supreme guardian of which was the Pope, whose authority they all recognized. The languages which sprang up in Europe were a blending of the Roman, Celtic, and Germanic. In Spain and Italy the Latin predominated, as the Saxon prevailed in England after the Norman conquest. Of all the new settlers in the Roman world, the Normans, who made no great incursions till the time of Charlemagne, were probably the strongest and most refined. But they all alike had the same national traits, substantially; and they entered upon the possessions of the Romans after various contests, more or less successful, for two hundred and fifty years.

The Empire might have been invaded by these barbarians in the time of the Antonines, and perhaps earlier; but it would not have succumbed to them. The Legions were then severely disciplined, the central power was established, and the seeds of ruin had not then brought forth their wretched fruits. But in the fifth century nothing could have saved the Empire. Its decline had been rapid for two hundred years, until at last it became as weak as the Oriental monarchies which Alexander subdued. It fell like a decayed and rotten tree. As a political State all vitality had fled from it. The only remaining conservative forces came from Christianity; and Christianity was itself corrupted, and had become a part of the institutions of the State.

It is mournful to think that a brilliant external civilization was so feeble to arrest both decay and ruin. It is sad to think that neither art nor literature nor law had conservative strength; that the manners and habits of the people grew worse and worse, as is universally admitted, amid all the glories and triumphs and boastings of the proudest works of man. "A world as fair and as glorious as our own," says Sismondi, "was permitted to perish." Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Athens, met the old fate of Babylon, of Tyre, of Carthage. Degeneracy was as marked and rapid in the former, notwithstanding all the civilizing influences of letters, jurisprudence, arts, and utilitarian science, as in the latter nations,–a most significant and impressive commentary on the uniform destinies of nations, when those virtues on which the strength of man is based have passed away. An observer in the days of Theodosius would very likely have seen the churches of Rome as fully attended as are those in New York itself to-day; and he would have seen a more magnificent city,–and yet it fell. There is no cure for a corrupt and rotten civilization. As the farms of the old Puritans of Massachusetts and Connecticut are gradually but surely passing into the hands of the Irish, because the sons and grandsons of the old New-England farmer prefer the uncertainties and excitements of a demoralized city-life to laborious and honest work, so the possessions of the Romans passed into the hands of German barbarians, who were strong and healthy and religious. They desolated, but they reconstructed.

The punishment of the enervated and sensual Roman was by war. We in America do not fear this calamity, and have no present cause of fear, because we have not sunk to the weakness and wickedness of the Romans, and because we have no powerful external enemies. But if amid our magnificent triumphs of science and art, we should accept the Epicureanism of the ancients and fall into their ways of life, then there would be the same decline which marked them,–I mean in virtue and public morality,–and there would be the same penalty; not perhaps destruction from external enemies, as in Persia, Syria, Greece, and Rome, but some grievous and unexpected series of catastrophes which would be as mournful, as humiliating, as ruinous, as were the incursions of the Germanic races. The operations of law, natural and moral, are uniform. No individual and no nation can escape its penalty. The world will not be destroyed; Christianity will not prove a failure,–but new forces will arise over the old, and prevail. Great changes will come. He whose right it is to rule will overturn and overturn: but "creation shall succeed destruction; melodious birth-songs will come from the fires of the burning phoenix," assuring us that the progress of the race is certain, even if nations are doomed to a decline and fall whenever conservative forces are not strong enough to resist the torrent of selfishness, vanity, and sin.

AUTHORITIES

The original authorities are Ammianus Marcellinus, Zosimus, Sozomen, Socrates, orations of Gregory Nazianzen, Theodoret, the Theodosian Code, Sulpicius Severus, Life of Martin of Tours, Life of Ambrose by Paulinus, Augustine's "De Civitate Dei," Epistles of Ambrose; also those of Jerome; Claudien. The best modern authorities are Tillemont's History of the Emperors; Gibbon's Decline and Fall; Milmans's History of Christianity; Neander; Sheppard's Fall of Rome; and Flécier's Life of Theodosius. There are several popular Lives of Theodosius in French, but very few in English.

LEO THE GREAT

A.D. 390-461FOUNDATION OF THE PAPACY

With the great man who forms the subject of this Lecture are identified those principles which lay at the foundation of the Roman Catholic power for fifteen hundred years. I do not say that he is the founder of the Roman Catholic Church, for that is another question. Roman Catholicism, as a polity, or government, or institution, is one thing; and Roman Catholicism, as a religion, is quite another, although they have been often confounded. As a government, or polity, it is peculiar,–the result of the experience of ages, adapted to society and nations in a certain state of progress or development, with evils and corruptions, of course, like all other human institutions. As a religion, although it superadded many dogmas and rites which Protestants do not accept, and for which they can see no divine authority,–like auricular confession, the deification of the Virgin, indulgences for sin, and the infallibility of the Pope,–still, it has at the same time defended the cardinal principles of Christian faith and morality; such as the personality and sovereignty of God, the divinity of Christ, salvation in consequence of his sufferings and death, immortality, the final judgment, the necessity of a holy life, temperance, humility, patience, and the virtues which were taught upon the Mount and enforced by the original disciples and apostles, whose writings are accepted as inspired.

In treating so important a subject as that represented by Leo the Great, we must bear in mind these distinctions. While Leo is conceded to have been a devout Christian and a noble defender of the faith as we receive it,–one of the lights of the early Christian Church, numbered even among the Fathers of the Church, with Augustine and Chrysostom,–his special claim to greatness is that to him we trace some of the first great developments of the Roman Catholic power as an institution. More than any other one man, he laid the foundation-stone of that edifice which alike sheltered and imprisoned the European nations for more than a thousand years. He was not a great theologian like Augustine, or preacher like Chrysostom, but he was a great bishop like Ambrose,–even far greater, inasmuch as he was the organizer of new forces in the administration of his important diocese. In fact he was a great statesman, as the more able of the popes always aspired to be. He was the associate and equal of princes.

It was the sublime effort of Leo to make the Church the guardian of spiritual principles and give to it a theocratic character and aim, which links his name with the mightiest moral movements of the world; and when I speak of the Church I mean the Church of Rome, as presided over by men who claimed to be the successors of Saint Peter,–to whom they assert Christ had given the supreme control over all other churches as His vicars on the earth. It was the great object of Leo to substantiate this claim, and root it in the minds of the newly converted barbarians; and then institute laws and measures which should make his authority and that of his successors paramount in all spiritual matters, thus centring in his See the general oversight of the Christian Church in all the countries of Europe. It was a theocratic aspiration, one of the grandest that ever entered into the mind of a man of genius, yet, as Protestants now look at it, a usurpation,–the beginning of a vast system of spiritual tyranny in order to control the minds and consciences of men. It took several centuries to develop this system, after Leo was dead. With him it was not a vulgar greed of power, but an inspiration of genius,–a grand idea to make the Church which he controlled a benign and potent influence on society, and to prevent civilization from being utterly crushed out by the victorious Goths and Vandals. It is the success of this idea which stamps the Church as the great leading power of Mediaeval Ages,–a power alike majestic and venerable, benignant yet despotic, humble yet arrogant and usurping.

But before I can present this subtile contradiction, in all its mighty consequences both for good and evil, I must allude to the Roman See and the condition of society when Leo began his memorable pontificate as the precursor of the Gregories and the Clements of later times. Like all great powers, it was very gradually developed. It was as long in reaching its culminating greatness as that temporal empire which controlled the ancient world. Pagan Rome extended her sway by generals and armies; Mediaeval Rome, by her prelates and her principles.

However humble the origin of the Church of Rome, in the early part of the fifth century it was doubtless the greatest See (or seat of episcopal power) in Christendom. The Bishop of Rome had the largest number of dependent bishops, and was the first of clerical dignitaries. As early as A.D. 250,–sixty years before Constantine's conversion, and during the times of persecution,–such a man as Cyprian, metropolitan Bishop of Carthage, yielded to him the precedence, and possibly the presidency, because his See was the world's metropolis. And when the seat of empire was removed to the banks of the Bosporus, the power of the Roman Bishop, instead of being diminished, was rather increased, since he was more independent of the emperors than was the Bishop of Constantinople. And especially after Rome was taken by the Goths, he alone possessed the attributes of sovereignty. "He had already towered as far above ordinary bishops in magnificence and prestige as Caesar had above Fabricius."

It was the great name of ROME, after all, which was the mysterious talisman that elevated the Bishop of Rome above other metropolitans. Who can estimate the moral power of that glorious name which had awed the world for a thousand years? Even to barbarians that proud capital was sacred. The whole world believed her to be eternal; she alone had the prestige of universal dominion. This queen of cities might be desolated like Babylon or Tyre, but her influence was indestructible. In her very ruins she was majestic. Her laws, her literature, and her language still were the pride of nations; they revered her as the mother of civilization, clung to the remembrance of her glories, and refused to let her die. She was to the barbarians what Athens had been to the Romans, what modern Paris is to the world of fashion, what London ever will be to the people of America and Australia,–the centre of a proud civilization. So the bishops of such a city were great in spite of themselves, no matter whether they were remarkable as individuals or not. They were the occupants of a great office; and while their city ruled the world, it was not necessary for them to put forth any new claims to dignity or power. No person and no city disputed their pre-eminence. They lived in a marble palace; they were clothed in purple and fine linen; they were surrounded by sycophants; nobles and generals waited in their ante-chambers; they were the companions of princes; they controlled enormous revenues; they were the successors of the high pontiffs of imperial domination.

Yet for three hundred years few of them were eminent. It is not the order of Providence that great posts, to which men are elected by inferiors, should be filled with great men. Such are always feared, and have numerous enemies who defeat their elevation. Moreover, it is only in crises of imminent danger that signal abilities are demanded. Men are preferred for exalted stations who will do no harm, who have talent rather than genius,–men who have business capacities, who have industry and modesty and agreeable manners; who, if noted for anything, are noted for their character. Hence we do not read of more than two or three bishops, for three hundred years, who stood out pre-eminently among their contemporaries; and these were inferior to Origen, who was a teacher in a theological school, and to Jerome, who was a monk in an obscure village. Even Augustine, to whose authority in theology the Catholic Church still professes to bow down, as the schools of the Middle Ages did to Aristotle, was the bishop of an unimportant See in Northern Africa. Only Clement in the first century, and Innocent in the fourth loomed up above their contemporaries. As for the rest, great as was their dignity as bishops, it is absurd to attribute to them schemes for enthralling the world. No such plans arose in the bosom of any of them. Even Leo I. merely prepared the way for universal domination; he had no such deep-laid schemes as Gregory VII. or Boniface VIII. The primacy of the Bishop of Rome was all that was conceded by other bishops for four hundred years, and this on the ground of the grandeur of his capital. Even this was disputed by the Bishop of Constantinople, and continued to be until that capital was taken by the Turks.

But with the waning power, glory, and wealth of Rome,–decimated, pillaged, trodden under foot by Goths and Vandals, rebuked by Providence, deserted by emperors, abandoned to decay and ruin,–some expedient or new claim to precedency was demanded to prevent the Roman bishops from sinking into mediocrity. It was at this crisis that the pontificate of Leo began, in the year 440. It was a gloomy period, not only for Rome, but for civilization. The queen of cities had been repeatedly sacked, and her treasures destroyed or removed to distant cities. Her proud citizens had been sold as slaves; her noble matrons had been violated; her grand palaces had been levelled with the ground; her august senators were fugitives and exiles. All kinds of calamities overspread the earth and decimated the race,–war, pestilence, and famine. Men in despair hid themselves in caves and monasteries. Literature and art were crushed; no great works of genius appeared. The paralysis of despair deadened all the energies of civilized man. Even armies lost their vigor, and citizens refused to enlist. The old mechanism of the Caesars, which had kept the Empire together for three hundred years after all vitality had fled, was worn out. The general demoralization had led to a general destruction. Vice was succeeded by universal violence; and that, by universal ruin. Old laws and restraints were no longer of any account. A civilization based on material forces and Pagan arts had proved a failure. The whole world appeared to be on the eve of dissolution. To the thoughtful men of the age everything seemed to be involved in one terrific mass of desolation and horror. "Even Jerome," says a great historian, "heaped together the awful passages of the Old Testament on the capture of Jerusalem and other Eastern cities; and the noble lines of Virgil on the sack of Troy are but feeble descriptions of the night which covered the western Empire."

Now Leo was the man for such a crisis, and seems to have been raised up to devise some new principle of conservation around which the stricken world might rally. "He stood equally alone and superior," says Milman, "in the Christian world. All that survived of Rome–of her unbounded ambition, of her inflexible will, and of her belief in her title to universal dominion–seemed concentrated in him alone."

Leo was born, in the latter part of the fourth century, at Rome, of noble parents, and was intensely Roman in all his aspirations. He early gave indications of future greatness, and was consecrated to a service in which only talent was appreciated. When he was nothing but an acolyte, whose duty it was to light the lamps and attend on the bishop, he was sent to Africa and honored with the confidence of the great Bishop of Hippo. And he was only deacon when he was sent by the Emperor Valentinian III. to heal the division between Aëtius and Albinus,–rival generals, whose dissensions compromised the safety of the Empire. He was absent on important missions when the death of Sixtus, A.D. 440, left the Papacy without a head. On Leo were all eyes now fixed, and he was immediately summoned by the clergy and the people of Rome, in whom the right of election was vested, to take possession of the vacant throne. He did not affect unworthiness like Gregory in later years, but accepted at once the immense responsibility.