Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

§ 138.- Religious conditions in the fifth century have been so well depicted by Professor Dill in his work on the Roman society of this period that we quote him:

[ocr errors]

"The line between Christian and pagan was long wayering and uncertain. We find adherents of the opposing creeds side by side even in the same family at the end of the fourth century. . . Anyone acquainted with the life of St. Jerome will remember Paula, the great Roman lady, who was the aristocratic leader of the exodus to the Holy Places. She gave up all her vast wealth to maintain the religious houses which she founded at Bethlehem. Her whole soul was absorbed in the study of the Scriptures, and in the thought of the life to come. Yet Paula was united in early youth to a noble named Julius Toxotius, who boasted of his descent from Aeneas, and who refused to abandon the worship of his ancestors. Their son, the younger Toxotius, who, at any rate in his youth, was also a staunch pagan, was married to Laeta, another devoted friend of St. Jerome, to whom he addressed a letter on the proper education for a Christian maiden. Laeta herself was the offspring of a mixed marriage. Her mother was a Christian, and her father was one of the most distinguished chiefs of the pagan aristocracy, Publilius Caeonius Albinus. The affectionate relations of this household seem to have been quite undisturbed by the difference of creed among its members. St. Jerome speaks of Albinus in a friendly tone as a most learned and distinguished man, and sketches a pleasant picture of the old heathen pontiff listening to his granddaughter singing her infant hymns to Christ. In general society the cultivated skeptic or pagan appears to have often maintained a friendly intimacy even with the most uncompromising champions of the church. The correspondence of St. Augustine reveals the singular freedom and candor with which the great religious questions of the time were debated between the cultivated members of the two parties" (26).

After an ineffectual attempt to remedy the evils growing out of the social problem, Christianity thus turns its head toward the clouds, and "stands gazing up into heaven," without closely studying the real course of events on the earth.

§ 139. The growing worldliness of the Church produced a reaction which issued in another institution of religion. Persons disgusted with the world went into the deserts and country places to live a holy life. Such were called "monks." But these, too, obeyed the powerful collective impulse. They associated in growing numbers; accepted endowments from wealthy Christians; and in time the Church adopted monasticism as one branch of its organization.

$140. As the Church extended its power and perfected its machinery, society continued steadily to decline. In the fifth century after the birth of Christ, the Empire collapsed in its ancient seat; and the barbarian tribes came into control of all the West. In Greece and the East, the Roman power, indeed, lived on for a time; but that part of the world, as the issue proved, no longer lay in the main path of human progress.

The center of historical interest, having shifted from the eastern to the northern seaboard of the Mediterranean, passes now into western Europe as whole. Here a third great civilization emerges from savagery and barbarism, assimilates the achievements of its predecessors, makes original contributions to progress, and assumes the leadership of the world.

(1)-THUCYDIDES, History (Boston, 1883. Jowett's trans.), pp. 1-2. (2) Cf. HALL, The Oldest Civilization of Greece (London, 1901), p. 20. Cf. RIDGEWAY, The Early Age of Greece (Cambridge, 1901), chaps. 1 and 2.

(3)-DUNCKER, History of Greece (London, 1886. Alleyne and Abbott's trans.), II, pp. 119, 138, 312. Cf. GROTE, History of Greece (N. Y., 1875) Pt. 2, chap. 9. Cf. DURUY, History of Greece (London, 1898), I, chap. 5. Cf. MоммSEN, History of Rome (N. Y., Dickson's trans.), I, p. 80.

(4) Cf. DUNCKER, History of Greece, II, pp. 5-15.
(5)-MOMMSEN, History of Rome, I, pp. 261, 262.

(6)-IDEM, I, p. 111.

(7)-CURTIUS, History of Greece (N. Y., 1875), I, p. 339.
(8)-DUNCKER, II, p. 319.

(9)-ABBOTT, History of Greece (N. Y., 1888), I, p. 367.

(10)-MOMMSEN, I, pp. 370, 371. Cf. RAMSEY AND LANCIANI, Roman Antiquities (London, 1894), p. 91. Cf. MORGAN, Ancient Society (N. Y., 1878), pp. 215-343.

(11)-MAHAFFY, Problems in Greek History (London, 1892), pp. 16, 88. Cf. SCHOMAN, Antiquities of Greece (London, 1880. Hardy and Mann's trans.), p. 347.

(12) MERIVALE, History of the Romans under the Empire (N. Y., 1889), VII, p. 484. On class relations in Greece and Italy generally, see the following: GILBERT, Greek Constitutional Antiquities (London, 1895, Brooks and Nicklin's trans.), p. 170-200. RAMSEY AND LANCIANI, Roman Antiquities (London, 1894), chaps. 2 and 3, SCHOMAN, Antiquities of Greece, Part 1, chap. 4; Part 2, chaps. 3 and 4. MAHAFFY, Social Life in Greece (London, 1892), Chap. 9. BLUMNER, Home Life of the Ancient Greeks (London, 1893), Chap. 15. GUHL AND KONER, Life of the Greeks and Romans (London, 1880), p. 509. Cox, Greek Statesmen (N. Y., 1885-6), passim. SIMCOX, Orations of Demosthenes, etc. (Oxford, 1872), XXV.

(13) Cf. DILL, Roman Society in the Fifth Century, A. D., (London, 1899), pp. 138, 139.

D. 229.

(14)—PEABODY, Jesus Christ and the Social Question (N. Y., 1901),

(15) Cf. SCHURER, The Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ, passim.

(16)-BRUCE, Apologetics (N. Y., 1899), p. 177.

(17)-FRIEDLANDER, in Jewish Quarterly Review, Jan., 1902.

(18) Cf. RAMSAY, St. Paul, the Traveller (N. Y., 1898), pp. 19, 20. Cf. MCGIFFERT, History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age (N. Y., 1900), pp. 172, 173.

(19) Cf. McGIFFERT, ibid., p. 629. Cf. FISHER, History of the Christian Church (N. Y., 1894), pp. 34, 35, 39.

(20)-BACON, Introduction to the New Testament (N. Y., 1902), p. 165. Cf. MCGIFFERT, The Apostolic Age, p. 581.

(21)-FISHER, History of Christian Doctrine (N. Y., 1899), p. 52. (22)-GIBBON, Decline of the Roman Empire (N. Y., Harper, 1900), chap. 15, p. 134.

(23)-HALLAM, Europe in the Middle Ages, chap. 7. Cf. MILMAN, History of Latin Christianity (N. Y., 1889), I, pp. 507-511, 536.

(24)-HEFELE, History of the Church Councils (Edinburg, 1883. Clark's trans.), I, p. 154. Cf. pp. 424-426; II, pp. 186, 301, 306; III, p. 169. Cf. LEA, Yale Review (New Haven), II, p. 356.

(25) For passages on the influence and functions of the Church in the last century of the Western Empire, cf. DILL, p. 215. KITCHIN, History of France (Oxford, 1873), I, pp. 64, 65,

(26)-DILL, pp. 13, 14.

CHAPTER VII.

WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

§ 141. The social development of western civilization began on the same level as that of the oriental and classic worlds. In the background of the history of our great modern states is the shifting scene of tribal migration and war. A passage from Strabo, a Greek geographer who lived at about the beginning of the Christian era, gives an interesting view of barbaric Germany, from whose forests issued the tribes that finally overwhelmed the western Roman Empire:

[ocr errors]

"Common to all the inhabitants of this land is their readiness to migrate a consequence of the simplicity of their mode of life, their ignorance of agriculture in the proper sense, and their custom, instead of laying in stores of provisions, of living in huts and providing only for the needs of the day. They derive most of their food from their cattle, like the Nomads; and imitating them they load their goods and furniture on wagons, and move with their cattle wherever they like” (1).

In the fifth century after Christ a host of barbarians came pouring out of the German forests. This movement was caused partly by the increase of a population which was unable to extract subsistence from its home territory on the capitalistic basis then prevailing, and partly by the pressure of outlying tribes from eastern Europe and Asia. It was plainly a mere involution of the vast cosmic process that underlies all history. Everywhere that Rome had ruled in western Europe her power was overthrown; and the barbarian flood rose to high tide. In Britain the Angles and Saxons, and later the Normans, established themselves. On the soil of Gaul, or France, and reaching

back into Germany, the Franks became the dominant race. In Italy the Lombards, and in Spain the Visigoths, took possession.*

-

§ 142. At the historical beginning of western civilization we read everywhere the old story of advance from the nomadic to the settled life; of the drawing together of men into social bodies of increasing size; of the mingling of conquerors and conquered; and of the stratification of society into two principal classes, upper and lower. It is plain that cleavage in western civilization, as in the oriental and classic worlds, did not commence in the full daylight of history. Tacitus and Cæsar show that it had begun within the tribes at an early period, long before the fall of the Empire (3).

§ 143.- Brought actively to the front during the early wars, the upper class consisted at first of a military, landholding nobility divided into clans, or gens, like the original aristocracies of the oriental and classic civilizations. And, as in these earlier communities, the clan nobility constituted the State, and wielded the power of society in its corporate capacity.

But this nobility soon added to itself another element. By the "conversion" of the barbarians to Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church was extended from its home in Italy throughout all the communities of western Europe. Everywhere lavish grants of land were made by nobles and kings to the bishops and the monastic orders (4). In England, the nobility made generous provision for

* In tracing the growth of western civilization, we shall consider the subject mainly, but not exclusively, from the standpoint of English history. There are three reasons for this: The evolution of England illustrates, and eventually becomes the pattern for, the development of modern civilization; the literary sources of English history surpass those of the other European countries; and, last but not least, our space is limited. With reference to the sources, Professor Gross observes: "Owing mainly to the blessings of insularity, and to the absence of violent domestic revolutions, the national archives of England are older, richer, more continuous, and more nearly complete than those of any other European nation" (2).

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »