 Chapter 8, Part 2 of History of the Christian Church during the first six centuries. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Anna Roberts. History of the Christian Church during the first six centuries by S. Chetham. Chapter 8, Part 2. 5. The beginning of Christian life was baptism. Those adults who desired to be admitted through the laver of regeneration into the body of Christ had to submit to a course of instruction, during which they were called catechumens, and were not allowed to be present at the celebration of Holy Communion. In primitive times this instruction seems to have been of a practical kind, impressing on the candidate the great distinction between the way of life and the way of death. The catechumenate lasted ordinarily, at the end of the third century, two years or even three, though it might be shortened in special cases. In the times immediately succeeding the apostolic we find that the candidate, after instruction, was taken to some place where there was water, if possible to a running stream. Both the baptize and the baptizer fasting, and there plunged into the water in the name of the Holy Trinity. Warm water might be used in case of necessity, and it was sufficient, when circumstances admitted of nothing else, to pour water thrice on the head of the candidate. Later at the end of the second and the beginning of the third century we find a more elaborate ritual. The candidate was questioned as to his faith, he renounced the devil in his pumps, and was exercised to free him from his power. The water was blessed by the bishop, before baptism which took place by trine immersion or fusion in the name of the Holy Trinity he was anointed, and again on leaving the water, when he was also given to taste of milk and honey, and immediately afterwards he received imposition of hands with prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit. This laying on of hands, being in the west reserved to the bishop, soon became a separate right. That in early times infants were baptized, in accordance with the principle laid down by Irenaeus, is evident from Tritulian's indignant remonstrance. Origin in the third century found infant baptism and immemorial custom held to be apostolic. Sponsors were necessary both for adults and infants, in the first case as guarantees of the honest intention of the candidate, in the second to give additional security that the children should be brought up as Christians. If one who had professed his readiness to receive baptism died the martyr's death without having actually passed through the purifying flood, the baptism of blood was always held to be at least equivalent to that of water. Both kinds were typified in the blood and water which flowed from the Lord's wounded side, those who suffer martyrdom, unbaptized, share in the blessing of the penitent robber. Towards the end of the second century, Tritulian raised the question whether baptism conferred by heretics was valid and answered it in the negative. Agrippinus, bishop of Carthage, agreed with him and baptized anew mountainists who came over to the church. The same practice prevailed in Asia Minor, Alexandria, and many other eastern churches, and was sanctioned by a series of provincial synods at Carthage, Iconium, and Sinata. The ancient practice of the Roman church was different. In Rome the heretic who returned to the church, if he had been baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, was admitted to communion by simple imposition of hands as penitents were. The churches of Carthage and Rome were brought into contact and consequence of their common concern with Novationism, and each was offended at the other's practice. Stephen, bishop of Rome, was not disposed to tolerate a custom which varied from his own and threatened to withdraw from communion with the African and Asiatic churches if they persisted in their offence. An absolute breach was however prevented by the mediation of Dionysius of Alexandria. But Cyprian was unable to reconcile the Roman principles with his conception of the Catholic church. There could be no true baptism outside the church, for heretics did not confer gifts of the spirit which they did not themselves possess. Against the authority of the Roman sea he protested that this was not a matter to be settled by tradition but by reason, nor was one bishop to lord it over another since all were partakers of a like grace. Stephen thereupon refused to receive the legates of Cyprian in Rome and withdrew from communion with him and his church. He even went so far as to call Cyprian a false Christ, a false prophet, a deceitful worker. The council of the African province in the year 256 under Cyprian's presidency decided in favor of their ancient custom. The Asiatic churches generally took the same side and their metropolitan, Vermilion, Bishop of Caesarea and Cappadocia, wrote to Cyprian a formal declaration of their opinion on the matter at issue containing a strong condemnation of the conduct of the Bishop of Rome. The contest was an obstinate one and outlived both the principal combatants. Cyprian suffered martyrdom in 257 and Cyprian in the following year. Meantime the kindly and judicious Dionysius of Alexandria had again intervened and the persecution under Valyrian no doubt turned men's thoughts to more pressing needs. A friendly message from Zeistus, Stephen's successor, was brought to Cyprian shortly before his execution. Gradually the Roman practice prevailed. It was sanctioned by a synod at Arles at which several Numidian bishops were present in the year 314. Christians assembled themselves together, mindful of the Lord's promise and the Apostles' warning, to worship God, to strengthen and refresh their own souls, to realize their union with Christ and with each other. These ends they sought especially in the supper of the Lord or Holy Eucharist. The earliest account remaining to us of this celebration teaches us that believers met on the Lord's Day when they confessed their sins and were warned that no one who is at enmity with his brother should approach the Feast of Love. Over the cup thanks were given for the Holy Vine of David, made known to us through Jesus Christ, over the broken bread, for the life and knowledge made known to us through him, and prayer was made that the disciples should be gathered into the kingdom, even as the scattered grains were made one loaf. After reception thanks were given for God's holy name revealed to us, and for knowledge and faith, for spiritual meat and drink, for immortal life made known to us through the Son, and prayer was made for the perfecting of the Church and the passing away of the present world. The service ended with an invitation to those who were without, and the watchword Maranatha, the Lord Cometh. From the account of Justin, later in age and differing in place from that of the teaching, we find that, in the Sunday service, portions were read from the memoirs of the apostles, probably the Gospels, and from the prophets. The reading was followed by an exhortation from the presiding brother, and then all stood up to pray. After this, bread and wine mixed with water were brought, and the president uttered prayer and thanksgiving. Then those present partook, and portions were sent to the absent by the hands of the deacons. Upon this followed the offering of alms, which were deposited with a president to be administered for the benefit of the sick and needy. The Holy Kiss is mentioned in Justin's description of the Eucharist, which immediately succeeded a baptism, but not in that of an ordinary Sunday. Both the teaching and Justin speak of the Eucharist service as a sacrifice. Elsewhere, Justin mentions that in the Eucharist, thanks were given for our creation and for our redemption through Christ. Irenaeus, too, speaks of the giving of thanks over the elements. We offer, he says, unto God the bread and the cup of blessing, giving thanks unto him for that he bade the earth bring forth these fruits for our sustenance, and we call forth the Holy Spirit to declare or manifest the sacrifice, even the bread, the body of Christ, and the cup, the blood of Christ, that they who partake of these copies, antitoupon, may obtain remission of their sins and everlasting life. The intercessions which, according to Turtulian, the faithful made on behalf of emperors and the peace of the empire and for enemies, their prayers for fruitful seasons, their commemoration of and intercession for the dead, all probably took place in connection with the Eucharist. Turtulian implies that a thanksgiving took place in the church over the elements, and he also mentions that prayers called orationaeus saccharficorum followed communion. Consecrated bread was kept in private homes and tasted before other food. Origin speaks of the loaves offered with thanksgiving and prayer over the gifts as having been made, in consequence of the prayer, a certain body, holy and hallowing those who use it with sound purpose. Turtulian first distinctly puts forth the principle that the Lord's acts in the Last Supper are to be followed by the celebrant in the Eucharist. Because, he says, we make mention of the Lord's passion in all our sacrifices, we ought to do no other thing than he did, for scripture says that so often as we offer the cup in commemoration of the Lord in his passion, we should do that which it is evident that he did. We also find from Cyprian that in the Eucharist intercession was made for brethren in affliction, whose names were decided, as were also the names of those who had made offerings, and of the faithful departed. A much more developed form of liturgy than any described in earlier documents is found in the second book of the Apostolical Constitutions. There bishops, presbyters, and deacons take part in the service. The elections from the Old Testament are intermingled with psalmody. There follow elections from the New Testament, ending with the gospel. Then silence is kept for a space, followed by exhortation from the presbyters and bishop. This ended catacumans and penitents depart, and the faithful, turning to the east, the abode of God, the seat of paradise, stand up and pray. Then follows the oblation of the elements, the warning to those in enmity or in hypocrisy, the kiss, the prayer of the deacon for the church and the world, the bishops' blessing in the words of the Hebrew priest, his prayer, and the sacrifice followed by communion. The doors are guarded that no uninitiated person may enter. The Eucharist's service, as described here, is summed up in the words, the reading of the prophets, the proclaiming of the Gospels, the oblation of the sacrifice, the gift of the holy food. In primitive times the bread was broken and the cup blessed at a meal, at first the meal of a household, afterwards a more public one to which each brother brought his contribution. This seems to have been still customary at the time when the teaching was written, but in just in's time, in the middle of the second century, it seems clear that no food was partaken of at communion except the consecrated bread and wine. So long as the communion continued to be celebrated in the primitive manner, it was almost certainly held in the evening at the usual hour of the principal meal. But even in Pliny's time Christians held a meeting before dawn, and their habit of meeting in obscurity caused the heathen to reproach them with loving darkness rather than light. In the African Church of the second and third centuries it is clear that Christians communicated before dawn, though it seems probable that in some cases they received in the evening also. Of the evening participation, however, Cyprian seems to speak as if it were rather a domestic than a public right. Besides the Eucharist, Christians also assembled at common meals, tables, or love-feasts, for social intercourse and edification. Tertullian describes the modest table and the sober joyousness of these festivals, which afterward, in his mountainistic fervor, he culminated. It is, however, in fact evident that the love-feasts in some cases degenerated into mere scenes of enjoyment. Directions are given in the apostolical constitutions for the proper distribution of portions to the several ministers by the host who gives a love-feast. Prayer was an essential part of Christian life. The third, sixth, and ninth hours were marked out by scriptural precedent, and we find them observed as special times of prayer in the second century. In the third there was added a prayer earlier than that of the third hour, and a prayer later than that of the ninth hour. The earlier authorities gave no ground for supposing that these prayers were set in churches, but in the apostolical constitutions the people are exhorted to come to the church daily, morning, and evening. In the early days of Christianity, marriage must, of course, have been celebrated in accordance with the law of the land in order to obtain legal validity, but it was early recognized that the union of believers should be sanctified by God's blessing, and men of the stricter school came to regard a marriage not publicly declared in the church as no valid marriage at all. The marriage ring and the veil seemed to have been retained from old Roman custom, but the wreath from its pagan associations was disapproved. Marriages of Christians with heathen were naturally discouraged. Divorce was permitted for the one cause only which was recognized as valid by the Lord, adultery. In the church the bodies of the departed acquired a new sacredness, and were laid to rest with tender care. Christian feelings shrank from reducing the body of a believer to ashes after the heathen fashion and preferred to lay it reverently in the bosom of the earth to await the general resurrection. The body was frequently embalmed. The clergy, as well as the friends and kin's folk of the departed, accompanied it to the grave chanting psalms as they went. Nor were the dead forgotten when they were laid to rest. The anniversary of a brother's departure was observed by the faithful with oblations, love-feast, prayer, and celebration of the Eucharist, if possible, at the tomb, in which special mention was made of the departed. As was natural, Christian brethren desired to rest near each other, and the places set apart for the reception of their remains, whether on the surface of the ground or in catacombs, were called cemeteries or sleeping places. The custom of placing lamps or tapers in places of burial seems to have arisen at an early period. Like the Hebrews, Christians loved to deposit their dead in tombs hewn in the rock. In the neighborhood of towns it was of course rarely possible to obtain such burying places except by subterranean excavation. Such excavations are found at Alexandria, in Sicily, at Naples, at Chiusi, at Milan, but most of all near Rome, where in later times they were known as catacombs. These form an immense series of chambers for burial, connected by long corridors and galleries, and were undoubtedly excavated in the soft Tufa Granolare for the purpose for which they were actually used. The earliest appear to be almost co-evil with the first appearance of Christianity in Rome. As Christians enjoyed in general the same protection for their dead as other subjects of the empire, there is no reason to suppose that the catacombs were formed simply to conceal Christian burial places. Yet it is noteworthy that from the time that Christianity was recognized as the religion of the empire, burials in the catacombs became infrequent and gradually ceased. End of Chapter 8, Part 2 Chapter 8, Part 3 of History of the Christian Church during the first six centuries. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. This recording by Anna Roberts. History of the Christian Church during the first six centuries by S. Chetham. Chapter 8. Social Life and Ceremonies of the Church, Part 3. Number 6. As was natural, Christians from the first dedicated special days to special observances. Christians, as Ignatius, no longer observed the Sabbath. Yet this must not be understood as if they paid it no respect, for some at any rate observed it as a day of joyful thanksgiving for the creation of the world. But whether they observed the Sabbath or not, they always recognized the weekly cycle, and their great weekly festival was the first day of the week, the day on which Christ rose from the dead. This day was already called Sunday, a name which Christians soon adopted, but its distinctively Christian appellation was the Lord's Day. On this day, dedicated to holy, joyful, and exultant commemoration, it was not permitted to fast, or even to adopt the humbled posture of kneeling in prayer. Some also abstained from kneeling in their prayers on the Sabbath. To abstain, so far as possible, from ordinary business on the Lord's Day, had come to be recognized as a duty as early as the end of the second century. The Wednesday in each week, as the day on which the rulers of the Jews took counsel to put Jesus to death, and the Friday, as the day of the Lord's crucifixion, were towards the end of the second century observed as stations, days on which Christians were to be specially on guard, in Statione, against the assaults of the enemy, when they had special devotions. The year was also marked by a cycle of festivals. The venerable feast of Pascha continued to be observed in the church with a great change of significance. About the time of its observance, early there arose serious divisions in the church. Under the Jewish law, the Paschal Lamb was sacrificed on the 14th day of the lunar month Nisan, and on the 16th was offered the sheaf, which represented the first fruits of the harvest. Thus, the offering of the Lamb was always at or near the time of full moon. As the Lord suffered and rose again at the Paschal season, this festival naturally became to Christians a commemoration of the passion and the resurrection, but there were considerable differences in early times both as to the time and the manner of the observance. The Ebonites, as they maintained generally the perpetual obligation of the Mosaic law, even in ceremonial matters, kept their Pascha on the 14th Nisan, with all the old ceremonies holding that the Lord had also done this on the day before his death. The Catholic Jewish Christians, whose practice was extensively followed by the churches of Asia Minor, while agreeing with the Ebonites as to the season for observing their Pascha, gave it a decidedly Christian significance. Christ, they held, the true Paschal Lamb, had himself been slain on the 14th Nisan, and had consequently not held an ordinary Pascha with his disciples. They therefore commemorated the crucifixion on the 14th Nisan and the resurrection on the 16th. These were in later times known as Quartor Decimans, but in the West, and especially in Rome, where the influence of Judaism was less, the variation from the ancient Jewish observance was much greater. There it was held that as there was already a weekly commemoration of the resurrection on the first day of the week, the weekday on which, as all were agreed, the Lord actually rose, the great annual festival in honor of the same great event should take place on no other day. The commemoration of the crucifixion would consequently fall on the sixth day of the week, Friday. If therefore the 14th Nisan did not fall on a Friday, the Romans commemorated the crucifixion on the Friday next after it and the resurrection on the following Sunday. For some years this divergency of practice continued in the church without collision. The first signs of division were given on occasion of a visit of Polycarp of Smyrna to Rome. The Roman bishop Anesotus appealed, in defense of his own practice, to the tradition of his church, while Polycarp, in defense of the Asiatic custom, alleged that he himself actually celebrated a posca with the Apostle Saint John. Neither would yield to the other, but the two bishops at last parted in peace. Some forty years later, however, the contest was renewed, with much greater violence by Victor, Bishop of Rome, and Polycrates of Ephesus. The former even went so far as to refuse to hold communion with the Asiatic churches so long as they continued to observe the Paschal season in their custom manner. This high-handed proceeding was, however, generally resented. Irenaeus in particular, himself sprung from Asia Minor, remonstrated warmly with the bishop of Rome, with full agreement of his Gallican brethren. The question remains still for some generations undecided, but the Roman practice seems to have spread. In the third century a new difficulty arose. In early times Christians had been content to accept the current Jewish Paschal season as their own. Now, however, it came to be alleged that the Jews themselves had varied. In ancient times, it was said, the Jews had always so arranged their calendar that the fourteenth Nisan was the day of the first full moon after the vernal equinox, but after the fall of Jerusalem they had seized to observe this, so that their Paschal full moon was sometimes before that epoch. As some Christians observed, while others neglected, the rule as to the equinox, it was possible for one church to be celebrating its Paschal a month earlier than another. It was probably this uncertainty about the correct reckoning of the Paschal, which induced Christian teachers to attempt an independent calculation, taking account of the official Roman calendar. Hippolytus of Rome drew up a cycle for indicating the true Paschal full moon, based on the suppositions that the vernal equinox fell on the eighteenth March, and that after sixteen years the full moons again fell on the same days of the year. This cycle found great acceptance in the West. For the Alexandrian Church a different cycle was drawn up by its bishop Dionysius. This was, however, soon superseded by the cycle, correct in so far as it assumed the recurrence of the full moons on the same year-day in nineteen years, of Anatolius of Laodicea. But the diversity of practice continued to exist, and the Paschal question was one of those brought before the Council of Nicaea. The commemoration of the Lord's crucifixion was from ancient times preceded by a fast. In the second century we find that some fasted at this time one day, some two days, some forty hours, and that these differences were mutually tolerated. Socrates states that the Roman custom was to fast three weeks, while in Greece and Alexandria a forty days fast was observed. Uniformity in this respect was not established before the fifth or sixth century. In the week immediately preceding Easter Sunday the fast was, in some churches at least, very strict, most of all on the two days, Good Friday and the Great Sabbath, before Easter Sunday. Many spent the whole night between the Great Sabbath and Easter Sunday in devotion in the churches, and hailed with joy at the dawn of the Easter morning. The seven weeks which followed Easter were a time of special joyfulness, during which the faithful did not bend the knee, but prayed standing. The fortieth day after the festival of the resurrection, corresponding to the day of the Lord's ascension, was naturally one of triumphant jubilation. The festival season ended with the fiftieth day, Pentecost, the day of the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Jerusalem, the birthday of the Christian Church. The followers of facilities are said to have kept a festival with the vigil proceeding in commemoration of the baptism of the Lord and the Jordan. Another class of yearly festivals arose from the annual commemorations of martyrs, which took place on the day of their death and, where it was possible, at their tombs. From the first the faithful shoot the greatest anxiety to obtain possession of the mortal remains of those who had fallen in the great fight, and with like care they noted the day of departure, the birth day of their brother into a higher life. Besides the ceremonies usual at the graves of the faithful departed, the acts of the martyr were recited, and probably before the end of the third century it became customary to pass the night preceding the festival, sometimes with much disorder at his tomb. Seven. It is not probable that in the earliest times of Christianity Christians raised special buildings for their worship. When they were rejected by the synagogue, those who held Christ for the Messiah met wherever they could obtain leave to meet, in the large upper room or loft of a disciple, in the lecture theater of a rhetorician, in the great hall of a Greek or Roman house. Early in the third century Christians had acquired land with a view to erecting a place of worship, and it is probable that at this time they possessed buildings of their own, resembling the Scala, or Lodge rooms, which various guilds or corporations erected for their meetings. During the dark days of Diceus and Diocletian they sometimes met in the silence and secrecy of the subterranean cemeteries, portions of which have been thought to be arranged as churches. But in the peaceful period between those emperors, the work of church building went actively forward. The increased congregations were no longer satisfied with their old narrow rooms, but built everywhere large and conspicuous churches. The stately church of Nicomedia was visible from the emperor's palace. Of the fittings and ornaments of churches in the first three centuries little is known, except that each church had a table or altar for the administration of the Eucharist, and a desk or raised foot-pace for the reader or preacher. The supposed church in the Catacomb of St. Agnes has at one end, hewn in the tufa, a chair which is thought to be the seat of the bishop, and the earliest description of a church places the bishop's throne in the middle of the east end, and the seats of the presbyters on each side. As all Christian buildings of the first three centuries have long disappeared, it is only in the Catacombs that we can look for remains of early Christian art. There we find that from the earliest times the faithful decorated with paintings the chambers where they lay their dead, and where their livings sometimes assembled. They adopted, as was inevitable, the style and many of the subjects of their pagan contemporaries. As in the house of pagan Pompeii, so in the Christian vaults the vine trails over the walls, birds and butterflies, and winged geni displaying their beauties, and graceful draped female figures are not absent, but the vine symbolizes the Savior and the other representations also received a new significance. Even the figure of the mythic Orpheus came to symbolize the attractive power of Christ. The fish represented both the Savior himself and the disciple who draws life from the vivifying water. Under the image of the fisherman Christ is seen as the great fisher of men, and under that of the shepherd he gathers his sheep in his arms, or leads them to pastor. Scenes from the Old Testament are made to symbolize the truths of the new. Direct representations of Christ and his saints are generally avoided in the earliest Christian pictorial art. Gems were early engraved with Christian symbols. The devices which Clement recommends are the dove, the fish, the ship, the lyre, the anchor, the fishermen, and very early specimens are extant bearing these and similar figures. Tertullian alludes to the figure of the good shepherd carrying the lost sheep, which Christians love to see on the bottom of cups, seemingly glass cups. The bottoms of many such cups bearing various representations in gold leaf and clothes between two layers of glass are found embedded in the mortar of the catacombs. Not only does the good shepherd appear in these, with many other Christian symbols, but heads are found, intended seemingly for portraits of apostles and other saints whose names are appended. Such were the small beginnings of the arts which in eighteenth centuries have raised magnificent buildings and displayed glorious representations of sacred scenes in the most enlightened countries of the world. Chapter 9 Part 1 of History of the Christian Church during the first six centuries. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. History of the Christian Church during the first six centuries by S. Cheetham. Chapter 9 The Church and the Empire, Part 1 In the year 313, Constantine and Licinius found themselves masters of the Roman world. They had joined in the edict which gave full toleration to Christianity but with very different feelings. Licinius, without actually declaring his hostility, harassed the Christian communities within his dominions by the hundred petty annoyances which are always at the command of persons in authority. Constantine, though no doubt restrained in some degree by consideration for his partner in the empire, showed in many areas the favor which he bore to Christianity. Several of the measures by which he benefited the church belonged to the period in which he still had Licinius for his colleague. He caused large sums to be given to the churches of Africa. He conferred on Christian masters the power of manumitting their slaves without the presence of a magistrate. He exempted the clergy from the obligation of undertaking burdensome municipal offices. He permitted churches to accept legacies. He commanded labor to cease with the exception of necessary work in the fields on Sunday. This last order, however, must not be assumed to have been given out of pure respect for the great weekly festival of Christians. It is clear that Constantine dreamed in these days of directing to one form of worship the common tendency of all mankind to reverence the divinity, thinking that such a universal religion would be an admirable bond for the distracted empire. The worship of the sun, especially under the name of Mithras, was very widely prevalent in the empire, and it may have seemed to the great ruler possible to unite the worship of the material sun with that of the sun of righteousness. Certainly many of his coins bear on one face the sign of the cross or the laborium on the other the sun-god. He retained the title of Pontifex Maximus and discharged the sacrificial duties belonging to the office. In fact, Constantine's real feeling towards the faith of Christ is involved in great obscurity. He was apparently capable of religious emotion and was fond of preaching to his courtiers. Yet he always remained outside the church and was baptized only on his deathbed. It is certain that his Christianity did not prevent him from putting to death his son Christmas and his wife Fausta. A generation or two later a story was current that, in great remorse at his bloody deeds, he had appealed to pagan priests or flamens to cleanse him from his guilt, and it was only when the pagans declared that they had no lustration for guilt such as his that he turned to the Christians who promised him purification. This story contains several improbabilities, but it is not inconceivable that a man of so complex a character may have had some dealings with pagan hero-fence even after the date of Nicaea as Saul resorted to the witch of Endor even after he had endeavored to put down witchcraft. But it was clear that Constantine, with whatever reservation, was favorable to the church while Licinius was against it. The heathen consequently regarded the latter as their champion while the Christians flocked around the former, and when in 323 the smoldering jealousy of the two Augusti broke out into open conflict, the war was in fact one of religion and the victory of Constantine was a victory of the church. He caused his conquered rival to be put to death and stood sole master of the Empire. Then he could carry out with greater freedom his plans for the reorganization of the state and the recognition of the church. He began with the foundation of New Rome, the city of Constantine, on the beautiful site of the old Byzantium in Europe but over against Asia. This city was adorned with a lavish hand by the master of the treasures of East and West. Old Rome was no longer the center of the Empire. It clung with great tenacity to the old religion under which its conquests had been won, its traditional republicanism was not extinct, and its pagan and republican citizens by no means hailed with enthusiasm a monarch who deserted the old deities. The transference of the seat of the imperial government to Byzantium had very important consequences for the church. If Rome had remained the capital of the Empire, the development of the papacy would almost certainly have been retarded, and the whole course of its history changed. Hardly less important was the character of Oriental despotism which the Empire rapidly acquired in its new seat and which would probably have grown more slowly in old Rome. Constantinople became, however, the great bulwark of Christianity against Islam and the nursery of Greek literature during the Middle Ages. It was there, in fact, that the seeds of the Reformation of the 16th century were preserved. His great city founded, Constantine proceeded with the Organization of the Empire in the way which promised to render the control of the central government most effective. He unfortunately at the same time increased the oppressive weight of taxation which in time crushed the unfortunate provincials. Constantine said to a party of bishops at his table that he was bishop of matters external while they were bishops in the internal affairs of the church, intending probably little more than to gratify the prelates by a polite speech. The distinction was, at any rate, not very accurately observed in subsequent times, but a succession of edicts by Constantine and his successors increased the power, the wealth, and the dignity of the church. The courts had long arbitrated in ecclesiastical matters and in civil suits between Christians who were unwilling to go to law before unbelievers. A law of the year 376 gave to the decisions of these courts of arbitration the same legal force which belonged to those of the imperial magistrates. Somewhat later no accusation against a cleric could be heard other where than before the tribunal of the bishop. The church itself had already treated with great severity those who, being condemned by an ecclesiastical court, ventured to appeal to an imperial tribunal. That bishops should bring before the emperor's court cases in which injustice had been done to the weak and friendless was right and becoming, but they were forbidden to sully the dignity of their office by taking up unworthy or frivolous cases. They took cognizance, as was natural, of matters which were rather offenses against the moral law than against the state, and sometimes succeeded in over-ying even high-placed offenders. The privileges of bishops were considerably extended by the legislation of Justinian which gave them civil jurisdiction over monks and nuns, as well as clerics, and added legal sanction to the oversight of public morality and the protection of the suffering which they had hitherto practiced on the authority of the church. It enjoined and empowered them to take charge of prisoners, miners, imbeciles, foundlings, and other waifs and strays of society. It gave them authority to put down gaming and to supplement the judgments of lay tribunals, and it endowed them with coordinate authority in the management of municipal property. Bishops thus became very important civil officials, and the secular judges were forbidden to summon them as witnesses or to administer an oath to them. Bishops were also freed, like other high officials of the empire, from the Patria potestas. From the fourth century onward they enjoyed the same right of intercession for criminals which had once been enjoyed by the vestals, especially on behalf of those who were sentenced to death. The right of asylum, too, which had belonged to certain heathen temples, passed by custom to Christian churches, and was formally legalized by Theodosius in the fifth century. In addition to these privileges, the church also received under the Christian emperors large additions to its property. From the municipal income of cities, from the spoils of heathen temples, and occasionally of heretical conventicles, riches flowed in upon the church, which was now empowered to receive legacies and gifts from the faithful. One effect of this permission was that increased wealth occasioned a great extension of the works of beneficence for which the church even in its poverty had been distinguished. Attempts were made to succor all kinds of suffering and distress, and so greatly did this increase the influence of the church, that the Emperor Julian attempted to transplant charitable institutions into his revived paganism. With the increase of wealth came also the necessity to arrange for its equitable distribution. For this, Galatius I decreed that the total income of the church, whether derived from property or from the offerings of the faithful, should be divided into four equal parts, of which one should be given to the bishop, one to the other clergy, one to the poor, and one to the maintenance of the buildings. The Council of Braga, a generation or two later, divided the income of a church into three portions, one for the bishop, one for the rest of the clergy, and a third for the reparation or lighting of the church. The relations of the clergy and especially of the bishops to the emperor and other high officials present curious contrasts. The respect paid to the bishop was from the first very great, and it was certainly not diminished when he became a conspicuous person in the eyes of the world. Even emperors bowed the head before him and kissed his hand. Jerome, whose life was simple and ascetic, was indignant at the lofty bearing of some of the prelates and presbyters, and begged them to remember that the faithful were their fellow servants, not their bond servants. But whatever respect the emperors might pay to the church and its officers, they had in fact immense influence over it. From the time when the emperors became Christian, says Socrates, the affairs of the church depended upon them. It could hardly be otherwise. Privileges were conferred by law upon the Catholic church alone, and occasions unfortunately soon arose when it was necessary for the emperor to say which of two contending parties he considered Catholic. If the defeated party asked what the emperor had to do with the church, the victors replied that the church was in the state and that none was over the emperor but God. The fathers at Constantinople in the year 448, when an imperial rescript had been read, cried out, Long live our high priest, the emperor. Edicts issued by the emperor were published in the churches. And as the emperor, by influence or direct nomination, secured the election of many bishops, especially those of Constantinople, the Episcopal Order was generally disposed to do him homage. Justinian showed much favor to the church, but at the same time he made it more directly subject to the state. Whomsoever he may have consulted privately, his edicts on the affairs of the church, even on a matter so strictly ecclesiastical as the tone in which the liturgy should be said, run in precisely the same style as those on purely secular matters. No authority but that of the emperor appears in them. He issues his commands to the patriarchs of old Rome and of Constantinople as if they were imperial officials. The Italian bishops, however, always maintained a certain independence and noted with some degree of contempt the subservience of their eastern brethren. And generally, in spite of the temptation to compliance, there were never wanting ecclesiastical leaders courageous enough to enforce, even upon emperors and their favorites, the claims of the church to a higher sovereignty than that of temporal princes. Chrysostom could brave imperial anger and go calmly into exile. Ambrose could repel Theodosius, bloody with massacre from his church. Nor were these solitary instances. It was perhaps an almost inevitable result of the intimate connection between the church and the empire that dissidents from the faith recognized as Catholic were persecuted. The greatest leaders of Christian thought were indeed opposed to all coercion in matters of faith. Hilary of Poitiers, for instance, set forth the blessings of religious freedom and the worthlessness of enforced compliance with admirable cleanness and force. Chrysostom would limit persecution to forbidding the assemblies of heretics and depriving them of their churches. The great name of Augustine, however, appears among the advocates of persecution. He had indeed in his earlier days contended for the freedom of religious convictions, but the obstinate resistance of the Donatists to his earnest persuasions convinced him that there were some who would own no argument but force. Theodosius I enacted severe laws against those who did not accept the Catholic faith, but these were not executed. And the first Christian prince who actually caused men to be put to death on account of religion was the usurper Maximus, whose proceedings called forth general indignation and found no imitator for many generations. The excellent Martin of Tours protested in this case that it was an outrage for a secular judge to try an ecclesiastical case and that no other punishment could fittingly be inflicted on heretics but that of excommunication. The Great Lines of the Christian Hierarchy remained after the public recognition of Christianity the same as in the previous period, though the changed condition of the Church occasioned the appointment of some new officers. The needs of the great cities, often visited by pestilence, called for the Paribolani who hazarded their lives on attendance on the sick and the Copiate who buried the dead. As the property of the Church increased, it required the attention of special stewards or managers under the bishop's direction. A special body of lawyers was created to defend the interests of the Church and especially of the poor in the courts. A large number of notaries took minutes of important proceedings and drew legal documents. As the archives of the great Churches accumulated, it became necessary to put them under the charge of a keeper of the records in each Church. The important matters which came into the hands of patriarchs and metropolitan cause them to require the assistance of privy counselors or ministers and their intercourse with the government made the services of legates at the imperial court almost indispensable. In the ordinary ministry of the Church, the office of Deacon remained in theory the same, but the Deacons, being constantly by the bishop's side as his helpers and secretaries, often attempted to set themselves above the presbyteres, a presumption which was checked by the decrees of several councils. The Architea Conus, or Chief of the Deacons in particular, became commonly the bishop's confidential advisor and representative, frequently his successor. The Order of the Deaconesses gradually lost its early prominence, which however it retained much longer in the East where the seclusion of women rendered their services important than in the West. The Western Church resolutely opposed the ordination of Deaconesses and at last forbade it altogether. The bishop was, as of old, the head and chief administrator of the district committed to him. He represented it in all its external relations and especially in councils. He summoned and presided over its synod. To him alone it belonged to ordained presbyteres and deacons. To him alone in the Western Church, to lay hands on those who had been baptized. He was the proper minister of the word and sacraments, though he might delegate these functions to inferior ministers. He, with his council of presbyteres, excommunicated offenders and readmitted pedantons. Without him neither exclusion nor reconciliation could take place. He also granted letters of commendation to members of his flock traveling abroad. The Council of Nicaea laid down that a bishop must be approved and chosen by the faithful of the city over which he was to preside, with, in the particular case before them, the ascent of the bishop of Alexandria. He was to be ordained and admitted to his office by the bishops of the same province, or by three of them at least. And this seems to have been generally recognized as the rule of the Church that the whole body of the faithful, Olaos, should at least have an opportunity of seeing whether a candidate proposed was worthy or unworthy. Even after the election was supposed to have taken place, opposition might shoe itself. When Theodorus of Heracola enthroned Demophilus at Constantinople, many of those who were present cried out unworthy. But not unfrequently distinguished men were actually chosen bishops by the acclamation of the people as Ambrose at Milan, Martinet Tours, Eustatius at Antioch, Chrysostom at Constantinople. Various customs, however, prevailed locally. In Southern Gaul, the bishops, presumably the comprovincial bishops, were to choose three from whom the clergy and people, sieves, were to choose one to be the bishop of their city. In Spain, the clergy and people of the city were to choose two or three, whose names were to be submitted to the metropolitan and bishops of the province, and one chosen by lot. But in many cases, powerful persons, whether bishops or others, were able to override rules. The emperors at Constantinople, in particular, generally secured the election of those whom they favored. The same principles, which regulated the choice of bishops, prevailed also in the election of presbyteres. To speak generally, a bishop could ordain no one without consulting his clergy and obtaining the testimony in the ascent of the lay people of the city. The elections in which the people of a city took so large a share were apt to become tumultuary. In Rome, in particular, where the city was large and populous, and the office of the bishop unusually important, scenes of great violence were often witnessed at an Episcopal election. The partisans of Samachus and Laurentius, at the end of the fifth century, are said to have contended with so much violence that the streets were strewn with dead, and at the Synod, which was held a few years afterwards under Samachus, it was complained that the laity had the election wholly in their own hands, contrary to the ancient cannons. There was, in fact, a constant danger lest in a popular election mere mob violence should prevail, and from an early period attempts were made to check this, apparently with no great effect. Justinian laid down that the clergy and chief men of a city should nominate three persons on a vacancy in their sea, and that from these three one should be chosen by the consecrator, generally the Metropolitan, to fill the vacant throne. At that time probably the term chief men, portoy, was understood of a definite class. The Teutonic dominion in Europe naturally made a great change in the position of the chief officers of the church. Considerable estates were conferred upon ecclesiastical persons. Bishops became the king's liegemen, and were often employed on the business of the state. The lands of the church were freed from many imposts, but remained subject to feudal service, whence it came to pass that bishops wore armor and fought in battle. Under such circumstances territorial lords came to look upon the holders of ecclesiastical benefits in much the same light as their other feudal tenants, and would only end persons who were agreeable to them. Thus they acquired at any rate a veto on the nomination of bishops, and in most cases prevented all difficulty by themselves nominating. They even sometimes sold their presentations. The status of the clergy generally was also materially changed by the laws of the Franks. No free man could be taken into the ranks of the clergy without the king's license. The clergy were therefore mainly recruited from among the unfree. The ordinary presbyters, therefore, came to be looked upon as an inferior class, and their rights were sometimes little regarded, even by their bishops. The power of the bishops was great, and it was well that persons of some cultivation and refinement should be able to influence the rough warriors who bore rule. Allah of Quoter, the son of Clovis, gave the bishops a general power of reviewing the decisions of lay judges, and excommunication came to be more dreaded when it carried with its civil disabilities. During the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, the relations of the bishop to his presbyters remained in theory much the same as they had been in the previous period, but practically they underwent considerable change. The importance of bishops increased, and that of presbyters diminished, yet in some cases the presbyters seemed to have gained an importance. In earlier ages a bishop was charged with the oversight of the faithful in a city. The scattered congregations in the country districts were cared for by rural bishops with less extensive powers. Congregations were sporadic. But after Constantine, the whole empire was covered by the ecclesiastical system. A bishop became the ecclesiastical ruler of a region not of a city only. Every town or village was included in some diocese. Presbyters, consequently who held office at a distance from the bishop, naturally came to discharge, as a matter of course, functions such as preaching and the administration of the sacraments, which had once been regarded as belonging specially to the bishop. Such presbyters appeared to have been, at any rate frequently, appointed by the bishop, though no doubt with the consent of the local community, and in some instances, as in that of St. Augustine, the local church people chose their candidate whom they presented to the bishop for ordination. Presbyters appointed to the charge of a place where there was no bishop were said to rule, regire, a church, and hence in the west were called rectors. In the time of Justinian we see the beginning of lay patronage in a law which permitted persons who built an oratory and maintained a body of clergy and also their heirs to nominate to the bishop fit clerics to serve the chapel. It was in this period that the clergy of a city were first brought to live together in one house under the presidency and control of the bishop. Some bishops, as Eusebius the Versle, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, and Martin of Tours, set an example of monastic austerity to the clergy who were domiciled with them, and the rules which they gave were imitated by others. Such clergy were forbidden to meddle with secular business. From the fourth century onward the presbyters who had charge of churches were grouped under the presidency and general superintendents of arch presbyters afterwards called in the west rural deans. The bishops also employed periadute or traveling inspectors, presbyters under their own immediate authority, to take cognizance on their behalf of the parochial clergy. Under these circumstances the Turpiscopi or rural bishops who had besides sometimes abused their power of ordination became superfluous and were abolished. In the period before the recognition of the church by the state groups of diocese had already been formed and the bishops of certain cities presided over their brethren within a certain district or province under the name of metropolitan. The political organization of the empire had naturally considerable influence on the constitution of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The most remarkable phenomenon in the government of the church in this period is the rise of the great patriarchates. At the time of the Council of Nicea it was clear that the metropolitan of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch held a superior rank among their brethren and had a kind of ill-defined jurisdiction over the provinces of several metropolitan. The Fathers of Nicea recognized the fact that the privileges of these seas were regulated by customs already regarded as primitive and these customs they confirmed. Alexandria was to have authority over Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis, an authority of the same kind as that which the Roman bishop had over his subject provinces. In like manner their ancient privileges were secured to Antioch and other super metropolitan churches. The empire was afterwards divided for the purposes of civil government into four perfectures as follows. One, the perfecture of the east subdivided into the diocese of the east containing 15 provinces and having Antioch for its capital. Egypt containing nine provinces with Alexandria as its capital. Asia containing 12 provinces with Ephesus as its capital. Pontus consisting of 13 provinces with Caesarea in Cappadocia as its chief town and Thrace consisting of six provinces which had its seed of government first at Heraclia afterwards at Constantinople. Two, the perfecture of eastern Eurychum with Thessalonica for its chief town subdivided into the diocese of Macedonia with seven provinces and Dacia with six. Three, the perfecture of Italy subdivided into the diocese of Rome with 10 suburbicarian provinces and Rome itself for a capital. Italy with seven provinces and Milan as its capital. Western Eurychum with seven provinces and Sirmium as its capital. Africa divided into six provinces with Carthage as its capital. Four, the perfecture of the Gauls again divided into the diocese of Gaul which contained 17 provinces and had Treves for its capital. Spain which had seven provinces and Britain which had five. The chief towns of the two last mentioned diocese were uncertain. The organization of the church followed on its main lines that of the empire. It also had its diocese and provinces coinciding for the most part with the similarly named political divisions. Not only did the same circumstances which marked out a city for political preeminence also indicated as a fit center of ecclesiastical rule, but it was a recognized principle with the church that the ecclesiastical should follow the civil division. At the head of a diocese was a patriarch, at the head of a province was a metropolitan, the territory of a simple bishop was a parish. Thus the civil diocese of the east was, in matters ecclesiastical, under the sway of the patriarch of Antioch, that of Egypt under that of the patriarch of Alexandria, and the bishops of the political capitals, Ephesus, Caesarea and Heracola, had patriarchal authority over the dioceses of Asia, Pontus and Thrace. In the second canon of the ecumenical council of Constantinople by which the bishops of a diocese are forbidden to intrude into the territory of their neighbors it seems to be assumed that the limits of the political and the ecclesiastical dioceses are identical. The same council ordained that the bishop of Constantinople, which had now superseded Heracola as the seat of diocese and civil government, should have precedence as bishop of New Rome next under the bishop of Rome. The bishop of Constantinople not unnaturally desired an increase of power as well as additional dignity, and his position as bishop of the imperial city enabled him to gain much of what he aimed at. He appears at once to have made himself master of the diocese of Thrace, thrusting aside the bishop of Heraclia, whose city, on the founding of Constantinople, had ceased to be a seat of the imperial government. But not content with this, he set himself to bring under his jurisdiction the dioceses of Asia and Pontus, which also helped by his position at court, he did in fact make subject to his sway. This arrangement still lacked the sanction of the church when the Council of Chelsedon gave him his opportunity. This council recognized the exclusive right of the bishop of Constantinople to consecrate the metropolitans of Thrace, Pontus, and Asia, expressly on the ground that as Constantinople was now the seat of empire it should enjoy the same privileges which Rome had enjoyed as the seat of empire. The once patriarchal seas of Heraclia, Caesarea, and Ephesus thus became simply metropolitans, though their occupants had the title of exarch and precedence before other bishops of the same diocese. The same council ordered that a bishop or other cleric who had a complaint against his own metropolitans should bring his case before the exarch of the diocese, or before the patriarchal throne of the imperial city of Constantinople, so that he might, if he chose, ignore his own exarch altogether. The sea of Constantinople thus became the oriental counterpart of that of Rome. The same council had before it the question of the state and dignity of the mother of all churches, Jerusalem, which had been for some time ambiguous and unsatisfactory. Jerusalem has associations which have in all ages secured it the reverence of Christians, yet it was at the time we speak of too unimportant a sea to secure for its bishop a distinguished position in the church. It was, in fact, overshadowed by the political chief town of Palestine, Caesarea, which became the ecclesiastical metropolis. The Council of Nicea assigned to Jerusalem precedence immediately after the seas of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, but without giving it any power beyond that of an ordinary episcopal throne, Caesarea being still recognized as having jurisdiction over the other seas of Palestine. The relation thus created was strained and unnatural, and it is no wonder that the bishop of Jerusalem struggled to emancipate himself from the yoke of Caesarea. The sea rose in fame after the peace of the church under Constantin, in consequence of the increasing reverence paid to the holy places, and at the Council of Ephesus, juvenileis, bishop of Jerusalem, had the courage to claim for his sea patriarchal jurisdiction over Palestine, Phoenicia, and Arabia. This claim was rejected by the Council, but he nevertheless obtained from the Emperor Theodosius II a rescript granting to him the provinces which he had claimed. The bishop of Antioch, Maximus, of course regarded this as an attack upon his long-established rights, and a long controversy arose between the two bishops, which was at last put an end to by a compromise which received the sanction of the Council of Chelsedon. This provided that the patriarch of Antioch should receive back his provinces of Phoenicia and Arabia, while the bishop of Jerusalem should possess patriarchal authority over the three provinces of Palestine. He thus became an actual patriarch, though of a small diocese. There were then in the Roman Empire, after the practical suppression of the patriarchal rights of the other diocese and thrones, five patriarchal seas, those of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Justinian indeed attempted to give to the sea of his native city, Acreta, patriarchal authority over the prefecture of Illyricum, but so artificial an arrangement did not long endure. There were, however, still in Christendom, and even in the Empire, metropolitan who acknowledged no patriarch or exarch over them, claiming to be autocephalus or independent. Such was the metropolitan of Salamis or Constantia in Cyprus, who at the Council of Ephesus successfully vindicated the ancient rights of his sea against the claims of the patriarch of Antioch, and even in Italy the authority of the sea of Rome was not everywhere acknowledged. A patriarch held within his own diocese the supreme ecclesiastical authority, and his diocese and synod was the highest court of appeal for ecclesiastical business. Without the consent and cooperation of the patriarchs no valid ecumenical council could be held, but the patriarchal system of government, like every other, suffered from the shocks of time. The patriarch of Antioch had, in the first instance, the most extensive territory, for he claimed authority not only over the civil diocese of the east, but over the churches in Persia, Medea, Parthia, and India, which lay beyond the limits of the Empire. But this large organization was but loosely knit and constantly tended to dissolution. Palestine, as we have seen, shook itself free. In consequence of the Nestorian controversy, the Persian Church asserted its independence and set up a patriarch of its own at Seleucia. Armenia, somewhat later, determined to have its own monophysite patriarch, and the Syrian monophysites chose a schismatical patriarch of Antioch. After the conquests of Caliph Omar, the great sea of Antioch sank into insignificance. The region subject to the Alexandrian patriarch was much smaller than that of Antioch, but it was better compacted. Here, too, however, the monophysite tumult so shook its organization that it was no longer able to resist the claims of the patriarch of Constantinople. It also fell under the dominion of the Saracens, a fate which had already befallen Jerusalem. In the whole east there remained only the patriarch of Constantinople in a condition to exercise actual authority. Chapter 9 Part 3 of History of the Christian Church during the first six centuries. History of the Christian Church during the first six centuries by S. Cheetham. Chapter 9 The Church and the Empire. Part 3 According to Rufinus' version of the sixth canon of the Council of Nicaea, the Bishop of Rome had entrusted to him the care of the Suburbicarian churches. What we are to understand by these Suburbicarian churches is by no means absolutely clear. Considering, however, how closely the ecclesiastical followed the civil divisions, it is extremely probable that the Suburbicarian churches are those included in the ten Suburbicarian provinces which were under the authority of the Vicarious of the Civil Diocese of Rome, and which included the greater part of central Italy and the whole of lower Italy with Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. And this interpretation is strongly confirmed by the letter of the Council of Sardica to Julius, Bishop of Rome, which recognizes him as the official channel of communication with the faithful in Sicily, Sardinia and Italy. But many causes tended to extend the authority of the Roman patriarch beyond these modest limits. The patriarch of Constantinople depended largely for his authority on the will of the Emperor and his spiritual realm was agitated by the constant intrigues of opposing parties. His brother of Rome enjoyed generally more freedom in matters spiritual and the diocese over which he presided, keeping aloof for the most part from controversies on points of dogma, was therefore comparatively calm and united. Even the Orientals were impressed by the majesty of old Rome and gave great honor to its bishop. In the west, the highest respect was paid to those seas which claimed an apostle as founder, and among these the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul naturally took the highest place. It was, in fact, the one apostolic sea of western Europe, and as such received a unique regard, and the tendency to regard Rome as an ecclesiastical center and standard was no doubt increased by the fact that in the provincial civil courts of the empire matters not regulated by local law or custom were decided according to the law of the city of Rome. Doubtful questions about apostolic doctrine and custom were addressed certainly to other distinguished bishops as Athanasius and Basil, but they came more readily and more constantly to Rome as already the last appeal in many civil matters. We must not suppose, however, that the Churches of the East were ready to accept this way of Rome, however they might respect the great city of the west. When Julius of Rome, who refused to concur in the deposition of Athanasius, invited him and his opponents to appear by delegates before a council of the Western Church, the Orientals assembled at Antioch declared that he, a foreign bishop, had no right to propose himself as judge in the affairs of the Eastern Church, that every synod was free to decide as it thought best, that the mere fact that he was bishop of a great city gave him no superiority over other bishops of apostolic seas, that his predecessors had never ventured to interfere in the internal affairs of the Eastern Church. But, in spite of this rebuff, the disputes about Athanasius in the end undoubtedly tended to strengthen the position of the Sea of Rome, which sided with the Orthodox and victorious party. The Council of Sardica, after the secession of its Oriental members, gave to bishops who were aggrieved by a provincial decision leave to appeal to Julius, bishop of Rome, meaning no doubt to give to those who were oppressed by Arian synods a protector in one who was a steady friend of Orthodoxy. But the President was not forgotten. A generation later, at the request of a Roman synod presided over by Damasus, the Emperor Gratian issued a rescript permitting in many cases an appeal from provincial tribunals to the Sea of Rome. But the decrees of provincial synods were still regarded as binding. Pope Ceresius himself, when appealed to against the decision of a synod at Capua, declared himself incompetent to entertain a question already decided by competent judges. And Ambrose, speaking of the same matter, urged that the decision of the Judicial Committee nominated by the synod was of the same binding force as that of the synod itself. The authority of the Roman Sea increased from causes which are sufficiently obvious to historical inquirers. But the greatest of the Roman bishops were far too wise to tolerate the supposition that their power depended on earthly sanctions. They contended steadfastly that they were the heads of the church on earth because they were the successors of him to whom the Lord had given the keys of the kingdom of heaven, Saint Peter. And they also contended that Rome was, in the most emphatic sense, the mother church of the whole West. Innocent I claims that no church had ever been founded in Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa, Sicily, or the Mediterranean islands, except by men who had received their commission from Saint Peter or his successors. At the same time, they admitted that the privileges of the sea were not wholly derived immediately from its founder, but were conferred by past generations out of respect for Saint Peter's sea. But the bishop who most clearly and emphatically asserted the claims of the Roman Sea to preeminence over the whole church on earth was no doubt Leo the First, a great man who filled a most critical position with extraordinary firmness and ability. Almost every argument by which in later times the authority of the sea of Saint Peter was supported is to be found in the letters of Leo. If the power to bind and loose was conferred on all the apostles, it was through Saint Peter that it was transmitted to them. It was to Saint Peter that power and commandment was given to feed the flock of Christ, and it was in Rome, the place of his burial, that the power given to Saint Peter was in all ages to be found. So far was the Roman bishop from receiving dignity from the capital of the world, that it was through his presence that Rome became what it was. He conferred honor on the city, but the city gave no dignity to him. It was in the name of Saint Peter that he, Leo, presided over the church. It was as God and Saint Peter prompted him that he gave judgment. He called on the other bishops to help him in the care of all the churches, but the plenitude of power remained his own peculiar attribute. If, however, Saint Peter appears in the forefront, Leo does occasionally bethink him of Saint Paul, who was, he admits, a partner in Saint Peter's glory at Rome, though he was much occupied with the care of other churches. Generally, however, from about the middle of the fifth century Saint Paul is but little spoken of in connection with Rome. The Empire of the West never seriously interfered with the proceedings of the Roman bishop, and when it fell the church became the heir of the Empire. In the general crash the Latin Christians found themselves compelled to drop their smaller differences and rally around the strongest representative of the old order. The Tutans, who shook to pieces the imperial system, brought into greater prominence the essential unity of all that was Catholic and Latin in the Empire, and so strengthened the position of the Sea of Rome. The church had no longer by its side one great homogenous state. The Gothic kings were not inclined to meddle with the internal affairs of the church. Oroasser, indeed, issued an edict that no election to the papacy should be held without the sanction of the civil government. But Theodoric laid down the golden rule, little regarded in aftertimes, that he could not exercise sovereignty in matters of religion because no man can believe upon coercion. And Theoda had held that as God permits diversity in religion it would be presumptuous in a king to attempt to enforce uniformity. The East Gothic dominion in Italy was in fact in more than one respect advantageous to the popes. The kings of the Aryan Goths were disposed to befriend them because they were generally in opposition to Constantinople, while at the same time the Catholic people of the West honored them as their rallying point against the incursions of Aryanism. It is not wonderful that under these circumstances the claims of the popes increased and multiplied. They claimed to be the highest court of appeal for the Western Church and to have a general authority in matters of faith and discipline over the whole church throughout the world. In support of these claims they appealed to imperial edicts and cannons of councils. They were as anxious as ever to ground their claims on the privileges conferred on Saint Peter, but they could not always avoid an appeal to the civil power. In the disputed election of Samachas to the papacy, both he and his rival Laurentius appealed to the Gothic king Theodoric at Ravina, who placed Samachas on the apostolic throne. But, consistently with his principle, he allowed an edict of Odoacer, ordaining that no election to the papacy should be held without the concurrence of the civil government to be annulled in a Roman synod. The partisans of Laurentius, persisting in their charges against Samachas, another synod, the synodus Palmeris, was held in the following year which acquitted Samachas or rather expressed its reluctance to try a de facto pope under any circumstances. Inodius, the official defender of this council, frankly laid down the principle that the occupant of the sea of Rome could be judged by none but God. It was probably about this time that forgery and interpolation began to be resorted to with a view of giving to these claims some appearance of antiquity. The acts of the supposed Council of Sinuesa, which desired Pope Marcinalus, accused of sacrificing to idols to judge himself as being alone competent in such a case, are no doubt a forgery. So is the constitution attributed to Sylvester and Constantine, which declares the Roman sea above the judgment of any human tribunal. So is the supposed report of the trial of Sixtus III. Cyprian's treatise on the unity of the Church had been altered to suit the views of the Roman sea before the time of Pelagius II. It was at this time, too, that the Roman bishops began to claim the title of pope, which, however, for some generations was also given to the incumbents of other apostolic seas. But the popes still admitted that they were subject to general councils, nor did they claim jurisdiction over other bishops, unless they were brought before them as the highest court of appeal. So long as the Roman sea agreed with them in hostility to Constantinople, the Gothic kings were willing to allow them a large measure of freedom. But when the popes came to an agreement with the sea of Constantinople, it became much more suspicious and watchful of their movements. John I having, contrary to the traditions of his sea, paid a visit to Constantinople, where he was received with the utmost distinction, was on his return regarded by Theodoric as a traitor and thrown into prison, where, after languishing for nearly a year, he died. The kings also interfered actively in the elections to the papacy and even nominated the person to be elected. Theodoric nominated Felix III, and Ethelaric issued an edict against bribery in papal and Episcopal elections. Still, even so, the Gothic domination was not so perilous to the papacy as the restoration of imperial rule which followed Justinian's conquest of Italy. Justinian, it is true, paid great respect to the sea of Rome, but he paid like honor to that of Constantinople and was not unwilling to use one against the other. His object was, in short, to extend his own power over church as well as state. Pope Silverius was deposed and banished by desire of the Emperor Theodora, Vigilius installed in this place by command of Belisarius, and when Vigilius, after a miserable life, sank into an unhonored grave, Pelagius was elevated to the sea by command of Justinian, an appointment so unpopular that the new pope was actually unable to induce three bishops to take part in his consecration. In many ways the popes were made to feel the bitterness of dependence on the Byzantine court. They were forced into heresy, or what seemed to be heresy, and on this account a large part of Italy withdrew from their communion. The seas of Milan and Revena were reconciled after a comparatively short interval, but that of Aquileia was more resolute, and it was not until the year 698 that it re-entered into communion with Rome. The dependence of Rome on Byzantium was brought to an end by the Lombard invasion. The dominions of the Greek Empire in Italy were then forth limited to Rome, Revena, and a part of southern Italy. This province was governed by exarchs seated at Revena. The authority of the emperors declined in Rome and passed almost insensibly to the popes, many of whom were very capable of sustaining it. The Byzantine sovereigns being often too weak to defend their distant province, the Italians had to defend themselves, and at their head in this struggle was the pope of Rome, the person of highest dignity in the city, the natural protector of the Catholics against the Aryan Lombards, and the greatest landowner in Italy. For the estates of the sea had been growing since the time when Constantine permitted bishops as such to receive gifts and legacies, and were in the 6th century of great extent. The prelates of that age appeared to have been good landlords and to have spent their revenues freely for the public good. For twenty-seven years, says Gregory the Great, the popes had lived in the midst of Lombard's swords, and all that time their income had been drawn upon for the clergy, the monasteries, the poor, for the wants of the people generally and for defense against the Lombards. As was natural, the sea gained infinitely in dignity and influence, and became, in matters ecclesiastical, less and less dependent on the Byzantine court. Under the influence of many causes, the Sea of Rome had risen to a great and unrivaled position in the West, and at the end of the 6th century the way was prepared for Gregory the Great, with whom a new era begins. It must not, however, be supposed that the views of the Roman bishops as to the authority of Rome were universally accepted even in the West. Many churches had grown up independently of Rome and were abundantly conscious of the greatness of their own past. Milan, for instance, a great city and the chief town of a civil diocese, always maintained a certain attitude of independence towards Rome, and the authority of so powerful a prelate as Ambrose contributed greatly to render its sea practically patriarchal. The Sea of Revena, too, from the time when Onorius, fleeing from the Gauss, made that city as capital, was not disposed to acknowledge in Rome a supremacy in ecclesiastical matters which it had ceased to possess politically. And in the African Church, the reluctance to submit to Roman dictation, which had showed itself in Cyprian's time, was maintained for many generations. In the Pelagian controversy, the Africans firmly opposed Zosimus of Rome, who had taken the site of Pelagius. And when the same Zosimus tried to compel them to reinstate a deprived presbyter, Appiarius, who had appealed to Rome, they were reluctant to obey. In vain he appealed to the canons of Sardica, which he quoted as Nicene. They rejoined that the canons and questions were not Nicene, and admonished the bishop of Rome to proceed with more moderation and equity. And when Bishop Celestinus, a few years later, again urged the restoration of Appiarius, they most emphatically repudiated his authority and forbade, under pain of excommunication, any appeal to a foreign bishop. They begged the bishop to consider whether it was probable that God would grant to an individual a power of correct judgment which he refused to ascend it. But the course of events broke the spirit of the African Churchmen. Their country was overrun by the Aryan vandals, and in their distress they were glad to cling to such support as they could find in Rome. They were not disposed to dispute the claims of Leo the Great as they had done those of Zosimus. In Gaul II there was a vigorous resistance to the jurisdiction of the sea of St. Peter. The sea of Arles, which was really ancient and claimed to be more ancient than it was, constantly asserted metropolitan rights which were acknowledged at Rome. One of its most famous bishops, Hilary, felt himself strong enough to resist even Leo the Great and refused to allow a sentence passed by himself and his provincial synod to be reviewed at Rome. In consequence of this contumacy, Leo withdrew, so far as in him lay, the metropolitan privileges of Arles, and obtained, for he did not refuse to use the secular power when it was on his side, the famous rescript of the Emperor Valentinian III, giving an emphatic supremacy to Rome over all churches, and enjoining provincial governors to compel the attendance of bishops who might be summoned thither. Practically, however, these proceedings do not seem in the end to have had much effect on the position and authority of the sea of Arles. And when the Franks came to be rulers in Gaul, the power of the Popes in that country was much weakened, for the bishops were compelled to pay more respect to a liege lord close at hand than to an ecclesiastical superior at a distance who could not protect them from him. Similarly, in Spain, after the conversion of the Gothic King to Catholic Christianity, the Archbishop of Toledo, supported by the civil power, was able to assert a large measure of independence for his province. The British Church, isolated by its position, seems to have had from the first a very loose connection with Rome, and after the withdrawal of the Roman troops, scarcely any. Chapter 9 Part 4 of History of the Christian Church during the first six centuries. This is a LibriVox recording, while LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. History of the Christian Church during the first six centuries by S. Chidom. Chapter 9 The Church and the Empire, Part 4 Ecclesiastical Councils were already summoned in the previous period, but when the Church was under the protection of the empire, they assumed a more regular and systematic character. There arose a regular gradation of parochial, provincial, diocesan, or patriarchal, and finally ecumenical councils. In the first place, a bishop assembled around him for deliberation on matters of common interest, the presbyteres of his parochia, the modern diocese. At these councils, deacons and laymen also attended, with what powers it is not quite certain. Secondly, a metropolitan held councils of all the bishops of his province. The council of Nicaea enjoined that a provincial council should be held twice every year to receive appeals from the judgment of individual bishops with regard to excommunications and other matters. It was also a court for the trial of charges against bishops of the province, though in troubled times it not unfrequently happened that it was unable to make its authority respected by influential offenders, supported perhaps by the civil power. A yet more important assembly was the council of a patriarchate, a diocese in the old sense of the word. Such a synod, assembled in Constantinople, constituted and ordained Flavian Bishop of Antioch. Such were the legislative and judicial assemblies which in ordinary times sufficed for the needs of the Church. But when the whole empire was divided and agitated by dogmatic questions of the highest importance, it was felt that nothing short of a representative assembly of the Church of the whole empire could give an authoritative decision. To such a general or ecumenical council, the bishops of the whole Church were summoned by the Emperor. The bishop had always been the constitutional organ of his Church in its relations with other Churches, and no one could be more truly representative of each Church than the man whom his fellow Churchmen had chosen to be their head. Others than bishops were, however, not unfrequently present, as Athanasius, then a deacon, at the first council of Nicaea. And it was scarcely possible that such bodies should be called together without at least the ascent of the civil power. In the time of which we are treating, religious questions were debated with the most eager animosity. The empire was as keenly excited over the question of our Lord's divinity or the double procession of the Holy Spirit, as England is during a general election which is to decide the most momentous political measures. For the sake of maintaining the peace of their dominions, it was necessary for the emperors to exercise some control over the councils, which so largely influenced their subjects. And as members of the Church they were bound to consider its welfare. It was, as Eusebius, as set up by God to take the general oversight of the Church that Constantine assembled councils of the ministers of God. And Constantine himself, addressing Assyrian synod, tells them that he had sent Dionysius, a consular, both to care for the orderly conduct of the council, and to admonish those bishops who were bound to attend, that they would incur the emperor's highest displeasure if they failed to obey his summons. Similarly, at a later date the Tribune Marcelinus was deputed to regulate and preside over the conference between the Catholics and the Donatists in Africa. The imperial commissioners generally had the place of honor in the midst before the altar rails were first named in the minutes, took the votes, arranged the order of the business, and closed the sessions. In an ecumenical synod the emperor, either in person or by a representative, took the seat of honor as Constantine himself did at the opening of the council of Nicaea. And this imperial presidency was sometimes more than formal. The emperor Marcian, in person, presided with great applause over the sixth session of the council of Chelsedon, proposed the questions, and conducted the business. It was, however, unusual for an emperor to preside in person, and it is a matter much controverted who were the actual presidents in the earlier general councils, that certain members of the synod were presidents as clear, but by whom they were appointed is very doubtful. At Chelsedon, however, one of the legates of Rome is repeatedly said to have presided, and their names stand first among those who signed the decrees. And emperors ratified the decrees of the councils which they had called. Constantine commended the decrees of Nicaea to his subjects, and the fathers of Constantinople supplicated Theodosius as he had honored them by sending out letters of summons to complete the graciousness of his act by giving authority to their conclusions. Athanasius, however, repudiates in the strongest terms the notion that the emperor's sanction added anything to the decrees of a council. When, he asks, did a decision of the church receive its binding force from the emperor? The earlier assemblies of the faithful had contented themselves with condemning erroneous doctrine. General councils often found themselves compelled to define the true. Hilary of Poissietia looked regretfully back to the time when men were content simply to receive the word of God and lamented the necessity which was laid upon his own age of defining the infinite and expressing the inexpressible. It is indeed to be feared that in some cases the combatants fought somewhat at random. When once a partisan spirit was aroused men were apt to forget that the proper object of their contention was truth and not merely victory. It might have been supposed that the conclusions of so imposing a body as an ecumenical council would have made strife to cease. In the end this was no doubt the case. The principal dogmatic statements of the great councils have been received into the life of the church, but at the time when the councils sat a defeated and disappointed party could always find grounds for caviling at their decrees, and the emperors were invoked, not always in vain, to overrule ecclesiastical synods. The defeated Aryans sought the help of the Aryan Constantius, and Athanasius makes that emperor address an assembly of bishops at Milan in the words, What I will let that be taken for a fixed rule, obey or ye shall be driven from the empire. But it was not without indignation that men saw the interference of the emperor in the affairs of the church. Leontius, bishop of Tripolius, though an Aryan, reproached Constantius with deserting his proper province, the superintendents of the state and the army, to interfere with matters which properly belonged to the bishops alone. While the church was spreading, growing, and organizing itself under its new circumstances, the old heathenism was declining and withering away. When Constantine came into power, heathenism still covered the empire. Its adherents, however inferior in all that gives life to religion, were probably greatly superior in numbers to the servants of Christ. In the time of Justinian it did but drag on a feeble existence in some carefully concealed den in a great city or among the rude dwellers in some mountain fastness. How was this brought about? It was not by a sudden and violent suppression. The emperor Constantine, whatever were his real sentiments with regard to religion, proceeded very cautiously with regard to paganism. He used his power against it only so far that in the east he converted some almost disused temples into Christian churches and suppressed certain worships which, like those of Aphrodite and of some Oriental and Egyptian deities, were morally offensive. To acknowledge himself personally a Christian was one thing. To attack the ancient religions of the empire was another. Even on the earliest of his coins, the Christian symbol Cairo appears on his helmet as a kind of personal badge. But it was not until the year 323 that the image of Mars, the tutelary deity of the Roman armies, and the inscription Soli Invicto Comiti vanished from the imperial coinage. In their place appeared allegorical figures with inscriptions such as Space Publica Beata Tranquilitas, which were not distinctly either pagan or Christian. In his new city of Constantinople he endeavored to preserve from the contamination of paganism, though even here the old goddess Ria and the fortune of Rome had shrines. At the end of his life he is said to have formally forbidden adultery. His son Constantius alludes to this in a law of the year 341, and it seems to be confirmed by the words of Eusebius and Theodorette. Still it is remarkable that no such law is to be found in any collection, and some have consequently supposed that it was almost immediately repealed, others that it related only to immoral forms of idolatry, against which the emperor had already begun to wage war. Certainly it was never carried into execution, and the pagan rhetorician Labanius many years later could appeal to the fact that Constantin had not interfered with the legal ceremonies of the old religions. Constantin left three sons, the eldest of whom, Constantin II, fell in battle against his brothers. The two remaining, very inferior to their father in the art of ruling, divided the heritage, Constans becoming emperor of the west, Constantius of the east. Neither of them kept towards the old religions the same moderation which their father had done. They joined in issuing a severe edict against paganism, but Constans had to act in his own government with caution and discretion, as paganism still retained a firm hold on the people of the west. Thus he forbade the destruction of heathen temples outside the city walls, as being often rather adjuncts of public games than special supports of paganism. A traveler who visited Rome in 347 found there seven vestals still remaining, and the worship of Jupiter, of the sun, and of the mother of the gods still carried on. Constantius was less fettered, and in his portion of the empire paganism was less powerful, and when in 350 the death of his brother left him sole emperor, he proceeded against heathen superstitions with great rigor. As the edicts hitherto issued, failed to put down heathen practices, in the year 353 he forbade he told heathenish ceremonies under pain of death and confiscation of goods. Prefects who did not enforce the law were to be liable for the same punishments. Only to Rome and Alexandria it was not applied. The emperor himself saw without emotion the old ceremonies still maintained in Rome, and did not interfere with the customs which he found there. But he saw danger to the state in the continued existence of paganism while the Christians approved of his measures against it, and urged him to further efforts. One effect of the severe laws against paganism was that many persons came into the church who convinced perhaps of the weakness of the heathen deities who endured such insults had no very solid belief in Christ nor much disposition to practice Christian virtues. And some, perplexed by the ceaseless strife of conflicting parties, attempted to frame a religion on the ground of the great truths recognized by all. Such were the Massoleons, or praying people, described by Epiphanias as gathering together from the time of Constantine in simple places of prayer, often mere open enclosures, to worship the one God whom they called the All Sovereign, or again in other places meeting at dawn and at sunset with abundant kindling of lights uttering chants and songs of praise made by earnest men of their own brotherhood. These worshipers were found principally in Palestine and Phoenicia. A kindred sect existed about the same time in Cappadocia, of which we have some account in Gregory Nazianzen's funeral sermon for his father, who had belonged to it in his youth. These two worshiped only the All Sovereign, the Most High, but in their practices they seemed to have mingled Parsism and Judaism. They rejected idols and sacrifice, but honored fire and lights. They referenced the Sabbath and observed the Mosaic prescriptions as to clean and unclean myths, while they rejected circumcision. The worshipers of heaven, who appeared at the end of the fourth century in Africa, were probably a kindred sect. The pagans were now in the condition in which the Christians had been a generation or two earlier. They were persecuted by the civil government. As was natural, they attacked the church with such weapons as were at their command. They spoke and wrote against Christianity. What was good and true in it was, they said, borrowed from the old philosophers. What it had of its own was superstition. Nay, sacred things were even burlesque in the theaters, and the disputes among Christians about matters which were to the heathen unintelligible did not incline them to look favorably on their religion. Heathenism long kept its hold on the schools and on literature. Heathens taught rhetoric at Athens and philosophy at Alexandria. The principal orators of the time were still heathens, like Labanias, the teacher of John Chrysostom. Neoplatonism sought to rejuvenize paganism, to defend it philosophically, to cover its immoral mis with a decent cloak of allegory. In this way, unstable spirits were sometimes attracted and drawn aside. In the latter half of the fourth century, the hopes of the pagans experienced a sudden revival. Julian, the son of Julius Constantius, younger brother of the great Constantine, had been brought up as a Christian among men whose Christianity was little likely to attract a very imaginative boy. He was probably his dreamy temperament, as it seemed unlikely to lead him to strive for preeminence in the empire, which saved him from the watchful jealousy of his cousin Constantius, who, Christian as he thought himself, had no scruple in removing anyone who stood in his way. When in early manhood he studied at Athens, his fellow student Gregory of Naziensis foreboded the misery which he was destined to bring on the empire, while the pagan teacher Lobanius thought that his profession of Christianity hung upon him like an ass's skin on a lion. Julian was evidently fascinated by the beauty and naturalness of the Greek classical literature, much as many Italian princes of the Renaissance were, but we must not suppose that he adopted the myths and opinions of popular paganism. It was hardly possible in that age and with his training. It was with paganism, as it appeared in the allegories of the Neoplatonists and in the mysteries which were the delight of the initiated that he was in love, a paganism which gave its main worship to one supreme deity and regarded the gods of the Pantheon as mere personifications of his varied attributes. The Christianity of the House of Constantine repelled him, as indeed it could scarcely fail to do. Cent still young and inexperienced to preside in Gaul, then torn by intestine divisions and harassed by the Teutonic tribes on the frontier, in four years he pacified the country and secured it for a time from external invasion. His success, while it endeared him to the Provincials and the army, excited the jealousy of his cousin the Emperor and to save his own life, he was compelled to lead his army against that of Constantius. The Mastership of the Empire hung in doubt when Constantius fell sick and died in the neighborhood of Tarsus. Julian, the next heir, was generally accepted as his successor and in December of that same year made his entry into Constantinople. As ruler of the Roman world, Julian could not but help give effect to the convictions which had mastered him. Even on his march through Illyria against his cousin, he had caused the temples of the national deities to be opened and their worship resumed. Fairly on the throne he proclaimed general freedom of worship and exhorted everyone frankly to confess the faith that was in him and to live in accordance with it. But with all his professed regard for religious equality he looked upon himself as chosen by the gods to restore the old religions of the Empire. He was too wise to proceed against Christianity by the method of blood and iron which had already so signally failed, but he set in motion a more light-handed persecution which might in time have produced important effects. Paganism was restored to almost all its old privileges. An edict was issued for the restoration to the temples of their confiscated endowments, most of which had been transferred to Christian churches. Much trouble and litigation ensued. The Christian clergy lost its privileges, payments to Christian churches from the public funds were withdrawn, the philosophic emperor alleging that he did the Christians no wrong in conferring on them the blessing of poverty. He forbade the use of classical literature in Christian schools on the ground, no doubt ironical, that it was unseemly that books written by men who served the old heathen deities should be expounded by those who believed the gods of Greece to be mere evil demons, misleading the minds of men. As Christianity had not yet produced a philosophic literature of its own he was aware that this edict, if carried into effect, would separate the rising generation of Christians from the highest culture of the time. He had a great contempt for much that he saw in the Christianity of his time, but he had not lived in the midst of it without finding something in it which was lacking in heathendom. He was conscious of a moral and spiritual power in the religion of Christ which he would feign to have transferred to Paganism. He recommended in the strongest terms to his pagan subjects brotherly love and mutual helpfulness, the priests of his religion in particular, he exhorted to lead pure and beneficent lives, but he rejected with scorn the Galilean who was the source of the virtues which he admired. The effect, however, of Julian's proceedings was probably much less than he had expected. The pagans doubtless walked with a prouder step and it is to be feared that some professing Christians joined the religion of the court. The fierce dissensions among Christians no doubt encouraged their enemies to hope that the time of their dissolution was at hand, but in fact the restoration of Paganism had little progress. Julian himself complained that few offered sacrifice and those only to please him. There was no love for the old gods, and in truth the emperor's own personality did not give dignity and impressiveness to his religion. He was no pagan of the old type, vigorous and healthy in mind and body. He was rather an ascetic professor, careless about his dress and his person, but with an odd manner which suggested nervous disorder. But what he might have affected in a long reign must remain unknown. In the midst of his reforms he marched against the Persians, carrying on a war which Constantius had bequeathed to him, and fell in battle, bravely fighting and encouraging his hard-pressed troops when he had reigned little more than a year and a half. With him fell the hopes of a pagan revival. The Galilean had indeed conquered, well had the banished Athanasius prophesied of Julian that he would pass away like a cloud. A kind of awe fell upon the army at the death of Julian. None of the pagan generals were willing to succeed him, and the army chose Jobian, a Pannonian, who was so zealous a Christian that his religion had brought him into discredit with the late emperor. He, however, died before he reached Constantinople, and another Pannonian, Valentinian, was chosen by the soldiery to succeed him. He, with their assent, shared the imperial dignity with his brother Valens, to whom he entrusted the command of the eastern portion of the empire while he himself took charge of the west. Valentinian was too much occupied with the wars and troubles of his times to interfere much with the affairs of religion, but Valens, a decided Arian, was guilty of great cruelty towards those who opposed him. Valentinian was succeeded in the empire of the west by his two sons, Gratian and Valentinian II, the latter a child of four years old. The real control rested, of course, with the former, who after the death of Valens, associated with himself, the Spaniard Theodosius, a worthy fellow countryman of Trajan, as emperor of the east. Gratian was under the influence of the greatest prelate of the west, Ambrose of Milan. First of the Roman emperors, he renounced the dignity of Pontifex Maximus and withdrew from the Vestal Virgins, on whom the very existence of the city was thought to depend, the privileges and the endowments which the Christian emperors had hitherto respected. After Gratian's death, Valentinian caused the altar of victory to be removed from the vestibule of the Senate House at Rome. This venerable altar, with its statue of the winged victory, had been placed there by Augustus and before it for many generations the Senators had taken their oath of fealty to the state. It had been removed by Constans, but Julian had restored it to its place. The removal of an object so long venerated and associated with so long a line of successes could not fail to rouse the deepest emotion in the adherence of the old faith. These had a worthy representative in the counselor Samachus, the prefect of the city, who addressed the emperor in words which were not without a certain pathos, begging him earnestly to leave to the Senate House its chief ornament, to permit senators who had now grown old to hand on to their descendants the emblem of good fortune which had been committed to them in their youth, to leave undisturbed the form of worship under which they had driven Hannibal from their walls and, in victory after victory, subdued the world. The humility of Samachus' appeal shows the great change which had come over the great city. The once dominant and arrogant heathenism pleads for the toleration of a single observance. It pleaded in vain. Ambrose insisted that the Christian faith forbade the restoration of the altar, and the emperor decided that what the Christian faith required should be done. Theodosius I, one of the greatest rulers of the declining empire, did much to complete the work which was begun under Constantine. When he, after the death of Valentinian II, became sole ruler of the empire, he forbade in the most emphatic terms all sorts and conditions of men to offer sacrifice to senseless idols, or even to practice private worship before the domestic shrines. To pour a libation of wine to the tutelary genius, or to hang a garland before the penates was made criminal, though heathen worship still lingered in Rome and Alexandria, but the zeal of Christian mobs had outrun the legislation of the emperors. Already many temples had been destroyed. Some few were turned into churches, but generally Christians had too great a horror of spots once dedicated to the worship of demons to permit such a transformation. The statues of the deities were broken to fragments. In vain, Labanius pleaded with his countrymen to spare the temples as monuments of art and ornaments of the towns. The destruction went on. Saint Martin of Tours was especially active in promoting the destruction of temples in his neighborhood, not without vigorous opposition from the inhabitants. And the African bishops in the year 399 supplicated the emperors to remove the remains of idolatry from Africa and to destroy at any rate those temples, which, being in remote places, served no purpose of ornament. But the Emperor Honorius, dreading perhaps the wrath of the pagans who were still numerous and attributed every public misfortune to the neglect of the ancient deities, tried to restrain the zeal of the Christians and put forth two edicts to the effect that popular festivals were not to be interfered with and that temples which had been cleared of superstitious objects were not to be destroyed. The Goths, however, under Euleric, who had none of the old Roman respect for antiquity, destroyed ruthlessly. It was when Arcadius was Emperor that the Vandal Staliccio caused the Sibylene books to be burned. The Rome of the Sibyl was indeed near its end. As was natural, Heathendom lingered longest among the country folk Pagani of remote districts, slow to receive new ideas, and so the word paganus came to be equivalent to heathen. But it was not only among unlettered laborers that Christianity was slow to find admission. Many old families prided themselves on belonging still to their ancestral religion. In the last agony of the Western Empire, when Euleric was before the walls of Rome, the pagans in the Senate determined to sacrifice on the capital and in other temples a proceeding connived at, says a pagan historian, by Pope Innocent himself. And many of the philosophic class clung to the new paganism or at any rate refused Christianity. One of the most famous of these is Hepatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon. This lady was a distinguished teacher of the Neoplatonic School at Alexandria, and was thought to have great influence with Orestes, the prefect of the city, who was not on good terms with Cyril the Bishop. Whatever may have been the immediate cause, she was seized one day by a rabble of Christians and dragged from her carriage into a neighboring church, where she was killed with pot-shirts, and her body, torn limb from limb, carried out and burned. This deed, says Socrates, a Christian witness, brought grievous shame on Cyril and the church in Alexandria, where all men respected the talent and modesty of Hepatia. Until the reign of Justinian nothing was added to the laws against paganism. Sacrifice remained forbidden, and either ceased altogether, or was celebrated in secrecy and silence. Pagan celebrations were no longer public and national, but the mysteries of adepts. In Rome itself, however, heathen practices long retained a kind of publicity. Even in the middle of the fifth century Salvian complained that the sacred fowls were still kept by the councils, and auguries still sought from the flight of birds. And to add a yet later date, the festival of the Lupercalia, perhaps as old as the city itself, and attended as a purification of the primitive settlement on the Palatine, was still celebrated, and was thought to give fertility to the land to its flocks, its herds, and its human inhabitants. Pope Galatius issued a decree against it. The Romans dreaded the curse of infertility if the usual propitiations were unperformed, but the bishop was resolute, and threatened to excommunicate the whole city if his decree was disobeyed. The rude festival came to an end, and it has sometimes been supposed that the Christian feast of the purification, held in the same month, was designed to take its place. Justinian resolved to put an end to whatever remained of heathenism. For this purpose he sought to crush the non-Christian philosophy which nourished pagan modes of thought. He closed the philosophic schools of Athens, which had been for centuries a kind of university. Many of the philosophers took refuge under the more tolerant sway of the Persian king, who, when he was able to make terms with the emperor, stipulated that they should be allowed to return to their own country. The schools, however, remained closed. But Justinian was not satisfied with forbidding pagan observances. He ordered that his subjects should be baptized on pain of confiscation and exile, a violation of the rites of conscience which had hitherto been unknown. The patricianphodius sought death itself rather than submit to the Christian rite, one of the few martyrs of paganism if a suicide may bear that name. From this time there was in the empire but little open and avowed paganism, whether in east or west. An important part of the empire, however, including Macedonia, Thessaly, Hellas, and the Peloponnesus, was soon under Justinian's time overrun by a swarm of Selvonic tribes who introduced their own form of paganism and maintained it until the 9th century. And the mainotes of Peloponnesus, secure in their mountains and their poverty, continued to worship Poseidon and Aphrodite until Basil the Macedonian in the 9th century compelled them to conform to Christianity. In Thessaly, in Sardinia, and in Corsica, there were many heathens at the end of the 6th century, and for these even Gregory the Great did not hesitate to recommend such methods of conversion as flogging and imprisonment. But in general it may be said that under the time of Justinian heathen practices either vanished altogether or were disguised under Christian names. It was in the great crash of the Roman world when Euleric and his ghosts were ravaging the west, when men's hearts were failing them for fear, and many said that the desertion of the Old Gods under whose auspices Rome had conquered the world was the cause of the present misfortunes that Augustine wrote his great work on the city of God. Of this he himself gives the following account. It consists of 22 books. In the first five he sought to refute those who asserted that temporal prosperity depended on the due payment of worship to the many gods of the Gentiles. In the next five those who, admitting that no form of religion could avert the misfortunes which were the lot of humanity, contended that polytheism was necessary to secure happiness in the world to come. In the remaining books he passes from refuting his adversaries to developing the positive side of his faith in God's government of the world. In the first four books of the second part he describes the rise of the two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. In the next four there spread and progress. In the last four the purposes which they severally subserve. The he then, he indignantly observes, far from complaining of Christianity, ought to be grateful to it for the protection which it had given them, when in the whole history of the pagan world had it been heard that the victors had spared the vanquished for the sake of the gods of the vanquished. But in the sack of Rome the Christian shrines had been found a safe refuge from the Gothic soldiery. They were not to think that a catastrophe such as the fall of Rome was to be regarded with despair. It was but the passage from the old order to the new, the painful birth of a better age. The same God who had caused the Romans, still pagan, to rise to such a height of empire, who had under the yoke of Christ give them a better kingdom. And Erosius, who at Augustine's instigation wrote a sketch of the history of the world with the intention of vindicating the ways of God to man, saw even more clearly than his master that the barbarians were beginning a new era and that future generations would look back to rude warriors of that day as kings and founders of kingdoms. Salvians saw the manifest judgment of God in the success of the Teutonic tribes. They increase, he said, day by day we decrease. They are lifted up, we are cast down. They flourish, we are withered. And he found a reason for this superiority in the greater social purity of the ghosts and bandals. What hope, he exclaims, can there be for a Roman state when the barbarians are more chaste and pure than the Romans? Nay, rather, when there is chastity among the barbarians and none among ourselves. Such were some of the thoughts called forth by the fall of Heathendom and of the great Heathen city which had been enabled for so long a time to rule the nations. Faithful souls saw in the calamities which then fell upon the earth at once the punishment of sin and the hope of better things to come.