Footnotes

1.
There is a remarkable passage of Celsus, on the impossibility of restoring a nature once thoroughly depraved, quoted by Origen in his answer to him.
2.
This is well shown by Pressensé in his Hist. des Trois premiers Siècles.
3.
See a great deal of information on this subject in Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian Church (Oxford, 1853), vol. v. pp. 370-378. It is curious that those very noisy contemporary divines who profess to resuscitate the manners of the primitive Church, and who lay so much stress on the minutest ceremonial observances, have left unpractised what was undoubtedly one of the most universal, and was believed to be one of the most important, of the institutions of early Christianity. Bingham shows that the administration of the Eucharist to infants continued in France till the twelfth century.
4.
See Cave's Primitive Christianity, part i. ch. xi. At first the Sacrament was usually received every day; but this custom soon declined in the Eastern Church, and at last passed away in the West.
5.
Plin. Ep. x. 97.
6.
The whole subject of the penitential discipline is treated minutely in Marshall's Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church (first published in 1714, and reprinted in the library of Anglo-Catholic Theology), and also in Bingham, vol. vii. Tertullian gives a graphic description of the public penances, De Pudicit. v. 13.
7.
Eusebius, H. E. viii, 7.
8.
St. Chrysostom tells this of St. Babylas. See Tillemont, Mém. pour servir à l'Hist. eccl. tome iii. p. 403.
9.
In the preface to a very ancient Milanese missal it is said of St. Agatha that as she lay in the prison cell, torn by the instruments of torture, St. Peter came to her in the form of a Christian physician, and offered to dress her wounds; but she refused, saying that she wished for no physician but Christ. St. Peter, in the name of that Celestial Physician, commanded her wounds to close, and her body became whole as before. (Tillemont, tome iii. p. 412.)
10.
See her acts in Ruinart.
11.
St. Jerome, Ep. xxxix.
12.
“Definitio brevis et vera virtutis: ordo est amoris.”—De Civ. Dei, xv. 22.
13.
Besides the obvious points of resemblance in the common, though not universal, belief that Christians should abstain from all weapons and from all oaths, the whole teaching of the early Christians about the duty of simplicity, and the wickedness of ornaments in dress (see especially the writings of Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Chrysostom, on this subject), is exceedingly like that of the Quakers. The scruple of Tertullian (De Coronâ) about Christians wearing laurel wreaths in the festivals, because laurel was called after Daphne, the lover of Apollo, was much of the same kind as that which led the Quakers to refuse to speak of Tuesday or Wednesday, lest they should recognise the gods Tuesco or Woden. On the other hand, the ecclesiastical aspects and the sacramental doctrines of the Church were the extreme opposites of Quakerism.
14.
See the masterly description of the relations of the English to the Irish in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in Froude's History of England, ch. xxiv.; and also Lord Macaulay's description of the feelings of the Master of Stair towards the Highlanders. (History of England, ch. xviii.)
15.
See on the views of Aristotle, Labourt, Recherches historiques sur les Enfanstrouvés (Paris, 1848), p. 9.
16.
See Gravina, De Ortu et Progressu Juris Civilis, lib. i. 44.
17.

“Nunc uterum vitiat quæ vult formosa videci,
Raraque in hoc ævo est, quæ velit esse parens.”

Ovid, De Nuce, 22-23.

The same writer has devoted one of his elegies (ii. 14) to reproaching his mistress Corinna with having been guilty of this act. It was not without danger, and Ovid says,

“Sæpe suos utero quæ necit ipsa perit.”

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

“Sed jacet aurato vix ulla puerpera lecto;
Tantum artes hujus, tantum medicamina possunt,
Quæ steriles facit, atque homines in ventre necandos
Conducit.”

Sat. vi. 592-595.

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

18.
See Labourt, Recherches sur les Enfans trouvés, p. 25.
19.
Among the barbarian laws there is a very curious one about a daily compensation for children who had been killed in the womb on account of the daily suffering of those children in hell. “Propterea diuturnam judicaverunt antecessores nostri compositionem et judices postquam religio Christianitatis inolevit in mundo. Quia diuturnam postquam incarnationem suscepit anima, quamvis ad nativitatis lucem minima pervenisset, patitur pœnam, quia sine sacramento regenerationis abortivo modo tradita est ad inferos.”—Leges Bajuvariorum, tit. vii. cap. xx. in Canciani, Leges Barbar. vol. ii. p. 374. The first foundling hospital of which we have undoubted record is that founded at Milan, by a man named Datheus, in a.d. 789. Muratori has preserved (Antich. Ital. Diss. xxxvii.) the charter embodying the motives of the founder, in which the following sentences occur: “Quia frequenter per luxuriam hominum genus decipitur, et exinde malum homicidii generatur, dum concipientes ex adulterio, ne prodantur in publico, fetos teneros necant, et absque baptismatis lavacro parvulos ad Tartara mittunt, quia nullum reperiunt locum, quo servare vivos valeant,” &c. Henry II. of France, 1556, made a long law against women who, “advenant le temps de leur part et délivrance de leur enfant, occultement s'en délivrent, puis le suffoquent et autrement suppriment sans leur avoir fait empartir le Saint Sacrement du Baptême.”—Labourt, Recherches sur les Enfans trouvés, p. 47. There is a story told of a Queen of Portugal (sister to Henry V. of England, and mother of St. Ferdinand) that, being in childbirth, her life was despaired of unless she took a medicine which would accelerate the birth but probably sacrifice the life of the child. She answered that “she would not purchase her temporal life by sacrificing the eternal salvation of her son.”—Bollandists, Act. Sanctor., June 5th.
20.
Tillemont, Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire ecclésiastique (Paris, 1701), tome x. p. 41. St. Clem. Alexand. says that infants in the womb and exposed infants have guardian angels to watch over them. (Strom. v.)
21.
There is an extremely large literature devoted to the subject of infanticide, exposition, foundlings, &c. The books I have chiefly followed are Terme et Monfalcon, Histoire des Enfans trouvés (Paris, 1840); Remacle, Des Hospices d'Enfans trouvés (1838); Labourt, Recherches historiques sur les Enfans trouvés (Paris, 1848); Kœnigswarter, Essai sur la Législation des Peuples anciens et modernes relative aux Enfans nés hors Mariage (Paris, 1842). There are also many details on the subject in Godefroy's Commentary to the laws about children in the Theodosian Code, in Malthus, On Population, in Edward's tract On the State of Slavery in the Early and Middle Ages of Christianity, and in most ecclesiastical histories.
22.
It must not; however, be inferred from this that infanticide increases in direct proportion to the unchastity of a nation. Probably the condition of civilised society in which it is most common, is where a large amount of actual unchastity coexists with very strong social condemnation of the sinner, and where, in consequence, there is an intense anxiety to conceal the fall. A recent writer on Spain has noticed the almost complete absence of infanticide in that country, and has ascribed it to the great leniency of public opinion towards female frailty. Foundling hospitals, also, greatly influence the history of infanticide; but the mortality in them was long so great that it may be questioned whether they have diminished the number of the deaths, though they have, as I believe, greatly diminished the number of the murders of children. Lord Kames, writing in the last half of the eighteenth century, says: “In Wales, even at present, and in the Highlands of Scotland, it is scarce a disgrace for a young woman to have a bastard. In the country last mentioned, the first instance known of a bastard child being destroyed by its mother through shame is a late one. The virtue of chastity appears to be thus gaining ground, as the only temptation a woman can have to destroy her child is to conceal her frailty.”—Sketches of the History of Man—On the Progress of the Female Sex. The last clause is clearly inaccurate, but there seems reason for believing that maternal affection is generally stronger than want, but weaker than shame.
23.
See Warburton's Divine Legation, vii. 2.
24.
Ælian, Varia Hist. ii. 7. Passages from the Greek imaginative writers, representing exposition as the avowed and habitual practice of poor parents, are collected by Terme et Monfalcon, Hist. des Enfans trouvés, pp. 39-45. Tacitus notices with praise (Germania, xix.) that the Germans did not allow infanticide. He also notices (Hist. v. 5) the prohibition of infanticide among the Jews, and ascribes it to their desire to increase the population.
25.
Dion. Halic. ii.
26.
Ad Nat. i. 15.
27.
The well-known jurisconsult Paulus had laid down the proposition, “Necare videtur non tantum is qui partum perfocat sed et is qui abjicit et qui alimonia denegat et qui publicis locis misericordiæ causa exponit quam ipse non habet.” (Dig. lib. xxv. tit. iii. 1. 4.) These words have given rise to a famous controversy between two Dutch professors, named Noodt and Bynkershoek, conducted on both sides with great learning, and on the side of Noodt with great passion. Noodt maintained that these words are simply the expression of a moral truth, not a judicial decision, and that exposition was never illegal in Rome till some time after the establishment of Christianity. His opponent argued that exposition was legally identical with infanticide, and became, therefore, illegal when the power of life and death was withdrawn from the father. (See the works of Noodt (Cologne, 1763) and of Bynkershoek (Cologne, 1761)). It was at least certain that exposition was notorious and avowed, and the law against it, if it existed, inoperative. Gibbon (Decline and Fall, ch. xliv.) thinks the law censured but did not punish exposition. See, too, Troplong, Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit, p. 271.
28.
Quintilian speaks in a tone of apology, if not justification, of the exposition of the children of destitute parents (Decl. cccvi.), and even Plutarch speaks of it without censure. (De Amor. Prolis.) There are several curious illustrations in Latin literature of the different feelings of fathers and mothers on this matter. Terence (Heauton. Act. iii. Scene 5) represents Chremes as having, as a matter of course, charged his pregnant wife to have her child killed provided it was a girl. The mother, overcome by pity, shrank from doing so, and secretly gave it to an old woman to expose it, in hopes that it might be preserved. Chremes, on hearing what had been done, reproached his wife for her womanly pity, and told her she had been not only disobedient but irrational, for she was only consigning her daughter to the life of a prostitute. In Apuleius (Metam. lib. x.) we have a similar picture of a father starting for a journey, leaving his wife in childbirth, and giving her his parting command to kill her child if it should be a girl, which she could not bring herself to do. The girl was brought up secretly. In the case of weak or deformed infants infanticide seems to have been habitual. “Portentosos fœtus extinguimus, liberos quoque, si debiles monstrosique editi sunt, mergimus. Non ira, sed ratio est, a sanis inutilia secernere.”—Seneca, De Ira, i. 15. Terence has introduced a picture of the exposition of an infant into his Andria, Act. iv. Scene 5. See, too, Suet. August. lxv. According to Suetonius (Calig. v.), on the death of Germanicus, women exposed their new-born children in sign of grief. Ovid had dwelt with much feeling on the barbarity of these practices. It is a very curious fact, which has been noticed by Warburton, that Chremes, whose sentiments about infants we have just seen, is the very personage into whose mouth Terence has put the famous sentiment, “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.”
29.
That these were the usual fates of exposed infants is noticed by several writers. Some, too, both Pagan and Christian (Quintilian, Decl. cccvi.; Lactantius, Div. Inst. vi. 20, &c.), speak of the liability to incestuous marriages resulting from frequent exposition. In the Greek poets there are several allusions to rich childless men adopting foundlings, and Juvenal says it was common for Roman wives to palm off foundlings on their husbands for their sons. (Sat. vi. 603.) There is an extremely horrible declamation in Seneca the Rhetorician (Controvers. lib. v. 33) about exposed children who were said to have been maimed and mutilated, either to prevent their recognition by their parents, or that they might gain money as beggars for their masters.
30.
See passages on this point cited by Godefroy in his Commentary to the Law “De Expositis,” Codex Theod. lib. v. tit. 7.
31.
Codex Theod. lib. xi. tit. 27.
32.
Codex Theod. lib. v. tit. 7, lex. 1.
33.
Ibid. lib. v. tit. 8, lex 1.
34.
See Godefroy's Commentary to the Law.
35.
In a letter to the younger Pliny. (Ep. x. 72.)
36.
See on this point Muratori, Antich. Ital. Diss. xxxvii.
37.
See on these laws, Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage, tome iii. pp. 52, 53.
38.
See Cod. Theod. lib. iii. tit. 3, lex 1, and the Commentary.
39.
On the very persistent denunciation of this practice by the Fathers, see many examples in Terme et Monfalcon.
40.
This is a mere question of definition, upon which lawyers have expended much learning and discussion. Cujas thought the Romans considered infanticide a crime, but a crime generically different from homicide. Godefroy maintains that it was classified as homicide, but that, being esteemed less heinous than the other forms of homicide, it was only punished by exile. See the Commentary to Cod. Theod. lib. ix. tit. 14, l. 1.
41.
Cod. Theod. lib. ix. tit. 15.
42.
Ibid. lib. ix. tit. 14, lex 1.
43.
Corp. Juris, lib. viii. tit. 52, lex 2.
44.
Leges Wisigothorum (lib. vi. tit. 3, lex 7) and other laws (lib. iv. tit. 4) condemned exposition.
45.
“Si quis infantem necaverit ut homicida teneatur.”—Capit. vii. 168.
46.
It appears, from a passage of St. Augustine, that Christian virgins were accustomed to collect exposed children and to have them brought into the church. See Terme et Monfalcon, Hist. des Enfans trouvés, p. 74.
47.
Compare Labourt, Rech. sur les Enfans trouvés, pp. 32, 33; Muratori, Antichità Italiane, Dissert. xxxvii. Muratori has also briefly noticed the history of these charities in his Carità Christiana, cap. xxvii.
48.
The first seems to have been the hospital of Sta. Maria in Sassia, which had existed with various changes from the eighth century, but was made a foundling hospital and confided to the care of Guy of Montpellier in a.d. 1204. According to one tradition, Pope Innocent III. had been shocked at hearing of infants drawn in the nets of fishermen from the Tiber. According to another, he was inspired by an angel. Compare Remacle, Hospices d'Enfans trouvés, pp. 36-37, and Amydemus, Pietas Romana (a book written a.d. 1624, and translated in part into English in a.d. 1687), Eng. trans, pp. 2, 3.
49.
For the little that is known about this missionary of charity, compare Remacle, Hospices d'Enfans trouvés, pp. 34-44; and Labourt, Recherches historiques sur les Enfans trouvés, pp. 38-41.
50.
E.g. the amphitheatre of Verona was only built under Diocletian.
51.
“Quid hoc triumpho pulchrius?... Tantam captivorum multitudinem bestiis objicit ut ingrati et perfidi non minus doloris ex ludibrio sui quam ex ipsa morte patiantur.”—Incerti, Panegyricus Constant. “Puberes qui in manus venerunt, quorum nec perfidia erat apta militiæ nec ferocia servituti ad pœnas spectaculo dati sævientes bestias multitudine sua fatigarunt.”—Eumenius, Paneg. Constant. xi.
52.
Cod. Theod. lib. xv. tit. 12, lex 1. Sozomen, i. 8.
53.
This, at least, is the opinion of Godefroy, who has discussed the subject very fully. (Cod. Theod. lib. xv. tit. 12.)
54.
Libanius, De Vita Sua, 3.
55.
Cod. Theod. lib. xv. tit. 12, l. 2.
56.
Ibid. lib. ix. tit. 40, l. 8.
57.
Ibid. lib. ix. tit. 40, l. 11.
58.
Ibid. lib. xv. tit. 12, l. 3.
59.
Symmach. Ex. x. 61.
60.
M. Wallon has traced these last shows with much learning. (Hist. de l'Esclavage, tome iii. pp. 421-429.)
61.
He wavered, however, on the subject, and on one occasion condemned them. See Wallon, tome iii. p. 423.
62.
Theodoret, v. 26.
63.
Muller, De Genio Ævi Theodosiani (1797), vol. ii. p. 88; Milman, Hist. of Early Christianity, vol. iii. pp. 343-347.
64.
See on these fights Ozanam's Civilisation in the Fifth Century (Eng. trans.), vol. i. p. 130.
65.
Nieupoort, De Ritibus Romanorum, p. 169.
66.
See a very unequivocal passage, Inst. Div. vi. 20. Several earlier testimonies on the subject are given by Barbeyrac, Morale des Pères, and in many other books.
67.
See two laws enacted in a.d. 380 (Cod. Theod. ix. tit. 35, l. 4) and a.d. 389 (Cod. Theod. ix. tit. 35, l. 5). Theodosius the Younger made a law (ix. tit. 35, l. 7) excepting the Isaurian robbers from the privileges of these laws.
68.
There are, of course, innumerable miracles punishing guilty men, but I know none assisting the civil power in doing so. As an example of the miracles in defence of the innocent, I may cite one by St. Macarius. An innocent man, accused of a murder, fled to him. He brought both the accused and accusers to the tomb of the murdered man, and asked him whether the prisoner was the murderer. The corpse answered in the negative; the bystanders implored St. Macarius to ask it to reveal the real culprit; but St. Macarius refused to do so. (Vitæ Patrum, lib. ii. cap. xxviii.)
69.
“Ut quam clementissime et ultra sanguinis effusionem puniretur.”
70.
Quæstœ. Romanæ, xcvi.
71.
Tillemont, Mém. d'Hist. ecclés. tome vi. pp. 88-98. The Donatists after a time, however, are said to have overcome their scruples, and used swords.
72.
Under the Christian kings, the barbarians multiplied the number of capital offences, but this has usually been regarded as an improvement. The Abbé Mably says: “Quoiqu'il nous reste peu d'ordonnances faites sous les premiers Mérovingiens, nous voyons qu'avant la fin du sixième siècle, les François avoient déjà adopté la doctrine salutaire des Romains au sujet de la prescription; et que renonçant à cette humanité cruelle qui les enhardissoit au mal, ils infligèrent peine de mort contre l'inceste, le vol et le meurtre qui jusques-là n'avoient été punis que par l'exil, ou dont on se rachetoit par une composition. Les François, en réformant quelques-unes de leurs lois civiles, portèrent la sévérité aussi loin que leurs pères avoient poussé l'indulgence.”—Mably, Observ. sur l'Hist. des François, liv. i. ch. iii. See, too, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xxxviii.
73.
The whole of the sixth volume of Godefroy's edition (folio) of the Theodosian code is taken up with laws of these kinds.
74.
Mme. de Staël, Réflexions sur le Suicide.
75.
The following became the theological doctrine on the subject: “Est vere homicida et reus homicidii qui se interficiendo innocentum hominem interfecerit.”—Lisle, Du Suicide, p. 400. St. Augustine has much in this strain. Lucretia, he says, either consented to the act of Sextius, or she did not. In the first case she was an adulteress, and should therefore not be admired. In the second case she was a murderess, because in killing herself she killed an innocent and virtuous woman. (De Civ. Dei, i. 19.)
76.
Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Cyprian are especially ardent in this respect; but their language is, I think, in their circumstances, extremely excusable. Compare Barbeyrac, Morale des Pères, ch. ii. § 8; ch. viii. §§ 34-39. Donne's Biathanatos (ed. 1644), pp. 58-67. Cromaziano, Istoria critica e filosofica del Suicidio ragionato (Venezia, 1788), pp. 135-140.
77.
Ambrose, De Virginibus, iii. 7.
78.
Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. viii. 12.
79.
Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. viii. 14. Bayle, in his article upon Sophronia, appears to be greatly scandalised at this act, and it seems that among the Catholics it is not considered right to admire this poor lady as much as her sister suicides. Tillemont remarks: “Comme on ne voit pas que l'église romaine l'ait jamais honorée, nous n'avons pas le mesme droit de justifier son action.”—Hist. ecclés. tome v. pp. 404, 405.
80.
Especially Barbeyrac in his Morale des Pères. He was answered by Ceillier, Cromaziano, and others. Matthew of Westminster relates of Ebba, the abbess of a Yorkshire convent which was besieged by the Danes, that she and all the other nuns, to save their chastity, deformed themselves by cutting off their noses and upper lips. (a.d. 870.)
81.
De Civ. Dei, i. 22-7.
82.
This had been suggested by St. Augustine. In the case of Pelagia, Tillemont finds a strong argument in support of this view in the astounding, if not miraculous, fact that, having thrown herself from the top of the house, she was actually killed by the fall! “Estant montée tout au haut de sa maison, fortifiée par le mouvement que J.-C. formoit dans son cœur et par le courage qu'il luy inspiroit, elle se précipita de là du haut en bas, et échapa ainsi à tous les piéges de ses ennemis. Son corps en tombant à terre frapa, dit S. Chrysostome, les yeux du démon plus vivement qu'un éclair.... Ce qui marque encore que Dieu agissoit en tout ceci c'est qu'au lieu que ces chutes ne sont pas toujours mortelles, ou que souvent ne brisant que quelques membres, elles n'ostent la vie que longtemps après, ni l'un ni l'autre n'arriva en cette rencontre; mais Dieu retira aussitost l'âme de la sainte, en sorte que sa mort parut autant l'effet de la volonté divine que de sa chute.”—Hist. ecclés. tome v. pp. 401-402.
83.
“Et virginitatis coronam et nuptiarum perdidit voluptatem.”—Ep. xxii.
84.
“Quis enim siccis oculis recordetur viginti annorum adolescentulam tam ardenti fide crucis levasse vexillum ut magis amissam virginitatem quam mariti doleret interitum?”—Ep. xxxix.
85.
For a description of these penances, see Ep. xxxviii.
86.
Ep. xxxix.
87.
St. Jerome gave some sensible advice on this point to one of his admirers. (Ep. cxxv.)
88.
Hase, St. François d'Assise, pp. 137-138. St. Palæmon is said to have died of his austerities. (Vit. S. Pachomii.)
89.
St. Augustine and St. Optatus have given accounts of these suicides in their works against the Donatists.
90.
See Todd's Life of St. Patrick, p. 462.
91.
The whole history of suicide in the dark ages has been most minutely and carefully examined by M. Bourquelot, in a very interesting series of memoirs in the third and fourth volumes of the Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes. I am much indebted to these memoirs in the following pages. See, too, Lisle, Du Suicide, Statistique, Médecine, Histoire, et Législation. (Paris, 1856.) The ferocious laws here recounted contrast remarkably with a law in the Capitularies (lib. vi. lex 70), which provides that though mass may not be celebrated for a suicide, any private person may, through charity, cause prayers to be offered up for his soul. “Quia incomprehensibilia sunt judicia Dei, et profunditatem consilii ejus nemo potest investigare.”
92.
See the very interesting work of the Abbé Bourret, l'École chrétienne de Séville sous la monarchie des Visigoths (Paris, 1855), p. 196.
93.
Roger of Wendover, a.d. 665.
94.
Esquirol, Maladies mentales, tome i. p. 591.
95.
Lea's History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (Philadelphia, 1867), p. 248.
96.
“Per lo corso di molti secoli abbiamo questo solo suicidio donnesco, e buona cosa è non averne più d'uno; perchè io non credo che la impudicizia istessa sia peggiore di questa disperata castità.”—Cromaziano, Ist. del. Suicidio, p. 126. Mariana, who, under the frock of a Jesuit, bore the heart of an ancient Roman, treats the case in a very different manner. “Ejus uxor Maria Coronelia cum mariti absentiam non ferret, ne pravis cupiditatibus cederet, vitam posuit, ardentem forte libidinem igne extinguens adacto per muliebria titione; dignam meliori seculo fœminam, insigne studium castitatis.”—De Rebus Hispan. xvi. 17.
97.
A number of passages are cited by Bourquelot.
98.
This is noticed by St. Gregory Nazianzen in a little poem which is given in Migne's edition of The Greek Fathers, tome xxxvii. p. 1459. St. Nilus and the biographer of St. Pachomius speak of these suicides, and St. Chrysostom wrote a letter of consolation to a young monk, named Stagirius, which is still extant, encouraging him to resist the temptation. See Neander, Ecclesiastical Hist. vol. iii. pp. 319, 320.
99.
Bourquelot. Pinel notices (Traité médico-philosophique sur l'Aliénation mentale (2nd ed.), pp. 44-46) the numerous cases of insanity still produced by strong religious feeling; and the history of the movements called “revivals,” in the present century, supplies much evidence to the same effect. Pinel says, religious insanity tends peculiarly to suicide (p. 265).
100.
Orosius notices (Hist. v. 14) that of all the Gauls conquered by Q. Marcius, there were none who did not prefer death to slavery. The Spaniards were famous for their suicides, to avoid old age as well as slavery. Odin, who, under different names, was the supreme divinity of most of the Northern tribes, is said to have ended his earthly life by suicide. Boadicea, the grandest figure of early British history, and Cordeilla, or Cordelia, the most pathetic figure of early British romance, were both suicides. (See on the first, Tacitus, Ann. xiv. 35-37, and on the second Geoffrey of Monmouth, ii. 15—a version from which Shakspeare has considerably diverged, but which is faithfully followed by Spenser. (Faëry Queen, book ii. canto 10.))
101.
“In our age, when the Spaniards extended that law which was made only against the cannibals, that they who would not accept the Christian religion should incur bondage, the Indians in infinite numbers escaped this by killing themselves, and never ceased till the Spaniards, by some counterfeitings, made them think that they also would kill themselves, and follow them with the same severity into the next life.”—Donne's Biathanatos, p. 56 (ed. 1644). On the evidence of the early travellers on this point, see the essay on “England's Forgotten Worthies,” in Mr. Froude's Short Studies.
102.
Lisle, pp. 427-434. Sprenger has noticed the same tendency among the witches he tried. See Calmeil, De la Folie (Paris, 1845), tome i. pp. 161, 303-305.
103.
On modern suicides the reader may consult Winslow's Anatomy of Suicide; as well as the work of M. Lisle, and also Esquirol, Maladies mentales (Paris, 1838), tome i. pp. 526-676.
104.

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

“Allu mari mi portati
Se voleti che mi sanati,
Allu mari, alla via,
Così m'ama la donna mia,
Allu mari, allu mari,
Mentre campo, t'aggio amari.”

105.
Cromaziano, Ist. del Suicidio caps. viii, ix.
106.
Cromaziano, pp. 92-93.
107.
Montesquieu, and many Continental writers, have noticed this, and most English writers of the eighteenth century seem to admit the charge. There do not appear, however, to have been any accurate statistics, and the general statements are very untrustworthy. Suicides were supposed to be especially numerous under the depressing influence of English winter fogs. The statistics made in the present century prove beyond question that they are most numerous in summer.
108.
Utopia, book ii. ch. vi.
109.
A sketch of his life, which was rather curious, is given by Cromaziano, pp. 148-151. There is a long note on the early literature in defence of suicide, in Dumas, Traité du Suicide (Amsterdam, 1723), pp. 148-149. Dumas was a Protestant minister who wrote against suicide. Among the English apologists for suicide (which he himself committed) was Blount, the translator of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and Creech, an editor of Lucretius. Concerning the former there is a note in Bayle's Dict. art. “Apollonius.” The latter is noticed by Voltaire in his Lettres Philos. He wrote as a memorandum on the margin of his “Lucretius,” “N.B. When I have finished my Commentary I must kill myself;” which he accordingly did—Voltaire says to imitate his favourite author. (Voltaire, Dict. phil. art. “Caton.”)
110.
Essais, liv. ii. ch. xiii.
111.
Lettres persanes, lxxvi.
112.
Nouvelle Héloïse, partie iii. let. 21-22. Esquirol gives a curious illustration of the way the influence of Rousseau penetrated through all classes. A little child of thirteen committed suicide, leaving a writing beginning: “Je lègue mon âme a Rousseau, mon corps à la terre.”—Maladies mentales, tome i. p. 588.
113.
In general, however, Voltaire was extremely opposed to the philosophy of despair, but he certainly approved of some forms of suicide. See the articles “Caton” and “Suicide,” in his Dict. philos.
114.
Lisle, Du Suicide, pp. 411, 412.
115.
“Le monde est vide depuis les Romains.”—St.-Just, Procés de Danton.
116.
This fact has been often noticed. The reader may find many statistics on the subject in Lisle, Du Suicide, and Winslow's Anatomy of Suicide.
117.
“There seems good reason to believe, that with the progress of mental development through the ages, there is, as in the case with other forms of organic development, a correlative degeneration going on, and that an increase of insanity is a penalty which an increase of our present civilisation necessarily pays.”—Maudsley's Physiology of Mind, p. 201.
118.
Cod. Theod. lib. ix. tit. 12.
119.
Some commentators imagine (see Muratori, Antich. Ital. Diss. xiv.) that among the Pagans the murder of a man's own slave was only assimilated to the crime of murdering the slave of another man, while in the Christian law it was defined as homicide, equivalent to the murder of a freeman. I confess, however, this point does not appear to me at all clear.
120.
See Godefroy's Commentary on these laws.
121.
Exodus xxi. 21
122.

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

Dean Milman observes, “In the old Roman society in the Eastern Empire this distinction between the marriage of the freeman and the concubinage of the slave was long recognised by Christianity itself. These unions were not blessed, as the marriages of their superiors had soon begun to be, by the Church. Basil the Macedonian (a.d. 867-886) first enacted that the priestly benediction should hallow the marriage of the slave; but the authority of the emperor was counteracted by the deep-rooted prejudices of centuries.”—Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 15.

123.
Cod. Theod. lib. ii. tit. 25.
124.
Ibid. lib. iv. tit. 7.
125.
Ibid. lib. ix. tit. 9.
126.
Corpus Juris, vi. 1.
127.
Cod. Theod. lib. vi. tit. 2.
128.
See on all this legislation, Wallon, tome iii.; Champagny, Charité chrétienne, pp. 214-224.
129.
It is worthy of notice, too, that the justice of slavery was frequently based by the Fathers, as by modern defenders of slavery, on the curse of Ham. See a number of passages noticed by Moehler, Le Christianisme et l'Esclavage (trad. franç.), pp. 151-152.
130.

The penalty, however, appears to have been reduced to two years' exclusion from communion. Muratori says: “In più consili si truova decretato, ‘excommunicatione vel pœnitentiæ biennii esse subjiciendum qui servum proprium sine conscientia judicis occiderit.’ ”—Antich. Ital. Diss. xiv.

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

131.
On the great multitude of emancipated slaves who entered, and at one time almost monopolised, the ecclesiastical offices, compare Moehler, Le Christianisme et l'Esclavage, pp. 177-178. Leo the Great tried to prevent slaves being raised to the priestly office, because it would degrade the latter.
132.
See a most admirable dissertation on this subject in Le Blant, Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, tome ii. pp. 284-299; Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xxxviii.
133.
Champagny, Charité chrétienne, p. 210. These numbers are, no doubt, exaggerated; see Wallon, Hist. de l'Esclavage, tome iii. p. 38.
134.
See Schmidt, La Société civile dans le Monde romain, pp. 246-248.
135.
Muratori has devoted two valuable dissertations (Antich. Ital. xiv. xv.) to mediæval slavery.
136.
Ozanam's Hist. of Civilisation in the Fifth Century (Eng. trans.), vol. ii. p. 43. St. Adelbert, Archbishop of Prague at the end of the tenth century, was especially famous for his opposition to the slave trade. In Sweden, the abolition of slavery in the thirteenth century was avowedly accomplished in obedience to Christian principles. (Moehler, Le Christianisme et l'Esclavage, pp. 194-196; Ryan's History of the Effects of Religion upon Mankind, pp. 142, 143.)
137.
Salvian, in a famous passage (De Gubernatione Dei, lib. v.), notices the multitudes of poor who voluntarily became “coloni” for the sake of protection and a livelihood. The coloni, who were attached to the soil, were much the same as the mediæval serfs. We have already noticed them coming into being, apparently when the Roman emperors settled barbarian prisoners to cultivate the desert lands of Italy; and before the barbarian invasions their numbers seem to have much increased. M. Guizot has devoted two chapters to this subject. (Hist. de la Civilisation en France, vii. viii.)
138.
See Finlay's Hist. of Greece, vol. i. p. 241.
139.
Moehler, p. 181.
140.
“Non v'era anticamente signor secolare, vescovo, abbate, capitolo di canonici e monistero che non avesse al suo servigio molti servi. Molto frequentemente solevano i secolari manometterli. Non cosi le chiese, e i monisteri, non per altra cagione, a mio credere, se non perchè la manumissione è una spezie di alienazione, ed era dai canoni proibito l'alienare i beni delle chiese.”—Muratori, Dissert. xv. Some Councils, however, recognised the right of bishops to emancipate Church slaves. Moehler, Le Christianisme et l'Esclavage, p. 187. Many peasants placed themselves under the dominion of the monks, as being the best masters, and also to obtain the benefit of their prayers.
141.
Muratori; Hallam's Middle Ages, ch. ii. part ii.
142.
See on this subject, Ryan, pp. 151-152; Cibrario, Economica politica del Medio Evo, lib. iii. cap. ii., and especially Le Blant, Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, tome ii. pp. 284-299.
143.
About 5/6ths of a bushel. See Hume's Essay on the Populousness of Ancient Nations.
144.
The history of these distributions is traced with admirable learning by M. Naudet in his Mémoire sur les Secours publics dans l'Antiquité (Mém. de l'Académie des Inscrip. et Belles-lettres, tome xiii.), an essay to which I am much indebted. See, too, Monnier, Hist. de l'Assistance publique; B. Dumas, Des Secours publics chez les Anciens; and Schmidt, Essai sur la Société civile dans le Monde romain et sur sa Transformation par le Christianisme.
145.
Livy, ii. 9; Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxi. 41.
146.
Dion Cassius, xxxviii. 1-7.
147.
Xiphilin, lxviii. 2; Pliny, Ep. vii. 31.
148.
Spartian. Sept. Severus.
149.
Suet. August. 41; Dion Cassius, li, 1.
150.
“Afflictos civitatis relevavit; puellas puerosque natos parentibus egestosis sumptu publico per Italiæ oppida ali jussit.”—Sext. Aurelius Victor, Epitome, “Nerva.” This measure of Nerva, though not mentioned by any other writer, is confirmed by the evidence of medals. (Naudet, p. 75.)
151.
Plin. Panegyr. xxvi. xxviii.
152.
We know of this charity from an extant bronze tablet. See Schmidt, Essai historique sur la Société romaine, p. 428.
153.
Plin. Ep. i. 8; iv. 13.
154.
Schmidt, p. 428.
155.
Spartianus, Hadrian.
156.
Capitolinus, Antoninus.
157.
Capitolinus, Anton., Marc. Aurel.
158.
Lampridius, A. Severus.
159.
See Friedlænder, Hist. des Mœurs romaines, iii. p. 157.
160.
Seneca (De Ira, lib. i. cap. 16) speaks of institutions called valetudinaria, which most writers think were private infirmaries in rich men's houses. The opinion that the Romans had public hospitals is maintained in a very learned and valuable, but little-known work, called Collections relative to the Systematic Relief of the Poor. (London, 1815.)
161.
See Tacit. Annal. xii. 58; Pliny, v. 7; x. 79.
162.
Cornelius Nepos, Epaminondas, cap. iii.
163.
Plutarch, Cimon.
164.
Diog. Laërt. Bias.
165.
Tac. Annal. iv. 63.
166.
See Pliny, Ep. x. 94, and the remarks of Naudet, pp. 38, 39.
167.
De Offic. i. 14, 15.
168.
Lucian describes this in his famous picture of Peregrinus; and Julian, much later, accused the Christians of drawing men into the Church by their charities. Socrates (Hist. Eccl. vii. 17) tells a story of a Jew who, pretending to be a convert to Christianity, had been often baptised in different sects, and had amassed a considerable fortune by the gifts he received on those occasions. He was at last miraculously detected by the Novatian bishop Paul. There are several instances in the Lives of the Saints of judgments falling on those who duped benevolent Christians.
169.
See on this subject Chastel, Études historiques sur la Charité (Paris, 1853); Martin Doisy, Hist. de la Charité pendant les quatre premiers Siècles (Paris, 1848); Champagny, Charité chrétienne; Tollemer, Origines de la Charité catholique (Paris, 1863); Ryan, History of the Effects of Religion upon Mankind (Dublin, 1820); and the works of Bingham and of Cave. I am also indebted, in this part of my subject, to Dean Milman's histories, Neander's Ecclesiastical History, and Private Life of the Early Christians, and to Migne's Encyclopédie.
170.
See the famous epistle of Julian to Arsacius, where he declares that it is shameful that “the Galileans” should support not only their own, but also the heathen poor; and also the comments of Sozomen, Hist. eccl. v. 16.
171.
The conduct of the Christians, on the first of these occasions, is described by Pontius, Vit. Cypriani, ix. 19. St. Cyprian organised their efforts. On the Alexandrian famines and pestilences, see Eusebius, H. E. vii. 22; ix. 8.
172.
The effects of this conquest have been well described by Sismondi, Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire Romain, tome i. pp. 258-260. Theodoric afterwards made some efforts to re-establish the distribution, but it never regained its former proportions. The pictures of the starvation and depopulation of Italy at this time are appalling. Some fearful facts on the subject are collected by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxxvi.; Chateaubriand, vime Disc. 2de partie.
173.
Cod. Theod. ix. xl. 15-16. The first of these laws was made by Theodosius, a.d. 392; the second by Honorius, a.d. 398.
174.
Cibrario, Economica politica del Medio Evo, lib. ii. cap. iii. The most remarkable of these saints was St. Julien l'Hospitalier, who having under a mistake killed his father and mother, as a penance became a ferryman of a great river, and having embarked on a very stormy and dangerous night at the voice of a traveller in distress, received Christ into his boat. His story is painted on a window of the thirteenth century, in Rouen Cathedral. See Langlois, Essai historique sur la Peinture sur verre, pp. 32-37.
175.
The fact of leprosy being taken as the image of sin gave rise to some curious notions of its supernatural character, and to many legends of saints curing leprosy by baptism. See Maury, Légendes pieuses du Moyen-Age, pp. 64-65.
176.
See on these hospitals Cibrario, Econ. Politica del Medio Evo, lib. iii. cap. ii.
177.
Calmeil observes: “On a souvent constaté depuis un demi-siècle que la folie est sujette à prendre la teinte des croyances religieuses, des idées philosophiques ou superstitieuses, des préjugés sociaux qui ont cours, qui sont actuellement en vogue parmi les peuples ou les nations; que cette teinte varie dans un même pays suivant le caractère des événements relatifs à la politique extérieure, le caractère des événements civils, la nature des productions littéraires, des représentations théâtrales, suivant la tournure, la direction, le genre d'élan qu'y prennent l'industrie, les arts et les sciences.”—De la Folie, tome i. pp. 122-123.
178.

Milman's History of Latin Christianity, vol. vii. pp. 353, 354.

“Venit de Anglia virgo decora valde, pariterque facunda, dicens, Spiritum Sanctum incarnatum in redemptionem mulierum, et baptizavit mulieres in nomine Patris, Filii et sui. Quæ mortua ducta fuit in Mediolanum, ibi et cremata.”—Annales Dominicanorum Colmariensium (in the “Rerum Germanic. Scriptores”).

179.
“Martin Gonçalez, du diocèse de Cuenca, disoit qu'il etoit frère de l'archange S. Michel, la première vérité et l'échelle du ciel; que c'étoit pour lui que Dieu réservoit la place que Lucifer avoit perdue; que tous les jours il s'élevoit au plus haut de l'Empirée et descendoit ensuite au plus profond des enfers; qu'a la fin du monde, qui étoit proche, il iroit au devant de l'Antichrist et qu'il le terrasseroit, ayant á sa main la croix de Jésus-Christ et sa couronne d'épines. L'archevêque de Tolède, n'ayant pu convertir ce fanatique obstiné, ni l'empêcher de dogmatiser, l'avoit enfin livré au bras séculier.”—Touron, Hist. des Hommes illustres de l'ordre de St. Dominique, Paris, 1745 (Vie d'Eyméricus), tome ii. p. 635.
180.
Calmeil, De la Folie, tome i. p. 134.
181.
Ibid. tome i. pp. 242-247.
182.
Calmeil, tome i. p. 247.
183.
See Esquirol, Maladies mentales.
184.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxxvii.
185.
Purchas's Pilgrims, ii. 1452.
186.
Desmaisons' Asiles d'Aliénés en Espagne, p. 53.
187.
Leo Africanus, Description of Africa, book iii.
188.
I have taken these facts from a very interesting little work, Desmaisons, Des Asiles d'Aliénés en Espagne; Recherches historiques et médicales (Paris, 1859). Dr. Desmaisons conjectures that the Spaniards took their asylums from the Mohammedans; but, as it seems to me, he altogether fails to prove his point. His work, however, contains some curious information on the history of lunatic asylums.
189.
Amydemus, Pietas Romana (Oxford, 1687), p. 21; Desmaisons, p. 108.
190.
Pinel, Traité médico-philosophique, pp. 241, 242.
191.
See the dreadful description in Pinel, pp. 200-202.
192.
Malthus, who is sometimes, though most unjustly, described as an enemy to all charity, has devoted an admirable chapter (On Population, book iv. ch. ix.) to the “direction of our charity;” but the fullest examination of this subject with which I am acquainted is the very interesting work of Duchâtel, Sur la Charité.
193.
This is very tersely expressed by a great Protestant writer: “I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the will and command of my God.”—Sir T. Brown, Religio Medici, part ii. § 2. A saying almost exactly similar is, if I remember right, ascribed to St. Elizabeth of Hungary.
194.
See Butler's Lives of the Saints.
195.
Campion's Historie of Ireland, book ii. chap. x.
196.
He wrote his Perils of the Last Times in the interest of the University of Paris, of which he was a Professor, and which was at war with the mendicant orders. See Milman's Latin Christianity, vol. vi. pp. 348-356; Fleury, Eccl. Hist. lxxxiv. 57.
197.
Henry de Knyghton, De Eventibus Angliæ.
198.
There was some severe legislation in England on the subject after the Black Death. Eden's History of the Working Classes, vol. i. p. 34. In France, too, a royal ordinance of 1350 ordered men who had been convicted of begging three times to be branded with a hot iron. Monteil, Hist. des Français, tome i. p. 434.
199.
Eden, vol. i. pp. 83-87.
200.
Ibid. pp. 101-103.
201.
Ibid. pp. 127-130.
202.
Morighini, Institutions pieuses de Rome.
203.
Eden, History of the Labouring Classes, i. 83.
204.
Locke discussed the great increase of poverty, and a bill was brought in suggesting some remedies, but did not pass. (Eden, vol. i. pp. 243-248.)
205.
In a very forcible letter addressed to the Irish Catholic clergy.
206.
This tract, which is extremely valuable for the light it throws upon the social condition of England at the time, was written in opposition to a bill providing that the poor in the poor-houses should do wool, hemp, iron, and other works. Defoe says that wages in England were higher than anywhere on the Continent, though the amount of mendicancy was enormous. “The reason why so many pretend to want work is, that they can live so well with the pretence of wanting work.... I affirm of my own knowledge, when I have wanted a man for labouring work, and offered nine shillings per week to strolling fellows at my door, they have frequently told me to my face they could get more a-begging.”
207.
Reforma degl' Instituti pii di Modena (published first anonymously at Modena). It has been reprinted in the library of the Italian economists.
208.
Essay on Charity Schools.
209.
Magdalen asylums have been very vehemently assailed by M. Charles Comte, in his Traité de Législation. On the subject of Foundling Hospitals there is a whole literature. They were violently attacked by, I believe, Lord Brougham, in the Edinburgh Review, in the early part of this century. Writers of this stamp, and indeed most political economists, greatly exaggerate the forethought of men and women, especially in matters where the passions are concerned. It may be questioned whether one woman in a hundred, who plunges into a career of vice, is in the smallest degree influenced by a consideration of whether or not charitable institutions are provided for the support of aged penitents.
210.
Apol. ch. xlii.
211.
On these penances, see Bingham, Antiq. book vii. Bingham, I think, justly divides the history of asceticism into three periods. During the first, which extends from the foundation of the Church to a.d. 250, there were men and women who, with a view to spiritual perfection, abstained from marriage, relinquished amusements, accustomed themselves to severe fasts, and gave up their property to works of charity; but did this in the middle of society and without leading the life of either a hermit or a monk. During the second period, which extended from the Decian persecution, anchorites were numerous, but the custom of a common or cœnobitic life was unknown. It was originated in the time of Constantine by Pachomius.
212.
This is expressly stated by St. Jerome (Vit. Pauli).
213.
See on this subject some curious evidence in Neander's Life of Chrysostom. St. Chrysostom wrote a long work to console fathers whose sons were thus seduced to the desert.
214.
On this tradition see Champagny, Les Antonins, tome i. p. 193.
215.
Ep. cxxiii.
216.
Euseb. Eccl. Hist. ii. 23.
217.
Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxxvii.; a brief but masterly sketch of the progress of the movement.
218.
Palladius, Hist. Laus. xxxviii.
219.
Jerome, Preface to the Rule of St. Pachomius, § 7.
220.
Cassian, De Cœnob. Inst. iv. 1.
221.
Rufinus, Hist. Monach. ch. v. Rufinus visited it himself.
222.
Palladius, Hist. Laus. lxxvi.
223.
Rufinus, Hist. Mon. vii.
224.
There is a good deal of doubt and controversy about this. See a note in Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. (Soame's edition), vol. i. p. 354.
225.
Most of the passages remaining on the subject of the foundation of monachism are given by Thomassin, Discipline de l'Église, part i. livre iii. ch. xii. This work contains also much general information about monachism. A curious collection of statistics of the numbers of the monks in different localities, additional to those I have given and gleaned from the Lives of the Saints, may be found in Pitra (Vie de St. Léger, Introd. p. lix.); 2,100, or, according to another account, 3,000 monks, lived in the monastery of Banchor.
226.

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

The hospitality of the monks was not without drawbacks. In a church on Mount Nitria three whips were hung on a palm-tree—one for chastising monks, another for chastising thieves, and a third for chastising guests. (Palladius, Hist. Laus. vii.)

227.
Vita Pauli. St. Jerome adds, that some will not believe this, because they have no faith, but that all things are possible for those that believe.
228.
Vita St. Hilarion.
229.
See a long list of these penances in Tillemont, Mém. pour servir à l'Hist. ecclés. tome viii.
230.
Vitæ Patrum (Pachomius). He used to lean against a wall when overcome by drowsiness.
231.
Vitæ Patrum, ix. 3.
232.
Sozomen, vi. 29.
233.
E.g. St. Antony, according to his biographer St. Athanasius.
234.
“Il y eut dans le désert de Scété des solitaires d'une éminente perfection.... On prétend que pour l'ordinaire ils passoient des semaines entières sans manger, mais apparemment cela ne se faisoit que dans des occasions particulières.”—Tillemont, Mém. pour servir à l'Hist. eccl. tome viii. p. 580. Even this, however, was admirable!
235.
Palladius, Hist. Laus. cap. xx.
236.
“Primum cum accessisset ad eremum tribus continuis annis sub cujusdam saxi rupe stans, semper oravit, ita ut nunquam omnino resederit neque Jacuerit. Somni autem tantum caperet, quantum stans capere potuit; cibum vero nunquam sumpserat nisi die Dominica. Presbyter enim tunc veniebat ad eum et offerebat pro eo sacrificium idque ei solum sacramentum erat et victus.”—Rufinus, Hist. Monach. cap. xv.
237.
Thus St. Antony used to live in a tomb, where he was beaten by the devil. (St. Athanasius, Life of Antony.)
238.
βοσκοί. See on these monks Sozomen, vi. 33; Evagrius, i. 21. It is mentioned of a certain St. Marc of Athens, that, having lived for thirty years naked in the desert, his body was covered with hair like that of a wild beast. (Bollandists, March 29.) St. Mary of Egypt, during part of her period of penance, lived upon grass. (Vitæ Patrum.)
239.
Life of Antony.
240.
“II ne faisoit pas aussi difficulté dans sa vieillesse de se laver quelquefois les piez. Et comme on témoignoit s'en étonner et trouver que cela ne répondoit pas à la vie austère des anciens, il se justifioit par ces paroles: Nous avons appris à tuer, non pas notre corps mais nos passions.”—Tillemont, Mém. Hist. eccl. tome xv. p. 148. This saint was so very virtuous, that he sometimes remained without eating for whole weeks.
241.
“Non appropinquavit oleum corpusculo ejus. Facies vel etiam pedes a die conversionis suæ nunquam diluti sunt.”—Vitæ Patrum, c. xvii.
242.
“In facie ejus puritas animi noscebatur.”—Ibid. c. xviii.
243.
Socrates, iv. 23.
244.
Heraclidis Paradisus (Rosweyde), c. xlii.
245.
“Nulla earum pedes suos abluebat; aliquantæ vero audientes de balneo loqui, irridentes, confusionem et magnam abominationem se audire judicabant, quæ neque audi tum suum hoc audire patiebantur.”—Vit. S. Euphrax. c. vi. (Rosweyde.)
246.
See her acts, Bollandists, April 2, and in the Vitæ Patrum.
247.
“Patres nostri nunquam facies suas lavabant, nos autem lavacra publica balneaque frequentamus.”—Moschus, Pratum Spirituale, clxviii.
248.

Pratum Spirituale, lxxx.

An Irish saint, named Coemgenus, is said to have shown his devotion in a way which was directly opposite to that of the other saints I have mentioned—by his special use of cold water—but the principle in each case was the same—to mortify nature. St. Coemgenus was accustomed to pray for an hour every night in a pool of cold water, while the devil sent a horrible beast to swim round him. An angel, however, was sent to him for three purposes. “Tribus de causis à Domino missus est angelus ibi ad S. Coemgenum. Prima ut a diversis suis gravibus laboribus levius viveret paulisper; secunda ut horridam bestiam sancto infestam repelleret; tertia ut frigiditatem aquæ calefaceret.”—Bollandists, June 3. The editors say these acts are of doubtful authenticity.

249.
See his Life by his disciple Antony, in the Vitæ Patrum, Evagrius, i. 13, 14. Theodoret, Philotheos, cap. xxvi.
250.
Palladius, Hist. Laus. lxxvi.
251.
Rufinus, Hist. Monach. xxxiii.
252.
We have a striking illustration of this in St. Arsenius. His eyelashes are said to have fallen off through continual weeping, and he had always, when at work, to put a cloth on his breast to receive his tears. As he felt his death approaching, his terror rose to the point of agony. The monks who were about him said, “ ‘Quid fles, pater? numquid et tu times?’ Ille respondit, ‘In veritate timeo et iste timor qui nunc mecum est, semper in me fuit, ex quo factus sum monachus.’ ”—Verba Seniorum, Prol. § 163. It was said of St. Abraham that no day passed after his conversion without his shedding tears. (Vit. Patrum.) St. John the dwarf once saw a monk laughing immoderately at dinner, and was so horrified that he at once began to cry. (Tillemont, Mém. de l'Hist. ecclés. tome x. p. 430.) St. Basil (Regulæ, interrog. xvii.) gives a remarkable disquisition on the wickedness of laughing, and he observes that this was the one bodily affection which Christ does not seem to have known. Mr. Buckle has collected a series of passages to precisely the same effect from the writings of the Scotch divines. (Hist. of Civilisation, vol. ii. pp. 385-386.)
253.
“Monachus autem non doctoris habet sed plangentis officium.”—Contr. Vigilant. xv.
254.
As Tillemont puts it: “Il se trouva très-peu de saints en qui Dieu ait joint les talens extérieurs de l'éloquence et de la science avec la grâce de la prophétie et des miracles. Ce sont des dons que sa Providence a presque toujours séparés.”—Mém. Hist. ecclés. tome iv. p. 315.
255.
St. Athanasius, Vit. Anton.
256.
Ep. xxii. He says his shoulders were bruised when he awoke.
257.
Ep. lxx.; Adv. Rufinum, lib. i. ch. xxx. He there speaks of his vision as a mere dream, not binding. He elsewhere (Ep. cxxv.) speaks very sensibly of the advantage of hermits occupying themselves, and says he learnt Hebrew to keep away unholy thoughts.
258.
Sozomen, vi. 28; Rufinus, Hist. Monach. ch. vi. Socrates tells rather a touching story of one of these illiterate saints, named Pambos. Being unable to read, he came to some one to be taught a psalm. Having learnt the single verse, “I said I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not with my tongue,” he went away, saying that was enough if it were practically acquired. When asked, six months, and again many years, after, why he did not come to learn another verse, he answered that he had never been able truly to master this. (H. E. iv. 23.)
259.
Tillemont, x. p. 61.
260.
Ibid. viii. 490; Socrates, H. E. iv. 23.
261.
I have combined in this passage incidents from three distinct lives. St. Jerome, in a very famous and very beautiful passage of his letter to Eustochium (Ep. xxii.) describes the manner in which the forms of dancing-girls appeared to surround him as he knelt upon the desert sands. St. Mary of Egypt (Vitæ Patrum, ch. xix.) was especially tortured by the recollection of the songs she had sung when young, which continually haunted her mind. St. Hilarion (see his Life by St. Jerome) thought he saw a gladiatorial show while he was repeating the psalms. The manner in which the different visions faded into one another like dissolving views is repeatedly described in the biographies.
262.
Rufinus, Hist. Monach., ch. xi. This saint was St. Helenus.
263.
Life of St. Pachomius (Vit. Patrum), cap. ix.
264.
Rufinus, Hist. Monach. cap. i. This story was told to Rufinus by St. John the hermit. The same saint described his own visions very graphically. “Denique etiam me frequenter dæmones noctibus seduxerunt, et neque orare neque requiescere permiserunt, phantasias quasdam per noctem totam sensibus meis et cogitationes suggerentes. Mane vero velut cum quadam illusione prosternebant se ante me dicentes, Indulge nobis, abbas, quia laborem tibi incussimus tota nocte.”—Ibid. St. Benedict in the desert is said to have been tortured by the recollection of a beautiful girl he had once seen, and only regained his composure by rolling in thorns. (St. Greg. Dial. ii. 2.)
265.
She lived also for some time in a convent at Jerusalem, which she had founded. Melania (who was one of St. Jerome's friends) was a lady of rank and fortune, who devoted her property to the monks. See her journey in Rosweyde, lib. ii.
266.
See his Life in Tillemont.
267.
Ibid. x. p. 14. A certain Didymus lived entirely alone till his death, which took place when he was ninety. (Socrates, H. E. iv. 23.)
268.
Rufinus, Hist. Monachorum, cap. i.
269.
Verba Seniorum, § 65.
270.
Pelagia was very pretty, and, according to her own account, “her sins were heavier than the sand.” The people of Antioch, who were very fond of her, called her Margarita, or the pearl. “Il arriva un jour que divers évesques, appelez par celui d'Antioche pour quelques affaires, estant ensemble à la porte de l'eglise de S.-Julien, Pélagie passa devant eux dans tout l'éclat des pompes du diable, n'ayant pas seulement une coeffe sur sa teste ni un mouchoir sur ses épaules, ce qu'on remarqua comme le comble de son impudence. Tous les évesques baissèrent les yeux en gémissant pour ne pas voir ce dangereux objet de péché, hors Nonne, très-saint évesque d'Héliople, qui la regarda avec une attention qui fit peine aux autres.” However, this bishop immediately began crying a great deal, and reassured his brethren, and a sermon which he preached led to the conversion of the actress. (Tillemont, Mém. d'Hist. ecclés. tome xii. pp. 378-380. See, too, on women, “under pretence of religion, attiring themselves as men,” Sozomen, iii. 14.)
271.
Tillemont, tome x. pp. 376, 377. Apart from family affections, there are some curious instances recorded of the anxiety of the saints to avoid distractions. One monk used to cover his face when he went into his garden, lest the sight of the trees should disturb his mind. (Verb. Seniorum.) St. Arsenius could not bear the rustling of the reeds (ibid.); and a saint named Boniface struck dead a man who went about with an ape and a cymbal, because he had (apparently quite unintentionally) disturbed him at his prayers. (St. Greg. Dial. i. 9.)
272.
“Quemadmodum se jam divitem non esse sciebat, ita etiam patrem se esse nesciret.”—Cassian, De Cœnobiorum Institutis, iv. 27.
273.
“Cumque taliter infans sub oculis ejus per dies singulos ageretur, pro amore nihilominus Christi et obedientiæ virtute, rigida semper atque immobilia patris viscera permanserunt ... parum cogitans de lacrymis ejus, sed de propria humilitate ac perfectione sollicitus.”—Ibid.
274.
Ibid.
275.
Bollandists, July 6; Verba Seniorum, xiv.
276.
Verba Seniorum, xiv.
277.

Tartuffe (tirant un mouchoir
de sa poche).

“Ah, mon Dieu, je vous prie,
Avant que de parler, prenez-moi ce mouchoir.

Dorine.

Comment!

Tartuffe.

Couvrez ce sein que je ne saurois voir;
Par de pareils objets des âmes sont blessées,
Et cela fait venir de coupables pensées.”

Tartuffe, Acte iii. scène 2.

278.
Bollandists, July 6.
279.
Verba Seniorum, iv. The poor woman, being startled and perplexed at the proceedings of her son, said, “Quid sic operuisti manus tuas, fili? Ille autem dixit: Quia corpus mulieris ignis est, et ex eo ipso quo te contingebam veniebat mihi commemoratio aliarum feminarum in animo.”
280.
Tillemont, Mém. de l'Hist. ecclés. tome x. pp. 444, 445.
281.
Vit. S. Pachomius, ch. xxxi.; Verba Seniorum.
282.
Verba Senorium, xiv.
283.
Palladius, Hist. Laus. cap. lxxxvii.
284.
Bollandists, June 6. I avail myself again of the version of Tillemont. “Lorsque S. Pemen demeuroit en Egypte avec ses frères, leur mère, qui avoit un extrême désir de les voir, venoit souvent au lieu où ils estoient, sans pouvoir jamais avoir cette satisfaction. Une fois enfin elle prit si bien son temps qu'elle les rencontra qui alloient à l'église, mais dès qu'ils la virent ils s'en retournèrent en haste dans leur cellule et fermèrent la porte sur eux. Elle les suivit, et trouvant la porte, elle les appeloit avec des larmes et des cris capables de les toucher de compassion.... Pemen s'y leva et s'y en alla, et l'entendant pleurer il luy dit, tenant toujours la porte fermée, ‘Pourquoi vous lassez-vous inutilement à pleurer et crier? N'êtes-vous pas déjà assez abattue par la vieillesse?’ Elle reconnut la voix de Pemen, et s'efforçant encore davantage, elle s'écria, ‘Hé, mes enfans, c'est que je voudrais bien vous voir: et quel mal y a-t-il que je vous voie? Ne suis-je pas votre mère, et ne vous ai-je pas nourri du lait de mes mammelles? Je suis déjà toute pleine de rides, et lorsque je vous ay entendu, l'extrême envie que j'ay de vous voir m'a tellement émue que je suis presque tombée en défaillance.’ ”—Mémoires de l'Hist. ecclès. tome xv. pp. 157, 158.
285.
The original is much more eloquent than my translation. “Fili, quare hoc fecisti? Pro utero quo te portavi, satiasti me luctu, pro lactatione qua te lactavi dedisti mihi lacrymas, pro osculo quo te osculata sum, dedisti mihi amaras cordis angustias; pro dolore et labore quem passa sum, imposuisti mihi sævissimas plagas.”—Vita Simeonis (in Rosweyde).
286.
Bingham, Antiquities, book vii. ch. iii.
287.
Ibid.
288.
Bingham, Antiquities, book vii. chap. 3.
289.
Milman's Early Christianity (ed. 1867), vol. iii. p. 122.
290.
Ibid. vol. iii. p. 153.
291.
Ibid. vol. iii. p. 120.
292.
De Virginibus, i. 11.
293.
See Milman's Early Christianity, vol. iii. p. 121.
294.
De Virginibus, i. 11.
295.
Epist. xxiv.
296.
St. Jerome describes the scene at her departure with admiring eloquence. “Descendit ad portum fratre, cognatis, affinibus et quod majus est liberis prosequentibus, et elementissimam matrem pietate vincere cupientibus. Jam carbasa tendebantur, et remorum ductu navis in altum protrahebatur. Parvus Toxotius supplices manus tendebat in littore, Ruffina jam nubilis ut suas expectaret nuptias tacens fletibus obsecrabat. Et tamen illa siccos tendebat ad cælum oculos, pietatem in filios pietate in Deum superans. Nesciebat se matrem ut Christi probaret ancillam.”—Ep. cviii. In another place he says of her: “Testis est Jesus, ne unum quidem nummum ab ea filiæ derelictum sed, ut ante jam dixi, derelictum magnum æs alienum.”—Ibid. And again: “Vis, lector, ejus breviter scire virtutes? Omnes suos pauperes, pauperior ipsa dimisit.”—Ibid.
297.
See Chastel, Etudes historiques sur la Charité, p. 231. The parents of St. Gregory Nazianzen had made this request, which was faithfully observed.
298.
Chastel, p. 232.
299.
See a characteristic passage from the Life of St. Fulgentius, quoted by Dean Milman. “Facile potest juvenis tolerare quemcunque imposuerit laborem qui poterit maternum jam despicere dolorem.”—Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 82.
300.
Ep. xiv. (Ad Heliodorum).
301.
St. Greg. Dial. ii. 24.
302.
Bollandists, May 3 (vol. vii. p. 561).
303.
“Hospitibus omni loco ac tempore liberalissimus fuit.... Solis consanguineis durus erat et inhumanus, tamquam ignotos illos respiciens.”—Bollandists, May 29.
304.
See Helyot, Dict. des Ordres religieux, art. “Camaldules.”
305.
See the charming sketch in the Life of St. Francis, by Hase.
306.
The legend of St. Scholastica, the sister of St. Benedict, has been often quoted. He had visited her, and was about to leave in the evening, when she implored him to stay. He refused, and she then prayed to God, who sent so violent a tempest that the saint was unable to depart. (St. Greg. Dial. ii. 33.) Cassian speaks of a monk who thought it his duty never to see his mother, but who laboured for a whole year to pay off a debt she had incurred. (Cœnob. Inst. v. 38.) St. Jerome mentions the strong natural affection of Paula, though she considered it a virtue to mortify it. (Ep. cviii.)
307.
Life of Antony. See, too, the sentiments of St. Pachomius, Vit. cap. xxvii.
308.
“Nec ulla res aliena magis quam publica.”—Tertullian, Apol. ch. xxxviii.
309.
“Quid interest sub cujus imperio vivat homo moriturus, si illi qui imperant, ad impia et iniqua non cogant.”—St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, v. 17.
310.
St. Jerome declares that “Monachum in patria sua perfectum esse non posse, perfectum autem esse nolle delinquere est.”—Ep. xiv. Dean Milman well says of a later period: “According to the monastic view of Christianity, the total abandonment of the world, with all its ties and duties, as well as its treasures, its enjoyments, and objects of ambition, advanced rather than diminished the hopes of salvation. Why should they fight for a perishing world, from which it was better to be estranged?... It is singular, indeed, that while we have seen the Eastern monks turned into fierce undisciplined soldiers, perilling their own lives and shedding the blood of others without remorse, in assertion of some shadowy shade of orthodox expression, hardly anywhere do we find them asserting their liberties or their religion with intrepid resistance. Hatred of heresy was a more stirring motive than the dread or the danger of Islamism. After the first defeats the Christian mind was still further prostrated by the common notion that the invasion was a just and heaven-commissioned visitation; ... resistance a vain, almost an impious struggle to avert inevitable punishment.”—Milman's Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 206. Compare Massillon's famous Discours au Régiment de Catinat:—“Ce qu'il y a ici de plus déplorable, c'est que dans une vie rude et pénible, dans des emplois dont les devoirs passent quelquefois la rigueur des cloîtres les plus austères, vous souffrez toujours en vain pour l'autre vie.... Dix ans de services ont plus usé votre corps qu'une vie entière de pénitence ... un seul jour de ces souffrances, consacré au Seigneur, vous aurait peut-être valu un bonheur éternel.”
311.
See a very striking passage in Salvian, De Gubern. Div. lib. vi.
312.
Chateaubriand very truly says, “qu'Orose et saint Augustin étoient plus occupés du schisme de Pélage que de la désolation de l'Afrique et des Gaules.”—Études histor. vime discours, 2de partie. The remark might certainly be extended much further.
313.
Zosimus, Hist. v. 41. This was on the first occasion when Rome was menaced by Alaric.
314.
See Merivale's Conversion of the Northern Nations, pp. 207-210.
315.
See Sismondi, Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire romain, tome i. p. 230.
316.
Eunapius. There is no other authority for the story of the treachery, which is not believed by Gibbon.
317.
Sismondi, Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire romain, tome ii. pp. 52-54; Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 213. The Monophysites were greatly afflicted because, after the conquest, the Mohammedans tolerated the orthodox believers as well as themselves, and were unable to appreciate the distinction between them. In Gaul, the orthodox clergy favoured the invasions of the Franks, who, alone of the barbarian conquerors of Gaul, were Catholics, and St. Aprunculus was obliged to fly, the Burgundians desiring to kill him on account of his suspected connivance with the invaders. (Greg. Tur. ii. 23.)
318.
Dean Milman says of the Church, “if treacherous to the interests of the Roman Empire, it was true to those of mankind.”—Hist. of Christianity, vol. iii. p. 48. So Gibbon: “If the decline of the Roman Empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, the victorious religion broke the violence of the fall and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors.”—Ch. xxxviii.
319.
Observe with what a fine perception St. Augustine notices the essentially unchristian character of the moral dispositions to which the greatness of Rome was due. He quotes the sentence of Sallust: “Civitas, incredibile memoratu est, adeptâ libertate quantum brevi creverit, tanta cupido gloriæ incesserat;” and adds: “Ista ergo laudis aviditas et cupido gloriæ multa illa miranda fecit, laudabilia scilicet atque gloriosa secundum hominum existimationem ... causa honoris, laudis et gloriæ consuluerunt patriæ, in qua ipsam gloriam requirebant, salutemque ejus saluti suæ præponere non dubitaverunt, pro isto uno vitio, id est, amore laudis, pecuniæ cupiditatem et multa alia vitia comprimentes.... Quid aliud amarent quam gloriam, qua volebant etiam post mortem tanquam vivere in ore laudantium?”—De Civ. Dei, v. 12-13.
320.

“Præter majorum cineres atque ossa, volucri
Carpento rapitur pinguis Damasippus et ipse,
Ipse rotam stringit multo sufflamine consul;
Nocte quidem; sed luna videt, sed sidera testes
Intendunt oculos. Finitum tempus honoris
Quum fuerit, clara Damasippus luce flagellum Sumet.”—Juvenal, Sat. viii. 146.

321.
Nat. Quæst. iv. 13. Ep. 78.
322.
“Pessimum vitæ scelus fecit, qui id [aurum] primus induit digitis ... quisquis primus instituit cunctanter id fecit, lævisque manibus, latentibusque induit.”—Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxiii. 4.
323.
See a curious passage in his Apologia. It should be said that we have only his own account of the charges brought against him.
324.
The history of false hair has been written with much learning by M. Guerle in his Éloge des Perruques.
325.
The fullest view of this age is given in a very learned little work by Peter Erasmus Müller (1797), De Genio Ævi Theodosiani. Montfaucon has also devoted two essays to the moral condition of the Eastern world, one of which is given in Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History.
326.
See on these abuses Mosheim, Eccl. Hist. (Soame's ed.), vol. i. p. 463; Cave's Primitive Christianity, part i. ch. xi.
327.
Cave's Primitive Christianity, part i. ch. vii.
328.
Ep. lxi.
329.
Evagrius describes with much admiration how certain monks of Palestine, by “a life wholly excellent and divine,” had so overcome their passions that they were accustomed to bathe with women; for “neither sight nor touch, nor a woman's embrace, could make them relapse into their natural condition. Among men they desired to be men, and among women, women.” (H. E. i. 21.)
330.
These “mulieres subintroductæ,” as they were called, are continually noticed by Cyprian, Jerome, and Chrysostom. See Müller, De Genio Ævi Theodosiani, and also the Codex Theod. xvi. tit. ii. lex 44, with the Comments. Dr. Todd, in his learned Life of St. Patrick (p. 91), quotes (I shall not venture to do so) from the Lives of the Irish Saints an extremely curious legend of a kind of contest of sanctity between St. Scuthinus and St. Brendan, in which it was clearly proved that the former had mastered his passions more completely than the latter. An enthusiast named Robert d'Arbrisselles is said in the twelfth century to have revived the custom. (Jortin's Remarks, a.d. 1106.)
331.
St. Jerome gives (Ep. lii.) an extremely curious picture of these clerical flatterers, and several examples of the terms of endearment they were accustomed to employ. The tone of flattery which St. Jerome himself, though doubtless with the purest motives, employs in his copious correspondence with his female admirers, is to a modern layman peculiarly repulsive, and sometimes verges upon blasphemy. In his letter to Eustochium, whose daughter as a nun had become the “bride of Christ,” he calls the mother “Socrus Dei,” the mother-in-law of God. See, too, the extravagant flatteries of Chrysostom in his correspondence with Olympias.
332.
“Pudet dicere sacerdotes idolorum, mimi et aurigæ et scorta hæreditates capiunt; solis clericis et monachis hoc lege prohibetur, et prohibetur non a persecutoribus, sed a principibus Christianis. Nec de lege conqueror sed doleo cur meruerimus hanc legem.” Ep. lii.
333.
See Milman's Hist. of Early Christianity, vol. ii. p. 314.
334.
This was one cause of the disputes between St. Gregory the Great and the Emperor Eustace. St. Chrysostom frequently notices the opposition of the military and the monastic spirits.
335.
Hieron. Ep. cxxviii.
336.
St. Greg. Nyss. Ad eund. Hieros. Some Catholic writers have attempted to throw doubt upon the genuineness of this epistle, but, Dean Milman thinks, with no sufficient reason. Its account of Jerusalem is to some extent corroborated by St. Jerome. (Ad Paulinum, Ep. xxix.)
337.
“Præterea non taceo charitati vestræ, quia omnibus servis Dei qui hic vel in Scriptura vel in timore Dei probatissimi esse videntur, displicet quod bonum et honestas et pudicitia vestræ ecclesiæ illuditur; et aliquod levamentum turpitudinis esset, si prohiberet synodus et principes vestri mulieribus et velatis feminis illud iter et frequentiam, quam ad Romanam civitatem veniendo et redeundo faciunt, quia magna ex parte pereunt, paucis remeantibus integris. Perpaucæ enim sunt civitates in Longobardia vel in Francia aut in Gallia in qua non sit adultera vel meretrix generis Anglorum, quod scandalum est et turpitudo totius ecclesiæ vestræ.”—(a.d. 745) Ep. lxiii.
338.
See Milman's Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 8.
339.
Tillemont, Hist. eccl. tome xi. p. 547.
340.
This was enjoined in the rule of St. Paphnutius. See Tillemont, tome x. p. 45.
341.
“Omnimodis monachum fugere debere mulieres et episcopos.”—Cassian, De Cœnob. Inst. xi. 17.
342.
We also find now and then, though I think very rarely, intellectual flashes of some brilliancy. Two of them strike me as especially noteworthy. St. Arsenius refused to separate young criminals from communion though he had no hesitation about old men; for he had observed that young men speedily get accustomed and indifferent to the state of excommunication, while old men feel continually, and acutely, the separation. (Socrates, iv. 23.) St. Apollonius explained the Egyptian idolatry with the most intelligent rationalism. The ox, he thought, was in the first instance worshipped for its domestic uses; the Nile, because it was the chief cause of the fertility of the soil &c. (Rufinus, Hist. Mon. cap. vii.)
343.
Palladius, Hist. Laus. cap. xix.
344.
Rufinus, Hist. Monach. cap. xxix.
345.
Tillemont, Hist. eccl. tome viii. pp. 583, 584.
346.
Ibid. p. 589.
347.
Theodoret, Philoth. cap. iii.
348.
Verba Seniorum.
349.
Theodoret, Philoth. cap. ii.
350.
Tillemont, tome viii. pp. 594-595.
351.
Pliny, Hist. Nat. viii. 1. Many anecdotes of elephants are collected viii. 1-12. See, too, Dion Cassius, xxxix. 38.
352.
Pliny, viii. 40.
353.
Donne's Biathanatos. p. 22. This habit of bees is mentioned by St. Ambrose. The pelican, as is well known, afterwards became an emblem of Christ.
354.
Plin. Hist. Nat. x. 6.
355.
A long list of legends about dogs is given by Legendre, in the very curious chapter on animals, in his Traité de l'Opinion, tome i. pp. 308-327.
356.
Pliny tells some extremely pretty stories of this kind. (Hist. Nat. ix. 8-9.) See, too, Aulus Gellius, xvi. 19. The dolphin, on account of its love for its young, became a common symbol of Christ among the early Christians.
357.
A very full account of the opinions, both of ancient and modern philosophers, concerning the souls of animals, is given by Bayle, Dict. arts. “Pereira E,” “Rorarius K.”
358.
The Jewish law did not confine its care to oxen. The reader will remember the touching provision, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk” (Deut. xiv. 21); and the law forbidding men to take a parent bird that was sitting on its young or on its eggs. (Deut. xxii. 6, 7.)
359.
“Cujus tanta fuit apud antiquos veneratio, ut tam capital esset bovem necuisse quam civem.”—Columella, lib. vi. in proœm. “Hic socius hominum in rustico opere et Cereris minister. Ab hoc antiqui manus ita abstinere voluerunt ut capite sanxerint si quis occidisset.”—Varro, De Re Rustic. lib. ii. cap. v.
360.
See Legendre, tome ii. p. 338. The sword with which the priest sacrificed the ox was afterwards pronounced accursed. (Ælian, Hist. Var. lib. viii. cap. iii.)
361.
Diog. Laërt. Xenocrates.
362.
There is a story told by Herodotus (i. 157-159) of an ambassador who was sent by his fellow-countrymen to consult an oracle at Miletus about a suppliant who had taken refuge with the Cymæans and was demanded with menace by his enemies. The oracle, being bribed, enjoined the surrender. The ambassador on leaving, with seeming carelessness disturbed the sparrows under the portico of the temple, when the voice from behind the altar denounced his impiety for disturbing the guests of the gods. The ambassador replied with an obvious and withering retort. Ælian says (Hist. Var.) that the Athenians condemned to death a boy for killing a sparrow that had taken refuge in the temple of Æsculapius.
363.
Quintilian, Inst. v. 9.
364.
In the same way we find several chapters in the Zendavesta about the criminality of injuring dogs; which is explained by the great importance of shepherd's dogs to a pastoral people.
365.

On the origin of Greek cock-fighting, see Ælian, Hist. Var. ii. 28. Many particulars about it are given by Athenæus. Chrysippus maintained that cock-fighting was the final cause of cocks, these birds being made by Providence in order to inspire us by the example of their courage. (Plutarch, De Repug. Stoic.) The Greeks do not, however, appear to have known “cock-throwing,” the favourite English game of throwing a stick called a “cock-stick” at cocks. It was a very ancient and very popular amusement, and was practised especially on Shrove Tuesday, and by school-boys. Sir Thomas More had been famous for his skill in it. (Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 283.) Three origins of it have been given:—1st, that in the Danish wars the Saxons failed to surprise a certain city in consequence of the crowing of cocks, and had in consequence a great hatred of that bird; 2nd, that the cocks (galli) were special representatives of Frenchmen, with whom the English were constantly at war; and 3rd, that they were connected with the denial of St. Peter. As Sir Charles Sedley said:—

“Mayst thou be punished for St. Peter's crime,
And on Shrove Tuesday perish in thy prime.”

Knight's Old England, vol. ii. p. 126.

366.
De Natura Rerum, lib. ii.
367.
Life of Marc. Cato.
368.

“Quid meruere boves, animal sine fraude dolisque,
Innocuum, simplex, natum tolerare labores?
Immemor est demum nec frugum munere dignus.
Qui potuit curvi dempto modo pondere aratri
Ruricolam mactare suum.”—

Metamorph. xv. 120-124.

369.

“Cujus
Turbavit nitidos extinctus passer ocellos.”

Juvenal, Sat. vi. 7-8.

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

Compare the charming description of the Prioress, in Chaucer:—

“She was so charitable and so pitous,
She wolde wepe if that she saw a
mous Caught in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde.
Of smale houndes had she that she fedde
With rosted flesh and milke and wastel brede,
But sore wept she if one of them were dede,
Or if men smote it with a yerde smert:
And all was conscience and tendre herte.”

Prologue to the “Canterbury Tales.”

370.
Philost. Apol. i. 38.
371.
See the curious chapter in his Κυνηγετικός, xvi. and compare it with No. 116 in the Spectator.
372.
In his De Abstinentia Carnis. The controversy between Origen and Celsus furnishes us with a very curious illustration of the extravagances into which some Pagans of the third century fell about animals. Celsus objected to the Christian doctrine about the position of men in the universe, that many of the animals were at least the equals of men both in reason, religious feeling, and knowledge. (Orig. Cont. Cels. lib. iv.)
373.
These views are chiefly defended in his two tracts on eating flesh. Plutarch has also recurred to the subject, incidentally, in several other works, especially in a very beautiful passage in his Life of Marcus Cato.
374.
See, for example, a striking passage in Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. ii. St. Clement imagines Pythagoras had borrowed his sentiments on this subject from Moses.
375.
There is, I believe, no record of any wild beast combats existing among the Jews, and the rabbinical writers have been remarkable for the great emphasis with which they inculcated the duty of kindness to animals. See some passages from them, cited in Wollaston, Religion of Nature, sec. ii., note. Maimonides believed in a future life for animals, to recompense them for their sufferings here. (Bayle, Dict. art, “Rorarius D.”) There is a curious collection of the opinions of different writers on this last point in a little book called the Rights of Animals, by William Drummond (London, 1838), pp. 197-205.
376.
Thus St. Paul (1 Cor. ix. 9) turned aside the precept, “Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn,” from its natural meaning, with the contemptuous question, “Doth God take care for oxen?”
377.
I have taken these illustrations from the collection of hermit literature in Rosweyde, from different volumes of the Bollandists, from the Dialogues of Sulpicius Severus, and from what is perhaps the most interesting of all collections of saintly legends, Colgan's Acta Sanctorum Hiberniæ. M. Alfred Maury, in his most valuable work, Légendes pieuses du Moyen Age, has examined minutely the part played by animals in symbolising virtues and vices, and has shown the way in which the same incidents were repeated, with slight variations, in different legends. M. de Montalembert has devoted what is probably the most beautiful chapter of his Moines d'Occident (“Les Moines et la Nature”) to the relations of monks to the animal world; but the numerous legends he cites are all, with one or two exceptions, different from those I have given.
378.
Chateaubriand speaks, however (Études historiques, étude vime, 1re partie), of an old Gallic law, forbidding to throw a stone at an ox attached to the plough, or to make its yoke too tight.
379.
Bollandists, May 31. Leonardo da Vinci is said to have had the same fondness for buying and releasing caged birds, and (to go back a long way) Pythagoras to have purchased one day, near Metapontus, from some fishermen all the fish in their net, that he might have the pleasure of releasing them. (Apuleius, Apologia.)
380.
See these legends collected by Hase (St Francis. Assisi). It is said of Cardinal Bellarmine that he used to allow vermin to bite him, saying, “We shall have heaven to reward us for our sufferings, but these poor creatures have nothing but the enjoyment of this present life.” (Bayle, Dict. philos. art. “Bellarmine.”)
381.
I have noticed, in my History of Rationalism, that, although some Popes did undoubtedly try to suppress Spanish bull-fights, this was solely on account of the destruction of human life they caused. Full details on this subject will be found in Concina, De Spectaculis (Romæ, 1752). Bayle says, “Il n'y a point de casuiste qui croie qu'on pèche en faisant combattre des taureaux contre des dogues,” &c. (Dict. philos. “Rorarius, C.”)
382.
On the ancient amusements of England the reader may consult Seymour's Survey of London (1734), vol. i. pp. 227-235; Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the English People. Cock-fighting was a favourite children's amusement in England as early as the twelfth century. (Hampson's Medii Ævi Kalendarii, vol. i. p. 160.) It was, with foot-ball and several other amusements, for a time suppressed by Edward III., on the ground that they were diverting the people from archery, which was necessary to the military greatness of England.
383.
The decline of these amusements in England began with the great development of the theatre under Elizabeth. An order of the Privy Council in July, 1591, prohibits the exhibition of plays on Thursday, because on Thursdays bear-baiting and suchlike pastimes had been usually practised, and an injunction to the same effect was sent to the Lord Mayor, wherein it was stated that, “in divers places the players do use to recite their plays, to the great hurt and destruction of the game of bear-baiting and like pastimes, which are maintained for Her Majesty's pleasure.”—Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (ed. 1823), vol. i. p. 438. The reader will remember the picture in Kenilworth of the Earl of Sussex petitioning Elizabeth against Shakespeare, on the ground of his plays distracting men from bear-baiting. Elizabeth (see Nichols) was extremely fond of bear-baiting. James I. especially delighted in cock-fighting, and in 1610 was present at a great fight between a lion and a bear. (Hone, Every Day Book, vol. i. pp. 255-299.) The theatres, however, rapidly multiplied, and a writer who lived about 1629 said, “that no less than seventeen playhouses had been built in or about London within threescore years.” (Seymour's Survey, vol. i. p. 229.) The Rebellion suppressed all public amusements, and when they were re-established after the Restoration, it was found that the tastes of the better classes no longer sympathised with the bear-garden. Pepys (Diary, August 14, 1666) speaks of bull-baiting as “a very rude and nasty pleasure,” and says he had not been in the bear-garden for many years. Evelyn (Diary, June 16, 1670), having been present at these shows, describes them as “butcherly sports, or rather barbarous cruelties,” and says he had not visited them before for twenty years. A paper in the Spectator (No. 141, written in 1711) talks of those who “seek their diversion at the bear-garden, ... where reason and good manners have no right to disturb them.” In 1751, however, Lord Kames was able to say, “The bear garden, which is one of the chief entertainments of the English, is held in abhorrence by the French and other polite nations.”—Essay on Morals (1st ed.), p. 7; and he warmly defends (p. 30) the English taste. During the latter half of the last century there was constant controversy on the subject (which may be traced in the pages of the Annual Register), and several forgotten clergymen published sermons upon it, and the frequent riots resulting from the fact that the bear-gardens had become the resort of the worst classes assisted the movement. The London magistrates took measures to suppress cock-throwing in 1769 (Hampson's Med. Æv. Kalend. p. 160); but bull-baiting continued far into the present century. Windham and Canning strongly defended it; Dr. Parr is said to have been fond of it (Southey's Commonplace Book, vol. iv. p. 585); and as late as 1824, Sir Robert (then Mr) Peel argued strongly against its prohibition. (Parliamentary Debates, vol. x. pp. 132-133, 491-495.)
384.
Bacon, in an account of the deficiencies of medicine, recommends vivisection in terms that seem to imply that it was not practised in his time. “As for the passages and pores, it is true, which was anciently noted, that the more subtle of them appear not in anatomies, because they are shut and latent in dead bodies, though they be open and manifest in live; which being supposed, though the inhumanity of anatomia vivorum was by Celsus justly reproved, yet, in regard of the great use of this observation, the enquiry needed not by him so slightly to have been relinquished altogether, or referred to the casual practices of surgery; but might have been well diverted upon the dissection of beasts alive, which, notwithstanding the dissimilitude of their parts, may sufficiently satisfy this enquiry.”—Advancement of Learning, x. 4. Harvey speaks of vivisections as having contributed to lead him to the discovery of the circulation of the blood. (Acland's Harveian Oration (1865), p. 55.) Bayle, describing the treatment of animals by men, says, “Nous fouillons dans leurs entrailles pendant leur vie afin de satisfaire notre curiosité.”—Dict. philos. art. “Rorarius, C.” Public opinion in England was very strongly directed to the subject in the present century, by the atrocious cruelties perpetrated by Majendie at his lectures. See a most frightful account of them in a speech by Mr. Martin (an eccentric Irish member, who was generally ridiculed during his life, and has been almost forgotten since his death, but to whose untiring exertions the legislative protection of animals in England is due).—Parliament. Hist. vol. xii. p. 652. Mandeville, in his day, was a very strong advocate of kindness to animals.—Commentary on the Fable of the Bees.
385.
See his Life by Sulpicius Severus.
386.
Milman.
387.
Greg. Turon. ii. 29.
388.
This was the first step towards the conversion of the Bulgarians.—Milman's Latin Christianity, vol. iii. p. 249.
389.
A remarkable collection of instances of this kind is given by Ozanam, Civilisation in the Fifth Century (Eng. trans.), vol. i. pp. 124-127.
390.
St. Gregory, Dial. iii. 7. The particular temptation the Jew heard discussed was that of the bishop of the diocese, who, under the instigation of one of the dæmons, was rapidly falling in love with a nun, and had proceeded so far as jocosely to stroke her on the back. The Jew, having related the vision to the bishop, the latter reformed his manners, the Jew became a Christian, and the temple was turned into a church.
391.
William of Malmesbury, ii. 13.
392.
See Milman's Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 293.
393.
Cassian. Cœnob. Instit. v. 4. See, too, some striking instances of this in the life of St. Antony.
394.
This spiritual pride is well noticed by Neander, Ecclesiastical History (Bohn's ed.), vol. iii. pp. 321-323. It appears in many traits scattered through the lives of these saints. I have already cited the visions telling St. Antony and St. Macarius that they were not the best of living people; and also the case of the hermit, who was deceived by a devil in the form of a woman, because he had been exalted by pride. Another hermit, being very holy, received pure white bread every day from heaven, but, being extravagantly elated, the bread got worse and worse till it became perfectly black. (Tillemont, tome x. pp. 27-28.) A certain Isidore affirmed that he had not been conscious of sin, even in thought, for forty years. (Socrates, iv. 23.) It was a saying of St. Antony, that a solitary man in the desert is free from three wars—of sight, speech, and hearing: he has to combat only fornication. (Apothegmata Patrum.)
395.
“Pride, under such training [that of modern rationalistic philosophy], instead of running to waste, is turned to account. It gets a new name; it is called self-respect.... It is directed into the channel of industry, frugality, honesty, and obedience, and it becomes the very staple of the religion and morality held in honour in a day like our own. It becomes the safeguard of chastity, the guarantee of veracity, in high and low; it is the very household god of the Protestant, inspiring neatness and decency in the servant-girl, propriety of carriage and refined manners in her mistress, uprightness, manliness, and generosity in the head of the family.... It is the stimulating principle of providence on the one hand, and of free expenditure on the other; of an honourable ambition and of elegant enjoyment.”—Newman, On University Education, Discourse ix. In the same lecture (which is, perhaps, the most beautiful of the many beautiful productions of its illustrious author), Dr. Newman describes, with admirable eloquence, the manner in which modesty has supplanted humility in the modern type of excellence. It is scarcely necessary to say that the lecturer strongly disapproves of the movement he describes.
396.
Thus “indagatio veri” was reckoned among the leading virtues, and the high place given to σοφία and “prudentia” in ethical writings preserved the notion of the moral duties connected with the discipline of the intellect.
397.
St. Augustine reckoned eighty-eight sects as existing in his time.
398.
See a full account of these persecutions in Tillemont, Mém. d'Histoire ecclés. tome vi.
399.
Socrates, H. E., iv. 16. This anecdote is much doubted by modern historians.
400.
Milman's Hist. of Christianity (ed. 1867), vol. ii. p. 422.
401.
St. Athanasius, Historical Treatises (Library of the Fathers), pp. 192, 284.
402.
Milman, Hist. of Christianity, ii. pp. 436-437.
403.
The death of Arius, as is well known, took place suddenly (his bowels, it is said, coming out) when he was just about to make his triumphal entry into the Cathedral of Constantinople. The death (though possibly natural) never seems to have been regarded as such, but it was a matter of controversy whether it was a miracle or a murder.
404.
Socrates, H. E., vii. 13-15.
405.
Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. i. pp. 214-215.
406.
Milman, Hist. of Christianity, vol. iii. p. 145.
407.
Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. i. pp. 290-291.
408.
Ibid. vol. i. pp. 310-311.
409.
Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. i. pp. 314-318. Dean Milman thus sums up the history: “Monks in Alexandria, monks in Antioch, monks in Jerusalem, monks in Constantinople, decide peremptorily on orthodoxy and heterodoxy. The bishops themselves cower before them. Macedonius in Constantinople, Flavianus in Antioch, Elias in Jerusalem, condemn themselves and abdicate, or are driven from their sees. Persecution is universal—persecution by every means of violence and cruelty; the only question is, in whose hands is the power to persecute.... Bloodshed, murder, treachery, assassination, even during the public worship of God—these are the frightful means by which each party strives to maintain its opinions and to defeat its adversary.”
410.
See a striking passage from Julianus of Eclana, cited by Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. i. p. 164.
411.
“Nowhere is Christianity less attractive than in the Councils of the Church.... Intrigue, injustice, violence, decisions on authority alone, and that the authority of a turbulent majority, ... detract from the reverence and impugn the judgments of at least the later Councils. The close is almost invariably a terrible anathema, in which it is impossible not to discern the tones of human hatred, of arrogant triumph, of rejoicing at the damnation imprecated against the humiliated adversary.”—Ibid. vol. i. p. 202.
412.
See the account of this scene in Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xlvii.; Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. i. p. 263. There is a conflict of authorities as to whether the Bishop of Alexandria himself kicked his adversary, or, to speak more correctly, the act which is charged against him by some contemporary writers is not charged against him by others. The violence was certainly done by his followers and in his presence.
413.
Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvii. 3.
414.
Cyprian, Ep. lxi.
415.
Milman, Hist. of Christianity, vol. ii. p. 306.
416.
Ibid. iii. 10.
417.
“By this time the Old Testament language and sentiment with regard to idolatry were completely incorporated with the Christian feeling; and when Ambrose enforced on a Christian Emperor the sacred duty of intolerance against opinions and practices which scarcely a century before had been the established religion of the Empire, his zeal was supported by almost the unanimous applause of the Christian world.”—Milman's Hist. of Christianity, vol. iii. p. 159.
418.
See the Theodosian laws of Paganism.
419.
This appears from the whole history of the controversy; but the prevailing feeling is, I think, expressed with peculiar vividness in the following passage:—“Eadmer says (following the words of Bede) in Colman's times there was a sharp controversy about the observing of Easter, and other rules of life for churchmen; therefore, this question deservedly excited the minds and feeling of many people, fearing lest, perhaps, after having received the name of Christians, they should run, or had run in vain.”—King's Hist. of the Church of Ireland, book ii. ch. vi.
420.
Gibbon, chap. lxiii.
421.
An interesting sketch of this very interesting prelate has lately been written by M. Druon, Étude sur la Vie et les Œuvres de Synésius (Paris, 1859).
422.
Tradition has pronounced Gregory the Great to have been the destroyer of the Palatine library, and to have been especially zealous in burning the writings of Livy, because they described the achievements of the Pagan gods. For these charges, however (which I am sorry to find repeated by so eminent a writer as Dr. Draper), there is no real evidence, for they are not found in any writer earlier than the twelfth century. (See Bayle, Dict. art. “Greg.”) The extreme contempt of Gregory for Pagan literature is, however, sufficiently manifested in his famous and very curious letter to Desiderius, Bishop of Vienne, rebuking him for having taught certain persons Pagan literature, and thus mingled “the praises of Jupiter with the praises of Christ;” doing what would be impious even for a religious layman, “polluting the mind with the blasphemous praises of the wicked.” Some curious evidence of the feelings of the Christians of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, about Pagan literature, is given in Guinguené, Hist. littéraire de l'Italie, tome i. p. 29-31, and some legends of a later period are candidly related by one of the most enthusiastic English advocates of the Middle Ages. (Maitland, Dark Ages.)
423.
Probably the best account of the intellectual history of these times is still to be found in the admirable introductory chapters with which the Benedictines prefaced each century of their Hist. littéraire de la France. The Benedictines think (with Hallam) that the eighth century was, on the whole, the darkest on the continent, though England attained its lowest point somewhat later. Of the great protectors of learning Theodoric was unable to write (see Guinguené, tome i. p. 31), and Charlemagne (Eginhard) only began to learn when advanced in life, and was never quite able to master the accomplishment. Alfred, however, was distinguished in literature.
424.
The belief that the world was just about to end was, as is well known, very general among the early Christians, and greatly affected their lives. It appears in the New Testament, and very clearly in the epistle ascribed to Barnabas in the first century. The persecutions of the second and third centuries revived it, and both Tertullian and Cyprian (in Demetrianum) strongly assert it. With the triumph of Christianity the apprehension for a time subsided; but it reappeared with great force when the dissolution of the Empire was manifestly impending, when it was accomplished, and in the prolonged anarchy and suffering that ensued. Gregory of Tours, writing in the latter part of the sixth century, speaks of it as very prevalent (Prologue to the First Book); and St. Gregory the Great, about the same time, constantly expresses it. The panic that filled Europe at the end of the tenth century has been often described.
425.
Maitland's Dark Ages, p. 403.
426.
This passion for scraping MSS. became common, according to Montfaucon, after the twelfth century. (Maitland, p. 40.) According to Hallam, however (Middle Ages, ch. ix. part i.), it must have begun earlier, being chiefly caused by the cessation or great diminution of the supply of Egyptian papyrus, in consequence of the capture of Alexandria by the Saracens, early in the seventh century.
427.
Bede, H. E. iv. 24.
428.
Mariana, De Rebus Hispaniæ, vi. 7. Mariana says the stone was in his time preserved as a relic.
429.
Odericus Vitalis, quoted by Maitland (Dark Ages, pp. 268-269). The monk was restored to life that he might have an opportunity of reformation. The escape was a narrow one, for there was only one letter against which no sin could be adduced—a remarkable instance of the advantages of a diffuse style.
430.
Digby, Mores Catholici, book x. p. 246. Matthew of Westminster tells of a certain king who was very charitable, and whose right hand (which had assuaged many sorrows) remained undecayed after death (a.d. 644).
431.
See Hauréau, Hist. de la Philosophie scolastique, tome i. pp. 24-25.
432.
On the progress of Roman civilisation in Britain, see Tacitus, Agricola, xxi.
433.
See the Benedictine Hist. littér. de la France, tome i. part ii. p. 9.
434.
A biographer of St. Thomas Aquinas modestly observes:—“L'opinion généralement répandue parmi les théologiens c'est que la Somme de Théologie de St. Thomas est non-seulement son chef-d'œuvre mais aussi celui de l'esprit humain.” (!!)—Carle, Hist. de St.-Thomas d'Aquin, p. 140.
435.
See Viardot, Hist. des Arabes en Espagne, ii. 142-166. Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, ch. viii. Viardot contends that the compass—which appears to have been long known in China—was first introduced into Europe by the Mohammedans; but the evidence of this appears inconclusive.
436.
Herder.
437.
“Impius ne audeto placare donis iram Deorum.”—Cicero, De Leg. ii. 9. See, too, Philost. Apoll. Tyan. i. 11.
438.
There are three or four instances of this related by Porphyry, De Abstin. Carnis, lib. ii.
439.
Muratori, Antich. Italiane, diss. lxvii.
440.
See, on the causes of the wealth of the monasteries, two admirable dissertations by Muratori, Antich. Italiane, lxvii., lxviii.; Hallam's Middle Ages, ch. vii. part i.
441.
“Lors de l'établissement du christianisme la religion avoit essentiellement consisté dans l'enseignement moral; elle avoit exercé les cœurs et les âmes par la recherche de ce qui étoit vraiment beau, vraiment honnête. Au cinquième siècle on l'avoit surtout attachée à l'orthodoxie, au septième on l'avoit réduite à la bienfaisance envers les couvens.”—Sismondi, Hist. des Français, tome ii. p. 50.
442.
Mr. Hallam, speaking of the legends of the miracles of saints, says: “It must not be supposed that these absurdities were produced as well as nourished by ignorance. In most cases they were the work of deliberate imposture. Every cathedral or monastery had its tutelar saint, and every saint his legend, fabricated in order to enrich the churches under his protection, by exaggerating his virtues, his miracles, and consequently his power of serving those who paid liberally for his patronage.”—Middle Ages, ch. ix. part i. I do not think this passage makes sufficient allowance for the unconscious formation of many saintly myths, but no impartial person can doubt its substantial truth.
443.
Sismondi, Hist. des Français, tome ii. pp. 54, 62-63.
444.
Milman's Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 257.
445.

Durandus, a French bishop of the thirteenth century, tells how, “when a certain bishop was consecrating a church built out of the fruits of usury and pillage, he saw behind the altar the devil in a pontifical vestment, standing at the bishop's throne, who said unto the bishop, ‘Cease from consecrating the church; for it pertaineth to my jurisdiction, since it is built from the fruits of usuries and robberies.’ Then the bishop and the clergy having fled thence in fear, immediately the devil destroyed that church with a great noise.”—Rationale Divinorum, i. 6 (translated for the Camden Society).

A certain St. Launomar is said to have refused a gift for his monastery from a rapacious noble, because he was sure it was derived from pillage. (Montalembert's Moines d'Occident, tome ii. pp. 350-351.) When prostitutes were converted in the early Church, it was the rule that the money of which they had become possessed should never be applied to ecclesiastical purposes, but should be distributed among the poor.

446.
Verba Seniorum, Prol. § 172.
447.
This vision is not related by St. Gregory himself, and some Catholics are perplexed about it, on account of the vision of another saint, who afterwards asked whether Trajan was saved, and received for answer, “I wish men to rest in ignorance of this subject, that the Catholics may become stronger. For this emperor, though he had great virtues, was an unbaptised infidel.” The whole subject of the vision of St. Gregory is discussed by Champagny, Les Antonins, tome i. pp. 372-373. This devout writer says, “Cette légende fut acceptée par tout le moyen-âge, indulgent pour les païens illustres et tout disposé à les supposer chrétiens et sauvés.”
448.
See the solemn asseveration of the care which he took in going only to the most credible and authorised sources for his materials, in the Preface to the First Book of Dialogues.
449.
Dial. iv. 36.
450.
Ibid. iv. 30.
451.
Ibid. iv. 35.
452.
The fullest collection of these visions with which I am acquainted is that made for the Philobiblion Society (vol. ix.), by M. Delepierre, called L'Enfer décrit par ceux qui l'ont vu, of which I have largely availed myself. See, too, Rusca De Inferno, Wright's Purgatory of St. Patrick, and an interesting collection of visions given by Mr. Longfellow, in his translation of Dante. The Irish saints were, I am sorry to say, prominent in producing this branch of literature. St. Fursey, whose vision is one of the earliest, and Tondale, or Tundale, whose vision is one of the most detailed, were both Irish. The English historians contain several of these visions. Bede relates two or three—William of Malmesbury that of Charles the Fat; Matthew Paris three visions of purgatory.
453.
The narrow bridge over hell (in some visions covered with spikes), which is a conspicuous feature in the Mohammedan pictures of the future world, appears very often in Catholic visions. See Greg. Tur. iv. 33; St. Greg. Dial. iv. 36; and the vision of Tundale, in Delepierre.
454.
Few Englishmen, I imagine, are aware of the infamous publications written with this object, that are circulated by the Catholic priests among the poor. I have before me a tract “for children and young persons,” called The Sight of Hell, by the Rev. J. Furniss, C.S.S.R., published “permissu superiorum,” by Duffy (Dublin and London). It is a detailed description of the dungeons of hell, and a few sentences may serve as a sample. “See! on the middle of that red-hot floor stands a girl; she looks about sixteen years old. Her feet are bare. She has neither shoes nor stockings.... Listen! she speaks. She says, I have been standing on this red-hot floor for years. Day and night my only standing-place has been this red-hot floor.... Look at my burnt and bleeding feet. Let me go off this burning floor for one moment, only for one single short moment.... The fourth dungeon is the boiling kettle ... in the middle of it there is a boy.... His eyes are burning like two burning coals. Two long flames come out of his ears.... Sometimes he opens his mouth, and blazing fire rolls out. But listen! there is a sound like a kettle boiling.... The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones.... The fifth dungeon is the red-hot oven.... The little child is in this red-hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor.... God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw it would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in hell. So God in His mercy called it out of the world in its early childhood.” If the reader desires to follow this subject further, he may glance over a companion tract by the same reverend gentleman, called A Terrible Judgment on a Little Child; and also a book on Hell, translated from the Italian of Pinamonti, and with illustrations depicting the various tortures.
455.
St. Greg. Dial. iv. 38.
456.
Ibid. iv. 18.
457.
Alger's History of the Doctrine of a Future Life (New York, 1866), p. 414. The ignis fatuus was sometimes supposed to be the soul of an unbaptised child. There is, I believe, another Catholic legend about the redbreast, of a very different kind—that its breast was stained with blood when it was trying to pull out the thorns from the crown of Christ.
458.
Wright's Purgatory of St. Patrick, p. 26. M. Delepierre quotes a curious theory of Father Hardouin (who is chiefly known for his suggestion that the classics were composed by the mediæval monks) that the rotation of the earth is caused by the lost souls trying to escape from the fire that is at the centre of the globe, climbing, in consequence, on the inner crust of the earth, which is the wall of hell, and thus making the whole revolve, as the squirrel by climbing turns its cage! (L'Enfer décrit par ceux qui l'ont vu, p. 151.)
459.
Delepierre, p. 70.
460.
Thus, in a book which was attributed (it is said erroneously) to Jeremy Taylor, we find two singularly unrhetorical and unimpassioned chapters, deliberately enumerating the most atrocious acts of cruelty in human history, and maintaining that they are surpassed by the tortures inflicted by the Deity. A few instances will suffice. Certain persons “put rings of iron, stuck full of sharp points of needles, about their arms and feet, in such a manner as the prisoners could not move without wounding themselves; then they compassed them about with fire, to the end that, standing still, they might be burnt alive, and if they stirred the sharp points pierced their flesh.... What, then, shall be the torment of the damned where they shall burn eternally without dying, and without possibility of removing?... Alexander, the son of Hyrcanus, caused eight hundred to be crucified, and whilst they were yet alive caused their wives and children to be murdered before their eyes, that so they might not die once, but many deaths. This rigour shall not be wanting in hell.... Mezentius tied a living body to a dead until the putrefied exhalations of the dead had killed the living.... What is this in respect of hell, when each body of the damned is more loathsome and unsavoury than a million of dead dogs?... Bonaventure says, if one of the damned were brought into this world it were sufficient to infect the whole earth.... We are amazed to think of the inhumanity of Phalaris, who roasted men alive in his brazen bull. That was a joy in respect of that fire of hell.... This torment ... comprises as many torments as the body of man has joints, sinews, arteries, &c., being caused by that penetrating and real fire, of which this temporal fire is but a painted fire.... What comparison will there be between burning for a hundred years' space, and to be burning without interruption as long as God is God?”—Contemplations on the State of Man, book ii. ch. 6-7, in Heber's Edition of the works of Taylor.
461.
Perrone, Historiæ Theologiæ cum Philosophia comparata Synopsis, p. 29. Peter Lombard's work was published in a.d. 1160.
462.
“Postremo quæritur, An pœna reproborum visa decoloret gloriam beatorum? an eorum beatitudini proficiat? De hoc ita Gregorius ait, Apud animum justorum non obfuscat beatitudinem aspecta pœna reproborum; quia ubi jam compassio miseriæ non erit, minuere beatorum lætitiam non valebit. Et licet justis sua gaudia sufficiant, ad majorem gloriam vident pœnas malorum quas per gratiam evaserunt.... Egredientur ergo electi, non loco, sed intelligentia vel visione manifesta ad videndum impiorum cruciatus; quos videntes non dolore afficientur sed lætitia satiabuntur, agentes gratias de sua liberatione visa impiorum ineffabili calamitate. Unde Esaias impiorum tormenta describens et ex eorum visione lætitiam bonorum exprimens, ait, Egredientur electi scilicet et videbunt cadavera virorum qui prævaricati sunt in me. Vermis eorum non morietur et ignis non extinguetur, et erunt usque ad satietatem visionis omni carni, id est electis. Lætabitur justus cum viderit vindictam.”—Peter Lombard, Senten. lib. iv. finis. These amiable views have often been expressed both by Catholic and by Puritan divines. See Alger's Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 541.
463.
Legenda Aurea. There is a curious fresco representing this transaction, on the portal of the church of St. Lorenzo, near Rome.
464.
Aimoni, De Gestis Francorum Hist. iv. 34.
465.
Turpin's Chronicle, ch. 32. In the vision of Watlin, however (a.d. 824), Charlemagne was seen tortured in purgatory on account of his excessive love of women. (Delepierre, L'Enfer décrit par ceux qui l'ont vu, pp. 27-28.)
466.
As the Abbé Mably observes: “On croyoit en quelque sorte dans ces siècles grossiers que l'avarice étoit le premier attribut de Dieu, et que les saints faisoient un commerce de leur crédit et de leur protection. De-là les richesses immenses données aux églises par des hommes dont les mœurs déshonoroient la religion.”—Observations sur l'Hist. de France, i. 4.
467.
Many curious examples of the way in which the Troubadours burlesqued the monkish visions of hell are given by Delepierre, p. 144.—Wright's Purgatory of St. Patrick, pp. 47-52.
468.
Comte, Philosophie positive, tome v. p. 269.
469.
“Saint-Bernard, dans son sermon De obitu Humberti, affirme que tous les tourments de cette vie sont joies si on les compare à une seconde des peines du purgatoire. ‘Imaginez-vous donc, délicates dames,’ dit le père Valladier (1613) dans son sermon du 3me dimanche de l'Avent, ‘d'estre au travers de vos chenets, sur vostre petit feu pour une centaine d'ans: ce n'est rien au respect d'un moment de purgatoire. Mais si vous vistes jamais tirer quelqu'un à quatre chevaux, quelqu'un brusler à petit feu, enrager de faim ou de soif, une heure de purgatoire est pire que tout cela.’ ”—Meray, Les Libres Prêcheurs (Paris, 1860), pp. 130-131 (an extremely curious and suggestive book). I now take up the first contemporary book of popular Catholic devotion on this subject which is at hand, and read: “Compared with the pains of purgatory, then, all those wounds and dark prisons, all those wild beasts, hooks of iron, red-hot plates, &c., which the holy martyrs suffered, are nothing.” “They (souls in purgatory) are in a real, though miraculous manner, tortured by fire, which is of the same kind (says Bellarmine) as our element fire.” “The Angelic Doctor affirms ‘that the fire which torments the damned is like the fire which purges the elect.’ ” “What agony will not those holy souls suffer when tied and bound with the most tormenting chains of a living fire like to that of hell! and we, while able to make them free and happy, shall we stand like uninterested spectators?” “St. Austin is of opinion that the pains of a soul in purgatory during the time required to open and shut one's eye is more severe than what St. Lawrence suffered on the gridiron;” and much more to the same effect. (Purgatory opened to the Piety of the Faithful. Richardson, London.)
470.
See Delepierre, Wright, and Alger.
471.
This appears from the vision of Thurcill. (Wright's Purgatory of St. Patrick, p. 42.) Brompton (Chronicon) tells of an English landlord who had refused to pay tithes. St. Augustine, having vainly reasoned with him, at last convinced him by a miracle. Before celebrating mass he ordered all excommunicated persons to leave the church, whereupon a corpse got out of a grave and walked away. The corpse, on being questioned, said it was the body of an ancient Briton who refused to pay tithes, and had in consequence been excommunicated and damned.
472.
Greg. Dial. iv. 40.
473.
As Sismondi says: “Pendant quatre-vingts ans, tout au moins, il n'y eut pas un Franc qui songeât à transmettre à la postérité la mémoire des événements contemporains, et pendant le même espace de temps il n'y eut pas un personnage puissant qui ne bâtit des temples pour la postérité la plus reculée.”—Hist. des Français, tome ii. p. 46.
474.
Gibbon says of the period during which the Merovingian dynasty reigned, that “it would be difficult to find anywhere more vice or less virtue.” Hallam reproduces this observation, and adds: “The facts of these times are of little other importance than as they impress on the mind a thorough notion of the extreme wickedness of almost every person concerned in them, and consequently of the state to which society was reduced.”—Hist. of the Middle Ages, ch. i. Dean Milman is equally unfavourable and emphatic in his judgment. “It is difficult to conceive a more dark and odious state of society than that of France under her Merovingian kings, the descendants of Clovis, as described by Gregory of Tours. In the conflict of barbarism with Roman Christianity, barbarism has introduced into Christianity all its ferocity with none of its generosity and magnanimity; its energy shows itself in atrocity of cruelty, and even of sensuality. Christianity has given to barbarism hardly more than its superstition and its hatred of heretics and unbelievers. Throughout, assassinations, parricides, and fratricides intermingle with adulteries and rapes.”—History of Latin Christianity, vol. i. p. 365.
475.
Greg. Tur. iv. 12. Gregory mentions (v. 41) another bishop who used to become so intoxicated as to be unable to stand; and St. Boniface, after describing the extreme sensuality of the clergy of his time, adds that there are some bishops “qui licet dicant se fornicarios vel adulteros non esse, sed sunt ebriosi et injuriosi,” &c.—Ep. xlix.
476.
Greg. Tur. iv. 12.
477.
Ibid. viii. 29. She gave them knives with hollow grooves, filled with poison, in the blades.
478.
Ibid. vii. 20.
479.
Ibid. viii. 31-41.
480.
Ibid. v. 19.
481.
See his very curious correspondence with her.—Ep. vi. 5, 50, 59; ix. 11, 117; xi. 62-63.
482.
Avitus, Ep. v. He adds: “Minuebat regni felicitas numerum regalium personarum.”
483.
See the emphatic testimony of St. Boniface in the eighth century. “Modo autem maxima ex parte per civitates episcopales sedes traditæ sunt laicis cupidis ad possidendum, vel adulteratis clericis, scortatoribus et publicanis sæculariter ad perfruendum.”—Epist. xlix. “ad Zachariam.” The whole epistle contains an appalling picture of the clerical vices of the times.
484.
More than one Council made decrees about this. See the Vie de St. Léger, by Dom Pitra, pp. 172-177.
485.
Greg. Tur. iv. 43. St. Boniface, at a much later period (a.d. 742), talks of bishops “Qui pugnant in exercitu armati et effundunt propria manu sanguinem hominum.”—Ep. xlix.
486.
Greg. Tur. iv. 26.
487.
Ibid. iv. 20.
488.
Ibid. iii. 26.
489.
Ibid. ix. 34.
490.
Ibid. viii. 19. Gregory says this story should warn clergymen not to meddle with the wives of other people, but “content themselves with those that they may possess without crime.” The abbot had previously tried to seduce the husband within the precincts of the monastery, that he might murder him.
491.
Ibid. v. 3.
492.
Ibid. viii. 39. She was guilty of many other crimes, which the historian says “it is better to pass in silence.” The bishop himself had been guilty of outrageous and violent tyranny. The marriage of ecclesiastics appears at this time to have been common in Gaul, though the best men commonly deserted their wives when they were ordained. Another bishop's wife (iv. 36) was notorious for her tyranny.
493.
Fredigarius, xlii. The historian describes Clotaire as a perfect paragon of Christian graces.
494.
“Au sixième siècle on compte 214 établissements religieux des Pyrénées à la Loire et des bouches du Rhône aux Vosges.”—Ozanam, Études germaniques, tome ii. p. 93. In the two following centuries the ecclesiastical wealth was enormously increased.
495.
Matthew of Westminster (a.d. 757) speaks of no less than eight Saxon kings having done this.
496.
“Le septième siècle est celui peut-être qui a donné le plus de saints au calendrier.”—Sismondi, Hist. de France, tome ii. p. 50. “Le plus beau titre du septième siècle à une réhabilitation c'est le nombre considérable de saints qu'il a produits.... Aucun siècle n'a été ainsi glorifié sauf l'âge des martyrs dont Dieu s'est réservé de compter le nombre. Chaque année fournit sa moisson, chaque jour a sa gerbe.... Si donc il plaît à Dieu et au Christ de répandre à pleines mains sur un siècle les splendeurs des saints, qu'importe que l'histoire et la gloire humaine en tiennent peu compte?”—Pitra, Vie de St. Léger, Introd. p. x.-xi. This learned and very credulous writer (who is now a cardinal) afterwards says that we have the record of more than eight hundred saints of the seventh century. (Introd. p. lxxx.)
497.
See, e.g., the very touching passage about the death of his children, v. 35.
498.
Lib. ii. Prologue.
499.
Greg. Tur. ii. 27-43.
500.
He observes how impossible it was that he could be guilty of shedding the blood of a relation: “Sed in his ego nequaquam conscius sum. Nec enim possum sanguinem parentum meorum effundere.”—Greg. Tur. ii. 40.
501.
“Prosternebat enim quotidie Deus hostes ejus sub manu ipsius, et augebat regnum ejus eo quod ambularet recto corde coram eo, et faceret quæ placita erant in oculis ejus.”—Greg. Tur. ii. 40.
502.
Lib. iii. Prologue. St. Avitus enumerates in glowing terms the Christian virtues of Clovis (Ep. xli.), but, as this was in a letter addressed to the king himself, the eulogy may easily be explained.
503.
Thus Hallam says: “There are continual proofs of immorality in the monkish historians. In the history of Rumsey Abbey, one of our best documents for Anglo-Saxon times, we have an anecdote of a bishop who made a Danish nobleman drunk, that he might cheat him out of an estate, which is told with much approbation. Walter de Hemingford records, with excessive delight, the well-known story of the Jews who were persuaded by the captain of their vessel to walk on the sands at low water till the rising tide drowned them.”—Hallam's Middle Ages (12th ed.), iii. p. 306.
504.
Canciani, Leges Barbarorum, vol. iii. p. 64. Canciani notices, that among the Poles the teeth of the offending persons were pulled out. The following passage, from Bodin, is, I think, very remarkable: “Les loix et canons veulent qu'on pardonne aux hérétiques repentis (combien que les magistrats en quelques lieux par cy-devant, y ont eu tel esgard, que celui qui avoit mangé de la chair au Vendredy estoit bruslé tout vif, comme il fut faict en la ville d'Angers l'an mil cinq cens trente-neuf, s'il ne s'en repentoit: et jaçoit qu'il se repentist si estoit-il pendu par compassion).”—Démonomanie des Sorciers, p. 216.
505.
A long list of examples of extreme maceration, from lives of the saints of the seventh and eighth centuries is given by Pitra, Vie de St. Léger, Introd. pp. cv.-cvii.
506.
This was related of St. Equitius.—Greg. Dialog. i. 4.
507.
Ibid. i. 5. This saint was named Constantius.
508.
A vast number of miracles of this kind are recorded. See, e.g., Greg. Tur. De Miraculis, i. 61-66; Hist. iv. 49. Perhaps the most singular instance of the violation of the sanctity of the church was that by the nuns of a convent founded by St. Radegunda. They, having broken into rebellion, four bishops, with their attendant clergy, went to compose the dispute, and having failed, excommunicated the rebels, whereupon the nuns almost beat them to death in the church.—Greg. Tur. ix. 41.
509.
See Canciani, Leges Barbarorum, vol. iii. pp. 19, 151.
510.
Much information about these measures is given by Dr. Hessey, in his Bampton Lectures on Sunday. See especially, lect. 3. See, too, Moehler, Le Christianisme et l'Esclavage, pp. 186-187.
511.
Gregory of Tours enumerates some instances of this in his extravagant book De Miraculis, ii. 11; iv. 57; v. 7. One of these cases, however, was for having worked on the day of St. John the Baptist. Some other miracles of the same nature, taken, I believe, from English sources, are given in Hessey's Sunday (3rd edition), p. 321.
512.
Compare Pitra, Vie de St.-Léger, p. 137. Sismondi, Hist. des Français, tome ii. pp. 62-63.
513.
See a remarkable passage from his life, cited by Guizot, Hist. de la Civilisation en France, xviime leçon. The English historians contain several instances of the activity of charity in the darkest period. Alfred and Edward the Confessor were conspicuous for it. Ethelwolf is said to have provided, “for the good of his soul,” that, till the day of judgment, one poor man in ten should be provided with meat, drink, and clothing. (Asser's Life of Alfred.) There was a popular legend that a poor man having in vain asked alms of some sailors, all the bread in their vessel was turned into stone. (Roger of Wendover, a.d. 606.) See, too, another legend of charity in Matthew of Westminster, a.d. 611.
514.
Greg. Tur. Hist. v. 8.
515.
M. Guizot has given several specimens of this (Hist. de la Civilis. xviime leçon).
516.
This portion of mediæval history has lately been well traced by Mr. Maclear, in his History of Christian Missions in the Middle Ages (1863). See, too, Montalembert's Moines d'Occident; Ozanam's Études germaniques. The original materials are to be found in Bede, and in the Lives of the Saints—especially that of St. Columba, by Adamnan. On the French missionaries, see the Benedictine Hist. lit. de la France, tome iv. p. 5; and on the English missionaries, Sharon Turner's Hist. of England, book x. ch. ii.
517.
Dion Chrysostom, Or. ii. (De Regno).
518.
Gibbon, ch. xvi.
519.
Origen, Cels. lib. viii.
520.
“Navigamus et nos vobiscum et militamus.”—Tert. Apol. xlii. See, too, Grotius De Jure, i. cap. ii.
521.
See an admirable dissertation on the opinions of the early Christians about military service, in Le Blant, Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, tome i. pp. 81-87. The subject is frequently referred to by Barbeyrac, Morale des Pères, and Grotius, De Jure, lib. i. cap. ii.
522.
Philostorgius, ii. 5.
523.
See some excellent remarks on this change, in Milman's History of Christianity, vol. ii. pp. 287-288.
524.
Mably, Observations sur l'Histoire de France, i. 6; Hallam's Middle Ages, ch. ii. part ii.
525.
Wakeman's Archæologia Hibernica, p. 21. However, Giraldus Cambrensis observes that the Irish saints were peculiarly vindictive, and St. Columba and St. Comgall are said to have been leaders in a sanguinary conflict about a church near Coleraine. See Reeve's edition of Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, pp. lxxvii. 253.
526.
Campion's Historie of Ireland (1571), book i. ch. vi.
527.
It seems curious to find in so calm and unfanatical a writer as Justus Lipsius the following passage: “Jam et invasio quædam legitima videtur etiam sine injuria, ut in barbaros et moribus aut religione prorsum a nobis abhorrentes.”—Politicorum sive Civilis Doctrinæ libri (Paris, 1594), lib. iv. ch. ii. cap. iv.
528.
“Con l'occasione di queste cose Plutarco nel Teseo dice che gli eroi si recavano a grande onore e si reputavano in pregio d'armi con l'esser chiamati ladroni; siccome a' tempi barbari ritornati quello di Corsale era titolo riputato di signoria; d'intorno a' quali tempi venuto Solone, si dice aver permesso nelle sue leggi le società per cagion di prede; tanto Solone ben intese questa nostra compiuta Umanità, nella quale costoro non godono del diritto natural delle genti! Ma quel che fa più maraviglia è che Platone ed Aristotile posero il ladroneccio fralle spezie della caccia e con tali e tanti filosofi d'una gente umanissima convengono con la loro barbarie i Germani antichi; appo i quali al referire di Cesare ì ladronecci non solo non eran infami, ma si tenevano tra gli esercizi della virtù siccome tra quelli che per costume non applicando ad arte alcuna così fuggivano l'ozio.”—Vico, Scienza Nuova, ii. 6. See, too, Whewell's Elements of Morality, book vi. ch. ii.
529.
The ancient right of war is fully discussed by Grotius, De Jure, lib. iii. See, especially, the horrible catalogue of tragedies in cap. 4. The military feeling that regards capture as disgraceful, had probably some, though only a very subordinate, influence in producing cruelty to the prisoners.
530.
“Le jour où Athènes décréta que tous les Mityléniens, sans distinction de sexe ni d'âge, seraient exterminés, elle ne croyait pas dépasser son droit; quand le lendemain elle revint sur son décret et se contenta de mettre à mort mille citoyens et de confisquer toutes les terres, elle se crut humaine et indulgente. Après la prise de Platée les hommes furent égorgés, les femmes vendues, et personne n'accusa les vainqueurs d'avoir violé le droit.... C'est en vertu de ce droit de la guerre que Rome a étendu la solitude autour d'elle; du territoire où les Volsques avaient vingt-trois cités elle a fait les marais pontins; les cinquante-trois villes du Latium ont disparu; dans le Samnium on put longtemps reconnaître les lieux où les armées romaines avaient passé, moins aux vestiges de leurs camps qu'à la solitude qui règnait aux environs.”—Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité antique, pp. 263-264.
531.
Plato, Republic, lib. v.; Bodin, République, liv. i. cap. 5.
532.
Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. viii. p. 224. Agesilaus was also very humane to captives.—Ibid. pp. 365-6.
533.
This appears continually in Livy, but most of all, I think, in the Gaulish historian, Florus.
534.
Scipio and Trajan.
535.
See some very remarkable passages in Grotius, De Jure Bell. lib. iii. cap. 4, § 19.
536.
These mitigations are fully enumerated by Ayala, De Jure et Officiis Bellicis (Antwerp, 1597), Grotius, De Jure. It is remarkable that both Ayala and Grotius base their attempts to mitigate the severity of war chiefly upon the writings and examples of the Pagans. The limits of the right of conquerors and the just causes of war are discussed by Cicero, De Offic. lib. i.
537.
In England the change seems to have immediately followed conversion. “The evangelical precepts of peace and love,” says a very learned historian, “did not put an end to war, they did not put an end to aggressive conquests, but they distinctly humanised the way in which war was carried on. From this time forth the never-ending wars with the Welsh cease to be wars of extermination. The heathen English had been satisfied with nothing short of the destruction and expulsion of their enemies; the Christian English thought it enough to reduce them to political subjection.... The Christian Welsh could now sit down as subjects of the Christian Saxon. The Welshman was acknowledged as a man and a citizen, and was put under the protection of the law.”—Freeman's Hist. of the Norman Conquest, vol. i. pp. 33-34. Christians who assisted infidels in wars were ipso facto excommunicated, and might therefore be enslaved, but all others were free from slavery. “Et quidem inter Christianos laudabili et antiqua consuetudine introductum est, ut capti hinc inde, utcunque justo bello, non fierent servi, sed liberi servarentur donec solvant precium redemptionis.”—Ayala, lib. i. cap. 5. “This rule, at least,” says Grotius, “(though but a small matter) the reverence for the Christian law has enforced, which Socrates vainly sought to have established among the Greeks.” The Mohammedans also made it a rule not to enslave their co-religionists.—Grotius, De Jure, iii. 7, § 9. Pagan and barbarian prisoners were, however, sold as slaves (especially by the Spaniards) till very recently.
538.
The character of Constantine, and the estimate of it in Eusebius, are well treated by Dean Stanley, Lectures on the Eastern Church (Lect. vi.).
539.
Theodoret, iii. 28.
540.
They are collected by Chateaubriand, Études hist. 2me disc. 2me partie.
541.
See St. Gregory's oration on Cesarius.
542.
Sozomen, vi. 2.
543.
Ep. xiii. 31-39. In the second of these letters (which is addressed to Leontia), he says: “Rogare forsitan debui ut ecclesiam beati Petri apostoli quæ nunc usque gravibus insidiis laboravit, haberet Vestra Tranquillitas specialiter commendatam. Sed qui scio quia omnipotentem Deum diligitis, non debeo petere quod sponte ex benignitate vestræ pietatis exhibetis.”
544.
See the graphic description in Gibbon, ch. liii.
545.
Baronius.
546.
Mably, ii. 1; Gibbon, ch. xlix.
547.
There are some good remarks upon the way in which, among the free Franks, the bishops taught the duty of passive obedience, in Mably, Obs. sur l'Histoire de France, livre i. ch. iii. Gregory of Tours, in his address to Chilperic, had said: “If any of us, O king, transgress the boundaries of justice, thou art at hand to correct us; but if thou shouldest exceed them, who is to condemn thee? We address thee, and if it please thee thou listenest to us; but if it please thee not, who is to condemn thee save He who has proclaimed Himself Justice.”—Greg. Tur. v. 19. On the other hand, Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, strongly asserted the obligation of kings to observe the law, and denounced as diabolical the doctrine that they are subject to none but God. (Allen, On the Royal Prerogative (1849), pp. 171-172.)
548.
The exact degree of the authority of the barbarian kings, and the different stages by which their power was increased, are matters of great controversy. The reader may consult Thierry's Lettres sur l'Hist. de France (let. 9); Guizot's Hist. de la Civilisation; Mably, Observ. sur l'Hist. de France; Freeman's Hist. of the Norman Conquest, vol. i.
549.
Fauriel, Hist. de la Poésie provençale, tome ii. p. 252.
550.
Ibid, p. 258.
551.
Le Grand D'Aussy, Fabliaux, préf. p. xxiv. These romances were accounts of his expeditions to Spain, to Languedoc, and to Palestine.
552.
The ἕδνα of the Greeks.
553.
Legouvé, Histoire morale des Femmes, pp. 95-96.
554.
Gen. xxix., xxxiv. 12; Deut. xxii. 29; 1 Sam. xviii. 25.
555.
The history of dowries is briefly noticed by Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. pp. 112-113; and more fully by Lord Kames, in the admirable chapter “On the Progress of the Female Sex,” in his Sketches of the History of Man, a book less read than it deserves to be. M. Legouvé has also devoted a chapter to it in his Hist. morale des Femmes. See, too, Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome ii. pp. 329-330. We find traces of the dowry, as well as of the ἕδνα, in Homer. Penelope had received a dowry from Icarus, her father. M. Michelet, in one of those fanciful books which he has recently published, maintains a view of the object of the ἕδνα which I do not remember to have seen elsewhere, and which I do not believe. He says: “Ce prix n'est point un achat de la femme, mais une indemnité qui dédommage la famille du père pour les enfants futurs, qui ne profiteront pas à cette famille mais à celle où la femme va entrer.”—La Femme, p. 166.
556.
In Rome, when the separation was due to the misconduct of the wife, the dowry belonged to her husband.
557.
“Dotem non uxor marito sed uxori maritus offert.”—Tac. Germ. xviii. On the Morgengab, see Canciani, Leges Barbarorum (Venetiis, 1781), vol. i. pp. 102-104; ii. pp. 230-231. Muratori, Antich. Ital. diss. xx. Luitprand enacted that no Longobard should give more than one-fourth of his substance as a Morgengab. In Gregory of Tours (ix. 20) we have an example of the gift of some cities as a Morgengab.
558.
See, on this point, Aul. Gellius, Noct. Att. xv. 20. Euripides is said to have had two wives.
559.
Aristotle said that Homer never gives a concubine to Menelaus, in order to intimate his respect for Helen—though false. (Athenæus, xiii. 3.)
560.
Æschylus has put this curious notion into the mouth of Apollo, in a speech in the Eumenides. It has, however, been very widely diffused, and may be found in Indian, Greek, Roman, and even Christian writers. M. Legouvé, who has devoted a very curious chapter to the subject, quotes a passage from St. Thomas Aquinas, accepting it, and arguing from it, that a father should be more loved than a mother. M. Legouvé says that when the male of one animal and the female of another are crossed, the type of the female usually predominates in the offspring. See Legouvé, Hist. morale des Femmes, pp. 216-228; Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité antique, pp. 39-40; and also a curious note by Boswell, in Croker's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson (1847), p. 472.
561.
Dr. Vintras, in a remarkable pamphlet (London, 1867) On the Repression of Prostitution, shows from the police statistics that the number of prostitutes known to the police in England and Wales, in 1864, was 49,370; and this is certainly much below the entire number. These, it will be observed, comprise only the habitual, professional prostitutes.
562.
Some measures have recently been taken in a few garrison towns. The moral sentiment of the community, it appears, would be shocked if Liverpool were treated on the same principles as Portsmouth. This very painful and revolting, but most important, subject has been treated with great knowledge, impartiality, and ability, by Parent-Duchâtelet, in his famous work, La Prostitution dans la ville de Paris. The third edition contains very copious supplementary accounts, furnished by different doctors in different countries.
563.
Parent-Duchâtelet has given many statistics, showing the very large extent to which the French system of supervision deters those who were about to enter into prostitution, and reclaims those who had entered into it. He and Dr. Vintras concur in representing English prostitution as about the most degraded, and at the same time the most irrevocable.
564.
Miss Mulock, in her amiable but rather feeble book, called A Woman's Thoughts about Women, has some good remarks on this point (pp. 291-293), which are all the more valuable, as the authoress has not the faintest sympathy with any opinions concerning the character and position of women which are not strictly conventional. She notices the experience of Sunday school mistresses, that, of their pupils who are seduced, an extremely large proportion are “of the very best, refined, intelligent, truthful, and affectionate.”
565.
See the very singular and painful chapter in Parent-Duchâtelet, called “Mœurs et Habitudes des Prostituées.” He observes that they are remarkable for their kindness to one another in sickness or in distress; that they are not unfrequently charitable to poor people who do not belong to their class; that when one of them has a child, it becomes the object of very general interest and affection; that most of them have lovers, to whom they are sincerely attached; that they rarely fail to show in the hospitals a very real sense of shame; and that many of them entered into their mode of life for the purpose of supporting aged parents. One anecdote is worth giving in the words of the author: “Un médecin n'entrant jamais dans leurs salles sans ôter légèrement son chapeau, par cette seule politesse il sut tellement conquérir leur confiance qu'il leur faisait faire tout ce qu'il voulait.” This writer, I may observe, is not a romance writer or a theorist of any description. He is simply a physician who describes the results of a very large official experience.
566.
“Parent-Duchâtelet atteste que sur trois mille créatures perdues trente cinq seulement avaient un état qui pouvait les nourrir, et que quatorze cents avaient été précipitées dans cette horrible vie par la misère. Une d'elles, quand elle s'y résolut, n'avait pas mangé depuis trois jours.”—Legouvé, Hist. morale des Femmes, pp. 322-323.
567.
Concerning the position and character of Greek women, the reader may obtain ample information by consulting Becker's Charicles (translated by Metcalfe, 1845); Rainneville, La Femme dans l'Antiquité (Paris, 1865); and an article “On Female Society in Greece,” in the twenty-second volume of the Quarterly Review.
568.
Plutarch, Conj. Præc.
569.
Xenophon, Econ. ii.
570.
Plut. Conj. Præc. There is also an extremely beautiful picture of the character of a good wife in Aristotle. (Economics, book i. cap. vii.)
571.
See Alexander's History of Women (London, 1783), vol. i. p. 201.
572.
Plutarch, Phocion.
573.
Our information concerning the Greek courtesans is chiefly derived from the thirteenth book of the Deipnosophists of Athenæus, from the Letters of Alciphron, from the Dialogues of Lucian on courtesans, and from the oration of Demosthenes against Neæra. See, too, Xenophon, Memorabilia, iii. 11; and among modern books, Becker's Charicles. Athenæus was an Egyptian, whose exact date is unknown but who appears to have survived Ulpian, who died in a.d. 228. He had access to, and gave extracts from, many works on this subject, which have now perished. Alciphron is believed to have lived near the time of Lucian.
574.
According to some writers the word “venerari” comes from “Venerem exercere,” on account of the devotions in the temple of Venus. See Vossius, Etymologicon Linguæ Latinæ, “veneror;” also La Mothe le Vayer, Lettre xc.
575.
On the connection of the courtesans with the artistic enthusiasm, see Raoul Rochette, Cours d'Archéologie, pp. 278-279. See, too, Athenæus, xiii. 59; Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxv. 40.
576.
See the very curious little work of Ménage, Historia Mulierum Philosopharum (Lugduni, mdxc.); also Rainneville, La Femme dans l'Antiquite, p. 244. At a much later date Lucian described the beauty, accomplishments, generosity, and even modesty, of Panthea of Smyrna, the favourite mistress of Lucius Verus.
577.
The ζῶμα, which was at first in use, was discarded by the Lacedæmonians, and afterwards by the other Greeks. There are three curious memoirs tracing the history of the change, by M. Burette, in the Hist. de l'Académie royale des Inscriptions, tome i.
578.
On the causes of paiderastia in Greece, see the remarks of Mr. Grote in the review of the Symposium, in his great work on Plato. The whole subject is very ably treated by M. Maury, Hist. des Religions de la Gréce antique, tome iii. pp. 35-39. Many facts connected with it are collected by Döllinger, in his Jew and Gentile, and by Chateaubriand, in his Études historiques. The chief original authority is the thirteenth book of Athenæus, a book of very painful interest in the history of morals.
579.
Plutarch, in his Life of Agesilaus, dwells on the intense self-control manifested by that great man, in refraining from gratifying a passion he had conceived for a boy named Megabetes, and Maximus Tyrius says it deserved greater praise than the heroism of Leonidas. (Diss. xxv.) Diogenes Laërtius, in his Life of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, the most austere of all ancient sects, praises that philosopher for being but little addicted to this vice. Sophocles is said to have been much addicted to it.
580.
Some examples of the ascription of this vice to the divinities are given by Clem. Alex. Admonitio ad Gentes. Socrates is said to have maintained that Jupiter loved Ganymede for his wisdom, as his name is derived from γάνυμαι and μῆδος, to be delighted with prudence. (Xenophon, Banquet.) The disaster of Cannæ was ascribed to the jealousy of Juno because a beautiful boy was introduced into the temple of Jupiter. (Lactantius, Inst. Div. ii. 17.)
581.
Athenæus, xiii. 78. See, too, the very revolting book on different kinds of love, ascribed (it is said falsely) to Lucian.
582.
Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 9.
583.
There is ample evidence of this in Athenæus, and in the Dialogues of Lucian on the courtesans. See, too, Terence, The Eunuch, act v. scene 4, which is copied from the Greek. The majority of the class were not called hetæræ, but πόρναι.
584.
Plutarch, De Garrulitate; Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 19. The feat of biting out their tongues rather than reveal secrets, or yield to passion, is ascribed to a suspiciously large number of persons. Ménage cites five besides Leæna. (Hist. Mulier. Philos. pp. 104-108.)
585.
See, upon Bacchis, several of the letters of Alciphron, especially the very touching letter (x.) on her death, describing her kindness and disinterestedness. Athenæus (xiii. 66) relates a curious anecdote illustrating these aspects of her character.
586.
Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 11.
587.
On the Flamens, see Aulus Gell. Noct. x. 15.
588.
Capitolinus, Maximinus Junior.
589.
Pliny, Hist. Nat. vii. 36. There is (as is well known) a similar legend of a daughter thus feeding her father. Val. Max. Lib. v. cap. 4.
590.
This appears from the first act of the Stichus of Plautus. The power appears to have become quite obsolete during the Empire but the first legal act (which was rather of the nature of an exhortation than of a command) against it was issued by Antoninus Pius, and it was only definitely abolished under Diocletian. (Laboulaye, Recherches sur la condition civile et politique des femmes, pp. 16-17.)
591.
Aul. Gell. Noct. x. 23.
592.
Val. Maximus, ii. 1, § 4; Aul. Gellius, Noct. iv. 3.
593.
Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 4.
594.
Tacitus, De Oratoribus, xxviii.
595.
See Aulus Gellius, Noct. ii. 24.
596.
“More inter veteres recepto, qui satis pœnarum adversum impudicas in ipsa professione flagitii credebant.”—Tacitus, Annal. ii. 85.
597.
Aul. Gell. iv. 3. Juno was the goddess of marriage.
598.
Ibid. iv. 14.
599.
The well-known superstition about the lion, &c., becoming docile before a virgin is, I believe, as old as Roman times. St. Isidore mentions that rhinoceroses were said to be captured by young girls being put in their way to fascinate them. (Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, tome ii. p. 35.)
600.
Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxviii. 23.
601.
Ibid. vii. 18.
602.
“Quem enim Romanorum pudet uxorem ducere in convivium? aut cujus materfamilias non primum locum tenet ædium, atque in celebritate versatur? quod multo fit aliter in Græcia. Nam neque in convivium adhibetur, nisi propinquorum, neque sedet nisi in interiore parte ædium quæ gynæcontis appellatur, quo nemo accedit, nisi propinqua cognatione conjunctus.”—Corn. Nepos. præfat.
603.
Val. Max. ii. 1, § 6.
604.
Liv. viii. 18.
605.
See Val. Max. ii. 1.
606.
“Nuptiæ sunt conjunctio maris et feminæ, et consortium omnis vitæ, divini et humani juris communicatio.”—Modestinus.
607.
Livy, xxxiv. 5. There is a fine collection of legends or histories of heroic women (but chiefly Greek) in Clem. Alexand. Strom. iv. 19.
608.
Tacitus, Annal. ii. 85. This decree was on account of a patrician lady named Vistilia having so enrolled herself.
609.
Dion Cassius, liv. 16, lvi. 10.
610.
“Si sine uxore possemus, Quirites, esse, omnes ea molestia careremus; sed quoniam ita natura tradidit, ut nec cum illis satis commode nec sine illis ullo modo vivi possit, saluti perpetuæ potius quam brevi voluptati consulendum.”—Aulus Gellius, Noct. i. 6. Some of the audience, we are told, thought that, in exhorting to matrimony, the speaker should have concealed its undoubted evils. It was decided, however, that it was more honourable to tell the whole truth. Stobæus (Sententiæ) has preserved a number of harsh and often heartless sayings about wives, that were popular among the Greeks. It was a saying of a Greek poet, that “marriage brings only two happy days—the day when the husband first clasps his wife to his breast, and the day when he lays her in the tomb;” and in Rome it became a proverbial saying, that a wife was only good “in thalamo vel in tumulo.”
611.
Friedländer, Hist. des Mœurs romaines, tome i. pp. 360-364. On the great influence exercised by Roman ladies on political affairs some remarkable passages are collected in Denis, Hist. des Idées Morales, tome ii. pp. 98-99. This author is particularly valuable in all that relates to the history of domestic morals. The Asinaria of Plautus, and some of the epigrams of Martial, throw much light upon this subject.
612.
See the very remarkable discussion about this repeal in Livy, lib. xxxiv. cap. 1-8.
613.
Legouvé, Hist. Morale des Femmes, pp. 23-26. St. Augustine denounced this law as the most unjust that could be mentioned or even conceived. “Qua lege quid iniquius dici aut cogitari possit, ignoro.”—St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, iii. 21—a curious illustration of the difference between the habits of thought of his time and those of the middle ages, when daughters were habitually sacrificed, without a protest, by the feudal laws.
614.
Plutarch, Cicero.
615.
Tacit. Ann. i. 10.
616.
Plutarch, Cato; Lucan, Pharsal. ii.
617.
Senec. Ep. cxiv.
618.
Val. Max. vi. 3.
619.
Plutarch, Paul. Æmil. It is not quite clear whether this remark was made by Paulus himself.
620.
Sen. De Benef. iii. 16. See, too, Ep. xcv. Ad Helv. xvi.
621.
Apol. 6.
622.
Epig. vi. 7.
623.
Juv. Sat. vi. 230.
624.
Ep. 2.
625.
Sueton. Aug. Charlemagne, in like manner, made his daughters work in wool. (Eginhardus, Vit. Car. Mag. xix.)
626.
Friedländer, Mœurs romaines du règne d'Auguste à la fin des Antonins (trad. franç.), tome i. p. 414.
627.
Much evidence of this is collected by Friedländer, tome i. pp. 387-395.
628.
Plutarch, Pompeius.
629.
Martial, xi. 16. Pliny, Ep. i. 14.
630.
Suet. Tiberius, xlv.
631.
Plutarch, Brutus.
632.
Tacit. Annal. xv. 63, 64.
633.
“Pæte, non dolet.”—Plin. Ep. iii. 16; Martial, Ep. i. 14.
634.
Tacit. Annal. xvi. 10-11; Hist. i. 3. See, too, Friedländer, tome i. p. 406.
635.
Tacit. Ann. xvi. 34.
636.
Pliny mentions her return after the death of the tyrant (Ep. iii. 11).
637.
“Quod paucis datum est, non minus amabilis quam veneranda.”—Plin. Ep. vii. 19.
638.
See Plin. Ep. vii. 19. Dion Cassius and Tacitus relate the exiles of Helvidius, who appears to have been rather intemperate and unreasonable.
639.
Friedländer gives many and most touching examples, tome i. pp. 410-414.
640.
Suet. Dom. viii.
641.
Capitolinus, Macrinus.
642.
Lampridius, A. Severus.
643.
In the oration against Neæra, which is ascribed to Demosthenes, but is of doubtful genuineness, the licence accorded to husbands is spoken of as a matter of course: “We keep mistresses for our pleasures, concubines for constant attendance, and wives to bear us legitimate children, and to be our faithful housekeepers.”
644.
There is a remarkable passage on the feelings of wives, in different nations, upon this point, in Athenæus, xiii. 3. See, too, Plutarch, Conj. Præc.
645.
Euripid. Andromache.
646.
Valer. Max. vi. 7, § 1. Some very scandalous instances of cynicism on the part of Roman husbands are recorded. Thus, Augustus had many mistresses, “Quæ [virgines] sibi undique etiam ab uxore conquirerentur.”—Sueton. Aug. lxxi. When the wife of Verus, the colleague of Marcus Aurelius, complained of the tastes of her husband, he answered, “Uxor enim dignitatis nomen est, non voluptatis.”—Spartian. Verus.
647.
Aristotle, Econom. i. 4-8-9.
648.
Plutarch enforces the duty at length, in his very beautiful work on marriage. In case husbands are guilty of infidelity, he recommends their wives to preserve a prudent blindness, reflecting that it is out of respect for them that they choose another woman as the companion of their intemperance. Seneca touches briefly, but unequivocally, on the subject: “Scis improbum esse qui ab uxore pudicitiam exigit, ipse alienarum corruptor uxorum. Scis ut illi nil cum adultero, sic nihil tibi esse debere cum pellice.”—Ep. xciv. “Sciet in uxorem gravissimum esse genus injuriæ, habere pellicem.”—Ep. xcv.
649.
“Periniquum enim videtur esse, ut pudicitiam vir ab uxore exigat, quam ipse non exhibeat.”—Cod. Just. Dig. xlviii. 5-13.
650.
Quoted by St. Augustine, De Conj. Adult. ii. 19. Plautus, long before, had made one of his characters complain of the injustice of the laws which punished unchaste wives but not unchaste husbands, and ask why, since every honest woman is contented with one husband, every honest man should not be contented with one wife? (Mercator, Act iv. scene 5.)
651.
Horace, Sat. i. 2.
652.
“Verum si quis est qui etiam meretriciis amoribus interdictum juventuti putet, est ille quidem valde severus; negare non possum; sed abhorret non modo ab hujus sæculi licentia, verum etiam a majorum consuetudine atque concessis. Quando enim hoc factum non est? Quando reprehensum? Quando non permissum? Quando denique fuit ut quod licet non liceret?”—Cicero, Pro Cælio, cap. xx. The whole speech is well worthy of the attention of those who would understand Roman feelings on these matters; but it should be remembered that it is the speech of a lawyer defending a dissolute client.
653.
Περί ἀφροδίσια, εἰς δύναμιν πρὸ γάμου καθαρευτέον. ἁπτομένῳ δέ, ὢν νομιμόν ἐστι, μεταληπτέον, μὴ μέν τοι ἐπαχθὴς γίνου τοῖς χρωμένοις, μηδὲ ἐλεγκτικός, μηδὲ πολλαχοῦ τό, Ὅτι αὐτὸς οὐ χρῇ, παράφερε.—Enchir. xxxiii.
654.
“Et si uxores non haberent, singulas concubinas, quod sine his esse non possent.”—Lampridius, A. Severus. We have an amusing picture of the common tone of people of the world on this matter, in the speech Apuleius puts into the mouth of the gods, remonstrating with Venus for being angry because her son formed a connection with Psyche. (Metam. lib. v.)
655.
Preserved by Stobæus. See Denis, Hist. des Idées morales dans l'Antiquité, tome ii. pp. 134-136, 149-150.
656.
Philos. Apol. i. 13. When a saying of Pythagoras, “that a man should only have commerce with his own wife,” was quoted, he said that this concerned others.
657.
Trebellius Pollio, Zenobia.
658.
This is asserted by an anonymous writer quoted by Suidas. See Ménage, Hist. Mulierum Philosopharum, p. 58.
659.
See, e.g., Plotinus, 1st Eun. vi. 6.
660.
Capitolinus, M. Aurelius.
661.
Amm. Marcell. xxv. 4.
662.
Cod. Theod. lib. ix. tit. 24.
663.
Cod. Theod. lib. xv. tit. 7.
664.
“Fidicinam nulli liceat vel emere vel docere vel vendere, vel conviviis aut spectaculis adhibere. Nec cuiquam aut delectationis desiderio erudita feminea aut musicæ artis studio liceat habere mancipia.”—Cod. Theod. xv. 7, 10. This curious law was issued in a.d. 385. St. Jerome said these musicians were the chorus of the devil, and quite as dangerous as the sirens. See the comments on the law.
665.

Ruinart, Act. S. Perpetuæ. These acts, are, I believe, generally regarded as authentic. There is nothing more instructive in history than to trace the same moral feelings through different ages and religions; and I am able in this case to present the reader with an illustration of their permanence, which I think somewhat remarkable. The younger Pliny gives in one of his letters a pathetic account of the execution of Cornelia, a vestal virgin, by the order of Domitian. She was buried alive for incest; but her innocence appears to have been generally believed; and she had been condemned unheard, and in her absence. As she was being lowered into the subterranean cell her dress was caught and deranged in the descent. She turned round and drew it to her, and when the executioner stretched out his hand to assist her, she started back lest he should touch her, for this, according to the received opinion, was a pollution; and even in the supreme moment of her agony her vestal purity shrank from the unholy contact. (Plin. Ep. iv. 11.) If we now pass back several centuries, we find Euripides attributing to Polyxena a trait precisely similar to that which was attributed to Perpetua. As she fell beneath the sword of the executioner, it was observed that her last care was that she might fall with decency.

ἡ δὲ και θνήσκουσ᾽ ὅμως πολλὴν πρόνοιαν εἶχεν εὐσχήμως πεσεῖν,
κρύπτουσ᾽ ἂ κρύπτειν ὄμματ᾽ ἀρσένων χρεών.

Euripides, Hec. 566-68.

666.
Vita Pauli.
667.
St. Ambrose relates an instance of this, which he says occurred at Antioch (De Virginibus, lib. ii. cap. iv.). When the Christian youth was being led to execution, the girl whom he had saved reappeared and died with him. Eusebius tells a very similar story, but places the scene at Alexandria.
668.
See Ceillier, Hist. des Auteurs ecclés. tome iii. p. 523.
669.
Ibid. tome viii. pp. 204-207.
670.
Among the Irish saints St. Colman is said to have had a girdle which would only meet around the chaste, and which was long preserved in Ireland as a relic (Colgan, Acta Sanctorum Hiberniæ, Louvain, 1645, vol. i. p. 246); and St. Fursæus a girdle that extinguished lust. (Ibid. p. 292.) The girdle of St. Thomas Aquinas seems to have had some miraculous properties of this kind. (See his Life in the Bollandists, Sept. 29.) Among both the Greeks and Romans it was customary for the bride to be girt with a girdle which the bridegroom unloosed in the nuptial bed, and hence “zonam solvere” became a proverbial expression for “pudicitiam mulieris imminuere.” (Nieupoort, De Ritibus Romanorum, p. 479; Alexander's History of Women, vol. ii. p. 300.)
671.
Vit. St. Pachom. (Rosweyde).
672.
See his Life, by Gregory of Nyssa.
673.
A little book has been written on these legends by M. Charles de Bussy, called Les Courtisanes saintes. There is said to be some doubt about St. Afra, for, while her acts represent her as a reformed courtesan, St. Fortunatus, in two lines he has devoted to her, calls her a virgin. (Ozanam, Études german. tome ii. p. 8.)
674.
See the Vit. Sancti Joannis Eleemosynarii (Rosweyde).
675.
Tillemont, tome x. pp. 61-62. There is also a very picturesque legend of the manner in which St. Paphnutius converted the courtesan Thais.
676.
See especially, Tertullian, Ad Uxorem. It was beautifully said, at a later period, that woman was not taken from the head of man, for she was not intended to be his ruler, nor from his feet, for she was not intended to be his slave, but from his side, for she was to be his companion and his comfort. (Peter Lombard, Senten. lib. ii. dis. 18.)
677.
The reader may find many passages on this subject in Barbeyrac, Morale des Pères, ii. § 7; iii. § 8; iv. § 31-35; vi. § 31; xiii. § 2-8.
678.
“It is remarkable how rarely, if ever (I cannot call to mind an instance), in the discussions of the comparative merits of marriage and celibacy, the social advantages appear to have occurred to the mind.... It is always argued with relation to the interests and the perfection of the individual soul; and, even with regard to that, the writers seem almost unconscious of the softening and humanising effect of the natural affections, the beauty of parental tenderness and filial love.”—Milman's Hist. of Christianity, vol. iii. p. 196.
679.
“Tempus breve est, et jam securis ad radices arborum posita est, quæ silvam legis et nuptiarum evangelica castitate succidat.”—Ep. cxxiii.
680.
“Laudo nuptias, laudo conjugium, sed quia mihi virgines generant.”—Ep. xxii.
681.
See Ceillier, Auteurs ecclés. xiii. p. 147.
682.
Socrates, iv. 23.
683.
Palladius, Hist. Laus. cxix.
684.
Vit. S. Abr. (Rosweyde), cap. i.
685.
I do not know when this legend first appeared. M. Littré mentions having found it in a French MS. of the eleventh century (Littré, Les Barbares, pp. 123-124); and it also forms the subject of a very curious fresco, I imagine of a somewhat earlier date, which was discovered, within the last few years, in the subterranean church of St. Clement at Rome. An account of it is given by Father Mullooly, in his interesting little book about that Church.
686.
De Virgin. cap. iii.
687.
Greg. Tur. i. 42.
688.
The regulations on this point are given at length in Bingham.
689.
Muratori, Antich. Ital. diss. xx.
690.
St. Greg. Dial. i. 10.
691.
Delepierre, L'Enfer décrit par ceux qui l'ont vu, pp. 44-56.
692.
Val. Max. ii. 1. § 3.
693.

“Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores
Abstulit; ille habeat secum, servetque sepulchro.”

Æn. iv. 28.

694.
E.g., the wives of Lucan, Drusus, and Pompey.
695.
Tacit. German. xix.
696.
Friedländer, tome i. p. 411.
697.
Hieron. Ep. liv.
698.

“Uxorem vivam amare voluptas;
Defunctam religio.”

Statius. Sylv. v. in proœmio.

699.
By one of the laws of Charondas it was ordained that those who cared so little for the happiness of their children as to place a stepmother over them, should be excluded from the councils of the State. (Diod. Sic. xii. 12.)
700.
Tertullian expounded the Montanist view in his treatise, De Monogamia.
701.
A full collection of the statements of the Fathers on this subject is given by Perrone, De Matrimonio, lib. iii. Sect. I.; and by Natalis Alexander, Hist. Eccles. Sæc. II. dissert. 18.
702.
Thus, to give but a single instance, St. Jerome, who was one of their strongest opponents, says: “Quid igitur? damnamus secunda matrimonia? Minime, sed prima laudamus. Abjicimus de ecclesia digamos? absit; sed monogamos ad continentiam provocamus. In arca Noe non solum munda sed et immunda fuerunt animalia.”—Ep. cxxiii.
703.
In Legat.
704.
Strom. lib. iii.
705.
Contra Jovin. i.
706.
Ibid. See, too, Ep. cxxiii.
707.
Hom. xvii. in Luc.
708.
Orat. xxxi.
709.
Perrone, De Matr. iii. § 1, art. 1; Natalis Alexander, Hist. Eccles. II. dissert. 18. The penances are said not to imply that the second marriage was a sin, but that the moral condition that made it necessary was a bad one.
710.
See Stephen's Hist. of English Criminal Law, i. p. 461.
711.
Conc. Illib. can. xxxviii. Bingham thinks the feeling of the Council to have been, that if baptism was not administered by a priest, it should at all events be administered by one who might have been a priest.
712.
Perrone, De Matrimonio, tome iii. p. 102.
713.
This subject has recently been treated with very great learning and with admirable impartiality by an American author, Mr. Henry C. Lea, in his History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (Philadelphia, 1867), which is certainly one of the most valuable works that America has produced. Since the great history of Dean Milman, I know no work in English which has thrown more light on the moral condition of the middle ages, and none which is more fitted to dispel the gross illusions concerning that period which High Church writers, and writers of the positive school, have conspired to sustain.
714.
See Lea, p. 36. The command of St. Paul, that a bishop or deacon should be the husband of one wife (1 Tim. iii. 2-12) was believed by all ancient and by many modern commentators to be prohibitory of second marriages; and this view is somewhat confirmed by the widows who were to be honoured and supported by the Church, being only those who had been but once married (1 Tim. v. 9). See Pressensé, Hist. des trois premiers Siècles (1re série), tome ii. p. 233. Among the Jews it was ordained that the high priest should not marry a widow. (Levit. xxi. 13-14.)
715.
Socrates, H. E. i. 11. The Council of Illiberis (can. xxxiii.) had ordained this, but both the precepts and the practice of divines varied greatly. A brilliant summary of the chief facts is given in Milman's History of Early Christianity, vol. iii. pp. 277-282.
716.
See, on the state of things in the tenth and eleventh centuries, Lea, pp. 162-192.
717.
Ratherius, quoted by Lea, p. 151.
718.
See some curious evidence of the extent to which the practice of the hereditary transmission of ecclesiastical offices was carried, in Lea, pp. 149, 150, 266, 299, 339.
719.
Lea, pp. 271, 292, 422.
720.
Ibid. pp. 186-187.
721.
Lea, p. 358.
722.
Ibid. p. 296.
723.
Ibid. p. 322.
724.
Ibid. p. 349.
725.
The reader may find the most ample evidence of these positions in Lea. See especially pp. 138, 141, 153, 155, 260, 344.
726.
Synesius, Ep. cv.
727.
Lea, p. 122. St. Augustine had named his illegitimate son Adeodatus, or the Gift of God, and had made him a principal interlocutor in one of his religious dialogues.
728.
Dialog. iv. 11.
729.
This is mentioned by Henry of Huntingdon, who was a contemporary. (Lea, p. 293.)
730.
The first notice of this very remarkable precaution is in a canon of the Council of Palencia (in Spain) held in 1322, which anathematises laymen who compel their pastors to take concubines. (Lea, p. 324.) Sleidan mentions that it was customary in some of the Swiss cantons for the parishioners to oblige the priest to select a concubine as a necessary precaution for the protection of his female parishioners. (Ibid. p. 355.) Sarpi, in his Hist. of the Council of Trent, mentions (on the authority of Zuinglius) this Swiss custom. Nicolas of Clemangis, a leading member of the Council of Constance, declared that this custom had become very common, that the laity were firmly persuaded that priests never lived a life of real celibacy, and that, where no proofs of concubinage were found, they always assumed the existence of more serious vice. The passage (which is quoted by Bayle) is too remarkable to be omitted. “Taceo de fornicationibus et adulteriis a quibus qui alieni sunt probro cæteris ac ludibrio esse solent, spadonesque aut sodomitæ appellantur; denique laici usque adeo persuasum habent nullos cælibes esse, ut in plerisque parochiis non aliter velint presbyterum tolerare nisi concubinam habeat, quo vel sic suis sit consultum uxoribus, quæ nec sic quidem usquequaque sunt extra periculum.” Nic. de Clem. De Præsul. Simoniac. (Lea, p. 386.)
731.
This was energetically noticed by Luther, in his famous sermon “De Matrimonio,” and some of the Catholic preachers of an earlier period had made the same complaint. See a curious passage from a contemporary of Boccaccio, quoted by Meray, Les Libres prêcheurs, p. 155. “Vast numbers of laymen separated from their wives under the influence of the ascetic enthusiasm which Hildebrand created.”—Lea, p. 254.
732.
“Quando enim servata fide thori causa prolis conjuges conveniunt sic excusatur coitus ut culpam non habeat. Quando vero deficiente bono prolis fide tamen servata conveniunt causa incontinentiæ non sic excusatur ut non habeat culpam, sed venialem.... Item hoc quod conjugati victi concupiscentia utuntur invicem, ultra necessitatem liberos procreandi, ponam in his pro quibus quotidie dicimus Dimitte nobis debita nostra.... Unde in sententiolis Sexti Pythagorici legitur ‘omnis ardentior amator propriæ uxoris adulter est.’ ”—Peter Lombard, Sentent. lib. iv. dist. 31.
733.
Many wives, however, were forbidden. (Deut. xvii. 17.) Polygamy is said to have ceased among the Jews after the return from the Babylonish captivity.—Whewell's Elements of Morality, book iv. ch. v.
734.
Levit. xii. 1-5.
735.
Ecclesiasticus, xiii. 14. I believe, however, the passage has been translated “Better the badness of a man than the blandishments of a woman.”
736.
This curious fact is noticed by Le Blant, Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, pp. xcvii.-xcviii.
737.
See the decree of a Council of Auxerre (a.d. 578), can. 36.
738.
See the last two chapters of Troplong, Influences du Christianisme sur le Droit (a work, however, which is written much more in the spirit of an apologist than in that of an historian), and Legouvé, pp. 27-29.
739.
Even in matters not relating to property, the position of women in feudalism was a low one. “Tout mari,” says Beaumanoir, “peut battre sa femme quand elle ne veut pas obéir à son commandement, ou quand elle le maudit, ou quand elle le dément, pourvu que ce soit modérément et sans que mort s'ensuive,” quoted by Legouvé, p. 148. Contrast with this the saying of the elder Cato: “A man who beats his wife or his children lays impious hands on that which is most holy and most sacred in the world.”—Plutarch, Marcus Cato.
740.
See Legouvé, pp. 29-38; Maine's Ancient Law, pp. 154-159.
741.
“No society which preserves any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by the middle Roman law: but the proprietary disabilities of married females stand on quite a different basis from their personal incapacities, and it is by keeping alive and consolidating the former that the expositors of the canon law have deeply injured civilisation. There are many vestiges of a struggle between the secular and ecclesiastical principles; but the canon law nearly everywhere prevailed.”—Maine's Ancient Law, p. 158. I may observe that the Russian law was early very favourable to the proprietary rights of married women. See a remarkable letter in the Memoirs of the Princess Daschkaw (edited by Mrs. Bradford: London, 1840), vol. ii. p. 404.
742.
Germania, cap. ix. xviii.-xx.
743.
De Gubernatione Dei.
744.
See, for these legends, Mallet's Northern Antiquities.
745.
Tacitus, Germ. 9; Hist. iv. 18; Xiphilin. lxxi. 3; Amm. Marcellinus, xv. 12; Vopiscus, Aurelianus; Floras, iii. 3.
746.
Valer. Max. vi. 1; Hieron. Ep. cxxiii.
747.
Plutarch, De Mulier. Virt.
748.
Plutarch, Amatorius; Xiphilin. lxvi. 16; Tacit. Hist. iv. 67. The name of this heroic wife is given in three different forms.
749.
On the polygamy of the first, see Greg. Tur. iv. 26; on the polygamy of Chilperic, Greg. Tur. iv. 28; v. 14.
750.
Greg. Tur. iv. 3.
751.
Ibid. iii. 25-27, 36.
752.
Fredegarius, xxxvi.
753.
Ibid. lx.
754.
Eginhardus, Vit. Kar. Mag. xviii. Charlemagne had, according to Eginhard, four wives, but, as far as I can understand, only two at the same time.
755.
Smyth's Lectures on Modern History, vol. i. pp. 61-62.
756.
Milman's Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. i. p. 363; Legouvé, Hist. Morale des Femmes, p. 57.
757.
See, on these laws, Lord Kames On Women; Legouvé, p. 57.
758.
Favorinus had strongly urged it. (Aul. Gell. Noct. xii. 1.)
759.
These are the reasons given by Malthus, On Population, book iii. ch. ii.
760.
St. Augustine (De Conj. Adult. ii. 19) maintains that adultery is even more criminal in the man than in the woman. St. Jerome has an impressive passage on the subject: “Aliæ sunt leges Cæsarum, aliæ Christi; aliud Papianus, aliud Paulus nostri præcepit. Apud illos viris impudicitiæ fræna laxantur et solo stupro atque adulterio condemnato passim per lupanaria et ancillulas libido permittitur, quasi culpam dignitas faciat non voluntas. Apud nos quod non licet feminis æque non licet viris; et eadem servitus pari conditione censetur.”—Ep. lxxvii. St. Chrysostom writes in a similar strain.
761.
See Troplong, Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit, pp. 239-251.
762.
We find, however, traces of a toleration of the Roman type of concubine in Christianity for some time. Thus, a Council of Toledo decreed: “Si quis habens uxorem fidelis concubinam habeat non communicet. Cæterum is qui non habet uxorem et pro uxore concubinam habet a communione non repellatur, tantum ut unius mulieris, aut uxoris aut concubinæ ut ei placuerit, sit conjunctione contentus.”—1 Can. 17. St. Isidore said: “Christiano non dicam plurimas sed nec duas simul habere licitum est, nisi unam tantum aut uxorem, aut certo loco uxoris, si conjux deest, concubinam.”—Apud Gratianum, diss. 4. Quoted by Natalis Alexander, Hist. Eccles. Sæc. I. diss. 29. Mr. Lea (Hist. of Sacerdotal Celibacy, pp. 203-205) has devoted an extremely interesting note to tracing the history of the word concubine through the middle ages. He shows that even up to the thirteenth century a concubine was not necessarily an abandoned woman. The term was applied to marriages that were real, but not officially recognised. Coleridge notices a remarkable instance of the revival of this custom in German history.—Notes on English Divines (ed. 1853), vol. i. p. 221.
763.
Legouvé, p. 199.
764.
See some curious passages in Troplong, pp. 222-223. The Fathers seem to have thought dissolution of marriage was not lawful on account of the adultery of the husband, but that it was not absolutely unlawful, though not commendable, for a husband whose wife had committed adultery to re-marry.
765.
Some of the great charities of Fabiola were performed as penances, on account of her crime in availing herself of the legislative permission of divorce.
766.
Laboulaye, Recherches sur la Condition civile et politique des Femmes, pp. 152-158.
767.
“A discourse concerning the obligation to marry within the true communion, following from their style (sic) of being called a holy seed.” This rare discourse is appended to a sermon against mixed marriages by Leslie. (London, 1702.) The reader may find something about Dodwell in Macaulay's Hist. of England, ch. xiv.; but Macaulay, who does not appear to have known Dodwell's masterpiece—his dissertation De Paucitate Marturum, which is one of the finest specimens of criticism of his time—and who only knew the discourse on marriages by extracts, has, I think, done him considerable injustice.
768.
Dodwell relies mainly upon this fact, and especially upon Ezra's having treated these marriages as essentially null.
769.
“Jungere cum infidelibus vinculum matrimonii, prostituere gentilibus membra Christi.”—Cyprian, De Lapsis.
770.
“Hæc cum ita sint, fideles Gentilium matrimonia subeuntes stupri reos esse constat, et arcendos ab omni communicatione fraternitatis.”—Tert. Ad Uxor. ii. 3.
771.
See on this law, and on the many councils which condemned the marriage of orthodox with heretics, Bingham, Antiq. xxii. 2, §§ 1-2.
772.
Many curious statistics illustrating this fact are given by M. Bonneville de Marsangy—a Portuguese writer who was counsellor of the Imperial Court at Paris—in his Étude sur la Moralité comparée de la Femme et de l'Homme. (Paris, 1862.) The writer would have done better if he had not maintained, in lawyer fashion, that the statistics of crime are absolutely decisive on the question of the comparative morality of the sexes, and also, if he had not thought it due to his official position to talk in a rather grotesque strain about the regeneration and glorification of the sex in the person of the Empress Eugénie.
773.
See Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 19.
774.
“Tantum inter Stoicos, Serene, et ceteros sapientiam professos interesse, quantum inter fœminas et mares non immerito dixerim.”—De Const. Sapientis, cap. i.
775.
This is well illustrated, on the one side, by the most repulsive representations of Christ, by Michael Angelo, in the great fresco in the Sistine Chapel (so inferior to the Christ of Orgagna, at Pisa, from which it was partly imitated), and in marble in the Minerva Church at Rome; and, on the other side, by the frescoes of Perugino, at Perugia, representing the great sages of Paganism. The figure of Cato, in the latter, almost approaches, as well as I remember, the type of St. John.
776.
In that fine description of a virtuous woman which is ascribed to the mother of King Lemuel, we read: “She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.” (Proverbs xxxi. 20.) I have already quoted from Xenophon the beautiful description of the Greek wife tending her sick slaves. So, too, Euripides represents the slaves of Alcestis gathering with tears around the bed of their dying mistress, who, even then, found some kind word for each, and, when she died, lamenting her as their second mother. (Eurip. Alcest.) In the servile war which desolated Sicily at the time of the Punic wars, we find a touching trait of the same kind. The revolt was provoked by the cruelties of a rich man, named Damophilus, and his wife, who were massacred with circumstances of great atrocity; but the slaves preserved their daughter entirely unharmed, for she had always made it her business to console them in their sorrow, and she had won the love of all. (Diodor. Sic. Frag. xxxiv.) So, too, Marcia, the wife of Cato, used to suckle her young slaves from her breast. (Plut. Marc. Cato.) I may add the well-known sentiment which Virgil puts in the mouth of Dido: “Haud ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.” There are, doubtless, many other touches of the same kind in ancient literature, some of which may occur to my readers.
777.
Theodoret, v. 19.
778.
See the beautiful description of the functions of a Christian woman in the second book of Tertullian, Ad Uxorem.
779.
See, upon the deaconesses, Bingham's Christian Antiquities, book ii. ch. 22, and Ludlow's Woman's Work in the Church. The latter author argues elaborately that the “widows” were not the same as the deaconesses.
780.
Phœbe (Rom. xvi. 1) is described as a διάκονος.
781.
A very able writer, who takes on the whole an unfavourable view of the influence of Christianity on legislation, says: “The provision for the widow was attributable to the exertions of the Church, which never relaxed its solicitude for the interests of wives surviving their husbands, winning, perhaps, one of the most arduous of its triumphs when, after exacting for two or three centuries an express promise from the husband at marriage to endow his wife, it at last succeeded in engrafting the principle of dower on the customary law of all Western Europe.”—Maine's Ancient Law, p. 224.
782.
See Troplong, Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit, pp. 308-310.
783.
The results of this change have been treated by Miss Parkes in her truly admirable little book called Essays on Woman's Work, better than by any other writer with whom I am acquainted.