We have seen how large the emperors loomed in the ideas and education of the fourth century, and what some of the evil effects of this were. As we pass into the fifth century we find a growing reaction. The balance is shifted, and the Church begins to receive from the emperors an authority which had previously been confined to the secular State.
At first the Church had been independent, unnoticed by the State; then, after the persecutions of the early Empire, it found imperial recognition with the accession of Constantine. But there was still a measure of independence of the State: the emperors did not interfere with Church dogma, and the bishops took no part in politics. They were, as yet, very humble and submissive, for they felt the need of imperial protection, having no sufficient organization of their own and no effective ecclesiastical government; though a considerable machinery had been created by the councils which had been meeting since the third century.
A third stage is reached when the bishops become haughty and imperious and begin to meddle with politics. The clergy have strengthened themselves by organization and training. The latent antagonism between Church and State becomes prominent, and the State sometimes comes off worse. And when the political framework goes under, the power of the Church grows and prospers.[878]
Now it is this growth of Church influence in the fifth century and its effect upon ideas and ideals that is important for our purpose. On the material side this growth is indicated by an increase of civil power. The Edict of Milan restored the confiscated buildings of the churches, and Constantine in 321[879] allowed the clergy to receive bequests. A vast amount of property was bequeathed to the Church in the fifth century, the administration of which was settled by the canons of the various synods. These canons gave rise to an ecclesiastical law which was later augmented by the decisions of the Popes, and played a great part in the Middle Ages. Civil jurisdiction largely passed into the hands of the bishops, and against their sentence, which was carried out by the civil authorities, there was no appeal. The entire administration of the widespread Church property and affairs was in the hands of the bishop. The State reserved criminal law for itself. Like the pagan ‘flamen’, the bishop sat on the ‘Curia’ of his city, where he exercised great authority.
More and more the State came to recognize the ecclesiastical society as a separate polity. Manumissions within the Church were sanctioned by the emperors.[880] The clergy are repeatedly excused from all public burdens whatsoever.[881] This cleavage between Church and State, which had been momentarily accentuated by Julian’s law of 362 forbidding Christians to teach, is further emphasized by the establishment of separate courts for ecclesiastical offenders. ‘The clergy’ (so ran the law of Honorius and Theodosius in 412) ‘may be tried only before an episcopal court.’[882]
More and more, therefore, the bishop came to be appealed to as a civil power,[883] and when the crisis came bishops like Sidonius defended the towns against the invaders.[884] A sense of the failing Empire made men turn to the Church for help against the oppression of imperial officials, and the ruin of invading barbarians.[885] Above all they turned to her for education.
For this position the Church had strengthened herself by increased organization during the fourth and fifth centuries. She assimilated the principles of imperial government and law, applied them in creating her bishoprics, and modelled on them her methods of administration. Thus law, the great contribution of the Roman Empire, passed into the Church, and so down the ages.
On the spiritual side this development of Christianity is marked by a greater kindliness (due also to the teaching of the pagan philosophers[886]) in the hard Roman world. Hints of a new attitude to slaves are to be found in the Theodosian Code. There are lengthy laws providing protection from enslavement—‘non erit impunita labefactatio atque oppugnatio libertatis’[887]—and steps are taken to enable people to rise out of slavery by placing legal means within their reach and making the assertion of liberty easier.[888] Moreover, the breaking up of slave families is forbidden, and the objection is stated from the moral point of view. ‘Quis enim ferat liberos a parentibus, a fratribus sorores ... segregari? Igitur qui dissociata in ius diversum mancipia traxerunt, in unum redigere eadem cogantur: ac si cui propter redintegrationem necessitudinum servi cesserint, vicaria per eum qui eosdem susceperit mancipia reddantur.’[889] But while we must grant to the philosophers and to Christianity an important share in the gradual disappearance of slavery, it must be remembered that the process was largely due to economic causes. It was found that it paid better to give a man some measure of personal freedom, and the economists tell us that the colonate which appeared at the beginning of the third century was a natural economic development of slavery. The absence of wars of conquest also contributed to this result.[890]
Moreover, liberation of body and spirit was aimed at by the attitude of the Church to the stage and the arena. Attendance was forbidden to Christians, and actors were not allowed to be baptized. The discredit thus cast upon these professions was emphasized by the emperors. A great many restrictions were introduced,[891] and games were forbidden on certain Christian feast-days.[892] It was enacted that actresses who had become Christians—‘quas melior vivendi usus vinculo naturalis condicionis evolvit’—should not be forced back into the profession.[893] Similarly, actors and actresses who had received the sacrament when thought to be dying must not be allowed to act again.[894]
Against the arena, too, a blow was struck. Constantine enacted in 325 that all those criminals who had previously been condemned to the arena should now be assigned to the mines. This did not mean the total abolition of gladiatorial contests, but it certainly meant a decrease in the victims of the ‘ludi gladiatorii’, and the moral lead it gave was valuable. ‘Cruenta spectacula’, he said, ‘in otio civili et domestica quiete non placent.’[895]
Later, he forbade soldiers to become gladiators,[896] and Valentinian exempted Christians from the punishment of the arena.[897] Gibbon gives the story of St. Telemachus to mark the final abolition of these contests by Honorius[898] in 404, though Bury points out that there is evidence of such shows some years later. As late as the fourth century we still find a man like Symmachus spending £80,000 on games for his son’s praetorship,[899] but, on the whole, the influence of the Christian ideal made for greater frugality and gentleness.
This influence was also seen in the increase of charities. The bishops, for example, often distributed corn among the people when times were bad.[900] That misuse was made of this spirit is seen from the strict law of Valentinian against mendicancy;[901] but the misuse is not so serious as the previous lack of charitable spirit.
The feeling of the Christians against slavery and the manual labour of the monks tended to destroy the aristocratic prejudice against practical work, and made for a simpler and more natural life. The artificial position in which the pagan world had placed women was to some extent remedied along the same line of the brotherhood of man. Jerome’s correspondence with Paula and Eustochium is an indication of this new attitude.[902] Naturalness also resulted from a reaction against the exaggerated centralization of the Empire, and was manifested in a development of individuality. The Western Church occasionally showed that it could stand up to the emperor.[903] When Constantius commanded that all the bishops assembled at the synod of Ariminum should be given their food (annonae et cellaria) the bishops of Gaul and Britain refused the gift, fearing the diplomacy of Constantius because ‘it did not seem fitting. They refused the imperial support and preferred to live at their own expense.’[904]
There was, therefore, a considerable and increasing independence on the part of the Church. Yet Church and State co-operated in many things. One of these points of co-operation, which was most important for education, was the holding of councils. First the Council of Arles (314), representing the Western Church, and then the Council of Nicea (325), representing the whole Church, was summoned by Constantine. And the influence of these councils in clearing away provincial prejudices and producing breadth of vision must have reacted very favourably on education, though the bishops of Gaul, owing to the larger extent of their bishoprics, did not have that close relation of teacher and pupil with their congregations which was the case in the East.
With all this in her favour the Church drew into her service men of the best blood and intellect. The nobility became the holders of the bishoprics, and the Christians consented. Indeed, they did more than consent. They sometimes demanded it, as in the case of Ambrose, feeling, no doubt, the value of having a man of high social rank to protect them in the political world. Men like Sidonius who had been living quite a ‘worldly’ life became bishops, moved, one is inclined to suspect, rather by the sense of power than the spirit of devotion. Thus aristocratic ideas were introduced into the Church and the bishop’s office was sometimes made hereditary, as in the case of Eucherius and his sons Salonius and Veranius. These aristocrats were at the same time the intellectuals of their time, and men like Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who was consulted by all the writers of the South,[905] Arbogast of Trèves, afterwards Bishop of Chartres,[906] of whose learning, as of that of Auspicius, Sidonius thought much,[907] Patiens of Lyons,[908] Faustus of Riez,[909] Mamertus of Vienne,[910] Graecus of Marseilles,[911] Perpetuus of Tours,[912] and many others, all friends of Sidonius and therefore of culture, shifted the balance of intellect from the pagan to the Christian side of society.
And yet, in spite of these hopeful signs, this growth in the power of ideals, we feel that the Church in Gaul did not transform the Roman Empire. Power the Church obtained, but found it a perilous possession. For with power came the whole host of political corruptions which had found a home in the imperial system, and entered, unsuspected, along the paths which custom had made. In becoming, to some extent, the successor of the Empire, the Church exposed herself to imperial dangers. Politics tended to overshadow principles. At least one of the two invasions of which Montalembert speaks[913] was needed in order that the Church should save Society—that of the monks from the South.
The development of Christianity, then, in the fourth and fifth centuries, largely takes the form of a struggle between the old and the new. Everywhere in the ecclesiastical society there are, inevitably, survivals, and they loom particularly large on account of two factors: the entry of Roman law into the Church, and the assumption of Church leadership by large numbers of the aristocracy.
It is natural, therefore, that we should find survivals in education too, and the extent to which we find them is evidence of the strength and the universality of the rhetorical tradition. And we need to see this tradition in its proper perspective before we can fully appreciate the significance of Gallic education in our period.
As we look back on the long line of rhetorical teachers, we can trace an increasing degree of narrowness and futility. The conditions of life in the city-state had made public speaking a practical and personal necessity. What Isocrates strove to do in his rôle as pamphleteer was to raise oratory from the personal to the national level, to connect education with statesmanship,[914] and to unify it by setting before it the ideal of a united Greece. The sphere of rhetoric in his view was wide and humane.[915] It is true that he himself was a theorist, unskilled in the practical issues of politics.[916] He was what Crito in the Euthydemus called a ‘Boundary Stone’—one who tried to combine practical politics and philosophy, avoiding the extremes of each. His attempt was unpopular, though ultimately he succeeded, for his school became the university of Greece.[917] But the ideal which he put forward had a real inspiration, and had none of the cramping restrictions of later rhetoric. Moreover, he taught the unity of moral and intellectual education: ‘The more strongly a man desires to persuade his audience’ (the intellectual practice of the rhetorical school) ‘the more will he train himself in culture of mind and manners and in gaining the esteem of his fellow citizens.’[918] Speech is regarded as the instrument of Persuasion, from which all the blessings of human society proceed,[919] and its function is to advance civilization by educating the ignorant and testing the wise.
Such was the high educational ideal of Isocrates, and we find much of it reflected in Cicero, his admirer and his imitator. The breadth of view is not impaired. For Cicero maintains that the power of eloquence is such that it embraces the rise, the force, the vicissitudes of all affairs, virtues, and duties; of everything in nature—character, mind, life. It defines the moral code, the principles of law and right. It regulates the State, and on every subject and in all its relations its words are many and eloquent.[920] There is the same attempt to connect rhetoric with politics, the same insistence that intellectual issues (doctrina bene dicendi) cannot be separated from moral ones (doctrina recte faciendi).[921] Wide and all-round knowledge is required of the orator: ‘mea quidem sententia, nemo poterit esse omni laude cumulatus orator, nisi erit omnium rerum magnarum atque artium scientiam consecutus.’[922] Yet Cicero was a panegyrist, and he followed the artificial rules of the game in exactly the same way as the Gallic rhetoricians of the third and fourth centuries did; and when he warns against spending too much time on philosophy,[923] which may be lightly learned, he says, we feel that he is giving rein to a natural Roman tendency to discount thought, and that this tendency proved the bane of rhetoric.
Cicero’s attempt to make the oratorical education something of wide scope, and to make it bear upon practical politics, was doomed to failure. More and more the tyranny of rhetorical rules, co-operating with the restriction of liberty under the Empire, produced a narrow and formal result. The sciolists of the fourth century believed that philosophy could be so easily learned that they hardly troubled to make its acquaintance. A political connexion with oratory was kept up, but it consisted in the degenerate panegyric. More and more rhetorical education narrowed its range, and retired within the academical atmosphere of the school.[924] As for moral education, we must find in the criticisms of Tacitus and Juvenal an element of truth. The emperor set the fashion, and the subject did not always find an inspiring example.
The change that came over oratory was not entirely one of artificiality. This there had been in Isocrates, whose rules were just as artificial as those of the ‘Panegyrici Latini’. It was rather a question of ideal. Isocrates had a national ideal, which could give meaning and life to his utterances; Cicero had the interests of a party to inspire him; but the panegyrists of the fourth century were confined to the emperor; his birthday or his benefits are the sort of subjects that stimulate their oratory, and Pliny could praise with equal fervour the political reforms and the white horses of Trajan.
Thus the rhetorical tradition, the ideal of oratory as the goal of education, came down through the centuries to our period. It came to Gaul, and flourished exceedingly on account of the natural aptitude of the Gauls for eloquence. Lucian, in the Herakles,[925] gives a picture of the Gallic Hercules who drags all men after him by fine chains attached to his tongue and their ears, and they follow gladly though it is in their power to break away. Cerialis, in addressing the Treveri and Lingones, maintained that the Roman way of establishing justice was the sword, but that words had most influence with the Gauls.[926]
And Jerome said of the Gauls: ‘The fact that they are prolific of orators points not so much to the studious character of the country as to the noise made by the rhetors: especially as Aquitaine boasts of its Greek origin.’[927] This is borne out by the inscriptions. We are struck in the south by the frequency of long-winded and ornate epitaphs, e.g.[928]
D.M.
As we go north epitaphs of this description become much rarer, which seems to indicate that as the influence of the Celtic element, and, perhaps, the Greek Massilia, decreases, there is a decrease also in the ‘ubertas Gallici sermonis’.[929]
We can hardly realize to-day how enormous the power and the extent of rhetoric was. In all parts of the Empire it was the mark of a cultured gentleman. As we have seen, it was the basis of education, the condition of imperial appointments, a tremendous factor in the policy of the emperors. ‘If we lose our eloquence’, said Libanius,[930] ‘what will be left to distinguish us from the barbarians?’ and again, ‘If you know the art of speaking you know the art of commanding.’[931] From Isocrates to Libanius Persuasion (Peitho) cast her spell with unfailing charm, nor was it Gaul alone that was bound by the chains of the tongue. Beyond the Graeco-Roman world the influence went: Sidonius, the conservative, could compliment an Arbogast on his eloquence,[932] and it was the rhetoric of pagan Gaul, as well as the religion of Christian Gaul, that led captive her fierce conquerors. So, too, beyond the pagan world, rhetoric invaded the Church and left its manifold traces on Christian education.
Kaufmann estimates that by the year 450 pagan schools in Gaul were disappearing under the influence of the Church militant.[933] Now it is true that the Church considered it a duty to condemn the rhetoricians, but their system persisted nevertheless through the monasteries up to our own day both in the matter and in method.
The Christian literature of the period shows this clearly. In poetry (except in a few cases like the Ad uxorem, and the De providentia Dei) the fetters of the tradition are still strong, and in trying to force biblical subjects into unsuitable forms, men like Sedulius, Marius Victor, and Paulinus of Nola produce mere lifeless paraphrases; in prose, where there were fewer rules to check naturalness and freshness of thought, the results are much more gratifying. In the schools it is recognized that the rhetorical system is indispensable. Tertullian[934] allows Christian children to attend pagan schools, though he will not permit Christians to teach in them, and Jerome, while he complains that the clergy are too fond of Vergil and the Comedies, is constrained to add ‘in pueris necessitatis est’.[935] The Church did not create a new educational system.
One or two particular cases of the survival of rhetoric may be given. Ennodius, Bishop of Pavia, born in 474 at Arles, illustrates in a typical way the enormous power which rhetoric could exercise over Christians as late as the end of the fifth century. He is passionately in love with the forms and methods of his pagan authors, loves their pomp and glitter,[936] and is always playing a part in the hope of winning applause.[937] He makes rhetoric say: ‘I am she who does things or changes things done. Light can dispel the darkness, however vast, in which the law involves a man, and this light by reading I can give. I am she from whom men await prosecution if guilty and acquittal if innocent ... for my gain the Roman keeps vigil throughout the Empire. Unless I adorn them, office, riches, honours lose their attraction: it is I who rule the rulers.’[938] This is all very similar to what Isocrates had said centuries ago, when he talked of the power and benefits of Persuasion,[939] and the traditional moral note is there just as in Isocrates[940] and in Cicero.[941] Rhetoric, says Ennodius, is the only moulder of public opinion. Her charm is irresistible and universal. (Why mention so obvious a fact?) The opinion she creates is eternal. It is she who makes people believe whatever she wishes about the deeds of the brave, she who can suppress facts with impunity. She is the mother of poetry, jurisprudence, dialectic, arithmetic, and she gives them their value.[942] ‘Grammar’ is recognized as the necessary precedent, the nurse of knowledge and virtue, who produces the sparks that lead to the Ciceronian fire of speech.[943] The idea that rhetorical adornment is specially connected with the school is still current. A correspondent begs him with many prayers that his letter to him should be embellished with the graces of the school (multis enim supplicationibus exegistis ut pagina vobis concinnationis didascalicae fingeretur[944]) and in the Libellus pro Synodo he urges ‘illas didascalici libelli relegamus argutias’.[945]
Later on Ennodius began to have misgivings about the part rhetoric played in his life. ‘Erat orandi fastidium dum perorandi tenebar cupiditate....’[946] He laments his placid satisfaction with his fine speeches, his elation at poetic successes, while he had no ear for the ‘angelorum chori’ owing to the intoxication of applause. ‘Quotiens adclamantium flatibus propter religionem vertex nudatus intumuit....’ But even in his confessions rhetoric is present, and she triumphs at the very time when he speaks of her defeat.
A curious instance of the survival of rhetoric is seen in the invective of Hilary of Poitiers against Constantius.[947] The author has worked up a great deal of feeling, and, to give it the most effective utterance, he lets it flow into the moulds prescribed by tradition. His divisions correspond perfectly to those of the schools. He spares no form of contumely, even at the expense of historical fact.[948] His railing reminds us of Milton’s denunciation of Salmasius:[949] for as late as the seventeenth century Latin retained its reputation as the language of invective. In spite of his preliminary professions of sincerity: ‘cesset itaque maledictorum opinio et mendacii suspicio. Veritatis enim ministros decet vera proferre’, we feel that in following the rules of the game he has proved himself a good player, but not always ‘a servant of truth’.[950]
Of a truer type was the rhetoric of Hilary of Arles. Honoratus is enthusiastic about the copious eloquence of his oratory, the gems of expression which he produced, the varied shades and shapes of his descriptions.[951] There was plenty of rhetorical colour, but there was also elasticity. ‘If the learned company was absent, he fed the hearts of the untutored with simple food’; and it was the opinion of contemporary critics, the savants of the day, that Hilary ‘had attained something that was neither eloquence nor learning, something superhuman’.[952] Famous for eloquence were also Salvian, the master of fiery denunciation, and Lupus, ‘scholis adhibitus et rhetorum studiis imbutus’.[953] In the very monasteries the artifices of the rhetor’s school lingered. Valerian, Bishop of Cemelium (near Nice), gives many examples of this in his Homilies. He frequently uses Parallelism and Repetition: ‘Disciplina igitur magistra est religionis, magistra verae pietatis; quae nec ideo increpat ut laedat, nec ideo castigat ut noceat’;[954] or Chiasmus and Assonance: ‘Alter de subscriptione patris disputat: alter de fratris persona desperat’;[955] ‘Vitare ista, dilectissimi, per singulos gradus forte difficile est, et laboriosum multis simul hostibus per diversos errores occurrere’; or Alliteration: ‘Ita est ergo, ut in te antiqui iuris districtio nihil habeat potestatis, si ea quae legis plenitudo postulat, obedienter observes’.[956] ‘Et nullus profecto adhuc poenae finis nisi Christus noster cruentis legibus oleum misericordiae miscuisset.’[957] ‘Sic erit ut homo de humiliore loco ad celsiora perveniat et remuneratus honore condigno, caelestis gratiam potestatis adquirat.’[958]
The rhetorical tradition, therefore, lived on; and it survived the more easily because of the controversial nature of Christianity at this time and the importance of preaching. The change from the rhetor’s ‘cathedra’ to the pulpit was often merely one of place and subject: the method was the same. And so the ideal of the orator persisted. In education it persisted for the further obvious reason that the monasteries had not yet organized themselves round the model of St. Benedict, and that very often Christian parents had to send their children to the pagan schools—in spite of Tertullian’s warnings.[959]
The triumph of rhetoric among the Christians, however, was only partial. When the Christian Fathers observed their congregations of simple and unlettered folk, and remembered the injunction of Christ[960] and the teaching of St. Paul,[961] they began to feel the need of a more direct style of speech. Largely, too, it was a natural reaction, springing from the opposition between Christian and pagan, and the ascetism which the monasteries preached.
This reaction is noticeable chiefly in the Church Fathers. In their prefaces it became the customary thing to proclaim their ‘rusticity’, and to hide (sometimes with false modesty) the traces of their rhetorical training.[962] So much was this the tendency, that Sidonius, with all his highly refined artificiality, must needs talk about his ‘countrified style’ (‘Si quid stilo rusticante peraravero’,[963] ‘in hoc stylo cui non urbanus lepos inest sed pagana rusticitas’[964]). Partly, of course, this was due to the over-courteous ways of high society at that time, as we may see from the correspondence of Symmachus or of Ausonius, and to an idea (never carried out by these gentlemen) that letter-writing ought to be careless and natural.[965] But the reaction against rhetoric was very strong. None of the Christian clergy dared to defend the rhetoricians openly. Lactantius, who did so,[966] was a layman.
The inscriptions reflect this tendency, or at any rate one of its causes—the simplicity and ignorance of the people. The Christian epitaphs, though influenced now and then by rhetorical floridness, as in the case of those composed by Sidonius,[967] are much shorter and simpler than the pagan ones. Sometimes they consist merely of a cross with the name of the person.[968] Sometimes the words ‘pax tecum’ are added. The increase in Christian education is indicated by the fact that there are only four inscriptions dating from the fourth century and fifty-four from the fifth.
How constantly the Church Fathers strove to check the rhetorical tendency in themselves and in the clergy may be seen from their frequent protests. Jerome remarked reprovingly of Hilary of Poitiers that he was affected by the tragic and turgid vein in the Gallic character, and too much adorned with the ‘flowers of Greece’, so that his long periods were not understood by the simple friars.[969] And Vincent of Lérins had to warn that a priest’s language must be ‘disciplined and grave’.[970] ‘Docente te in ecclesia’, said Jerome elsewhere,[971] ‘non clamor populi sed gemitus suscitetur.’ Gallus, in Sulpicius Severus,[972] expresses his contempt for flowery language. ‘For if you call me a disciple of Martin (the stern saint of Tours) you must also allow me the right of following him in despising vain ornamental speech and verbal embellishment’ (sermonum faleras et verborum ornamenta). In a sermon on Rebecca, attributed to Caesarius,[973] the preacher proclaims the principle of adaptability: ‘The educated must accommodate themselves to the ignorance of the simple. If, in expounding holy Scripture we desired the arrangement and the eloquence of (certain) holy fathers, ... the food of doctrine could reach only a small band of scholars (there is a secret satisfaction in having had a superior training), while the remaining masses of the people would go unfed. And therefore I humbly ask that the ears of the learned bear patiently the words of simplicity (rustica verba) if only the whole flock of God may partake of spiritual food by means of speech unadorned and (if I may say so) pedestrian.’ Ruricius, Bishop of Limoges, and a contemporary of Sidonius,[974] speaks of his ‘ineptia rusticitatis’,[975] his ‘rusticus sermo’.[976] ‘Rusticitatem meam’, he says, ‘malo prodere quam perdere caritatem’.[977]
This prevalent cultivation of ‘rusticitas’ was, as has been said, partly a reaction, and like all reactions it had a tendency to go too far. It is not surprising to find men like Jerome protesting (though with self-condemnation) against the bald style of certain Christian writings.[978] Heyne, after describing the ‘verborum fucos, concinnos et calamistrum’ of the rhetoricians, remarks on the uncultured and disgusting lack of style into which the later writers fell. It was natural, he says, that, having thrown eloquence overboard, they should fall into ‘barbaries’ and subjects vulgar and essentially trivial (per se tenuia). The charge of ‘barbaries’ is admitted. But the subject-matter was not always ‘per se tenuia’; it was essentially the reverse: and the ‘horrida oratio’ into which the Christian writers fell had the compensation of sincerity and the capacity of rising into genuine eloquence.
We have, then, these two facts: the persistence in Christian thought of rhetoric, and the reaction in the direction of simplicity. But we must ask what the Christian attitude was towards pagan education as a whole, for on this attitude largely depended the nature of the Christian schools.
Sulpicius Severus is uncompromisingly harsh. All literature except the Bible and theological writings are utterly vain. ‘For what did the pagan writers themselves gain by a literary glory that was to perish with their generation? Or what profit was it to posterity to read of Hector’s battles or Socrates’ philosophy? Not only is it folly to imitate those writers, but not to attack them with the utmost fierceness is sheer madness....’[979] The pagan philosophy has been a mighty bane. ‘Qui quidem error humanus (pagan philosophy) litteris traditus in tantum valuit ut multos plane aemulos vel inanis philosophiae vel stultae illius virtutis invenerit.’[980] Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius on entering the Church abjured the heathen literature,[981] and Jerome conceived of the difference between the two groups of writers as that between light and darkness.[982] Philosophy was regarded as dangerous, and extensive secular reading deprecated.[983] Poetry was banned because it inflamed passion,[984] and Claudius Victor of Marseilles went so far as to trace the misfortunes of his day to the pagan schools and authors.
‘Is not ours the blame?’ he wails: ‘Paul and Solomon are neglected and the Vergil who wrote of Dido and the Ovid who described Corinna are recited, the verses of Horace are applauded and the scenes of Terence, and it is we, we who are at fault, we who basely feed those flames.’[985] Paulinus writes to his old master Ausonius who is much concerned because his pupil has deserted the Muses, and declares with pathetic firmness that the Christian heart must needs say ‘No’ to Apollo and the Muses. ‘New is the force and greater the god that now moves the soul, and he permits not leisure in work or play for the literature of fable.’[986] To him the education and the literature of the pagan world is nothing but ‘the clever influence of a sophist, the knack of a rhetor, the false imagination of a bard’, and its professors men who miss the truth,