BOOKS.
MILMAN'S HISTORY OF LATIN CHRISTIANITY.* THE object of Dean Milman in this work is to narrate the history of Latin that is of Papal Christianity till the time of Nicholas the Fifth, 1447-1455; though from some incidental remarks he would seem to contemplate treating of the state of opinion which led to the Reformation : and this indeed would be a more appro- priate close. The three volumes before us begin with a rapid view of the rise and progress of Christianity ; trace more fully the gradual origin and growth of the Papal power ; and bring down the theme to the death of the Emperor Henry the Sixth, the Hohenstaufen, in 1197.
The subject or rather the subjects are great in their actors, their events, and the social interests they embrace ; they admit of being presented in marked epochs, which not only possess the interest of striking masses, but impress themselves distinctly on the mind. Their great importance, both as regards necessary knowledge and religious disputes, rather detracts from the novelty of the matter. The origin and causes, the claims, powers, and usurpa- tions of the Popedom, have been narrated in various histories, as well as discussed in countless treatises. The great Fathers of the Latin Church, as Jerome, Augustin—the great missionaries of the heathen in Britain and Germany—the great schoolmen of the middle ages, more especially Abelard from other causes than his scholarship—the great founders of disciplined monachism, from St. Benedict downwards—and the leading Popes, whether truly great men, like Gregory, or combining, like Hildebrand, cruelty and criminal ambition with mental grasp and power and the vices inseparable from the priesthood—have been painted in special biographies most of them in controversies, while they figure in regular history whether secular or ecclesiastical. It is the same with the civil or military actors, whose greatness, or occasionally whose weakness, vices, and misfortunes, made their age an epoch. The capture of Rome and the devastation of the Western empire by Alaric and other barbarian leaders, the reigns of Justinian, of Charlemagne, of several of the German Emperors, and of monarchs less prominent but not without influence on the Church and on European society, as Clovis, have received as much notice as the great churchmen, probably more. So likewise in the case of continuous events, which less depend upon any single man than upon general opinion, as the heresies of various kinds, Mahomet and his theism, the Crusades, and the Papal assumptions over the civil power.
But though none of these subjects are fresh, they are grouped under a masterly arrangement, which by mere inspection sug- gests the broad and massy features of the whole to an informed mind. Dr. Milman has perused the original authorities with a discerning eye, combined with the critical spirit of the present age ; so that new lights and modern judgments are struck out from old facts. He brings to his task of research a wise and liberal spirit, neither bigoted nor indifferent. The great merit of the history, however, is in the limitation of the sub- ject, which gives a unity to the work that it could not other- wise have attained. Independently of the great influence which "Latin Christianity" has exercised upon the mind, the manners, and the literature of Europe, and its inseparable connexion with its history, the Western Church is bolder and more intelligible, even in its doctrines and its heresies than that of the East, with- out being more bigoted or more cruel. The stern obedience to or- der and authority which characterized the Roman, the simple prac- tical character of the Teutonic mind, gave a less dreamy and ab- stract character to the speculations of the Western theologians than to those which characterized the East. The discussions themselves might indeed wander far enough into the region of ab- struse metaphysics ; but the questions of free will, predestination, and grace, had more direct bearing on the salvation and even the practical faith of mankind, than the frivolous or fanciful questions which employed the Greek intellect. Though it originated in the East, the heresy of Arius belongs rather to the West ; for it has survived to the present day, and is probably spreading wider than ever in the Western world. In the East it soon became extinct, unless we are to look upon the theism of Afahometanism as its substitute.
The execution of this work is superior to that of the author's previous History of Christianity to the Extinction of Paganism. The manner of Gibbon is still visible ; but allusion in lieu of di- rect statement is not so predominant, and the manners of the times are occasionally indicated by the narrative. Greater flexi- bility and variety would have improved the composition. From the very rare power of varying his style with the varying nature of his subject, and allowing the manners of the epoch to exhibit
Histo_r, of Latin Christianity', including that of the Popes to the Pontificate of "Wu V. By Henry Hart Milman, D.D., Dean of St. Pants. Published by ldurray.
themselves, Dr. Milman is a long way off'. It is not quite clear, perhaps, that he takes the true course. The mind of the author may and indeed must appear in his work, by the elevation and moral tone he imparts to it, and the character he impresses on it. But even genius itself cannot create, in the common sense ; it can only combine. He who would revive the past or depict the present must accumulate the materials for doing so, by long labour—the labour of close and continuous research or obser- vation. Invention, if it means anything else than the combination into an ideal whole of many deductions from the actual, can only reach the fanciful. A man can no more present a lifelike picture of times of which no contemporary records remain, than an architect can "restore "a building of which he knows not the form or order. In the absence of materials, the mind is driven to fancy, and in proportion to its knowledge and its native powers will be the result. For the secular period of the decline and fall of the Western Empire, authorities for manners are scanty. The Fathers and monkish writers are full of mate- rials. Their authority in historical facts is probably less than what is generally ascribed to them ; but they strikingly paint in- dividual weakness and superstition, as well as the customs of the times. The following neat sketch of the career of Pope Callistus is very clear as to the facts of middle-class life at Rome ; but the manner of Gibbon overpowers the manners of the third century.
"Callistus, who had ruled the feeble mind of Zephyrinus, aspired to be his successor ; as head, it should seem, of one of the contending parties, he at- tained the object of his ambition. The memory of theolog,ic adversaries is tenacious. His enemies were not likely to forget the early life of Callistus, which must have been public and notorious, at least among the Christians. He had been a slave in the family of Carpophorus, a wealthy Christian, in the Emperor's household. He was set up by his master in a bank in the quarter called the Piscine Publics. The Christian brethren and widows, on the credit of the name of Carpophorus, deposited their savings in this bank of Callistus. He made away with the funds, was called to account, fled, em- barked on board a ship, was pursued, threw himself into the sea—was res- cued, brought back to Rorne,,and ignominiously consigned to hard labour in the public workhouse. The Merciful Carpophorus cared not for his own losses, but for those of the poor widows ; he released the prisoner on the pre- text of collecting monies, which he pretended to be due to him. Callistus raised a riot in a Jewish synagogue, was carried before the Prefect Fuscianus, scourged and transported to the mines in Sardinia. On the release of the exiles through the intercession of Marcia, Callistus, though not on the list furnished by the Bishop 'Victor, persuaded Hyacinthus, the eunuch appointed to bear the order for release of the captives to the governor, to become re- sponsible for his liberation also. He returned to Rome ; the Pope Victor, though distressed by the affair, was too merciful to expose the fraud ; Calls- tus was sent to Antium with a monthly allowance for his maintenance. At Antium (for this release of the Sardinian prisoners must have been at the commencement of Victor's episcopate) he remained nine or ten years. Ze- phyrinus recalled him from his obscure retreat ; and placed him over the cemetery. By degrees the Pope entirely surrendered himself to the guidance of Callistus."
In the discussions of critical, doctrinal, or metaphysical sub- jects, manners go for little or nothing ; qualities and reasoning being in their essence the same at all times. In these things Dr. Milman often strikes out new views, from bringing a later spirit, as well perhaps as a more comprehensive and penetrat- ing mind, to bear upon the question. Here is a genial pane- gyric of Jerome's translation, and an exposition of the intellectual authors of Rome's supremacy.
"Of both these events, the extension of monasticism, the promulgation of the Vulgate Bible, Jerome was the author ; of the former principally, of the latter exclusively. This was his great and indefeasible title to the appella- tion of Father of the Latin Church. Whatever it may owe to the older and fragmentary versions of the sacred writings, Jerome's Bible is a wonderful work, still more as achieved by one man and that a Western Christian, even with all the advantage of study and of residence in the East. It almost created a new laaguage. The inflexible Latin became pliant and expansive, naturalizing foreign Eastern imagery, Eastern modes of expression and of thought, and Eastern religious notions, most uncongenial to its own genius and character, and yet retaining much of its own peculiar strength, solidity, and majesty. If the Northern, the Teutonic languages, coalesce with greater facility with the Orientalism of the Scriptures, it is the triumph of Jerome to have brought the more dissonant Latin into harmony with the Eastern tongues. The Vulgate was even more, perhaps, than the Papal power the foundation of Latin Christianity. Jerome cherished the secret hope, if it was not the avowed object of his ambition, to succeed Damasus, as the Bishop of Rome. He was designated, he says, almost by unamimous consent for that dignity. Is the rejection of an aspirant so singularly unfit for the station, from his violent passions his insolent treatment of his adversaries, his utter want of self-command, his almost unrivalled faculty of awakening hatred, to be attributed to the sagacious and intuitive wisdom of Borne? Or, as is far more probable, did the vanity of Jerome mistake outward respect for general attachment, awe of his abilities and learning for admiration, and so blind him to the ill-dissembled, if dissembled, hostility which he had provoked in so many quarters ? It is difficult to refrain from speculating on his eleva- tion. How signally dangerous would it have been to have loaded the rising Papacy with the reponsibility of all, or even a large part of the voluminous works of Jerome ! The station of a Father of the Church, one of the four great Latin Fathers, committed Christendom to a less close adhesion to all his opinions, while at the same time it placed him above jealous and hostile scrutiny. It was not till two centuries later, when speculative subjects had ceased to agitate the Christian mind, and the creed and the discipline had settled down to a mature and established form, that a Father of the Church, a voluminous writer' could safely appear on the episcopal throne of Rome. Gregory the Great was at once the representative and ins of the Chris-
tianity of his age. Nor could the great work of Jerome have been achieved at Rome, assuredly not by a Pope. It was in his cell at Bethlehem, medi- tating and completing the Vulgate, that Jerome fixed for centuries the do- minion of Latin Christianity over the mind of man. Siricius was the suc- cessor of Damasus. Jerome left ungrateful Rome, against whose sins the recluse of Palestine becomes even more impassioned, whose clergy and people become blacker and more inexcusable in his harsher and more unsparing de- nunciations. • "Latin Christianity, in truth, in all but its monarchical strength, in its unity under one head, and under one code of ecclesiastical law, enacted and executed in its last resort by that head, was established in its dominion over the human mind without the walls of Rome. It was Jerome who sent forth the Vulgate from his retreat in Palestine; it was Ambrose of Milan who raised the sacerdotal power to more than independence, limited the universal homage paid to the Imperial authority, protected youthful and feeble Empe- rors, and in the name of justice and of humanity rebuked the greatest sove- reign of the age. It was Augustine, Bishop of the African Hippo, who orga- nized Latin theology ; wrought Christianity into the minds and hearts of men by his impassioned autobiography ; and finally, under the name of the City of God,' established that new and undefined kingdom at the head of which the Bishop of Rome was hereafter to place himself as sovereign ; that vast polity which was to rise out of the ruins of ancient and Pagan Rome; if not to succeed at once to the temporal supremacy, to superinduce a higher go- vernment, that of God himself. This divine government was sure eventually to fall to those who were already aspiring to be the earthly representatives of God. The theocracy of Augustine, comprehending both worlds, heaven as well as earth, was far more sublime, as more indefinite, than the spiritual monarchy of the later Popes. It established, it contemplated, no such ex- ternal or visible autocracy, but it prepared the way for it in the minds of men; the spiritual city of God became a secular monarchy ruling by spiritual means."
The asceticism of the West, though bad and revolting enough, seems never to have reached the excesses of the East ; and yet it is difficult to say why. Climate might account for Eastern priva- tion and exposure ; what would be hardship in the West and North of Europe would be nothing in Egypt and Syria. The in- fliction of bodily torture, derived from the fanatics of Hindostan, is more puzzling, because it would be thought that the Eastern nervous system was more excitable than the European. The prac- tice, however, seems to be the reverse. The nature of Dr. Mil- man's work does not carry the historian often into the East, but this is a specimen of their saints. "On one religious subject alone the conflicting East maintained its perfect unity—in the reverence it may be said the worship, of the Hermit on the Pillar. Simeon Stylites had been observed by his faithful disciple to have remained motionless for three days in the same attitude of prayer. Not once had he stretched out his arms in the form of the cross; not once had he bowed his forehead till it touched- his feet (a holy exploit, which his wondering admirers had seen him perform twelve hundred and forty-four times, and then lost their reckoning). The watchful disciple climbed the pillar; a rich odour saluted his nostrils; the saint was dead. The news reached Antioch. Ardaburius, general of the forces in the East, hastened to send a guard of honour, lest the neighbouring cities should seize, perhaps meet in desperate warfare for, the treasure of his body. Antioch, now one in heart and soul, sent out her Patriarch, with three other bishops, to lead the funeral procession. The body was borne on mules for three hundred stadia; a deaf and dumb man touched the bier—he burst out into a cry of gratulation. The whole city with torches and hymns followed the body. The Emperor Leo implored Antioch to yield to him the inestimable deposit. The Emperor implored in vain. Antioch, so long as she possessed the re- mains of Simeon, might defy all her enemies. In the same year, when An- tioch thus honoured the funeral rites of him whom she esteemed the greatest of mankind, Rome was lamenting in deep and manly sorrow her Pontiff Leo. Contrast Simeon Stylites with one Emperor crouching at the foot of his pil- lar, and receiving his dull incoherent words as an oracle' with another, a man of higher character, supplicating for the possession of his remains, and Pope Leo on his throne in Rome and in the camp of Attila. Such were then Greek and Latin Christianity. Nor was the lineage of the holy Simeon broken or contested. The sees of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexan- dria, the throne of the East, might be the cause of long and bloody conflict. The hermit Daniel mounted his pillar at Anaplus, near the month of the Engine : in that cold and stormy climate, his body, instead of being burned up with heat, was rigid with frost. But he became at once the legitimate acknowledged successor of Simeon the Prophet, the oracle of Constantinople. Once he condescended to appear in the streets of Constantinople; his pre- sence decided the fate of the empire."
Civil and military affairs are embraced in the history when they have a relation to religion; and the frequency of their occurrence shows more distinctly than words how soon Christianity, by amal- gamation with old Etruscan Paganism, had interwoven itself with every affair of Roman life. As in other places, its influence was late and slow on the rights of property ; but even there it was felt in the amelioration of the slave code of Justinian, though it did not go very far.
" In nothing Is the stern and Roman character of the Justinian code more manifest than in its full recognition of slavery. Throughout, the broad dis- tinction of mankind into freemen and slaves is the unquestioned admitted groundwork of legislation. It declares indeed the natural equality of man, and so far is in advance of the doctrine which prevailed in the dm; of Aris- totle, and is vindicated by that philosopher, that certain races or classes of men are pronounced by the unanswerable voice of nature, by their physical and intellectual inferiority, as designed for and irrevocably doomed to servi- tude. But this natural equality is absolutely and entirely forfeited by cer- tain acknowledged disqualifications for freedom, by captivity in war, self- vendition into slavery, or servile descent. Christianity had, indeed, exalted the slave to spiritual equality, as having the same title to the blessings, con- solations, and promises of the gospel, as capable of practising all Christian virtues, and therefore of obtaining the Christian's reward. This religious elevation could not be without influence, besides the more generous humanity to which it would soften the master, on their temporal and social position. It took them out of the class of brute beasts or inanimate things, to be transferred like cattle or other goods from one master to another, which the owner might damage or destroy with as much impunity as any other pro- perty; and placed them in that of human beings, equally under the care of Divine Providence and gifted with the same immortality. But the legisla- tion of the Christian Emperor went no further. It makes no claim to higher humanity ; it does not attempt to despoil the Pagan Emperors of the praise due to the first step made in that direction. It ascribes to the heathen sove- vereign Antonieus the great change which had placed the life of the slave under the protection of the law. Even his punishment was then restricted by legislative enactment. But the abrogation of slavery was not cantata- plated even as a remote possibility. A general enfranchisement seems never to have dawned on the wisest and best of the Christian writers, notwith- standing the greater facility for manumission, and the sanctity, as it were, assigned to the act by placing it under the special superintendence of the clergy, by Constantine. The law of Justinian gave, indeed, or recognized, a greater value to the life of the slave. The edict of Antoninus had declared the master who killed his own slave without cause liable to the same penalty as if he killed the slave of another. The Code of Justinian ratified the law of Constantine, which made it homicide to kill a slave with malice aforethought ; and it de- scribes certain modes of barbarous punishment, by which, if death follows, that guilt is incurred. The Code confirms the law of Claudius against the abandonment of sick and useless slaves; it enjoins the master to send them to the public hospitals. These hospitals were open to slaves as well as to poor freemen. ' In these times, and under our empire,' writes Justinian,
no one must be permitted to exercise unlawful cruelty against a slave.' The motive, however, for this was not evangelic humanity, but the public good, which was infringed if any man ill-used his property.
" But while it protected the life, to a certain extent the person, of the slave, it asserted as sternly as ever his inferior condition. He was the pro- perty of his master. Whoever became a slave lost all power over his chil- dren. His testimony could be received against his master only in cases of high treason. His union with his wife was still only conoubinage, not mar- riage. The slave had no remedy for adultery before the tribunals; it was left to the master to punish the offence. A free woman who had unlawful connexion with her slave, according to the law of Constantine, not as it set ms repealed by Justinian, was to be put to death; the slave to be burned alive. But the law of Constantine, confirmed in the West by Antbemius, which prohibited the union of a freeman and a slave, at least a freeman of a certain rank, under the penalty of exile and confiscation of goods, and con- demned the female to the mines, appears to have been mitigated ; at least the law of Claudius, which condemned the free woman who married a slave to servitude, was tempered to a sentence of separation. 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 recognized by Chris- tianity itself. These unions were not blessed, as the marriages of their superiors had soon begun to be, by the Church. Basil the Macedonian 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."
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