Chapter 5 DIFFICULTIES WITH PAGANS, JEWS, IMAGE WORSHIPPERS, AND CIVIL POWERS.

THE NAME OF CHRISTIAN.

Though for the last sixteen centuries the name of Christian has been used throughout the whole world, this descriptive word was not much used in the first four centuries. The Christians used to call each other disciples, believers, elect, saints, and brethren. Third parties called them at first Jesseans, spiritual physicians, or gnostics. When heretics or followers of peculiar opinions of a novel kind arose, these were called by the name of their leaders, as Marcionites, Valentinians, Donatists; while those holding the standard or orthodox opinions adhered to the name of Christians or Catholic Churchmen. The heathen often called the new body Jews, as the early Christians were of that race. There were also names of reproach given by the heathen, such as Nazarenes, Galileans, atheists, Greeks, impostors, magicians, superstitionists, Sibyllists, self-murderers (on account of their desire for martyrdom), desperadoes, fagot-men (from being so often burned), skulkers (from meeting in secret). The division between clergy and laity was soon acknowledged, all those who held regular offices in the Church being called clerici, or clerics, or clerks; and to this day the word "clerk" is the proper legal denomination of a priest of the Church of England. The origin of the word is disputed, but is generally traced to the Greek word "cleros," signifying that the clergy at first were chosen by lot.

AN EARLY PAGAN RIOT AGAINST CHRISTIANS.

The teaching of Christian doctrines seems to have already begun to tell upon Pagan practices when St. Paul worked at Ephesus. After he had been preaching there two years, the great feasts and shows connected with the worship of Diana came round. A silversmith, named Demetrius, found out during the fair that his little silver shrines were not sold so extensively as before, and that business was slack. He spoke to many in the trade, and they all agreed that their business had fallen off, and that it could be caused by nothing but by the missionary preaching of Paul. So they resolved to hold an indignation meeting, and, if necessary, get rid of this new-fangled sect. Demetrius harangued the mob, and they all shouted, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" and "Down with the Jews!" They all rushed to seize that invidious sect. Paul was concealed from the popular vengeance by Priscilla and her husband. The crowd then rushed to the theatre, which was large enough to hold 30,000 people. Paul wanted to address the excited audience, but his friends warned him to avoid it. One Alexander was asked to satisfy them that all the Jews were not Christians. The yelling and confusion grew worse. At last the town clerk made a most businesslike speech, never to be forgotten for worldly wisdom, and which amounted to this-that if Paul or the Christians had done wrong, the law was open to the persons thereby aggrieved, but that this was no excuse for dragging them about and maltreating them. This soon quelled the storm, and the mob became more peaceable. And soon after Paul left the city, and went elsewhere to carry out his missionary labours.

THE EARLY CHRISTIANS AND SLAVERY.

The Pagans treated slavery as an integral part of society, and their wisest men never dreamt of a time when slaves could be dispensed with. On the contrary, one radical doctrine of Christianity being that all men are brethren, it is at first difficult to understand how it took eighteen centuries to bear upon this old vice. Dr. Schaff, in his "History of the Apostolic Church," states the reasons in this way: The Apostles did not attempt even a sudden political and social abolition, and would have discountenanced any stormy and tumultuous measures to that effect. For, in the first place, the immediate abolition of slavery could never have been effected without a revolution which would have involved everything in confusion, a radical reconstruction of the whole domestic and social life with which the system is interwoven. In the next place, a sudden emancipation would not have bettered the condition of the slaves themselves, but would have rather made it worse, for outward liberation, in order to work well, must be prepared by moral training for the rational use of freedom, and by education until majority was attained. And this can only be done by a gradual process. Paul, moreover (1 Cor. vii. 17), lays down the general principle that Christianity primarily proposes no change in the outward relations in which God has placed a man by birth, education, or fortune; but teaches him rather to strive for a higher point of view, and to attain glimpses of a new spirit, until in time a suitable change shall be worked out. He recommends Christians to emancipate their slaves (Eph. vi. 9), and he himself sent back Onesimus, a runaway slave, to his master, asking that master to receive the slave kindly. He does not exhort slaves to burst their bonds, but to give reverential and single-hearted obedience to their masters for the time being.

NERO AND THE FIRST PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS.

St. Paul was released from his first trial at Rome in A.D. 63, and the next year Rome was devastated by a great conflagration. Some say that the Emperor Nero set fire to one place, and this, owing to the inflammable materials, spread in all directions, and the inhabitants fled to the fields. Men were going about with torches, saying that they had orders to spread the fire, though perhaps this was only an excuse for plunder. Nero at the moment was at Antium, and did not return till his own palace had caught fire. He set apart the Campus Martius and his own gardens whereon to fix temporary structures to accommodate the houseless. A general report was circulated that Nero went on the stage of his private theatre while the city was burning, and sang "The Fall of Troy," as being similar in its catastrophe. At length on the sixth day numbers of buildings had been demolished, so as to intercept the flames. The capital was rebuilt with wider streets. Meanwhile the rumour spread more and more that Nero had himself ordered the fire. To stop this rumour Nero accused and punished with exquisite tortures the people called Christians. Many were clothed in skins of wild animals and torn to pieces by dogs, or crucified, or set on fire, and were burned like lamps. Nero made a holiday spectacle of these atrocities, riding about like a charioteer in the circus. Tacitus, though referring to Christ as a Jewish malefactor put to death by Pilate, and treating Christianity as an Eastern superstition, yet said the people were slain, not for the public good, but because of the cruelty of one man. This is usually called the first persecution of the Christians. Four years later Paul was tried again at Rome for some offence, and it is usually believed that he perished there by the sword.

HOW THE EARLY CHRISTIANS APPEARED TO PAGANS.

Pliny the younger, one of the most eminent advocates of Rome, and full of sprightliness and good-nature, when appointed a governor of Pontus and Bithynia, near the Black Sea, wrote to the Emperor Trajan in 101 this account of the Christians, who used to be charged before him for refusing to worship the Pagan gods. He said: "Some who said they had once been Christians affirmed the whole of their guilt or their error to be, that they met on a certain stated day before it was light, and addressed themselves in some form of prayer to Christ or to some god, binding themselves by a solemn oath-not for the purposes of any wicked design, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery-never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up, after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to eat in common a harmless meal. I tried to extort the real truth by putting two female slaves to the torture who were said to administer religious functions, but I could discover nothing more than an absurd and excessive superstition on their part. This contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among the country villages. Nevertheless, it still seems possible to remedy this evil and restrain its progress. It is possible that numbers might be reclaimed from their error if a pardon were granted to those who shall repent." The tone of this letter showed that Pliny had misgivings as to the proper way of treating the new sect. The Emperor in reply said that Pliny seemed to have acted rightly, though it was difficult to lay down a rule; but that though these Christians were not to be run after, yet should they chance to be accused and convicted they ought to be punished.

CHRISTIANITY OPPOSES SHOWS OF WILD BEASTS.

The brutal spectacles in which Pagan Rome delighted-the fights of gladiators, and the combats of men with beasts-roused the indignation of the Christians. Not merely did women crowd the amphitheatre during these fierce and almost naked encounters, but it was the especial privilege of the Vestal virgins to give the signal for the mortal blow, and to watch the sword driven into the quivering entrails of the victim. St. Augustine describes the frenzy and fascination of the spectators for these brutal shows. A Christian student of the law was once compelled by the importunity of his friends to enter the amphitheatre. He sat with his eyes closed and his mind totally abstracted from the scene. He was suddenly startled from his trance by a tremendous shout from the whole audience. He opened his eyes. He could not choose but gaze on the spectacle. Directly he beheld the blood, his heart caught the common frenzy; he could not choose to turn away; his eyes were riveted on the arena. The interest, the excitement, the pleasure grew into complete intoxication. He looked on, he shouted, he was inflamed; he carried away from the amphitheatre an irresistible propensity to return to its cruel enjoyments. Emperor after emperor gradually prohibited first one part then another part of these disgusting spectacles, being influenced by the persistent remonstrances of Christians. The progress was not, however, very rapid. At last an Eastern monk, named Telemachus, travelled all the way to Rome, in order to protest against the disgraceful barbarities. In his noble enthusiasm he leaped into the arena to separate the combatants; but whether with or without the sanction of the prefect or that of the infuriated assembly, he was torn to pieces-a martyr to Christian humanity. The impression of this awful scene of a Christian and a monk thus murdered in the arena was so profound, that Honorius (who died 423) issued an edict, putting an end to such bloody spectacles. This edict, however, only suppressed the mortal combats of men; the conflict of wild beasts continued till the supply was cut off by the narrowing of the limits of the empire. The distant provinces no longer rendered their accustomed contributions of lions from Libya, leopards from the East, dogs of remarkable ferocity from Scotland, crocodiles and bears and other wild animals from remote regions. Towards the end the improving humanity of the people allowed artificial methods to be substituted, so as to excite the fury of the beasts without endangering the lives of the combatants. In the West these games sank with the Western Empire; in the East they disappeared at the close of the seventh century under the prohibition of the Council of Trullo.

EMPEROR CONSTANTIUS TESTING THE FIDELITY OF CHRISTIANS.

Sozomen says that the Emperor Constantius (who died at York in 306) wished to test the fidelity of certain Christians as excellent and good men who were attached to his palace. He called them all together, and told them that if they would sacrifice to idols as well as serve God they should remain in his service and retain their appointments; but that if they refused compliance with his wishes, they should be sent from the palace, and should scarcely escape his vengeance. When difference of judgment had divided them into two parties, separating those who consented to abandon their religion from those who preferred the honour of God to their present welfare, the Emperor determined upon retaining those who had adhered to their faith as his friends and counsellors; but he turned away from the others, whom he regarded as unmanly impostors, and sent them from his presence, judging that those who had so readily betrayed their God could not be faithful to their king. Hence, as Christians were deservedly retained in the service of Constantius, he was not willing that Christianity should be accounted unlawful in the countries beyond the confines of Italy-that is to say, in Gaul, in Britain, or in the region of the Pyrenean mountains as far as the Western Ocean.

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT FIRST FAVOURS THE CHRISTIANS.

Constantine the Great, son of the Emperor Constantius, deserved the appellation of the first emperor who publicly professed and established the Christian religion, and in whose epoch, accordingly, all Christendom is interested. While the Pagans represented him as a disgraceful tyrant, the Christians treat him as a hero, or even as a saint, and equal to the Apostles. His stature was lofty, his countenance majestic, and his deportment graceful. He delighted in society, and had a turn for raillery; and, though rather illiterate, he was indefatigable in business, and a consummate general in the field. He accepted the purple at York, where his father, Constantius, died in 306, and in his career gained signal victories over the foreign and domestic policy of the republic. In the last fourteen years of his life (323-337) he was said to have degenerated, being corrupted by fortune, and growing rapacious and prodigal. He affected an effeminate and luxurious dress. He is represented with false hair of various colours, laboriously arranged by the skilful artists of the times; a diadem of expensive fashion; a profusion of gems and pearls, of collars and bracelets; and a variegated and flowing robe of silk, most curiously embroidered with flowers of gold. He was twice married, and had an only son, Crispus, by the first wife, and by the second wife, Fausta, three daughters and three sons. Crispus was amiable and popular, and had been a pupil of the eloquent Christian Lactantius, but he soon incurred the suspicion and jealousy of his father, and was, owing to the intrigues and jealousies of the second family, put to death. Constantine, it was said, then discovered the falsehood of the charges against his son, erected a golden statue to his memory, and the cruel stepmother, in turn, was said to have suffered death or imprisonment. In his latter days Constantine had to chastise the pride of the Goths, then led by Alaric, and spreading terror and desolation. In 337 Constantine, the only emperor since Augustus who had reigned so long as thirty years, died at the age of sixty-four at Nicomedia. His body, adorned with purple and diadem, was transported to Constantinople, and deposited on a golden bed, at which the great officials, with bended knees, offered their respectful homage as seriously as if he had been alive, so that his flatterers remarked that by the peculiar indulgence of Heaven he reigned after his death.

CONSTANTINE'S STANDARD OF THE CROSS.

When Constantine, in 324, was invested with the sole dominion of the Roman world, he exhorted, by circular letters, all his subjects to imitate without delay his example and embrace the Divine truths of Christianity. The Christians, knowing that the Emperor's father, Constantius, was on their side, had looked to the elevation of Constantine as intimately connected with the designs of Providence, and they confidently expected some Divine and miraculous aid to attest the great revolution in the world's affairs then at hand. History accordingly has preserved full particulars of the standard, the dream, and the celestial sign which sealed their hopes. The Emperor took measures to have the standard of the cross affixed to his own statue, and on the helmets, shields, and banners of his army. The principal standard was styled the labarum, which was a long pike intersected by a transverse beam, from which hung down a silken veil, which was curiously inwrought with the images of the reigning monarch and his children. The summit of the pike supported a crown of gold, which enclosed the mysterious monogram at once expressive of the figure of the cross and the initial letters of the name of Christ. The safety of the labarum was entrusted to fifty guards of approved valour and fidelity. The opinion soon grew that so long as the guards of the labarum were in the execution of their office, they were secure and invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy. The sight of the standard gave the troops an invincible enthusiasm, and scattered terror and dismay among the enemies. There is still extant a medal of the Emperor Constantine, where the standard of the labarum is accompanied with these memorable words, "By this sign thou shalt conquer!"

THE DREAM OF CONSTANTINE.

In the age of Constantine the sign of the cross had come to be used by the primitive Christians in all their ecclesiastical rites, in all the daily occurrences of life, as an infallible preservative against every species of spiritual and temporal evil. A contemporary writer affirms with perfect confidence that in the night which preceded the last battle against Maxentius Constantine was admonished in a dream to inscribe the shields of his soldiers with the celestial sign of God, the sacred monogram of the name of Christ; that he executed the commands of Heaven; and that his valour and obedience were rewarded by the decisive victory of the Milvian Bridge. The senate and people, exulting in the success of Constantine, acknowledged that his victory surpassed the power of man. The triumphal arch which was erected about three years after the event recognised that by an instinct or impulse of the Divinity Constantine had saved and avenged the Roman Republic. Twenty-six years after the event the historian Eusebius narrates that in one of his marches Constantine saw a luminous cross in the sky inscribed with the words, "By this conquer," and this sign astonished the whole army; and that in a vision of the ensuing night Christ appeared to the Emperor, displaying the same celestial sign of the cross, and directing him to march with an assurance of victory. These incidents were universally adopted, as undoubted truths, by the Catholic Church both of the East and the West; but it is noted by the sceptics that, though the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries often celebrated the triumphs of Constantine, they do not allude to these signs and wonders as accompanying the event.

THE EMPEROR CONSTANTINE PREACHING (A.D. 314).

The Emperor Constantine revolutionised the Empire by giving a chief place to Christian doctrines and practices. He issued an edict of toleration in 313; decreed the observance of Sunday, the use of prayer in the army; abolished the punishment of crucifixion, gladiatorial games, infanticide, private divinations; and encouraged slave emancipation. He was a great admirer of good preaching. Eusebius says he himself once delivered a sermon in the palace before the marvellous man on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There was a crowded audience. The Emperor stood erect the whole time; would not be induced to sit down on the throne close by; paid the utmost attention; would not hear of the sermon being too long; insisted on its continuance; and on being entreated to sit down, replied, with a frown, that he could not bear to hear the truths of religion in any easier posture. More often he was himself the preacher, and one sermon of his is preserved by Eusebius. These sermons were always in Latin, but they were translated into Greek by interpreters appointed for the purpose. On these occasions a general invitation was issued, and thousands of people flocked to the palace to hear the Emperor do duty as the preacher. He stood erect, and then with a set countenance and grave voice poured forth his address, to which, at the striking passages, the audience responded with loud cheers of approbation. He usually discoursed on the follies of Paganism, the scheme of Providence and redemption, and the avarice and rapacity of courtiers.

THE LAST ILLNESS OF CONSTANTINE (A.D. 337).

The Emperor Constantine was anxious to see a reunion of the Arian and Athanasian controversialists; but owing to the sudden death of Arius at a critical moment, and, as was often surmised, by a Divine judgment, the opportunity lapsed. Constantine had been seized with sudden illness while preparing for his Persian expedition, and he tried the mineral waters near Helenopolis in vain. He now bethought himself of the necessity of baptism, which he had omitted, though he had been for twenty-five years convinced of the Christian faith. In the church of Helenopolis he was admitted a catechumen by the imposition of hands. He then cast off his imperial purple robes and assumed those of dazzling whiteness, and was baptised by an Arian bishop, but nevertheless ordered the recall of the orthodox Athanasius. He was greatly comforted at the accomplishment of his baptism, and on his deathbed bade his friends rejoice at his speedy departure. He died at the age of sixty-four. His body was laid out in a coffin of gold, and carried by a procession of the whole army to Constantinople. For three months the body lay in state in the palace, lights burning around and guards watching. The Bishop of Nicomedia, who had been entrusted with the Emperor's will, alarmed at its contents, placed it for security in the dead man's hand till his son Constantius arrived. It was believed to express the Emperor's conviction that he had been poisoned by his brothers and their children, and to call on Constantius to avenge his death. That bequest was obeyed by the massacre of six princes of the imperial family. Prayers were offered up to the dead Emperor, and miracles were believed to be wrought by him.

THE FIRST CHURCH COUNCIL OF NICE (A.D. 325).

When the first great Church controversy arose as to the Trinity, the Emperor Constantine summoned the first great Council of the Church at Nice in 325 to settle this and other doubtful points. Three hundred bishops attended, with many presbyters and deacons and laity. The assembly sat in solemn silence till the Emperor entered with great state and glittering with jewels. The whole assembly rose to do him honour. He advanced with modest dignity to a low golden seat, and did not take the seat till a sign of permission had been given by the bishops. A leading prelate began with a short address and hymn; then the Emperor delivered an exhortation to unity. The debate next began, and mutual accusations, defences, and recriminations followed, the Emperor occasionally softening asperities and commending pacific views. The council sat two months, and at the end the Emperor invited the bishops to a sumptuous banquet. They all attended, and were delighted at the prosperous turn which affairs had at last taken. The Nicene Creed was the result. Three hundred and eighteen bishops signed it, and five dissented, though ultimately only two of these withstood to the last.

AN EARLY BISHOP SILENCING THE PAGANS.

When Alexander was Bishop of Byzantium, about 314, being then seventy-three years old, he presided at a conference which the Emperor Constantine appointed to be held between the Pagan philosophers and the bishop. The latter was called an apostolic bishop, owing to his reputation for sanctity. And the historians say that on the occasion of the conference he put the spokesman of the Pagans to silence by firmly exclaiming, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I command thee to be silent!" On another occasion the same bishop was an ardent opponent of Arius, who then enjoyed the patronage of the Court party. The Emperor Constantine ordered that Arius should be admitted to the Communion. But Alexander was determined not to admit the heretic, and rather than comply with the royal command shut himself up in the church of Irene for purposes of prayer. Strange to say, Arius died suddenly on the following morning, as he was proceeding in triumph to the cathedral, and the people all believed that this was a judgment on the heretic in answer to the good bishop's prayers.

HOW TO CHALLENGE AND REFUTE A HERETIC.

Gregory of Nyssa relates of Ephraim the Syrian, who died about 373, and who was a most voluminous author, preacher, commentator, and hymn-writer: One Apollinaris had written a treatise in two volumes, containing much that was contrary to Scripture. These volumes he had entrusted to a lady at Edessa, from whom Ephraim obtained a loan of them by pretending that he was a disciple of Apollinaris, and was preparing to defend his views. But before returning them he glued the leaves together, and then challenged the heretic to a public disputation. Apollinaris accepted the challenge, but only so far as to consent to read from these books what he had written, and declining to do more on account of his great age. The controversialists met; but when Apollinaris endeavoured to open the books, he found the leaves so firmly fastened together that the attempt was in vain, and he withdrew, mortified almost to death by his opponent's unworthy triumph.

JULIAN THE APOSTATE.

As there are many examples of kings and emperors converted to the Christian religion, so there is a notable example of one relapsing to the condition of an apostate. Julian the Emperor was brought up as a Christian, and had the repute even of a zealous Christian till he attained the age of twenty, when he took a grudge against the Christians, and resolved to restore, if possible, the worship of the gods as it used to be before the Christian era. He was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, and studied with the Pagan philosophers. He composed an elaborate work against the Christians. To spite the Christians he resolved to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem; but earthquakes, whirlwinds, or fiery eruptions destroyed these attempts. He prohibited the Christians from teaching rhetoric and grammar, and excluded them from offices of trust, ordered the Christian temples to be demolished and the Pagan temples to be rebuilt, and showed an irrepressible dislike to the progress of Christianity. Julian admitted that neither fire nor the sword could change the faith of mankind. He therefore prohibited the putting to death of the Galileans, as he called the Christians. He looked on them as wild, savage, and intractable brutes, or at least poor, blind, misguided creatures, who needed only be left to punish themselves. The Pagans of Antioch received him with rapture; but on entering the temple of Apollo, where he expected to find a magnificent procession, he found only a solitary priest, and a single goose for sacrifice, at the very sight of which parsimonious neglect he was greatly incensed. While he was busy urging on the restoration of Apollo's temple, it took fire, and this the Christians viewed as a judgment; while Julian, on the other hand, attributed it to their malice. He retaliated on the cathedral at Antioch by despoiling it of the sacred vessels. Julian died in battle after two years' enjoyment of the throne, and it was said his last words were, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!" But the most trustworthy accounts state that he died in 363 without remorse, as he had lived without guilt, and delivered an impressive address to his friends, submitting with dignity to the stroke of fate.

HOW JULIAN THE APOSTATE DIED OF WORMS (A.D. 363).

Sozomen relates that Julian, when governor of Egypt, put the presbyter, Theodoret of Antioch, the custodian of the sacred ornaments of the church, to cruel tortures, and then caused him to be slain. Julian then proceeded to the sacrilege of the sacred vases, which he flung upon the ground and sat upon, at the same time uttering incredible blasphemies against Christ; but his impious course was suddenly arrested, for certain parts of his body were turned into corruption, and generated enormous quantities of worms. The physicians confessed that the disease was beyond the reach of their art; but from fear and reverence towards the Emperor, they tried all the resources of medicine. They procured the most costly and the fattest birds, and applied them to the corrupted part, in hope that the worms might be thereby attracted to the surface. But this was of no effect; for, in proportion as some of the worms were thus drawn out, others were generated in the flesh, by which he was ceaselessly devoured, until they put an end to his life. Many believed that this disease was an infliction of Divine wrath visited upon him in consequence of his impiety, and this supposition appears the more probable from the fact that the treasurer of the Emperor, and others of the chief officers of the Court who had persecuted the Church, died in an extraordinary and dreadful manner, as if Divine wrath had been visited upon them.

THEOLOGICAL DISPUTES THE TALK OF THE DAY.

When the Arians and Athanasians, early in the fourth century, were in the height of their controversy about the mysteries of the Trinity, the public also took sides, and things beyond all human comprehension became the fashionable topic of conversation at Court. The dispute spread to the people of high rank, and then pervaded the classes below. Socrates said that a war of dialectics was carried on in every family. Gregory of Nyssa in one of his orations thus graphically described the state of public excitement: "Every corner and nook of the city is full of men who discuss incomprehensible subjects-the streets, the markets, the people who sell old clothes, those who sit at the tables of the money-changers, those who deal in provisions. Ask a man how many pence it comes to, he gives you a specimen of dogmatising on generated and ungenerated beings. Inquire the price of bread, you are answered, 'The Father is greater than the Son, and the Son subordinate to the Father.' Ask if the bath is ready, and you are answered, 'The Son of God was created from nothing.'"

THE GREAT CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE TRINITY.

The controversy between the Arians and the Athanasians exercised the leaders of the Church from the time of Constantine to the Second Ecumenic Council in 381. All the great and commanding minds of the age were with the Trinitarians, each condemning the Arian heresy in his own peculiar way. One leader was Ephraim, the Syrian monk, who wept night and day for the sins of mankind and for his own, and who poured forth verse and prose in defence of orthodoxy. It was said his very writings wept, even his panegyrics and festival homilies flowed with tears. His psalms and hymns, however, animated his monkish companions, and were the occupation and delight of all the earnest believers, and all his thoughts and emotions were rigidly Trinitarian. St. Basil the monk, whose boast it was to be "without wife, without property, without flesh, almost without blood," was equally zealous for the Trinity, and as its champion he was made Archbishop of C?sarea. St. Gregory of Nazianzen was equally zealous and eloquent in the same cause; and even the Arian monks and virgins were excited to tumults and bloodshed by his exasperating popularity. Chrysostom in the same cause offended the Empress, who was inclined to the Arians. He was banished; but the Empress, on seeing the commotion caused by an earthquake, was afraid, and he was recalled amid the enthusiasm of the whole inhabitants, who went forth to welcome his return. His renewed insults led the Emperor to send his military officers to seize Chrysostom at the altar during the celebration of the Sacrament, and he was carried off. The same night the church took fire, for which his followers were blamed, and he never returned from exile. The cause of the Trinitarians triumphed at last and became the settled faith.

ATHANASIUS ATTACKED IN HIS OWN CHURCH.

Athanasius, the great champion of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, who died in 373, escaped many imminent dangers in his career. When Syrianus, Duke of Egypt, at the head of five thousand soldiers attacked Alexandria in 356, the Archbishop Athanasius was with his clergy and people engaged in their nocturnal devotions. The troops with horrid imprecations battered in the door and interrupted the service; but the archbishop, seated on his throne and expecting the approach of death, merely desired the trembling congregation to chant one of the Psalms of David which celebrates the triumph of the God of Israel over the haughty and impious tyrant of Egypt. When the door was burst in, a cloud of arrows was discharged, and the soldiers with drawn swords rushed forward, their armour gleaming under the lights round the altar. Athanasius refused the importunate prayers of the monks and presbyters who urged him to escape, and insisted on keeping his seat till he had dismissed in safety the last of the congregation. The darkness and tumult of the night favoured his own retreat, though he was thrown down in the crowd and was eagerly searched for by the soldiers, who had been instructed by their Arian guides that the head of Athanasius would be a most acceptable present to the Emperor Constantius, who was zealous for the Arian faction. It was on this occasion that Athanasius was lost sight of for six years, making hairbreadth escapes during all that period.

ATHANASIUS CONCEALED BY A HOLY VIRGIN.

Sozomen says that Athanasius, the champion of orthodoxy, on hearing of the death of Constantius in 362, appeared by night in the church at Alexandria, to the astonishment of his friends. He told them that while his enemies were seeking to arrest him he had concealed himself in the house of a holy virgin in Alexandria. She was only twenty years old, and was of such extraordinary beauty, modesty, and wisdom that the gravest and best men felt indescribable fascination in her presence. It is said that Athanasius was led by the revelation of God to seek refuge in her house, and the result showed that all the events were directed by Providence. The friends and relatives of Athanasius would thus have been preserved from danger had search been made for him amongst them, and had they been compelled to swear that he was not concealed with them. There was nothing to excite suspicion of a bishop being concealed in the house of so lovely a virgin. She had, moreover, the courage to receive him and sufficient prudence to preserve his life. She alone ministered to him and supplied his wants. She washed his feet, brought him food, provided him with the books he wanted, and acted so prudently that during the whole time of his residence with her none of the inhabitants of Alexandria suspected the place of his retreat. The people of Alexandria rejoiced at this unexpected reappearance of Athanasius, and at once restored his churches to him.

AN IMPRESSIVE SERMON ON THE TRINITY.

Alanus de Insulis was a schoolman of immense renown in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He had appointed a certain day to preach on the Blessed Trinity and to give a perfect explanation of that mystery to his auditors. On the preceding day, as he took a solitary walk on the margin of a river, he saw a little boy scooping out a small trench, and trying to fill it with water from a shell; but the water escaped through the sandy bottom as fast as he filled it. "What are you doing, my pretty child?" asked Alanus. The reply was, "I am going to put all the water of the river into my trench." "And when do you think, my child, that you will succeed in this great design?" "Oh," said the child, "I shall succeed before you succeed in yours. For they say you are to explain the Trinity, in your sermon to-morrow, by the rules of science." Alanus was struck with this reply and seized with compunction. He returned home meditating deeply on the child's remarks and his own presumption. On the morrow, when the hour of the sermon arrived, a great crowd assembled. Alanus mounted the pulpit and uttered these words, which were his whole discourse, "It is sufficient, my friends, that you have seen Alanus." He immediately descended and withdrew, leaving the people in astonishment. The same day he left Paris for Burgundy, and repaired to the abbey of Citeaux, where he became a monk, and ended his days in holy offices and far-reaching reflections.

PAGANS PLEADING AGAINST DEMOLISHING TEMPLES.

When the young Emperor Valentinian, who died A.D. 375, was about to carry out the edict of his predecessor and demolish the Pagan temples and remove the statue of Victory, the eloquent prefect of Rome, Symmachus, ventured to remonstrate, and in the Senate he lavished his eloquence in defence of the immortal gods and the religion of his ancestors. He was cautious, dextrous, and conciliatory. He told the Emperor how their old religion had subdued the world to the Roman dominion, that Heaven was above them all, and there were many ways by which we arrive at the great secret. But he presumed not to contend on this occasion; he was a humble suppliant. It would surely be a disgrace to the imperial treasury to be enriched by the paltry saving in the maintenance of the Vestal Virgins and by confiscating legacies bequeathed by the piety of individuals. Yea, the deified father of the Emperor would look down with sorrow from the starry citadel to see the intolerance of that day's proceedings. Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan, was, however, at hand to confront and confute this Pagan harangue. He told the Emperor that ancestors were to be treated with reverence, but that the question now was the right way of treating with God alone. No part of the public revenue must be given to maintain idolatry. He who offered to images would have his offerings returned by the Church with disdain. All the gods of Rome had done nothing for her. It was the courage of the legions, and not the influence of all the false idols, that turned in their favour the issue of battles. Valentinian was murdered before the final step was taken, and his successor hesitated. Ambrose had to fly from Milan, for the soldiery boasted that they would stable their horses in the churches and press the clergy as soldiers. Alaric soon arrived on the scene, the Roman aristocracy became absorbed by the Christianising population, and Paganism at last gradually died out in 493, and the new religion took its place in the old temples.

THE DEFENCE OF THE PAGAN IDOLS.

The ruin of Paganism and its idols took place in the age of the Emperor Theodosius (378-395). The Roman priests, with their robes of purple, chariots of state, and sumptuous entertainments, were the admiration of the people; and they found their great champion and advocate in Symmachus, who in turn was baffled by Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, whose influence caused the Pagan orator to be exiled. On a vote of the Senate as to whether the worship of Jupiter or of Christ should be the religion of the Romans, a large majority condemned Jupiter, and this led to a special committee of officers, who were directed to shut up the temples and destroy the instruments of idolatry. The Sophists who stood by the Pagan religion describe the acts of the Christian image-breakers as a dreadful and amazing prodigy which covered the earth with darkness. They pathetically relate how the Pagan temples were converted into sepulchres, and how the filthy monks polluted holy places with relics of martyrs which were nothing better than the heads-salted and pickled-of those infamous malefactors who, for the multitude of their crimes, had suffered an ignominious death. But the monks triumphed, and the bodies of St. Andrew, St. Luke, and St. Timothy were transported from their obscure graves in solemn pomp and deposited in the Church of the Apostles, which the magnificence of Constantine had founded in Constantinople. The example of Rome and Constantinople confirmed the faith and discipline of the Catholic world; and the influence of this part of the worship of the faithful lasted during the twelve hundred years which elapsed between the reign of Constantine and the reformation of Luther.

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN DEMOLITION OF TEMPLES.

When Theodosius, the Christian Emperor, in 379 made an edict ordering the demolition of idolatrous temples, it filled the Pagans with dismay. Theophilus, the Archbishop of Alexandria, hastened to execute the order. Marching at the head of the military, he entered the proud temple of the god Serapis, to which a hundred steps led up, and magnificent portices and pillars surrounded the spot. There stood the celebrated colossal statue of the god, made of gold, silver, and other metals fused together, and inlaid with precious stones. When the Christians entered the vast deserted building, the centre of adoration for centuries, they stood silent and awestruck, and after a pause of wonder a soldier was ordered to strike the statue on the knee. He did so timidly, for the spectators expected some terrific outburst of thunder and lightning to destroy him instantaneously. There was an echo, but no sign came. The man, being emboldened, then climbed up to the head, and with one blow struck it off and made it roll to the ground. Another pause. Still no sign of insulted godhead; but a large colony of rats, disturbed from their peaceful abode, suddenly leapt out and scampered about in all directions. The multitude, with their high-strung nerves, were prepared for some act of personal vengeance, but at once dissolved with mirth; peals of loud laughter and jests and mockery mingled with the rest of the work. The curious crowd were further gratified by discovering some of the machinery by which the tricks were produced which had so long imposed on their simple faith, such as letting the light through an aperture fall suddenly on the lips of the statue at the right moment, also a magnet in the roof, which kept a small statue suspended in the air. The fragments of the statue of Serapis were zealously dragged through the streets, and the foundations of the walls were rooted up. The Pagans waited in vain for some sequel of god-like retribution to come; but the river Nile flowed on unmindful of its god without any unusual outbreak. And like scenes were repeated in other cities with the same impunity. In some of the earlier demolitions, however, in other parts of the empire the Pagans resisted, and in some cases successfully. The war against the temples began in Syria. One enthusiastic iconoclast, named Marcellus of Apamea, after successfully destroying temples in other neighbouring places, when attacking that in his own district was seized rudely by the inhabitants and burned alive. The synod of Christians, thinking it a glorious death, refused to revenge on the ignorant barbarians their precipitate outrage.

DESTROYING PAGAN TEMPLES TOO ABRUPTLY.

When the Emperor Theodosius in 386 directed the pr?torian prefect Cynegius, an ardent supporter of Christianity, to shut up all the Pagan temples, this was not done without great excitement. One Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, a somewhat worldly man, who was rather bent on erecting splendid churches than on carrying out the spirit of Christianity, obtained from the Emperor a gift of a temple of Bacchus, and he proceeded to convert it into a Christian church. He acted most injudiciously, first collecting all the indecent decorations out of that impure place, and ordering these to be carried in a procession through the streets, so as to expose them to the ridicule and contempt of the people. But it had rather a contrary effect, for it roused the fanatical spirit, and caused the mob to create a riot and retaliate on the Christians, driving them off and themselves taking refuge in the magnificent temple of Serapis, the pride of Pagan idolaters. There a fanatical Pagan named Olympius, who was clad in the garb of a philosopher, harangued his followers, and instigated them to fight for the sanctuaries of their fathers. The spirit of the mob rose to fever heat, and the loss of life in these commotions was so great that the Emperor took occasion of it to issue a decree, in which he found it necessary to pardon the ringleaders of the Pagans, but at the same time he directed all the heathen temples at Alexandria to be destroyed, since it was through these that such serious disturbances had been created. And this led, amongst others, to the demolition of the celebrated temple of Serapis, and its conversion into churches and cloisters. After these events it was expected that Paganism would soon die out.

DEMOLISHING AN IMAGE AT THE PALACE.

There was a magnificent image of Christ erected over the bronze portal of the Imperial Palace at Constantinople. The legend was, that Theodore, a wealthy merchant, after losing all his property at sea, went to borrow some capital from a wealthy Jew, who demanded good security. Theodore had nothing of value but an image of Christ, and this he boldly offered as his surety. The Jew was so amused and yet overwhelmed at this simplicity that he agreed to accept it. The result was that the merchant won back all his wealth, and repaid the Jew to the uttermost farthing, and the great image called the Surety was set up. When the imperial decree was published against this and other images, a soldier of the Emperor's guard erected a ladder in order to take it down to be burned. But a crowd of women collected, demanding that the image should be spared; and when they watched the soldier striking his axe at it, they were so maddened with indignation, that they pulled the ladder from under his feet, and caused him to fall, and he was killed. The Emperor sent troops to the spot to drive away the people, and set up a plain cross instead of the image which had so won upon the reverence of the lieges.

ST. MARTIN OF TOURS DEMOLISHING TEMPLES (A.D. 380).

St. Martin of Tours (who died 396) distinguished himself by his zeal and efficiency as a destroyer of the Pagan temples when the word was given to destroy them. The Pagans occasionally used to resist. Once, after demolishing a temple, he was also desirous of cutting down a pine that stood near it. But the Pagans opposed this, and after some argument agreed that they themselves would fell it upon condition that he, who boasted so much of his trust in God, would stand under it where they would place him. The saint consented, and suffered himself to be tied to that side of the tree on which it leaned. When it seemed just ready to fall upon him, he made the sign of the cross, and it fell on the contrary side. Whereupon the Pagans were so astonished that they all upon the spot demanded to be enrolled in his list of catechumens. Another time he was pulling down a temple, when a great number of Pagans fell upon him with fury, and one attacked him sword in hand. The saint, however, merely took off his mantle and presented his bare neck to him, whereupon the Pagan was so terrified that he fell backwards, and begged the saint to forgive him.

THE KING OF THE GOTHS RESPECTS THE CHURCHES.

When Alaric, King of the Goths, besieged Rome the third time, in 410, the Salarian Gate was silently opened by his confederates inside at midnight, and the inhabitants were roused by the piercing sound of the Gothic trumpet. The tribes of Germany and Scythia then rushed in, eager to enrich themselves with the spoils of the great city. Alaric exhorted his troops to respect the churches of the Apostles, St. Peter, and St. Paul. The Goths were impressed, and showed here and there some self-restraint. One barbarian chief burst open the humble dwelling of an aged virgin, demanding all her silver and gold, and was astounded at the readiness with which she conducted him to a splendid hoard of massy plate curiously inwrought, which made the eye of the captor sparkle with delight. But the woman with a confident air said to him, "These are the consecrated vessels belonging to St. Peter; if you presume to touch them, the sacrilegious deed will haunt your conscience. As for me, I dare not keep what I am unable to defend." The captain was awestruck; and after reporting the circumstance to the king, the latter ordered all the consecrated plate and ornaments to be transported without damage or delay to the Church of the Apostles, and a detachment of Goths thereupon marched in battle-array, bearing aloft these sacred treasures amid barbarian shouts and the psalms of rejoicing Christians who joined in the procession. The Goths, in pillaging the city, spared nothing beyond these select vessels of the Church; and gold, jewels, silks, and works of art were piled in waggons for their own spoil. The victorious Goths evacuated the city on the sixth day and marched south, spreading terror and destruction. On reaching Sicily, Alaric's life was cut short, and his funeral was celebrated with barbaric pomp. A small river, Busentinus, that washes the walls of Consentia, was diverted from its course, and in its bed the hero's body with the spoils and trophies of Rome were buried. The prisoners who had been compelled to execute this work were then massacred, and the river was restored to its former channel, so as to conceal for ever the place of burial.

ATTILA, KING OF THE HUNS, IMPRESSED BY THE POPE (A.D. 453).

When Attila, the King of the Huns, was supposed to meditate the invasion of Italy, so great was the consternation that the Senate and people thought it prudent to send a solemn embassy to deprecate the wrath of that ferocious monarch. He listened to the appeal, and the deliverance of Italy was purchased by the immense ransom or dowry of the Princess Honoria. When Attila talked of carrying his victorious arms to the gates of Rome, both friends and foes warned him that Alaric did not long survive the conquest of the Eternal City; but in 453 he carried out his resolution. Meanwhile, Leo, the bishop, was induced to venture his life to endeavour to mollify the conqueror. Leo's eloquence and majestic aspect and sacerdotal robes made an immense impression on the superstitious barbarian. It was said by the chroniclers that the two apostles St. Peter and St. Paul appeared in person on the occasion, and threatened Attila with instant death if he rejected the prayer of their successor. He was much embarrassed; but before he evacuated Italy he still threatened to return more dreadful and implacable if the Princess Honoria were not delivered up to him according to the treaty. Fortunately for Italy, Attila was one night seized with sudden illness, during which a blood-vessel burst and suffocated him in his sleep. After solemnly exposing his body under a silken pavilion, squadrons of Huns wheeled round, chanting a funeral song to his memory. They inclosed his remains in three coffins, of gold, of silver, and of iron, and privately buried him in the night, throwing into his grave the spoils of nations and the bodies of captives massacred for the purpose.

THE VANDALS SACKING ROME AND CAPTURING SACRED VESSELS (455).

When Genseric, King of the Vandals, was secretly invited by the Empress Eudoxia to deliver her from the brutal treatment of the Emperor Maximus, the African galleys brought an army to the mouth of the Tiber. Maximus being, meanwhile, slain in a tumult of his subjects, the Vandals advanced at once to the gates of Rome; but instead of meeting an army, saw only a procession of clergy, headed by the bishop, who by his venerable appearance sought to mitigate the ferocity of the conqueror. Some show of mercy was promised; but the conquerors, nevertheless, were allowed to pillage the city, which they did for fourteen days and nights. Vast spoils were collected, including the splendid relics of the temples, both Pagan and Christian. Magnificent furniture, sideboards of massy plate, and jewels stripped from the persons of the Empress and her daughters were collected and stowed in the ships. Amongst others, the holy instruments of the Jewish worship, the gold table and the gold candlestick with seven branches, originally framed by the direction of God Himself, and which were placed in the sanctuary of His Temple, had been displayed to the Roman people by Titus, and afterwards deposited in the Temple of Peace. These spoils of Jerusalem at the end of four hundred years were transferred from Rome to Carthage by the Vandals. It has been related that the vessel which transported the relics of the Capitol was the only one of the fleet which suffered shipwreck. Thousands of Romans of both sexes, and mostly those skilled in the arts, were included among the captives; and the Bishop of Carthage generously sold the gold and silver plate of his church to relieve them.

JUSTINIAN DRIVING OUT THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS (526).

Though Julian the Apostate, in his zeal to re-establish Paganism, made no great impression, the schools of the Greek philosophers, with their dreamy morality, were not allowed to expire like a worn-out veteran in peaceful dignity. The impatient zeal of the Emperor Justinian in 526 led him to forcibly expel the remnant of the old philosophers from the ancient groves and porches of Athens. Seven followers of Proclus were obliged to find a retreat in Persia; but the Magi there were still more intolerant than the Christians. Philosophy found no resting-place; it found itself supplanted by a new faith, which now domineered over the human mind. Justinian governed the Roman Empire for thirty-eight years (527-565), and great and curious events occurred in his time. The Empress Theodora was daughter of an official called the Master of the Bears, and took to the stage in her youth. Her forte was not to sing or dance or play on the flute, but to act in pantomime and buffoonery, her eyes being bright, and her agile and elegant form drawing down endless applause. She captivated the nephew of the Emperor Justin, young Justinian, whom she married, and she maintained an ascendency over him to the last. She developed into a rapacious and cruel tyrant, and yet patronised many charitable schemes; and her influence and power with the Emperor were unbounded, and many a courtier fell a victim to her caprice. Her physicians at last warned her that her health required her to use the Pythian warm baths. She went there attended by a splendid train of four thousand officials. Highways and palaces were repaired and made ready during the progress. In passing through Bithynia she distributed liberal alms to the churches, the monasteries, and hospitals that they might implore Heaven for the restoration of her health. At last in 548, the twenty-second year of her reign, she was carried away by a cancer.

MAHOMET'S KNOWLEDGE OF CHRISTIANITY (632).

Mahomet's knowledge of and connection with Christianity are inferred from the fact that his favourite slave Zeyd leaned to the Christian faith. And the monk Bahari, who conversed with Mahomet on his first journey with the camel-drivers, who professed to foresee and welcome the future greatness of the prophet, may have communicated many of the traditions of the faith. Though Mahomet was not well acquainted with the canonical gospels, yet the apocryphal gospels with the current traditions of the time were familiar to him. He adopted the legend of the Seven Sleepers at Ephesus, and of the Wandering Jew. Many incidents of ecclesiastical history have analogies in the Koran. There is a priesthood in the sense of men devoted to the interpretation of the Koran. The saints are also venerated, and pilgrims make annual visitations. The ceremonial rites are even more mechanical than are to be found in any portion of the Christian Church.

THE OAK OF GEISMAR DEMOLISHED (724).

When St. Boniface was sent as a missionary by the Pope in 724 to convert the Germans, they were found grovelling in Pagan superstition, putting their faith in sacred groves and fountains. The missionary, when made a bishop, determined to strike a blow at this creed. There was an old and venerable oak of immense size in the grove of Geismar, in Upper Hesse, hallowed for ages to Thor, the thunder-god. Attended by all the clergy, Boniface, who felt that one visible ark of sacred confidence must be replaced by another, went publicly forth to fell this tree. The Pagans assembled in multitudes to behold a trial of strength between the rival gods. They awaited the issue in profound silence, some expecting that the sacrilegious axe would recoil on the impious Christians. But only a few blows had been struck when a sudden wind was heard in the groaning branches, and down it came toppling, and split into four pieces. The shuddering Pagans at once bowed before the superior might of Christianity. Boniface at once built out of the wood a chapel dedicated to St. Peter. After this churches and monasteries sprang up, and zealous labourers from England flocked to help in civilising the Teutonic race. Eadberga, the abbess of Minster, in the isle of Thanet, sent presents of clothes and books. Boniface was then made a metropolitan, with his throne at Mentz, on the Rhine, and Christianity spread from that time throughout that district, and it was by his hand that Pepin the Little was anointed king. In his old age Boniface descended the Rhine in a boat towards the Zuyder Zee. He took with him a shroud, in which his body might be wrapped and sent back to Fulda in Hesse in case of accident. It proved that the Pagan priests attacked him, and then, laying his head upon a volume of the gospels, he received the fatal blow, being killed in 755, and his seventy-fifth year.

THE POPE DEFENDING ROME AGAINST FOREIGNERS (742).

When Luitprand, the Lombard King, was conquering Italy in 742, and was approaching Rome, Pope Zacharias went and met him at Terni, surrounded with a courtly array of bishops. He chose the church of St. Valentine for the place of meeting; and the Pope, availing himself of the solemnity of the building, and reminding the king of the last account and the damnation that must await him, made such an impression that the king was overawed and agreed to a treaty, making the concessions asked; and the Pope, after a solemn service in church, ended by inviting the king to a banquet. But ten years later another Pope (Stephen) was less successful with the next Lombard king, Astolph. The Pope's ambassadors were received and listened to, but nothing more. The king did not stay his career, but approached Rome. Not all the Litanies, not all the solemn processions to the most revered altars of the city, in which the Pope himself with naked feet bore the cross and the whole people followed with ashes on their heads, and with a wild howl of agony implored the protection of God against the blaspheming Lombards, arrested for an instant his progress. The Pope appealed to Heaven by tying a copy of the treaty violated by Astolph to the holy cross. Astolph entered notwithstanding; and, strange to say, while he remained he busied himself digging up the bodies of saints, not for insult, but as the most precious trophies, and carried them off as tutelar deities to Lombardy. At the same time the Pope was making a journey to King Pepin of France, and there met with a warm reception, which led to many future favours from that quarter.

THE FORGED DECRETALS ABOUT CONSTANTINE (795).

Pope Adrian I., who died 795, in his troubles with emperors and kings, finding Charlemagne a rising power, wrote a letter to him exhorting him to imitate the liberality and revive the name of the great Constantine. He used for that purpose a legend for which he vouched, and which was to this effect: The first of the Christian emperors was healed of the leprosy, and purified in the waters of baptism by St. Sylvester, the Roman bishop, and the physician was gloriously recompensed, for that emperor withdrew from the seat and patrimony of St. Peter, declared his resolution of founding a new capital in the East, and resigned to the Popes the free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West. By this plausible story it was made to appear that the Popes were made by the best of titles supreme; and such were the ignorance and credulity of the times, that this absurd fable was received with equal reverence in Greece and France. It turned out that the story was a forgery concocted near the end of the eighth century by one Isidore, a scribe. It was, nevertheless, accepted and handed down as a magna charta of papal rights, until some opposition to its authenticity proceeded from a Sabine monastery about 1100. In the revival of letters, an eloquent critic and Roman patriot, named Laurentius Valla, who died 1457, completed the exposure of the forgery, to the amazement of his contemporaries, and before the end of the next age the imposture was rejected with the contempt of all the historians. But it served its purpose. As Gibbon observes, "The Popes themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar, but a false obsolete title still sanctifies their reign; and by the same fortune which has attended these forged decretals, and the Sibylline oracles, the edifice has subsisted after the foundations have been undermined."

POPE NICOLAS AND THE FALSE DECRETALS (867).

One of the clever stratagems by which Pope Nicolas I., who died in 867, tried to establish his supremacy over the whole world in all things spiritual was the promulgation of the false decretals. This Pope was said to have tamed kings and tyrants, and to have ruled the world like a sovereign. A rebel Transalpine prelate, Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, had disputed the jurisdiction of the Pope, but was compelled to submit. On a sudden, at the nick of time, there was promulgated a new code, including thirty-nine (false) decrees of Popes and councils. These not only asserted the supremacy of the Pope, his dignity and privileges, but included a whole system of Church discipline on Church property, sacraments, festivals, rites, and ceremonies. The whole is composed with an air of profound piety and reverence, and a specious purity of tone. But for the too manifest design, the aggrandisement of the whole clergy in subordination to the See of Rome; but for the monstrous ignorance of history, which betrayed itself in glaring anachronisms, and in the utter confusion of the order of events and the lives of distinguished men-the former awakening keen and jealous suspicion, the latter making the detection of the spuriousness of the whole easy, clear, irrefragable-the false decretals might still have maintained their place in ecclesiastical history. They are now given up by all; not a voice is raised in their favour. The utmost done is to palliate the guilt of the forger, who fortunately is unknown.

SEPARATION OF THE GREEK AND LATIN CHURCHES (1054).

The restoration of the Western Empire by Charlemagne was speedily followed by the permanent separation of the Greek and Latin Churches. About 850 Photius, an ambitious layman and captain of the guards, was promoted to the office of Patriarch of Constantinople, thereby superseding Ignatius, who had a large following. Both appealed to Pope Nicolas I., a proud and aspiring pontiff, who embraced the welcome opportunity of judging and condemning his rival of the East. The patriarch had the aid of his own court, and deposed the Pope; but in turn he and his patrons lost ground, and the original patriarch, Ignatius, was restored. Thereafter the feud continued more or less fiercely, till at last, in 1054, the then patriarch was excommunicated in Constantinople by the Pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema, which enumerated seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and consigned the Eastern Church, its teachers and sectaries, to everlasting damnation. Though the forms of civility thereafter were sometimes maintained, the Greeks never recanted the errors and the Popes never repealed their sentence. This aversion of the Greeks and Latins was nourished and manifested in the three first expeditions to the Holy Land. The Eastern Christians never gave a cordial welcome to the Crusaders, and rather treated them as schismatics, and sometimes took part in thwarting them. In 1183 the Greeks carried out a massacre, in which the Latins were slaughtered in houses and streets, their clergy burnt in the churches, and the sick in their hospitals. The Greek monks and priests actually chanted a thanksgiving to the Lord when the head of a Roman cardinal, the Pope's legate, was severed from his body, fastened to the tail of a dog, and dragged in savage mockery through the city.

EARLY CONTENTIONS OF JEW AND CHRISTIAN.

In the fourth century, after miraculous powers ceased to attend the progress of Christianity, and a system of wonder-working was established, the Jews, who had long watched with jealousy the advance of their rivals, began to think that they could also become adepts in pious frauds. Next one party took to magical arts as weapons of superiority. A conference is said to have taken place in the presence of Constantine and the devout empress-mother Helena between the Jews and the Christians. Pope Sylvester had already triumphed in argument over his infatuated opponents, when the Jews had recourse to magic. A noted enchanter commanded an ox to be brought forward; he whispered into the ear of the animal, which instantly fell dead at the feet of Constantine. The Jews shouted in triumph, for it was the word Ham-semphorash, the ineffable name of God, at the sound of which the awestruck beast had expired. Sylvester, with some shrewdness, observed, "As he who whispered the name must be well acquainted with it, why does not he fall dead in like manner?" The Jews answered contemptuously, "Let us have no more verbal disputations; let us come to actions." "So be it," said Sylvester; "and if this comes to life again at the name of Christ, will ye believe?" They all assented. Sylvester then raised his eyes to heaven, and said with a loud voice, "If He be the true God whom I preach, in the name of Christ arise, you ox, and stand on your feet." The ox sprang up and began to move and feed. The legend then adds that the whole assembly was baptised.

JULIAN INCITING THE JEWS TO REBUILD THE TEMPLE.

Sozomen says that, though Julian the Apostate hated and oppressed the Christians, he was benevolent to the Jews merely in order to spite the Christians. He commanded the Jews to rebuild their Temple at Jerusalem, and gave them money to do so. They entered on the undertaking without reflecting that according to their holy prophets it could not be accomplished. They sought the most skilful artisans, collected materials, cleared the ground, and entered so earnestly on the task that even the women carried heaps of earth and sold their ornaments towards defraying the expense. Yet when they cleared the ground an earthquake occurred, and stones were thrown up from the earth, wounding those near, and houses were thrown down. After the earthquake the workmen returned to the task; and instead of regarding the unexpected wonder as a manifest indication that God was opposed to the re-creation of the Temple, they were consumed by a fire which burst from the foundations. This fact is related by all the contemporaries, who agree that the fire burst out either from the foundations or from the bowels of the earth. A still more extraordinary prodigy occurred, for the sign of the cross appeared on the garments of the workmen. These crosses were disposed like stars, and appeared the work of art. Many were hence led to confess that Christ was God, and repented and were baptised.

CHRISTIANS HATING THE JEWS.

Southey says, "That the primitive Christians should have regarded the Jews with hostile feelings as their first persecutors was but natural, and that that feeling should have been aggravated by a just and religious horror for the crime which has drawn upon this unhappy nation its abiding punishment. But it is indeed strange that during so many centuries this enmity should have continued to exist, and that no sense of compassion should have mitigated it. For the Jews to have inherited the curse of their fathers was in the apprehension of ordinary minds to inherit their guilt; and the cruelties which man inflicted upon them were interpreted as proofs of the continued wrath of Heaven, so that the very injuries and sufferings which in any other case would have excited commiseration served in this to close the heart against it. Being looked on as God's outlaws, they were everywhere placed, as it were, under the ban of humanity. And while these heart-hardening prepossessions subsisted against them in full force, the very advantages of which they were in possession rendered them more especial objects of envy, suspicion, and popular hatred."

THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM (A.D. 800).

The Jews seemed never to be so prosperous as in the age of Pepin and Charlemagne (about 768-800). The laws were not enforced against them, and they were practically free from restrictions, except as to keeping Christian slaves and following the law of dower. Bishops, abbots, and abbesses were only prevented by heavy penalties from pledging or selling to the circumcised the costly vestments, rich furniture, and precious vessels of the churches. Jews became physicians, ministers of finance to nobles and monarchs; and when Charlemagne sent an embassy to Caliph Haroun al Raschid, a Jew was sent with two Christian counts as ambassadors, and as they died on the road he conducted the business and brought back costly presents, including an enormous elephant, which the monks of the period described as a wonder of the world. The monks also described the accomplishments of a Jew physician named Zedekiah, who was a confidential adviser of Louis the Débonnaire or the Pious. They relate that he could swallow a whole cart of hay and fly in the air. The toleration and equal treatment of Jews and Christians greatly shocked Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, who issued edicts to his people prohibiting their intercourse. But on appeal the king ordered an inquiry, and the edicts were withdrawn. About the same time in Spain, from the conquest by the Moors till the end of the tenth century, the Jews enjoyed nearly equal laws; and one Moses, their rabbi, became wealthy and influential; and when his grandson Nathan enjoyed a drive in the groves near Cordova, seven hundred chariots joined in the procession that followed him.

THE POPE AND THE JEWS (1140).

Various Christian countries for centuries maintained laws making it necessary that Jews should wear a particular dress or badge to distinguish them. They were always viewed by Christian communities with suspicion. One of the common accusations against them was that of crucifying children, after scourging them and crowning them with thorns; and this they were suspected of doing annually. This was said to be done out of hatred to the Christian religion, and it was even alleged that the Jews received the heart of the sacrificed child at their own Communion. The Jews were also accused of scourging crucifixes and profaning images and crosses. These and other imputations were adroitly used as pretexts for confiscating the wealth of the Jews. One remarkable badge of subjection and suspicion took its rise in the twelfth century-namely, the conduct of the Jews at the installation of a new Pope. They are obliged to wait for the Pontiff on the road to St. John de Lateran, and there on their knees they present him with a copy of their Law. On receiving this, the Pope thus addresses them: "I revere the law which God gave to Moses, but condemn the false sense you give it by vainly expecting the Messiah who has been long come, and whom the Church believes to be Jesus Christ our Lord." This custom took its rise when Pope Innocent II., on his retreat to France, made his entry into Paris, on which occasion the Jews went to meet him with great solemnity, and in a very respectful manner presented him with the holy books of their Law.

THE JEWS OF YORK DEFENDING THEMSELVES (1189).

A time of monstrous persecution and cruelty towards the Jews was the coronation of Richard I. in 1189. One Benedict, a York Jew, to save his life had submitted to baptism in London, but died of injuries received during a riot there. The people of York, equally excited, attacked Benedict's house there, and his wife and children took refuge in the Castle with their valuable effects. Other Jews being with them, all at last suspected that the governor was in treaty with their enemies to surrender them, and while the governor was temporarily absent they shut the gates against him. This made the populace frantic, and eager to enter and despatch them. A canon urged the mob on; and at last a rabbi, seeing the hopelessness of their situation, addressed his fellow Jews as follows: "Men of Israel, the God of our fathers calls upon us to die for our Law. Death is inevitable, but we may yet choose whether we will die speedily and nobly, or ignominiously, after horrible torments. My advice is that we shall voluntarily render up our souls to our Creator, and fall by our own hands. The deed is both reasonable and according to the Law, and is sanctioned by the example of our most illustrious ancestors." The old man sat down in tears. The assembly was divided, but debated; and finally, while a few left the place, the great majority made up their minds to die. They collected their precious effects into a pile and burnt them. They then cut the throats of their wives and children. The rabbi and Joachim were the last to suffer; but one slew the other and then himself. Next morning the mob broke in, only to find the fire burning in all quarters, and they took care to have all the bonds and obligations and money securities of the dead men burned in an enormous bonfire. No proper punishment was ever inflicted on the ringleaders who thus caused the death of seven or eight hundred persons, though some of the ringleaders were arrested.

JEWS ATTEMPTING TO CRUCIFY AN ENGLISH BOY.

Matthew Paris says: "About 1240 the Jews circumcised a Christian boy at Norwich, and after he was circumcised they called him Jurnim; they then kept him to crucify him, in contempt of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The father of the boy, however, from whom the Jews had stolen him, after a diligent search at length discovered him confined in custody of the Jews, and with a loud cry he pointed out his son, whom he believed lost, shut up in a room of one of the Jews' houses. When this extraordinary crime came to the knowledge of William de Kele, the bishop, a wise and circumspect prelate, and of some other nobles, in order that such an insult to Christ should not be passed over unpunished through the neglect of the Christians, all the Jews of that city were made prisoners; and when they wished to place themselves under the protection of the royal authority, the bishop said, 'These matters belong to the Church; and when the question raised is concerning circumcision and insult to religion, it is not to be decided by the King's Court.' Four of the Jews therefore, having been found guilty of the aforesaid crime, were first dragged at the tails of horses, and afterwards hung on a gibbet, where they breathed forth the wretched remains of life."

JEWS CRUCIFYING AN ENGLISH BOY (1255).

Matthew Paris also says that in 1255 some Jews of Lincoln stole a boy of eight years, shut him up in a room, fed him on milk, and then sent to all the cities in England where Jews lived to come and be present at a sacrifice to take place at Lincoln, when a boy was to be crucified. A great many Jews attended, and one was appointed to take the place of Pilate, who subjected the boy to divers tortures. They beat him till blood flowed and he was quite livid; they crowned him with thorns, derided him, and spat upon him. Then he was pierced by each of them with a wood knife, was made to drink gall, was overwhelmed with reproaches and blasphemies, and was repeatedly called "Jesus, the false prophet," by his tormentors, who surrounded him, grinding and gnashing their teeth. At last they crucified him, and pierced him to the heart with a lance, took down his body from the cross, disembowelled him, and used his body to practise magical operations, and then threw it into a well. The boy's mother began tracing the boy to a Jew's house, and excited the compassion of the citizens by her suspicions. A wise man, John of Lexington, encouraged the hue and cry with his eloquence, and one or two Jews were arrested, and a pardon offered if confession were made. One Jew professed then to confess that the Jews crucified a boy every year as an insult to the name of Jesus. The boy's body was afterwards found in the well, and exposed to the gaze of the citizens. The canons of the cathedral inquired into it, and the king was informed. The Jew who confessed was tied to a horse's tail and dragged to the gallows; and at a later day eighteen wealthy Jews were also hanged, and others imprisoned to await a like fate, though it was said that some indiscreet minor brethren interceded for them.

JEWS BLAMED FOR THE BLACK DEATH IN 1347.

The disease known as the Black Death first appeared at Constantinople in 1347, and soon spread along the north of the Black Sea, then to Sicily, Marseilles, France, Italy, and Spain. The black patches on the skin and the pestilential breath of the sick, who spat blood, carried contagion far and near. There were also atmospheric disturbances, deluges of rain, and earthquakes. In England in 1349 the Parliament was prorogued on account of this plague. The Princess Joan, daughter of Edward III., then on her way to marry the eldest son of the King of Castile, caught the disease at Bordeaux and died. Wicliff, then a student at Oxford, wrote a book on "The Last Age of the Church," in which it was predicted that the end of the world would be in 1400 at latest. The effect on people was twofold. Some lived more temperately, while others gave themselves up to revelling and drinking. The Flagellants, as a new religious order, went about scourging and being scourged, as a means of propitiating Heaven, and singing psalms and ringing bells. Some started the theory that the Jews were the cause of this disease, and many were put to death (as was mentioned ante, p. 90). Labourers, from the scarcity, demanded higher wages, and under Wat Tyler many joined in a local rebellion.

JEWS STEALING THE HOST TO INSULT IT (1350).

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the German Jews were subject to frequent spoliations and massacres. The sect of Flagellants, who, with mad enthusiasm, passed through the cities of Germany, preceded by a crucifix and scourging their naked and bleeding backs, used, as they said, to atone for their own transgressions by plundering and murdering as many Jews as they could in Frankfort and other places. The Jews were thus hunted through all Germany, Silesia, Brandenburg, Bohemia, Lithuania, and Poland. As a justification for this systematic cruelty, the following legend was circulated and believed in most countries: A certain Jew, named Jonathan of Enghien, desired to possess himself of the consecrated Host in order to treat it with sacrilegious insult. He bribed a desperado, named John of Louvain, to procure the sacred symbol. John mounted by night into the chapel of St. Catherine, stole the pyx, with the sacred contents, and conveyed it to Jonathan. The latter assembled his friends, who most impiously met and blasphemed and pierced it with knives. At that time Jonathan was advised for safety to migrate to Brussels; and there, in the synagogue, the Jews treated the Host with every insult, piercing it with knives, and though blood flowed forth the obdurate unbelievers, unmoved, continued their insults. They next sent the treasure to Cologne for similar treatment; but having entrusted it to a woman whose conscience smote her, she betrayed them to the clergy. The consequence was that the Jews were arrested, put to the torture, convicted, and sentenced to be torn with red-hot pincers and then burnt alive. This memorable act of vengeance was said to be justified by many miracles that were worked in Brussels, the place of punishment.

BANQUETING WITH THE JEWS (1478).

Though the Jews were often treated with gross cruelty and injustice in the Middle Ages, they sometimes had it in their power to retaliate. The Jews, often acquiring great wealth, defied the clergy and refused to pay tithe. It was often a question whether the clergy should admit servants of the Jews to baptism. Once large numbers of bishops forbade Christians, under pain of excommunication, to frequent the banquets of the Jews. In 1478 one Francis de Pizicardis, a great and cruel usurer, was buried in the Church of St. Francis in Placentia. It happened to rain torrents during many days, till a report spread through the city that it would never cease as long as the said body was in holy ground. The young men of the city in a body, as if convoked by the bishop, went to the church, burst open the gates, dug up the body, and dragged it by a cord through all the streets of the city. And as they passed the house of one old woman, she ran out and insulted it, saying, "Give me back my eggs!" for she had given him two fresh eggs every day as interest for a ducat which she owed him. At length the body was dragged out of the city, suspended from a willow tree, and finally thrown into the Po. And, strange to say, according to the annalist, the rain then ceased. Some Polish rulers were so indebted to the Jews that, in order to keep their creditors quiet, they favoured the Jewish merchants more than the Christian.

TORQUEMADA'S ZEAL AGAINST SPANISH JEWS (1492).

After the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella had succeeded in driving the Moors from Spain, and when at last they had agreed to send Columbus on his expedition to the New World, the clergy inflamed the minds of the sovereigns and the Inquisition against the Jews, who obstinately resisted all efforts to convert them. While the Jews were negotiating with the sovereign to avert this odium, Torquemada, the Inquisitor-General, burst into the apartment of the palace, and, drawing a crucifix from under his mantle, held it up, and exclaimed, "Judas Iscariot sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. Your Highnesses would sell Him anew for thirty thousand. Here He is; take Him and barter Him away." So saying, this demon priest threw the crucifix on the table, and left the apartment. The royal pair were overawed, and their superstitious forebodings were so effectually worked upon that they signed, in 1492, the edict for the expulsion of the Jews which caused so much misery. The Jews, who were then estimated to be about six hundred and fifty thousand, resolved to abandon the country and sacrifice all rather than their religion. They had to sell their property for a trifle, owing to the market being glutted. A house would be sold for an ass and a vineyard for a piece of cloth. Some Jews swallowed their jewels; others tried to conceal them in clothes and saddles. Some ships carrying the fugitives were visited by the plague. Those suffered all the miseries of hunger who travelled by land, and many sold their children for bread. Some were cast naked and desolate on the African coast. Some tried to escape into Portugal; and King Joan II. drove a hard bargain, fixing a high capitation tax, which his tax-gatherers lined the frontiers in order to collect. This was only for permission to pass through the country and embark for Africa. The new king, Emanuel, acted still more brutally, and ordered all Jewish children to be kidnapped and torn from their parents' arms, in order to be brought up in the Catholic faith. The Dominicans watched, during these years of massacre and pillage, the moment when a Jewish person was visible, rushed forth with crucifix in their hands to hunt and roast the offender, and for this brutal work of merit the reward was said to be that the sufferings in purgatory should be confined to a hundred days. This expulsion of Jews seriously marred the national prosperity.

THE PREJUDICE AGAINST JEWISH PHYSICIANS.

Southey says that nothing exposed the Jews to more odium, in ages when they were held most odious, than the reputation which they possessed as physicians. So late as the middle of the sixteenth century, Francis I., after a long illness, finding no benefit from his own physicians, despatched a courier to Spain, requesting Charles V. to send him the most skilful Jewish practitioner in his dominions. This afforded matter for merriment to the Spaniards. No Jewish physician being heard of, a Christian one was sent, but was dismissed without a trial; and at last a Jew came from Constantinople, who, however, prescribed nothing more for the royal patient than asses' milk. This reputation of the Jewish physicians was said to be founded on the notion that they had stores of knowledge not accessible to other people, especially as to all the drugs known in the East. Yet at the same time there were tales as to the disreputable knowledge they had, such as killing Christian children to use their fat as cosmetics. The conduct of the Romish Church tended to strengthen this obloquy. Several councils of the Church denounced excommunication against any persons who should place themselves under the care of a Jewish physician; for it was said to be pernicious and scandalous that Christians, who ought to despise and hold in horror the enemies of their holy religion, should have recourse to them for remedies in sickness. The decree of the Lateran Council, by which physicians were enjoined under heavy penalties to require that their patients should confess and communicate before they administered any medicines to them, seems to have been designed as much against Jewish practitioners as heretical patients. The Jews on their part were not more charitable, and used to forbid rabbis to attend upon either a Christian or Gentile unless he dared not refuse, and above all never to attend such patients gratuitously.

A HOLY FATHER CONVERTING A JEW (1600).

In the seventeenth century one Engelberger, a Bohemian Jew, was sentenced to imprisonment for stealing the plate from a synagogue at Prague. In prison he became a great reader; and a holy Father, who visited him and took an interest in him, promised him not only absolution but a considerable reward if he would renounce his faith. He did so, and was received into the Church, thereby drawing on him the contempt and vengeance of the other Jews, and the praise and congratulation of the Christians. He published a book vindicating his conversion, became a favourite of high society, and was invited to Vienna, where he was well received by the Emperor Ferdinand III. But the convert by degrees was suspected of hypocrisy; and on the first opportunity he robbed the royal treasury, and after trial was condemned to death. He again affected sincere piety and contrition, expecting that his sentence would be remitted. But at the last moment, being told the contrary, and while receiving the last Sacrament on the scaffold, he spat the sacred wafer from his mouth; he shouted to the mob that he deserved his fate for abjuring the faith of Moses, and he called on them to bear witness that he died in the faith of the patriarchs. The mob, who had formerly almost deified the renegade, were now enraged at this insult to the Catholic faith, and wanted to tear him to pieces; but he was withdrawn for a few days. He was then again exposed, and drawn on a hurdle through the streets of Vienna. And a more diabolical sentence had meanwhile been passed. His right hand was first cut off; his tongue torn from his mouth; he was suspended from the gallows with his head downward, and dogs were allowed to tear him to pieces; and then his dead body was thrown into the Danube. An inscription in the Guildhall at Vienna records the date of this appalling example of religious fanaticism.

THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT IMAGE WORSHIP (A.D. 726).

The mode in which the great controversy about worship of images in churches arose was said to be as follows: A hermit had sent to Gregory the Great, who was appointed Pope in 589, for an image of Christ and other religious symbols. The latter sent him a picture of Christ and the Virgin Mary, also of St. Peter and St. Paul, and added some observations as to the right use of images. The Pope observed that, though it was grounded in man's nature that he should seek to represent things invisible by means of the visible, yet the representations were not to be worshipped as God, but only used to enkindle the love of Him whose image was present to the eye. About that time country bishops reported that the worship of images was spreading, and that those opposed to that tendency demolished them and cast them out of churches. Parties began to be formed on both sides. In the Greek Church the church books had long been ornamented with pictures of Christ, of the Virgin, and the Saints; and private houses and household furniture also had like embellishments. There were legends connected with each. Some prostrated themselves whenever they approached within sight of these symbols. The most noted and determined enemy of images was the Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, who was full of zeal, and paid small respect to what he thought to be wrong. He was very arbitrary. He forced the Jews to receive baptism, which only made them more and more tenacious of their antipathy. He also forced the Montanists to join the dominant Church, and this so enraged them that they burned themselves in their own churches. Leo's first ordinance of 726 forbade any kind of reverence to be paid to images or pictures, and any prostration or kneeling. One bishop in defence attributed miracles which were wrought to these images, and said he knew from his personal experience this was not a delusion; moreover, an image of Mary at Sozopolis, in Posidia, distilled balsam, as was well attested. In short, party spirit ran high, and at last a great champion of images arose, named John of Damascus. Leo waged war against images for twelve years, until his death. His son Constantine was as zealous an iconoclast as his father; but great disturbances were caused by his proceedings. In 754 he convoked a council of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops, who agreed with the Emperor. They denounced the wretched painters who with profane hands attempted to depict the sacred feelings of the heart, and laid down the rule of faith to be, that there was only one true image or symbol, which was the bread and wine used in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Painting was described as a Pagan, godless art, which degraded the Divine Majesty; and whoever in future should manufacture an image to worship it either in church or dwelling-house should, if an ecclesiastic, be deposed; if a monk or a layman, he should be expelled from the communion of the Church. An anathema was pronounced accordingly against all images. Though the council by a majority so decided, yet the monks as a body were equally zealous and determined to resist all attempts to do away with images. It was said the monk Stephen was thrown into prison for his zeal in favour of images; he refused to touch the food which the gaoler's wife secretly brought to him, until she secretly assured him that she kept a casket in her own chamber containing several images of Divine persons, and which she showed to the monk to reassure him of her genuine devotion. Constantine, during the thirty years of his reign, flattered himself that he had struck a final blow at image worship; but after his death the next emperor married Irene, an Athenian lady, who was an unscrupulous supporter of images, and she cunningly brought about a reaction and restored things to their former footing.

THE ICONOCLASTS AND THEIR FIRST REVOLT.

Thus a strong feeling grew up, maintained by the Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, that the Christians were going to an excess in their worship of images, and the contest raged for a hundred and twenty-five years, and led to bloodshed and civil war. The precise occasion of this revolt is not known with certainty; and it was thought afterwards to be unfortunate, for Christians at that time were called upon rather to combine against Mohammedanism than think of dividing their forces. When Leo had reigned ten years, he issued in 726 a prohibition against the worship of all statues and pictures of the Saviour, the Virgin, and the Saints; and all statues and pictures were to be raised sufficiently high that they could not receive pious kisses. Soon after a second edict was issued, commanding the total destruction of all images and the whitewashing of the walls of churches. The clergy and monks were driven to absolute fury by this tyrannical measure. An imperial officer had orders to destroy a statue of our Saviour in a church in Constantinople, an image renowned for its miracles. The crowd (as stated ante, p. 112), consisting chiefly of women, saw with horror the officer mount the ladder. Thrice he struck with his impious axe the holy countenance which had so benignly looked down upon them. Heaven interfered not; but the women seized the ladder, threw down the officer, and beat him to death with clubs. The Emperor sent his troops to put down the riot, and a frightful massacre ensued; but the image worshippers were viewed as martyrs, and cheerfully encountered mutilation and banishment, while the Emperor was denounced as worse than a Saracen. The Pope prohibited the Italians from paying tribute to the Emperor, and wrote letters defending the practice of the Church. He alludes to that practice as including pictures of the miracles, of the Virgin with choirs of angels, of the Last Supper, the Transfiguration, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and other like subjects. The Pope's letter, however, had no effect.

JOHN OF DAMASCUS, CHAMPION OF IMAGES (A.D. 756).

The great champion who rose to defend image worship against Leo, the iconoclast, was John of Damascus, the most learned man in the East, and a subject of the Sultan. The ancestors of John, when that city was taken by the Mohammedans, had remained faithful Christians; but, being wealthy and respectable, were employed by the Sultan in high judicial posts. One day, when John's father was a judge, a Christian monk, named Cosmas, was about to be executed, and was weeping and bewailing so much that he was asked why he, a monk, should so earnestly plead for his life. The monk answered that he did not weep so much for losing life as for the treasures of knowledge that would be buried with him, for he knew nearly everything under the sun-rhetoric, logic, philosophy, geometry, music, astronomy, theology. All he wanted was some heir who could inherit this vast patrimony of knowledge, so that he might not go down to the tomb an unprofitable servant. John's father saw at once that this was a remarkable monk, begged his life, and made him tutor to his son; and in due course the son John became, under such tuition, the greatest master of knowledge extant, as the monk took care to assure the grateful father. With these accomplishments John of Damascus entered the lists in due course, and composed three immortal orations in favour of image worship, in which all the learning of the world was brought to bear upon that delicate subject. The Emperor being indignant at John's oration, procured a letter to be forged in a similar handwriting, containing a proposal to betray his native city of Damascus to the Christians, and purporting to be signed by John. This letter was sent by the Emperor to the Sultan with specious friendly comments. The result was that John's right hand was cut off for his wicked treason. John, however, entreated the Virgin to restore his hand; and after kneeling before her image and praying fervently, he fell asleep, and when he woke his hand was restored and was as well as ever. This astonished and convinced the Sultan, who reinstated John at once in all his honours. These orations, while containing some puerile matter, are distinguished for zeal and ingenuity. John of Damascus maintained that pictures were great standing memorials of triumph over the devil; that whoever destroys these memorials is a friend of the devil; that to reprove material images is Manicheism, as betraying the hatred of matter, which is the first tenet of that odious heresy; and that it was a kind of Docetism too, asserting the unreality of the body of the Saviour. In support of his doctrine John concluded by citing a copious list of miracles wrought by certain images. This question of images was so serious a disturbance that a council met, called the Third Council of Constantinople, in 746; and three hundred and forty-eight bishops attended, and all these united in condemning images and excommunicating those who set them up. The Empress Irene, however, afterwards favoured the image worshippers; and in 787 another council, called the Second Council of Nic?a, again considered the subject; and three hundred and eighty-seven bishops and monks came to a decision the reverse of the decision of the former council. Succeeding emperors, however, again favoured the iconoclasts, till the Empress Theodora, in 842, at last restored the images and made the clergy happy. They all then met and held a solemn festival, marching with processions of crosses, torches, and incense to the church of St. Sophia, in Constantinople. They made the circuit of the church, and bowed to every statue and picture; and the heresy of the iconoclasts was extinguished for ever from that time.

JOHN OF DAMASCUS AND HIS TAUNTS.

John of Damascus, the champion of image worship, in his many eloquent discourses in support of it, sneered at Leo's arbitrary decrees against what was noticed to be a rising influence among the nations of the West. "You have only to go," said John, "into the schools where the children are learning to read and write, and tell them you are the persecutor of images, and they would instantly throw their tablets at your head. Even the ignorant would teach you what you would not learn from the wise." "Men," he further said, "spent their estates to have these sacred stories represented in paintings. Husbands and wives took their children by the hand, others led youths and strangers from Pagan lands, to these paintings, where they could point out to them the sacred stories with the finger, and so edify them as to lift their hearts and minds to God; but you hinder poor people from doing all this, and teach them to find their amusements in harp-playing and flute-playing, in carousals and buffoonery."

CLAUDIUS OF TURIN AGAINST IMAGES AND PILGRIMAGES.

Claudius of Turin, a bishop who flourished about 795-839, was great in censuring the gross superstition attaching to the use of the cross and pilgrimages. Though a chaplain of King Louis I. of France, who became emperor, he devoted himself to purifying the ritual of the Church by writing commentaries on the Scriptures and exposing the abuses of image worship. He said those who worship the images of the saints have not forsaken idols, but changed their names. Whether the walls of churches are painted with figures of St. Peter and St. Paul or of Jupiter and Saturn, the latter are not gods, and the former are not apostles. Better worship the living than the dead. If the works of God's hands, the stars of heaven, are not to be worshipped, much less ought the works of human hands to be worshipped. Whoever seeks from any creature in heaven or on earth the salvation which he should seek from God alone is an idolater. Those who pretend to honour the memory of Christ's passion forget His resurrection. If one must worship every piece of wood bearing the image of the cross because Christ hung on the cross, for the same reason one should worship many other things with which Christ came in contact while living in the flesh. God has commanded us to bear the cross, not to adore it. Those are not adoring it who are unwilling to bear it either spiritually or bodily. In like manner it is foolish in people, and an undervaluing of spiritual instruction, to be always striving to go to Rome in order to obtain everlasting life. It is vain to ascribe so much merit to pilgrimages, and forget the seal of true penitence in the soul. One gets no nearer to St. Peter by finding himself on the spot where his body was buried, for the soul is the real man. In this manner Claudius displayed his aversion to the monastic life as misleading. It was thought that he must soon be proceeded against as a heretic; but after publishing works which made a great impression on his age, the bishop died.

TRYING TO CONVERT THE IMAGE WORSHIPPERS.

When Leo the Isaurian had secured his empire against foreign enemies, he set himself resolutely to convert heretics. He issued a decree that Jews and Montanists should be forcibly baptised. In 724 he issued his first decree against the superstitious use of images, which made the monks and John of Damascus so furious. When Leo died in 741, his son, Constantine Copronymus, so called from his having polluted the baptismal font, succeeded him, and reigned thirty-four years. He was also a resolute enemy of image worship. He procured a council of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops to sit in 754, and resolve unanimously that all pictures and sculptures of sacred subjects were Pagan and idolatrous, and that all images must be removed out of churches. They pronounced anathemas against John of Damascus and other champions of images. Constantine, on the strength of this council, ordered paintings on church walls to be effaced, and paintings of birds and fruits to be substituted. The monks were furious; and he ordered, in retaliation, monasteries to be destroyed and turned into barracks. One of his governors, named Lachanadraco, put many rebellious monks to death. He anointed the beards of some of these with oil and wax, and set them on fire; he burnt the monasteries, the books, and the relics. The relics of St. Euphemia at Chalcedon, which used to exude a fragrant balsam, were thrown into the sea, though the monks afterwards narrated that these were miraculously preserved. One monk, named Stephen, exasperated by these brutalities, boldly defied the Emperor, and to show his contempt produced a coin stamped with the Emperor's head, threw it on the ground, and trod on it. The Emperor ordered him to prison; but noticing that some sympathy seemed to be shown by his attendants, exclaimed, "Am I or is this monk emperor of the world?" The courtiers in turn, in their zeal to defend the Emperor, rushed to the prison where Stephen was kept, brought him out, and, tying a rope round his neck, dragged the body through the streets, and then tore it to pieces. The patriarch being also charged with abetting the monks, was stripped of his robes, set upon an ass with his face towards the tail, led through the streets, jeered by the mob, and then beheaded. Constantine died in 775, a resolute enemy of images to the last.

THE EMPRESS IRENE RESTORING IMAGES (A.D. 780).

Though Leo the Isaurian and his son Constantine had for thirty years worked so energetically in stamping out image worship, yet at the death of the latter a reaction was brought about. The Emperor Leo, grandson of the Isaurian, married an Athenian wife, Irene, who was constitutionally devoted to image worship and sensuous art, and her devotion to these so worked on her irresolute husband as to baffle the labour of years. She took care to procure all the important vacancies in the Church to be filled by monks. Her household officers were encouraged to practise in secret the adoration of images, and there were concealed some figures under her pillow; and though the Emperor, on discovering this petty treason, ordered the chief actors to be scourged, yet on his death in 780 Irene assumed the government and changed everything. She took care to get a patriarch appointed who was of her way of thinking, and for that purpose first induced the then holder of the office to resign and retire into a monastery. She then spread the report that this change was due to remorse of conscience; and the new patriarch, acting in concert with her, professed his inability to assume the high office unless she would convoke a council to review the late heresy of the iconoclasts. After great man?uvring on the part of the monks, and secret meetings to canvas the chief men of the assembly, and by the Empress deciding to attend in person and with great state, she so managed affairs that a council of three hundred and fifty bishops met, and they all in her presence returned to the old traditions, declaring the worship of images agreeable to Scripture and reason, and shouted their approval and ended with the enthusiastic exclamation, "Long live the orthodox Queen Regent!"

EMPRESS THEODORA CONQUERING FOR THE IMAGES (A.D. 842).

The Empress Irene having in 780 so skilfully turned the tide in favour of images, the contest was still maintained during the five succeeding reigns, a period of thirty-eight years between the worshippers of images and the iconoclasts. The final victory of the images was achieved by a second female, the widow Theodora, after the death of the Emperor Theophilus in 842. Her measures were bold and decisive. She sentenced the iconoclast patriarch to a whipping of two hundred lashes instead of the loss of his eyes. At this stroke of power the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the images. The only point left unsettled was, whether images were endowed with any proper and inherent sanctity, and this continued to be discussed in the eleventh century. The Churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain had steered a middle course between the adoration and the destruction of images, which they professed to admit into their temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. Charlemagne had used his authority in assembling a synod of three hundred bishops at Frankfort in 794, who professed to blame the superstition of the Greeks. But the worship of images advanced with silent progress, and reached to the idolatry of the ages which preceded the Reformation. Theodora skilfully gained over many bishops by representing that her husband the Emperor on his deathbed repented of his errors, and that her young son at the same time had also registered a vow to restore images.

IMAGE WORSHIP IN SPAIN.

In Spain image worship reached a height hardly attained in any other part of Christendom. Besides the most holy effigies heaven-descended, like the Black Lady of the Pillar at Saragossa, and the Christ of the Vine Stock at Valladolid, there were many sacred images, which, even before the hands which fashioned them were cold, began to make the blind see, the lame walk, and friars flourish and grow powerful. St. Bernard was modelled and clothed like a brother of the order in his own white robes; St. Dominic scourged himself in effigy till the red blood flowed from his painted shoulders; and the Virgin, copied from the loveliest models, was presented to her adorers gloriously apparelled in clothing of wrought gold. Many of these figures not only presided in their chapels throughout the year, but, decked with garlands and illuminated by tapers, were carried by brotherhoods or guilds instituted in their honour in the religious processions. The colouring was sometimes laid on canvas, with which the figure was covered as with a skin. The effects and gradation of tints were studied as carefully as in paintings on canvas. The imitation of rich stuffs for draperies was a nice and difficult branch of the art. For single figures real draperies were sometimes used, especially for those of the Madonnas, which possessed large and magnificent wardrobes and caskets of jewels worthy of the queens of the Mogul.

THE AMBITIOUS POPE HILDEBRAND (1046-1085).

During the time that Hildebrand, son of a carpenter of Soan in Tuscany, became noted and acquired an ascendency with the Popes, he advocated certain reforms. The first was to make the Popes independent of the Emperor: this he achieved by procuring a decree that the Pope should be chosen by the cardinals, bishops, and priests assembled in college. He also put a stop to the immorality of the clergy by enforcing celibacy of priests. He also procured more stringent laws against simony. He succeeded to the popedom in 1073 as Gregory VII., and in carrying out his ambitious schemes he summoned the German king, Henry IV., and ultimately excommunicated him, in retaliation for Henry having procured a sentence of deposition by the Synod of Worms against himself as Pope. These two potentates exchanged some defiant and insulting letters. Henry at last was reduced to such difficulties that he had to go in the guise of a penitent, clad in a thin white dress, while the ground was deep in snow, and he waited humbly at the outer gate of the Castle of Canossa three days before he was received into the presence of his Holiness, who gave him absolution, but under most humiliating circumstances. Gregory, however, at last was punished in his turn in 1080, and he had to become an exile, in which condition he died friendless and deserted in 1085, and muttering the words: "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die an exile."

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, THE ANGELIC DOCTOR (A.D. 1227).

St. Thomas Aquinas was born in 1227, and became the greatest theologian and master of logic and powerful reasoner of his age. He was at first thought dull at school, and used to be called the great dumb Sicilian ox; but his genius soon broke forth, and he came to be called the angelical doctor. His versatility, power of abstraction, and memory astonished everybody. Louis IX. of France (St. Louis) made him a privy councillor, and often consulted him. Once at dinner with the king, after a long silence, Thomas thumped the table energetically, muttering to himself, "That is an overwhelming argument against the Manicheans!" and the king, curious to know what sudden thought it was, begged him to explain it, which was done, and committed to writing by clerks. While praying one day in the church at Naples, his friend Romanus, who had died some time before, appeared to Thomas and spoke to him, and said that his works pleased God, and that he (Romanus) was now in eternal bliss. Thomas then asked whether the habits which are acquired in this life remain to us in heaven. Romanus answered, "Brother Thomas, I see God, and do not ask for more." He then vanished. One day Thomas was writing a treatise on the Sacrament, and was praying, when the figure on the crucifix turned towards him and said, "Thomas, thou hast written well of Me: what reward desirest thou?" "Nought, save Thyself, Lord," was the saint's immediate reply. Another time Thomas, while celebrating Mass, was seized with a sudden rapture, owing to a vision which appeared to him, and which he said was so glorious that all he had written appeared worthless compared with what he had just seen. In his last illness the monks of Fossa Nuova, near Maienza, waited on him with unceasing devotion, and begged of him to expound to them the Canticle of Canticles, as St. Bernard did. The saint replied, "Get me Bernard's spirit, and I will do your bidding." He yielded to their wish. The saint, growing feebler, died; and while a corpse, a blind man begged to approach and pay his last tribute of respect, when the man's sight was restored that moment.

ATTITUDES OF POPES TO FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS.

Guizot thus sums up the attitude between Popes and foreign governments: "From the tenth century and the accession of the Capetians (989) the policy of the Holy See had been enterprising, bold, full of initiative, often even aggressive, and more often than not successful in the prosecution of its designs. Under Innocent III. (1198-1216) it had attained the apogee of its strength and fortune. At that point its motion forward and upward came to a stop. Boniface VIII. (1294-1303) had not the wit to recognise the changes which had taken place in European communities, and the decided progress which had been made by laic influences and civil powers. He was a stubborn preacher of maxims he could no longer practise. He was beaten in his enterprise; and the Papacy, even on recovering from his defeat, found itself no longer what it had been before him. Starting from the fourteenth century, we find no second Gregory VII. or Innocent III. Without expressly abandoning their principles, the policy of the Holy See became essentially defensive and conservative, more occupied in the maintenance than the aggrandisement of itself, and sometimes even more stationary and stagnant than was required by necessity or recommended by foresight. The posture assumed and the conduct adopted by the earliest successors of Boniface VIII. showed how far the situation of the Papacy was altered, and how deep had been the stab which, in the conflict between the two aspirants to absolute power, Philip the Fair (1283-1314) had inflicted on his rival."

THE POPES AS TEMPORAL PRINCES (1118-1185).

The feuds of Guelphs and Ghibellines kept up constant irritation at Rome. In 1118, when Paschal II. was officiating at the altar on Holy Thursday, he was interrupted by a mob, who demanded that he should confirm the appointment of a favourite magistrate, and his silence only exasperated them. During the festival of Easter, while the bishop and clergy barefoot and in procession visited the tombs of the martyrs, they were twice assaulted with volleys of stones and darts. The houses of the Pope's friends were demolished, he escaped with difficulty, and his last days were embittered by the strife of civil war. His successor, Gelasius II., in 1118 was dragged by his hair along the ground, beaten and wounded, and bound with an iron chain in the house of a factious baron named Cencio Frangipani, who stripped and beat and trampled on the cardinals. An insurrection of the people delivered the Pope for a while; but a few days later he was again assaulted at the altar, and during a bloody encounter between the factions he escaped in his sacerdotal garments. He then shook the dust from his feet, and withdrew from a city where, as he described it, one emperor would be more tolerable than twenty. About a quarter of a century later, Pope Lucius II., as he ascended in battle-array to assault the Capitol, was struck on the temple by a stone, and expired in a few days in 1145. Again in 1185 a body of priests were seized, and the eyes of all put out except those of one. They were crowned with mock mitres, mounted on asses with their faces to the tail, and paraded as a lesson to Pope Lucius III.

RIENZI AS TRIBUNE OF ROME (1353).

The Pope having lived long away from Rome, and the government of the city being impracticable, a youth named Rienzi, the son of a publican and a washerwoman, who was handsome and gifted with eloquence, aspired to raise the enthusiasm of the mob and revive the old glory of the first city of the world. He assumed the title of tribune, began to introduce order, and for a time he carried all before him. He was, however, soon intoxicated with his success, claimed a Divine mission, procured himself to be crowned as a successor of the C?sars, imposed heavy taxes, and displayed great extravagance in dress and in vulgar exhibitions of grandeur. At last the Pope's legate anathematised him as a heretic, and enemies combined to crush him. He fled in 1308 to Prague; there he entered into wild schemes, was captured and imprisoned, but was spared from punishment as a heretic. He reappeared, and again obtained such favour with the Pope as to be made a senator in 1353, and encouraged to resume his influence over the mob in Rome. He was placed in high command, but again ruined his position with tyrannical and foolish schemes. His personal habits were gross and sensual; he became addicted to wine, and his body became bloated with his indulgences till he was likened to a fatted ox. In a sudden riot brought on by his own folly he attempted to escape, but the mob captured him and cut him to pieces.

LAST HOURS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1453).

When Mahomet II. in 1453 besieged Constantinople, the Greek Emperor implored the assistance of earth and Heaven to check the invaders and ward off the destruction of the Roman Empire. The celestial image of the Virgin was exposed in solemn procession, but no succour came. At last the houses and convents were deserted, and the inhabitants flocked together in the streets like a herd of timid animals, and poured into the church of St. Sophia, filling every corner. They placed no small confidence on some prophecy that had been circulated that an angel would descend from heaven and deliver the empire with some celestial weapon. While so wailing and confiding, the doors were broken in with axes, and the Turks seized the company, binding the males with cords, and the females with their veils and girdles. All ranks were mixed in groups-senators, slaves, plebeians and nobles, maids and children. The loudest in their wailings were the nuns, who were torn from the altar and consigned to the usual fate of slavery, and worse. The monasteries and churches were profaned. The dome of St. Sophia itself, a throne of heavenly splendour, was despoiled of the oblations of ages, and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments, were most wickedly perverted to the basest uses. After the divine images were stripped, the canvas and woodwork were torn or burnt or trodden under foot. The libraries, with a hundred and twenty thousand manuscripts, were sold as wastepaper. The Sultan passed in triumph through the wreck and plunder. He ordered the church to be converted into a mosque; the instruments of superstition to be removed; the crosses, images, and mosaics to be dismantled and washed and purified. The cathedral of St. Sophia was soon crowned with lofty minarets, and surrounded with groves and fountains for the devotion and refreshment of the Moslems. He took care, however, to leave the churches of Constantinople to be shared between the Mussulmans and the Christians.

ELECTION TO THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.

The empire which Charlemagne founded over so many kingdoms, being a revival of the old Roman Empire and in imitation of the empire claimed by the Bishop of Rome over all other Churches, was commonly believed till the end of the sixteenth century to be elective, and the privilege of electing was confined by a decree of Gregory V. about 996 to seven persons. These were the archbishops of Mentz, Treves, and Cologne; the dukes of the Franks, Swabians, Saxons, and Bavarians. The Franks and Swabians were superseded respectively by the palatinate of the Rhine and the margravate of Brandenburg. A golden bull of Charles IV. in 1356 regulated the mode of election and fixed the place at Frankfort. A majority of votes carried the election. An eighth and ninth elector were added afterwards, the eighth being the elector of Brunswick, who succeeded to the English throne in 1714. An extravagant importance was attached to this titular potentate and his electors. Though he was only elected, yet he was thought to reign by a Divine right as a sort of Lord of the World. The sovereigns of Europe long continued to address the Emperor as a superior and as entitled to precedence, and it was even thought that he had the power of creating kings, though in actual resources he stood below the kings of France and England. The epithet "holy" was applied by Frederick I. (Barbarossa) in 1156. There was once a vague notion that the English kingdom was a vassal of the empire, but Edward I. and Edward III. notably disclaimed any such submissiveness. When Charles V. was elected, Francis I. of France and Henry VIII. of England were competitors. Charles V. not succeeding in dragooning the Protestants into conformity to the Catholic Church, the influence of the empire declined. After long flickering, the Holy Roman Empire came to an end by the resignation of Francis II. in 1806, about a thousand years after the coronation of Charlemagne.

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