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Title: The Roman and the Teuton
Author: Charles Kingsley
Release Date: March, 2003 [Etext #3821]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
[The actual date this file first posted = 09/25/01]
Edition: 10
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This etext was produced by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk,
from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition.
THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON
A SERIES OF LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
BY CHARLES KINGSLEY, M.A.
Contents
Preface by Professor F. Max Muller
The Forest Children
The Dying Empire
Preface to Lecture III
The Human Deluge
The Gothic Civilizer
Dietrich's End
The Nemesis of the Goths
Paulus Diaconus
The Clergy and the Heathen
The Monk a Civilizer
The Lombard Laws
The Popes and the Lombards
The Strategy of Prividence
Appendix--Inaugural Lecture: The Limits of Exact Science as
Applied to History
PREFACE
Never shall I forget the moment when for the last time I gazed upon
the manly features of Charles Kingsley, features which Death had
rendered calm, grand, sublime. The constant struggle that in life
seemed to allow no rest to his expression, the spirit, like a caged
lion, shaking the bars of his prison, the mind striving for
utterance, the soul wearying for loving response,--all that was over.
There remained only the satisfied expression of triumph and peace, as
of a soldier who had fought a good fight, and who, while sinking into
the stillness of the slumber of death, listens to the distant sounds
of music and to the shouts of victory. One saw the ideal man, as
Nature had meant him to be, and one felt that there is no greater
sculptor than Death.
As one looked on that marble statue which only some weeks ago had so
warmly pressed one's hand, his whole life flashed through one's
thoughts. One remembered the young curate and the Saint's Tragedy;
the chartist parson and Alton Locke; the happy poet and the Sands of
Dee; the brilliant novel-writer and Hypatia and Westward-Ho; the
Rector of Eversley and his Village Sermons; the beloved professor at
Cambridge, the busy canon at Chester, the powerful preacher in
Westminster Abbey. One thought of him by the Berkshire chalk-streams
and on the Devonshire coast, watching the beauty and wisdom of
Nature, reading her solemn lessons, chuckling too over her inimitable
fun. One saw him in town-alleys, preaching the Gospel of godliness
and cleanliness, while smoking his pipe with soldiers and navvies.
One heard him in drawing-rooms, listened to with patient silence,
till one of his vigorous or quaint speeches bounded forth, never to
be forgotten. How children delighted in him! How young, wild men
believed in him, and obeyed him too! How women were captivated by
his chivalry, older men by his genuine humility and sympathy!
All that was now passing away--was gone. But as one looked on him
for the last time on earth, one felt that greater than the curate,
the poet, the professor, the canon, had been the man himself, with
his warm heart, his honest purposes, his trust in his friends, his
readiness to spend himself, his chivalry and humility, worthy of a
better age.
Of all this the world knew little;--yet few men excited wider and
stronger sympathies.
Who can forget that funeral on the 28th Jan., 1875, and the large sad
throng that gathered round his grave? There was the representative
of the Prince of Wales, and close by the gipsies of the Eversley
common, who used to call him their Patrico-rai, their Priest-King.
There was the old Squire of his village, and the labourers, young and
old, to whom he had been a friend and a father. There were Governors
of distant Colonies, officers, and sailors, the Bishop of his
diocese, and the Dean of his abbey; there were the leading
Nonconformists of the neighbourhood, and his own devoted curates,
Peers and Members of the House of Commons, authors and publishers;
and outside the church-yard, the horses and the hounds and the
huntsman in pink, for though as good a clergyman as any, Charles
Kingsley had been a good sportsman too, and had taken in his life
many a fence as bravely as he took the last fence of all, without
fear or trembling. All that he had loved, and all that had loved him
was there, and few eyes were dry when he was laid in his own yellow
gravel bed, the old trees which he had planted and cared for waving
their branches to him for the last time, and the grey sunny sky
looking down with calm pity on the deserted rectory, and on the short
joys and the shorter sufferings of mortal men.
All went home feeling that life was poorer, and every one knew that
he had lost a friend who had been, in some peculiar sense, his own.
Charles Kingsley will be missed in England, in the English colonies,
in America, where he spent his last happy year; aye, wherever Saxon
speech and Saxon thought is understood. He will be mourned for,
yearned for, in every place in which he passed some days of his busy
life. As to myself, I feel as if another cable had snapped that tied
me to this hospitable shore.
When an author or a poet dies, the better part of him, it is often
said, is left in his works. So it is in many cases. But with
Kingsley his life and his works were one. All he wrote was meant for
the day when he wrote it. That was enough for him. He hardly gave
himself time to think of fame and the future. Compared with a good
work done, with a good word spoken, with a silent grasp of the hand
from a young man he had saved from mischief, or with a 'Thank you,
Sir,' from a poor woman to whom he had been a comfort, he would have
despised what people call glory, like incense curling away in smoke.
He was, in one sense of the word, a careless writer. He did his best
at the time and for the time. He did it with a concentrated energy
of will which broke through all difficulties. In his flights of
imagination, in the light and fire of his language he had few equals,
if any; but the perfection and classical finish which can be obtained
by a sustained effort only, and by a patience which shrinks from no
drudgery, these are wanting in most of his works.
However, fame, for which he cared so little, has come to him. His
bust will stand in Westminster Abbey, in the Chapel of St. John the
Baptist, by the side of his friend, Frederick Maurice; and in the
Temple of Fame which will be consecrated to the period of Victoria
and Albert, there will be a niche for Charles Kingsley, the author of
Alton Locke and Hypatia.
Sooner or later a complete edition of his works will be wanted,
though we may doubt whether he himself would have wished all his
literary works to be preserved. From what I knew of him and his
marvellous modesty, I should say decidedly not. I doubt more
especially, whether he would have wished the present book, The Roman
and the Teuton, to be handed down to posterity. None of his books
was so severely criticised as this volume of Lectures, delivered
before the University of Cambridge, and published in 1864. He
himself did not republish it, and it seems impossible to speak in
more depreciatory terms of his own historical studies than he does
himself again and again in the course of his lectures. Yet these
lectures, it should be remembered, were more largely attended than
almost any other lectures at Cambridge. They produced a permanent
impression on many a young mind. They are asked for again and again,
and when the publishers wished for my advice as to the expediency of
bringing out a new and cheaper edition, I could not hesitate as to
what answer to give.
I am not so blinded by my friendship for Kingsley as to say that
these lectures are throughout what academical lectures ought to be.
I only wish some one would tell me what academical lectures at Oxford
and Cambridge can be, as long as the present system of teaching and
examining is maintained. It is easy to say what these lectures are
not. They do not profess to contain the results of long continued
original research. They are not based on a critical appreciation of
the authorities which had to be consulted. They are not well
arranged, systematic or complete. All this the suddenly elected
professor of history at Cambridge would have been the first to grant.
'I am not here,' he says, 'to teach you history. I am here to teach
you how to teach yourselves history.' I must say even more. It
seems to me that these lectures were not always written in a
perfectly impartial and judicial spirit, and that occasionally they
are unjust to the historians who, from no other motive but a sincere
regard for truth, thought it their duty to withhold their assent from
many of the commonly received statements of mediaeval chroniclers.
But for all that, let us see what these Lectures are, and whether
there is not room for them by the side of other works. First of all,
according to the unanimous testimony of those who heard them
delivered at Cambridge, they stirred up the interest of young men,
and made them ask for books which Undergraduates had never asked for
before at the University libraries. They made many people who read
them afterwards, take a new interest in old and half-forgotten kings
and battles, and they extorted even from unfriendly critics the
admission that certain chapters, such as, for instance, 'The Monk as
a Civiliser,' displayed in an unexpected way his power of
appreciating the good points in characters, otherwise most antipathic
to the apostle of Manly Christianity. They contain, in fact, the
thoughts of a poet, a moralist, a politician, a theologian, and,
before all, of a friend and counsellor of young men, while reading
for them and with them one of the most awful periods in the history
of mankind, the agonies of a dying Empire and the birth of new
nationalities. History was but his text, his chief aim was that of
the teacher and preacher, and as an eloquent interpreter of the
purposes of history before an audience of young men to whom history
is but too often a mere succession of events to be learnt by heart,
and to be ready against periodical examinations, he achieved what he
wished to achieve. Historians by profession would naturally be
incensed at some portions of this book, but even they would probably
admit by this time, that there are in it whole chapters full of
excellence, telling passages, happy delineations, shrewd remarks,
powerful outbreaks of real eloquence, which could not possibly be
consigned to oblivion.
Nor would it have been possible to attempt to introduce any
alterations, or to correct what may seem to be mistakes. The book is
not meant as a text-book or as an authority, any more than Schiller's
History of the Thirty Years' War; it should be read in future, as
what it was meant to be from the first, Kingsley's thoughts on some
of the moral problems presented by the conflict between the Roman and
the Teuton. One cannot help wishing that, instead of lectures,
Kingsley had given us another novel, like Hypatia, or a real
historical tragedy, a Dietrich von Bern, embodying in living
characters one of the fiercest struggles of humanity, the death of
the Roman, the birth of the German world. Let me quote here what
Bunsen said of Kingsley's dramatic power many years ago:
'I do not hesitate (he writes) to call these two works, the Saint's
Tragedy and Hypatia, by far the most important and perfect of this
genial writer. In these more particularly I find the justification
of a hope which I beg to be allowed to express--that Kingsley might
continue Shakspeare's historical plays. I have for several years
made no secret of it, that Kingsley seems to me the genius of our
century, called to place by the side of that sublime dramatic series
from King John to Henry VIII, another series of equal rank, from
Edward VI to the Landing of William of Orange. This is the only
historical development of Europe which unites in itself all vital
elements, and which we might look upon without overpowering pain.
The tragedy of St. Elizabeth shows that Kingsley can grapple, not
only with the novel, but with the more severe rules of dramatic art.
And Hypatia proves, on the largest scale, that he can discover in the
picture of the historical past, the truly human, the deep, the
permanent, and that he knows how to represent it. How, with all
this, he can hit the fresh tone of popular life, and draw humourous
characters and complications with Shakspearian energy, is proved by
all his works. And why should he not undertake this great task?
There is a time when the true poet, the prophet of the present, must
bid farewell to the questions of the day, which seem so great because
they are so near, but are, in truth, but small and unpoetical. He
must say to himself, "Let the dead bury their dead"--and the time has
come that Kingsley should do so.'
A great deal has been written on mistakes which Kingsley was supposed
to have made in these Lectures, but I doubt whether these criticisms
were always perfectly judicial and fair. For instance, Kingsley's
using the name of Dietrich, instead of Theodoric, was represented as
the very gem of a blunder, and some critics went so far as to hint
that he had taken Theodoric for a Greek word, as an adjective of
Theodorus. This, of course, was only meant as a joke, for on page
120 Kingsley had said, in a note, that the name of Theodoric,
Theuderic, Dietrich, signifies 'king of nations.' He therefore knew
perfectly well that Theodoric was simply a Greek adaptation of the
Gothic name Theode-reiks, theod meaning people, reiks, according to
Grimm, princeps {p1}. But even if he had called the king Theodorus,
the mistake would not have been unpardonable, for he might have
appealed to the authority of Gregory of Tours, who uses not only
Theodoricus, but also Theodorus, as the same name.
A more serious charge, however, was brought against him for having
used the High-German form Dietrich, instead of the original form
Theodereiks or Theoderic, or even Theodoric. Should I have altered
this? I believe not; for it is clear to me that Kingsley had his
good reasons for preferring Dietrich to Theodoric.
He introduces him first to his hearers as 'Theodoric, known in German
song as Dietrich of Bern.' He had spoken before of the Visi-Gothic
Theodoric, and of him he never speaks as Dietrich. Then, why should
he have adopted this High-German name for the great Theodoric, and
why should he speak of Attila too as Etzel?
One of the greatest of German historians, Johannes von Muller, does
the same. He always calls Theodoric, Dietrich of Bern; and though he
gives no reasons for it, his reasons can easily be guessed. Soon
after Theodoric's death, the influence of the German legends on
history, and of history on the German legends, became so great that
it was impossible for a time to disentangle two characters,
originally totally distinct, viz. Thjodrekr of the Edda, the Dietrich
of the German poetry on one side, and the King of the Goths,
Theodoric, on the other. What had long been said and sung about
Thjodrekr and Dietrich was believed to have happened to King
Theodoric, while at the same time historical and local elements in
the life of Theodoric, residing at Verona, were absorbed by the
legends of Thjodrekr and Dietrich. The names of the legendary hero
and the historical king were probably identical, though even that is
not quite certain {p2}; but at all events, after Theodoric's death,
all the numerous dialectic varieties of the name, whether in High or
in Low-German, were understood by the people at large, both of the
hero and of the king.
Few names have had a larger number of alias'. They have been
carefully collected by Graff, Grimm, Forstemann, Pott, and others. I
here give the principal varieties of this name, as actually occurring
in MSS., and arranged according to the changes of the principal
consonants:-
(1) With Th-d: Theudoricus, Theudericus, [Greek text which cannot
be reproduced], Thiodiricus, Thiodericus, Thiodric, Thiodricus,
Thiodrih, Theodoricus, Theodericus, Theoderic, Theodrich, Thiadric,
Thiadrich, Thiedorik, Thiederic, Thiederik, Thiederich, Thiedorich,
Thiedric, Thiedrich, Thideric, Thiederich, Thidrich, Thodericus,
Thiaedric, Thieoderich, Thederich, Thedric.
(2) With T-d Teudericus, Teudricus, Tiodericus, Teodoricus,
Teodericus, Teodric, Teodrich, Tiadric, Tiedrik, Tiedrich, Tiedric,
Tidericus, Tiderich, Tederich.
(3) With D-d: [Greek text], Diodericus, Deoderich, Deodrich,
Diederich, Diderich.
(4) With Th-t: Thiotiricus, Thiotirih, Thiotiricus, Thiotrih,
Theotoricus, Theotericus, Theoterih, Theotrih, Theotrich, Thiatric,
Thieterich, Thietrih, Thietrich, Theatrih.
(5) With T-t: Teutrich, Teoterih, Teotrich, Teotrih, Tieterich,
Teatrih, Tiheiterich.
(6) With D-t: Dioterih, Diotericus, Diotricus, Deotrich, Deotrih,
Dieterih, Dieterich, Dietrich, Diterih, Ditricus.
(7) With Th-th: Theotherich, Theothirich.
(8) With T-th: deest.
(9) With D-th: Dietherich.
It is quite true that, strictly speaking, the forms with Th-d, are
Low-German, and those with D-t, High-German, but before we trust
ourselves to this division for historical purposes, we must remember
three facts: (1) that Proper Names frequently defy Grimm's Law; (2)
that in High-German MSS. much depends on the locality in which they
are written; (3) that High-German is not in the strict sense of the
word a corruption of Low-German, and, at all events, not, as Grimm
supposed, chronologically posterior to Low-German, but that the two
are parallel dialects, like Doric and Aeolic, the Low-German being
represented by the earliest literary documents, Gothic and Saxon, the
High-German asserting its literary presence later, not much before
the eighth century, but afterwards maintaining its literary and
political supremacy from the time of Charlemagne to the present day.
When Theodoric married Odeflede, the daughter of Childebert, and a
sister of Chlodwig, I have little doubt that, at the court of
Chlodwig or Clovis, his royal brother-in-law was spoken of in
conversation as Dioterih, although in official documents, and in the
history of Gregory of Tours, he appears under his classical name of
Theodoricus, in Jornandes Theodericus. Those who, with Grimm {p3},
admit a transition of Low into High-German, and deny that the change
of Gothic Th into High-German D took place before the sixth or
seventh century, will find it difficult to account, in the first
century, for the name of Deudorix, a German captive, the nephew of
Melo the Sigambrian, mentioned by Strabo {p4}. In the oldest German
poem in which the name of Dietrich occurs, the song of Hildebrand and
Hadebrand, written down in the beginning of the ninth century {p5},
we find both forms, the Low-German Theotrih, and the High-German
Deotrih, used side by side.
Very soon, however, when High-German became the more prevalent
language in Germany, German historians knew both of the old legendary
hero and of the Ost-gothic king, by one and the same name, the High-
German Dietrich.
If therefore Johannes von Muller spoke of Theodoric of Verona as
Dietrich von Bern, he simply intended to carry on the historical
tradition. He meant to remind his readers of the popular name which
they all knew, and to tell them,--This Dietrich with whom you are all
acquainted from your childhood, this Dietrich of whom so much is said
and sung in your legendary stories and poems, the famous Dietrich of
Bern, this is really the Theoderic, the first German who ruled Italy
for thirty-three years, more gloriously than any Roman Emperor before
or after. I see no harm in this, as long as it is done on purpose,
and as long as the purpose which Johannes von Muller had in his mind,
was attained.
No doubt the best plan for an historian to follow is to call every
man by the name by which he called himself. Theodoric, we know,
could not write, but he had a gold plate {p6} made in which the first
four letters of his name were incised, and when it was fixed on the
paper, the King drew his pen through the intervals. Those four
letters were [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], and though we
should expect that, as a Goth, he would have spelt his name
Thiudereik, yet we have no right to doubt, that the vowels were eo,
and not iu. But again and again historians spell proper names, not
as they were written by the people themselves, but as they appear in
the historical documents through which they became chiefly known. We
speak of Plato, because we have Roman literature between us and
Greece. American names are accepted in history through a Spanish,
Indian names through an English medium. The strictly Old High-German
form of Carolus Magnus would be Charal, A. S. Carl; yet even in the
Oaths of Strassburg (842) the name appears as Karlus and as Karl, and
has remained so ever since {p7}. In the same document we find Ludher
for Lothar, Ludhuwig and Lodhuvig for Ludovicus, the oldest form
being Chlodowich: and who would lay down the law, which of these
forms shall be used for historical purposes?
I have little doubt that Kingsley's object in retaining the name
Dietrich for the Ost-gothic king was much the same as Johannes von
Muller's. You know, he meant to say, of Dietrich of Bern, of all the
wonderful things told of him in the Nibelunge and other German poems.
Well, that is the Dietrich of the German people, that is what the
Germans themselves have made of him, by transferring to their great
Gothic king some of the most incredible achievements of one of their
oldest legendary heroes. They have changed even his name, and as the
children in the schools of Germany {p8} still speak of him as their
Dietrich von Bern, let him be to us too Dietrich, not simply the Ost-
gothic Theoderic, but the German Dietrich.
I confess I see no harm in that, though a few words on the strange
mixture of legend and history might have been useful, because the
case of Theodoric is one of the most luculent testimonies for that
blending of fact and fancy in strictly historical times which people
find it so difficult to believe, but which offers the key, and the
only true key, for many of the most perplexing problems, both of
history and of mythology.
Originally nothing could be more different than the Dietrich of the
old legend and the Dietrich of history. The former is followed by
misfortune through the whole of his life. He is oppressed in his
youth by his uncle, the famous Ermanrich {p9}; he has to spend the
greater part of his life (thirty years) in exile, and only returns to
his kingdom after the death of his enemy. Yet whenever he is called
Dietrich of Bern, it is because the real Theodoric, the most
successful of Gothic conquerors, ruled at Verona. When his enemy was
called Otacher, instead of Sibich, it is because the real Theodoric
conquered the real Odoacer. When the king, at whose court he passes
his years of exile, is called Etzel, it is because many German heroes
had really taken refuge in the camp of Attila. That Attila died two
years before Theodoric of Verona was born, is no difficulty to a
popular poet, nor even the still more glaring contradiction between
the daring and ferocious character of the real Attila and the
cowardice of his namesake Etzel, as represented in the poem of the
Nibelunge. Thus was legend quickened by history.
On the other hand, if historians, such as Gregory I (Dial. iv. 36)
{p10}, tell us that an Italian hermit had been witness in a vision to
the damnation of Theodoric, whose soul was plunged, by the ministers
of divine vengeance, into the volcano of Lipari, one of the flaming
mouths of the infernal world, we may recognise in the heated
imagination of the orthodox monk some recollection of the mysterious
end of the legendary Dietrich {p11}. Later on, the legendary and the
real hero were so firmly welded together that, as early as the
twelfth century, chroniclers are at their wits' end how to reconcile
facts and dates.
Ekkehard, in his Chronicon Universale {p12}, which ends 1126 A.D.,
points out the chronological contradiction between Jornandes, who
places the death of Ermanrich long before Attila, and the popular
story which makes him and Dietrich, the son of Dietmar, his
contemporaries.
Otto von Freising {p13}, in the first half of the twelfth century,
expresses the same perplexity when he finds that Theodoric is made a
contemporary of Hermanricus and Attila, though it is certain that
Attila ruled long after Hermanric, and that, after the death of
Attila, Theodoric, when eight years old, was given by his father as a
hostage to the emperor Leo.
Gottfried von Viterbo {p14}, in the second half of the twelfth
century, expresses his difficulties in similar words.
All these chroniclers who handed down the historical traditions of
Germany were High-Germans, and thus it has happened that in Germany
Theodoric the Great became Dietrich, as Strataburgum became
Strassburg, or Turicum, Zurich. Whether because English belongs to
the Low German branch, it is less permissible to an English historian
than to a German to adopt these High-German names, I cannot say: all
I wished to point out was that there was a very intelligible reason
why Kingsley should have preferred the popular and poetical name of
Dietrich, even though it was High-German, either to his real Gothic
name, Theodereik, or to its classical metamorphosis, Theodoricus or
Theodorus.
Some other mistakes, too, which have been pointed out, did not seem
to me so serious as to justify their correction in a posthumous
edition. It was said, for instance, that Kingsley ought not to have
called Odoacer and Theodoric, Kings of Italy, as they were only
lieutenants of the Eastern Caesar. Cassiodorus, however, tells us
that Odoacer assumed the name of king (nomen regis Odoacer
assumpsit), and though Gibbon points out that this may only mean that
he assumed the abstract title of a king, without applying it to any
particular nation or country, yet that great historian himself calls
Odoacer, King of Italy, and shows how he was determined to abolish
the useless and expensive office of vicegerent of the emperor.
Kingsley guesses very ingeniously, that Odoacer's assumed title, King
of nations, may have been the Gothic Theode-reiks, the very name of
Theodoric. As to Theodoric himself, Kingsley surely knew his real
status, for he says: 'Why did he not set himself up as Caesar of
Rome? Why did he always consider himself as son-in-arms, and quasi-
vassal of the Caesar of Constantinople?'
Lastly, in speaking of the extinction of the Western Empire with
Romulus Augustulus, Kingsley again simply followed the lead of Gibbon
and other historians; nor can it be said that the expression is not
perfectly legitimate, however clearly modern research may have shown
that the Roman Empire, though dead, lived.
So much in defence, or at all events, in explanation, of expressions
and statements which have been pointed out as most glaring mistakes
in Kingsley's lectures. I think it must be clear that in all these
cases alterations would have been impossible. There were other
passages, where I should gladly have altered or struck out whole
lines, particularly in the ethnological passages, and in the
attempted etymologies of German proper names. Neither the one nor
the other, I believe, are Kingsley's own, though I have tried in vain
to find out whence he could possibly have taken them.
These, however, are minor matters which are mentioned chiefly in
order to guard against the impression that, because I left them
unchanged, I approved of them. The permanent interest attaching to
these lectures does not spring from the facts which they give. For
these, students will refer to Gibbon. They will be valued chiefly
for the thoughts which they contain, for the imagination and
eloquence which they display, and last, not least, for the sake of
the man, a man, it is true, of a warm heart rather than of a cold
judgment, but a man whom, for that very reason, many admired, many
loved, and many will miss, almost every day of their life.
M. M.
LECTURE 1--THE FOREST CHILDREN.
I wish in this first lecture to give you some general conception of
the causes which urged our Teutonic race to attack and destroy Rome.
I shall take for this one lecture no special text-book: but suppose
you all to be acquainted with the Germania of Tacitus, and with the
9th Chapter of Gibbon. And I shall begin, if you will allow me, by a
parable, a myth, a saga, such as the men of whom I am going to tell
you loved; and if it seem to any of you childish, bear in mind that
what is childish need not therefore be shallow. I know that it is
not history. These lectures will not be, in the popular sense,
history at all. But I beg you to bear in mind that I am not here to
teach you history. No man can do that. I am here to teach you how
to teach yourselves history. I will give you the scaffolding as well
as I can; you must build the house.
Fancy to yourself a great Troll-garden, such as our forefathers
dreamed of often fifteen hundred years ago;--a fairy palace, with a
fairy garden; and all around the primaeval wood. Inside the Trolls
dwell, cunning and wicked, watching their fairy treasures, working at
their magic forges, making and making always things rare and strange;
and outside, the forest is full of children; such children as the
world had never seen before, but children still: children in
frankness, and purity, and affectionateness, and tenderness of
conscience, and devout awe of the unseen; and children too in fancy,
and silliness, and ignorance, and caprice, and jealousy, and
quarrelsomeness, and love of excitement and adventure, and the mere
sport of overflowing animal health. They play unharmed among the
forest beasts, and conquer them in their play; but the forest is too
dull and too poor for them; and they wander to the walls of the
Troll-garden, and wonder what is inside. One can conceive easily for
oneself what from that moment would begin to happen. Some of the
more adventurous clamber in. Some, too, the Trolls steal and carry
off into their palace. Most never return: but here and there one
escapes out again, and tells how the Trolls killed all his comrades:
but tells too, of the wonders he has seen inside, of shoes of
swiftness, and swords of sharpness, and caps of darkness; of charmed
harps, charmed jewels, and above all of the charmed wine: and after
all, the Trolls were very kind to him--see what fine clothes they
have given him--and he struts about awhile among his companions; and
then returns, and not alone. The Trolls have bewitched him, as they
will bewitch more. So the fame of the Troll-garden spreads; and more
and more steal in, boys and maidens, and tempt their comrades over
the wall, and tell of the jewels, and the dresses, and the wine, the
joyous maddening wine, which equals men with gods; and forget to tell
how the Trolls have bought them, soul as well as body, and taught
them to be vain, and lustful, and slavish; and tempted them, too
often, to sins which have no name.
But their better nature flashes out at times. They will not be the
slaves and brutes in human form, which the evil Trolls would have
them; and they rebel, and escape, and tell of the horrors of that
fair foul place. And then arises a noble indignation, and war
between the Trolls and the forest-children. But still the Trolls can
tempt and bribe the greedier or the more vain; and still the wonders
inside haunt their minds; till it becomes a fixed idea among them
all, to conquer the garden for themselves and bedizen themselves in
the fine clothes, and drink their fill of the wine. Again and again
they break in: but the Trolls drive them out, rebuild their walls,
keep off those outside by those whom they hold enslaved within; till
the boys grow to be youths, and the youths men: and still the Troll-
garden is not conquered, and still it shall be. And the Trolls have
grown old and weak, and their walls are crumbling away. Perhaps they
may succeed this time--perhaps next.
And at last they do succeed--the fairy walls are breached, the fairy
palace stormed--and the Trolls are crouching at their feet, and now
all will be theirs, gold, jewels, dresses, arms, all that the Troll
possesses--except his cunning.
For as each struggles into the charmed ground, the spell of the place
falls on him. He drinks the wine, and it maddens him. He fills his
arms with precious trumpery, and another snatches it from his grasp.
Each envies the youth before him, each cries--Why had I not the luck
to enter first? And the Trolls set them against each other, and
split them into parties, each mad with excitement, and jealousy, and
wine, till, they scarce know how, each falls upon his fellow, and all
upon those who are crowding in from the forest, and they fight and
fight, up and down the palace halls, till their triumph has become a
very feast of the Lapithae, and the Trolls look on, and laugh a
wicked laugh, as they tar them on to the unnatural fight, till the
gardens are all trampled, the finery torn, the halls dismantled, and
each pavement slippery with brothers' blood. And then, when the wine
is gone out of them, the survivors come to their senses, and stare
shamefully and sadly round. What an ugly, desolate, tottering ruin
the fairy palace has become! Have they spoilt it themselves? or have
the Trolls bewitched it? And all the fairy treasure--what has become
of it? no man knows. Have they thrown it away in their quarrel? have
the cunningest hidden it? have the Trolls flown away with it, to the
fairy land beyond the Eastern mountains? who can tell? Nothing is
left but recrimination and remorse. And they wander back again into
the forest, away from the doleful ruin, carrion-strewn, to sulk each
apart over some petty spoil which he has saved from the general
wreck, hating and dreading each the sound of his neighbour's
footstep.
What will become of the forest children, unless some kind saint or
hermit comes among them, to bind them in the holy bonds of
brotherhood and law?
This is my saga, gentlemen; and it is a true one withal. For it is
neither more nor less than the story of the Teutonic tribes, and how
they overthrew the Empire of Rome.
Menzel, who though he may not rank very high as a historian, has at
least a true German heart, opens his history with a striking passage.
'The sages of the East were teaching wisdom beneath the palms; the
merchants of Tyre and Carthage were weighing their heavy anchors, and
spreading their purple sails for far seas; the Greek was making the
earth fair by his art, and the Roman founding his colossal empire of
force, while the Teuton sat, yet a child, unknown and naked among the
forest beasts: and yet unharmed and in his sport he lorded it over
them; for the child was of a royal race, and destined to win glory
for all time to come.'
To the strange and complicated education which God appointed for this
race; and by which he has fitted it to become, at least for many
centuries henceforth, the ruling race of the world, I wish to call
your attention in my future lectures. To-day, I wish to impress
strongly on your minds this childishness of our forefathers. For
good or for evil they were great boys; very noble boys; very often
very naughty boys--as boys with the strength of men might well be.
Try to conceive such to yourselves, and you have the old Markman,
Allman, Goth, Lombard, Saxon, Frank. And the notion may be more than
a mere metaphor. Races, like individuals, it has been often said,
may have their childhood, their youth, their manhood, their old age,
and natural death. It is but a theory--perhaps nothing more. But at
least, our race had its childhood. Their virtues, and their sad
failings, and failures, I can understand on no other theory. The
nearest type which we can see now is I fancy, the English sailor, or
the English navvy. A great, simple, honest, baby--full of power and
fun, very coarse and plain spoken at times: but if treated like a
human being, most affectionate, susceptible, even sentimental and
superstitious; fond of gambling, brute excitement, childish
amusements in the intervals of enormous exertion; quarrelsome among
themselves, as boys are, and with a spirit of wild independence which
seems to be strength; but which, till it be disciplined into loyal
obedience and self-sacrifice, is mere weakness; and beneath all a
deep practical shrewdness, an indomitable perseverance, when once
roused by need. Such a spirit as we see to this day in the English
sailor--that is the nearest analogue I can find now. One gets hints
here and there of what manner of men they were, from the evil day,
when, one hundred and two years before Christ, the Kempers and
Teutons, ranging over the Alps toward Italy, 300,000 armed men and
15,000 mailed knights with broad sword and lances, and in their
helmets the same bulls'-horns, wings, and feathers, which one sees
now in the crests of German princes, stumbled upon Marius and his
Romans, and were destroyed utterly, first the men, then the women,
who like true women as they were, rather than give up their honour to
the Romans, hung themselves on the horns of the waggon-oxen, and were
trampled to death beneath their feet; and then the very dogs, who
fought on when men and women were all slain--from that fatal day,
down to the glorious one, when, five hundred years after, Alaric
stood beneath the walls of Rome, and to their despairing boast of the
Roman numbers, answered, 'Come out to us then, the thicker the hay,
the easier mowed,'--for five hundred years, I say, the hints of their
character are all those of a boy-nature.
They were cruel at times: but so are boys--much more cruel than
grown men, I hardly know why--perhaps because they have not felt
suffering so much themselves, and know not how hard it is to bear.
There were varieties of character among them. The Franks were always
false, vain, capricious, selfish, taking part with the Romans
whenever their interest or vanity was at stake--the worst of all
Teutons, though by no means the weakest--and a miserable business
they made of it in France, for some five hundred years. The Goths,
Salvian says, were the most ignavi of all of them; great lazy
lourdans; apt to be cruel, too, the Visigoths at least, as their
Spanish descendants proved to the horror of the world: but men of
honour withal, as those old Spaniards were. The Saxons were famed
for cruelty--I know not why, for our branch of the Saxons has been,
from the beginning of history, the least cruel people in Europe; but
they had the reputation--as the Vandals had also--of being the most
pure; Castitate venerandi. And among the uncivilized people coldness
and cruelty go often together. The less passionate and sensitive the
nature, the less open to pity. The Caribs of the West Indies were
famed for both, in contrast to the profligate and gentle inhabitants
of Cuba and Hispaniola; and in double contrast to the Red Indian
tribes of North America, who combined, from our first acquaintance
with them, the two vices of cruelty and profligacy, to an extent
which has done more to extirpate them than all the fire-water of the
white man.
But we must be careful how we compare our forefathers with these, or
any other savages. Those who, like Gibbon, have tried to draw a
parallel between the Red Indian and the Primaeval Teuton, have done
so at the expense of facts. First, they have overlooked the broad
fact, that while the Red Indians have been, ever since we have known
them, a decreasing race, the Teutons have been a rapidly increasing
one; in spite of war, and famine, and all the ills of a precarious
forest life, proving their youthful strength and vitality by a
reproduction unparalleled, as far as I know, in history, save perhaps
by that noble and young race, the Russian. These writers have not
known that the Teuton had his definite laws, more simple, doubtless,
in the time of Tacitus than in that of Justinian, but still founded
on abstract principles so deep and broad that they form the
groundwork of our English laws and constitution; that the Teuton
creed concerning the unseen world, and divine beings, was of a
loftiness and purity as far above the silly legends of Hiawatha as
the Teuton morals were above those of a Sioux or a Comanche. Let any
one read honest accounts of the Red Indians; let him read Catlin,
James, Lewis and Clarke, Shoolbred; and first and best of all, the
old 'Travaile in Virginia,' published by the Hakluyt Society: and
then let him read the Germania of Tacitus, and judge for himself.
For my part, I believe that if Gibbon was right, and if our
forefathers in the German forests had been like Powhattan's people as
we found them in the Virginian forests, the Romans would not have
been long in civilizing us off the face of the earth.
No. All the notes which Tacitus gives us are notes of a young and
strong race; unconscious of its own capabilities, but possessing such
capabilities that the observant Romans saw at once with dread and awe
that they were face to face with such a people as they had never met
before; that in their hands, sooner or later, might be the fate of
Rome. Mad Caracalla, aping the Teuton dress and hair, listening in
dread to the songs of the Allman Alrunas, telling the Teutons that
they ought to come over the Rhine and destroy the empire, and then,
murdering the interpreters, lest they should repeat his words, was
but babbling out in an insane shape the thought which was brooding in
the most far-seeing Roman minds. He felt that they could have done
the deed; and he felt rightly, madman as he was. They could have
done it then, if physical power and courage were all that was needed,
in the days of the Allman war. They could have done it a few years
before, when the Markmen fought Marcus Aurelius Antoninus; on the day
when the Caesar, at the advice of his augurs, sent two lions to swim
across the Danube as a test of victory; and the simple Markmen took
them for big dogs, and killed them with their clubs. From that day,
indeed, the Teutons began to conquer slowly, but surely. Though
Antoninus beat the Markmen on the Danube, and recovered 100,000 Roman
prisoners, yet it was only by the help of the Vandals; from that day
the empire was doomed, and the Teutons only kept at bay by bribing
one tribe to fight another, or by enlisting their more adventurous
spirits into the Roman legions, to fight against men of their own
blood;--a short-sighted and suicidal policy; for by that very method
they were teaching the Teuton all he needed, the discipline and the
military science of the Roman.
But the Teutons might have done it a hundred years before that, when
Rome was in a death agony, and Vitellius and Vespasian were
struggling for the purple, and Civilis and the fair Velleda, like
Barak and Deborah of old, raised the Teuton tribes. They might have
done it before that again, when Hermann slew Varus and his legions in
the Teutoburger Wald; or before that again, when the Kempers and
Teutons burst over the Alps, to madden themselves with the fatal
wines of the rich south. And why did the Teutons NOT do it? Because
they were boys fighting against cunning men. Boiorich, the young
Kemper, riding down to Marius' camp, to bid him fix the place and
time of battle--for the Teuton thought it mean to use surprises and
stratagems, or to conquer save in fair and open fight--is the type of
the Teuton hero; and one which had no chance in a struggle with the
cool, false, politic Roman, grown grey in the experience of the forum
and of the camp, and still as physically brave as his young enemy.
Because, too, there was no unity among them; no feeling that they
were brethren of one blood. Had the Teuton tribes, at any one of the
great crises I have mentioned, and at many a crisis afterwards,
united for but three years, under the feeling of a common blood,
language, interest, destiny, Rome would have perished. But they
could not learn that lesson. They could not put aside their boyish
quarrels.
They never learnt the lesson till after their final victory, when the
Gospel of Christ--of a Being to whom they all owed equal allegiance,
in whose sight they were all morally equal--came to unite them into a
Christendom.
And it was well that they did not learn it sooner. Well for them and
for the world, that they did not unite on any false ground of
interest or ambition, but had to wait for the true ground of unity,
the knowledge of the God-man, King of all nations upon earth.
Had they destroyed Rome sooner, what would not they have lost? What
would not the world have lost? Christianity would have been stifled
in its very cradle; and with Christianity all chance--be sure of it--
of their own progress. Roman law, order, and discipline, the very
things which they needed to acquire by a contact of five hundred
years, would have been swept away. All classic literature and
classic art, which they learnt to admire with an almost superstitious
awe, would have perished likewise. Greek philosophy, the germs of
physical science, and all that we owe to the ancients, would have
perished; and we should have truly had an invasion of the barbarians,
followed by truly dark ages, in which Europe would have had to begin
all anew, without the help of the generations which had gone before.
Therefore it was well as it was, and God was just and merciful to
them and to the human race. They had a glorious destiny, and
glorious powers wherewith to fulfil it: but they had, as every man
and people has, before whom there is a noble future, to be educated
by suffering. There was before them a terrible experience of sorrow
and disappointment, sin and blood, by which they gained the first
consciousness of what they could do and what they could not. Like
Adam of old, like every man unto this day, they ate of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, and were driven out of the paradise
of unconsciousness; had to begin again sadder and wiser men, and eat
their bread in the sweat of their brow; and so to rise, after their
fall, into a nobler, wiser, more artificial, and therefore more truly
human and divine life, than that from which they had at first fallen,
when they left their German wilds.
One does not, of course, mean the parallel to fit in all details.
The fall of the Teuton from the noble simplicity in which Tacitus
beheld and honoured him, was a work of four centuries; perhaps it was
going on in Tacitus' own time. But the culminating point was the
century which saw Italy conquered, and Rome sacked, by Visigoth, by
Ostrogoth, by Vandal, till nothing was left save fever-haunted ruins.
Then the ignorant and greedy child, who had been grasping so long
after the fair apples of Sodom, clutched them once and for all, and
found them turn to ashes in his hands.
Yes--it is thus that I wish you to look at the Invasion of the
Barbarians, Immigration of the Teutons, or whatsoever name you may
call it. Before looking at questions of migration, of ethnology, of
laws, and of classes, look first at the thing itself; and see with
sacred pity--and awe, one of the saddest and grandest tragedies ever
performed on earth. Poor souls! And they were so simple withal.
One pities them, as one pities a child who steals apples, and makes
himself sick with them after all. It is not the enormous loss of
life which is to me the most tragic part of the story; it is that
very simplicity of the Teutons. Bloodshed is a bad thing, certainly;
but after all nature is prodigal of human life--killing her twenty
thousand and her fifty thousand by a single earthquake; and as for
death in battle--I sometimes am tempted to think, having sat by many
death beds, that our old forefathers may have been right, and that
death in battle may be a not unenviable method of passing out of this
troublesome world. Besides, we have no right to blame those old
Teutons, while we are killing every year more of her Majesty's
subjects by preventible disease, than ever they killed in their
bloodiest battle. Let us think of that, and mend that, ere we blame
the old German heroes. No, there are more pitiful tragedies than any
battlefield can shew; and first among them, surely, is the
disappointment of young hopes, the degradation of young souls.
One pities them, I say. And they pitied themselves. Remorse, shame,
sadness, mark the few legends and songs of the days which followed
the fall of Rome. They had done a great work. They had destroyed a
mighty tyranny; they had parted between them the spoils wrung from
all the nations; they had rid the earth of a mighty man-devouring
ogre, whose hands had been stretched out for centuries over all the
earth, dragging all virgins to his den, butchering and torturing
thousands for his sport; foul, too, with crimes for which their
language, like our own (thank God) has scarcely found a name.
Babylon the Great, drunken with the blood of the saints, had fallen
at last before the simple foresters of the north: but if it looks a
triumph to us, it looked not such to them. They could only think how
they had stained their hands in their brothers' blood. They had got
the fatal Nibelungen hoard: but it had vanished between their hands,
and left them to kill each other, till none was left.
You know the Nibelungen Lied? That expresses, I believe, the key-
note of the old Teuton's heart, after his work was done. Siegfried
murdered by his brother-in-law; fair Chriemhild turned into an
avenging fury; the heroes hewing each other down, they scarce know
why, in Hunnish Etzel's hall, till Hagen and Gunther stand alone;
Dietrich of Bern going in, to bind the last surviving heroes;
Chriemhild shaking Hagen's gory head in Gunther's face, himself hewed
down by the old Hildebrand, till nothing is left but stark corpses
and vain tears: --while all the while the Nibelungen hoard, the cause
of all the woe, lies drowned in the deep Rhine until the judgment
day.--What is all this, but the true tale of the fall of Rome, of the
mad quarrels of the conquering Teutons? The names are confused,
mythic; the dates and places all awry: but the tale is true--too
true. Mutato nomine fabula narratur. Even so they went on, killing,
till none were left. Deeds as strange, horrible, fratricidal, were
done, again and again, not only between Frank and Goth, Lombard and
Gepid, but between Lombard and Lombard, Frank and Frank. Yes, they
were drunk with each other's blood, those elder brethren of ours.
Let us thank God that we did not share their booty, and perish, like
them, from the touch of the fatal Nibelungen hoard. Happy for us
Englishmen, that we were forced to seek our adventures here, in this
lonely isle; to turn aside from the great stream of Teutonic
immigration; and settle here, each man on his forest-clearing, to
till the ground in comparative peace, keeping unbroken the old
Teutonic laws, unstained the old Teutonic faith and virtue, cursed
neither with poverty nor riches, but fed with food sufficient for us.
To us, indeed, after long centuries, peace brought sloth, and sloth
foreign invaders and bitter woes: but better so, than that we should
have cast away alike our virtue and our lives, in that mad quarrel
over the fairy gold of Rome.
LECTURE II--THE DYING EMPIRE.
It is not for me to trace the rise, or even the fall of the Roman
Empire. That would be the duty rather of a professor of ancient
history, than of modern. All I need do is to sketch, as shortly as I
can, the state in which the young world found the old, when it came
in contact with it.
The Roman Empire, toward the latter part of the fourth century, was
in much the same condition as the Chinese or the Turkish Empire in
our own days. Private morality (as Juvenal and Persius will tell
you), had vanished long before. Public morality had, of course,
vanished likewise. The only powers really recognised were force and
cunning. The only aim was personal enjoyment. The only God was the
Divus Caesar, the imperial demigod, whose illimitable brute force
gave him illimitable powers of self-enjoyment, and made him thus the
paragon and ideal of humanity, whom all envied, flattered, hated, and
obeyed. The palace was a sink of corruption, where eunuchs,
concubines, spies, informers, freedmen, adventurers, struggled in the
basest plots, each for his share of the public plunder. The senate
only existed to register the edicts of their tyrant, and if need be,
destroy each other, or any one else, by judicial murders, the willing
tools of imperial cruelty. The government was administered (at least
since the time of Diocletian) by an official bureaucracy, of which
Professor Goldwin Smith well says, 'the earth swarmed with the
consuming hierarchy of extortion, so that it was said that they who
received taxes were more than those who paid them.' The free middle
class had disappeared, or lingered in the cities, too proud to
labour, fed on government bounty, and amused by government
spectacles. With them, arts and science had died likewise. Such
things were left to slaves, and became therefore, literally, servile
imitations of the past. What, indeed, was not left to slaves? Drawn
without respect of rank, as well as of sex and age, from every nation
under heaven by an organized slave-trade, to which our late African
one was but a tiny streamlet compared with a mighty river; a slave-
trade which once bought 10,000 human beings in Delos in a single day;
the 'servorum nationes' were the only tillers of the soil, of those
'latifundia' or great estates, 'quae perdidere Romam.' Denied the
rights of marriage, the very name of humanity; protected by no law,
save the interest or caprice of their masters; subjected, for slight
offences, to cruel torments, they were butchered by thousands in the
amphitheatres to make a Roman holiday, or wore out their lives in
'ergastula' or barracks, which were dens of darkness and horror.
Their owners, as 'senatores,' 'clarissimi,' or at least 'curiales,'
spent their lives in the cities, luxurious and effeminate, and left
their slaves to the tender mercy of 'villici,' stewards and gang-
drivers, who were themselves slaves likewise.
More pampered, yet more degraded, were the crowds of wretched beings,
cut off from all the hopes of humanity, who ministered to the wicked
pleasures of their masters, even in the palaces of nominally
Christian emperors--but over that side of Roman slavery I must draw a
veil, only saying, that the atrocities of the Romans toward their
slaves--especially of this last and darkest kind--notably drew down
on them the just wrath and revenge of those Teutonic nations, from
which so many of their slaves were taken. {p15}
And yet they called themselves Christians--to whom it had been said,
'Be not deceived, God is not mocked. For these things cometh the
wrath of God on the children of disobedience.' And the wrath did
come.
If such were the morals of the Empire, what was its political state?
One of complete disorganization. The only uniting bond left seems to
have been that of the bureaucracy, the community of tax-gatherers,
who found it on the whole safer and more profitable to pay into the
imperial treasury a portion of their plunder, than to keep it all
themselves. It stood by mere vi inertiae, just because it happened
to be there, and there was nothing else to put in its place. Like an
old tree whose every root is decayed, it did not fall, simply because
the storm had not yet come. Storms, indeed, had come; but they had
been partial and local. One cannot look into the pages of Gibbon,
without seeing that the normal condition of the empire was one of
revolt, civil war, invasion--Pretenders, like Carausius and Allectus
in Britain, setting themselves up as emperors for awhile--Bands of
brigands, like the Bagaudae of Gaul, and the Circumcelliones of
Africa, wandering about, desperate with hunger and revenge, to slay
and pillage--Teutonic tribes making forays on the frontier, enlisted
into the Roman armies, and bought off, or hired to keep back the
tribes behind them, and perish by their brethren's swords.
What kept the empire standing, paradoxical as it may seem, was its
own innate weakness. From within, at least, it could not be
overthrown. The masses were too crushed to rise. Without unity,
purpose, courage, they submitted to inevitable misery as to rain and
thunder. At most they destroyed their own children from poverty, or,
as in Egypt, fled by thousands into the caves and quarries, and
turned monks and hermits; while the upper classes, equally without
unity or purpose, said each to himself, 'Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die.'
The state of things at Rome, and after the rise of Byzantium under
Constantine at Byzantium likewise, was one altogether fantastic,
abnormal, utterly unlike anything that we have seen, or can imagine
to ourselves without great effort. I know no better method of
illustrating it, than quoting, from Mr. Sheppard's excellent book,
The Fall of Rome and the Rise of New Nationalities, a passage in
which he transfers the whole comi-tragedy from Italy of old to
England in 1861.
'I have not thought it necessary to give a separate and distinct
reply to the theory of Mr. Congreve, that Roman Imperialism was the
type of all good government, and a desirable precedent for ourselves.
Those who feel any penchant for the notion, I should strongly
recommend to read the answer of Professor G. Smith, in the Oxford
Essays for 1856, which is as complete and crushing as that
gentleman's performances usually are. But in order to convey to the
uninitiated some idea of the state of society under Caesarian rule,
and which a Caesarian rule, so far as mere government is concerned,
if it does not produce, has never shewn any tendency to prevent, let
us give reins to imagination for a moment, and picture to ourselves a
few social and political analogies in our own England of the
nineteenth century.
'An entire revolution has taken place in our principles, manners, and
form of government. Parliaments, meetings, and all the ordinary
expressions of the national will, are no longer in existence. A free
press has shared their fate. There is no accredited organ of public
opinion; indeed there is no public opinion to record. Lords and
Commons have been swept away, though a number of the richest old
gentlemen in London meet daily at Westminster to receive orders from
Buckingham Palace. But at the palace itself has broken out one of
those sanguinary conspiracies which have of late become unceasing.
The last heir of the house of Brunswick is lying dead with a dagger
in his heart, and everything is in frightful confusion. The armed
force of the capital are of course "masters of the situation," and
the Guards, after a tumultuous meeting at Windsor or Knightsbridge,
have sold the throne to Baron Rothschild, for a handsome donation of
25 pounds a-piece. Lord Clyde, however, we may be sure, is not
likely to stand this, and in a few months will be marching upon
London at the head of the Indian Army. In the mean time the Channel
Fleet has declared for its own commander, has seized upon Plymouth
and Portsmouth, and intends to starve the metropolis by stopping the
imports of "bread-stuffs" at the mouth of the Thames. And this has
become quite possible; for half the population of London, under the
present state of things, subsist upon free distributions of corn
dispensed by the occupant of the throne for the time being. But a
more fatal change than even this has come over the population of the
capital and of the whole country. The free citizens and 'prentices
of London; the sturdy labourers of Dorsetshire and the eastern
counties; and the skilful artizans of Manchester, Sheffield and
Birmingham; the mariners and shipwrights of Liverpool, have been long
ago drafted into marching regiments, and have left their bones to
bleach beneath Indian suns and Polar snows. Their place has been
supplied by countless herds of negro slaves, who till the fields and
crowd the workshops of our towns, to the entire exclusion of free
labour; for the free population, or rather the miserable relics of
them, disdain all manual employment: they divide their time between
starvation and a degrading debauchery, the means for which are
sedulously provided by the government. The time-honoured
institutions of the bull-bait, the cockpit, and the ring, are in
daily operation, under the most distinguished patronage. Hyde Park
has been converted into a gigantic arena, where criminals from
Newgate "set-to" with the animals from the Zoological Gardens. Every
fortnight there is a Derby Day, and the whole population pour into
the Downs with frantic excitement, leaving the city to the slaves.
And then the moral condition of this immense mass! Of the doings
about the palace we should be sorry to speak. But the lady
patronesses of Almack's still more assiduously patronize the prize-
fights, and one of them has been seen within the ropes, in battle
array, by the side of Sayers himself. No tongue may tell the orgies
enacted, with the aid of French cooks, Italian singers, and foreign
artists of all sorts, in the gilded saloons of Park Lane and Mayfair.
Suffice to say, that in them the worst passions of human nature have
full swing, unmodified by any thought of human or divine restraints,
and only dashed a little now and then by the apprehension that the
slaves may rise, and make a clean sweep of the metropolis with fire
and steel. But n'importe--Vive la bagatelle! Mario has just been
appointed prime minister, and has made a chorus singer from the Opera
Duke of Middlesex and Governor-General of India. All wise men and
all good men despair of the state, but they are not permitted to say
anything, much less to act. Mr. Disraeli lost his head a few days
ago; Lords Palmerston and Derby lie in the Tower under sentence of
death; Lord Brougham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Mr.
Gladstone, opened their veins and died in a warm bath last week.
Foreign relations will make a still greater demand on the reader's
imagination. We must conceive of England no longer as
"A precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive of a house."
but rather as open to the inroad of every foe whom her aggressive and
colonizing genius has provoked. The red man of the West, the Caffre,
the Sikh, and the Sepoy, Chinese braves, and fierce orientals of all
sorts, are hovering on her frontiers in "numbers numberless," as the
flakes of snow in the northern winter. They are not the impotent
enemy which we know, but vigorous races, supplied from inexhaustible
founts of population, and animated by an insatiate appetite for the
gold and silver, purple and fine linen, rich meats and intoxicating
drinks of our effete civilization. And we can no longer oppose them
with those victorious legions which have fought and conquered in all
regions of the world. The men of Waterloo and Inkermann are no more.
We are compelled to recruit our armies from those very tribes before
whose swords we are receding!
'Doubtless the ordinary reader will believe this picture to be
overcharged, drawn with manifest exaggeration, and somewhat
questionable taste. EVERY SINGLE STATEMENT WHICH IT CONTAINS may be
paralleled by the circumstances and events of the decadence of the
Roman Empire. The analogous situation was with the subjects of this
type of all good government, ALWAYS A POSSIBLE, often an actual,
state of things. We think this disposes of the theory of Mr.
Congreve. With it may advantageously be contrasted the opinion of a
man of more statesman-like mind. "The benefits of despotism are
short-lived; it poisons the very springs which it lays open; if it
display a merit, it is an exceptional one; if a virtue, it is created
of circumstances; and when once this better hour has passed away, all
the vices of its nature break forth with redoubled violence, and
weigh down society in every direction." So writes M. Guizot. Is it
the language of prophecy as well as of personal experience?'
Mr. Sheppard should have added, to make the picture complete, that
the Irish have just established popery across St. George's Channel,
by the aid of re-immigrants from America; that Free Kirk and National
Kirk are carrying on a sanguinary civil war in Scotland; that the
Devonshire Wesleyans have just sacked Exeter cathedral, and murdered
the Bishop at the altar, while the Bishop of London, supported by the
Jews and the rich churchmen (who are all mixed up in financial
operations with Baron Rothschild) has just commanded all Dissenters
to leave the metropolis within three days, under pain of death.
I must add yet one more feature to this fearful, but accurate
picture, and say how, a few generations forward, an even uglier thing
would be seen. The English aristocracy would have been absorbed by
foreign adventurers. The grandchildren of these slaves and
mercenaries would be holding the highest offices in the state and the
army, naming themselves after the masters who had freed them, or
disguising their barbarian names by English endings. The De Fung-
Chowvilles would be Dukes, the Little-grizzly-bear-Joe-Smiths Earls,
and the Fitz-Stanleysons, descended from a king of the gipsies who
enlisted to avoid transportation, and in due time became Commander-
in-Chief, would rule at Knowsley in place of the Earl of Derby,
having inherited the same by the summary process of assassination.
Beggars on horseback, only too literally; married, most of them, to
Englishwomen of the highest rank; but looking on England merely as a
prey; without patriotism, without principle; they would destroy the
old aristocracy by legal murders, grind the people, fight against
their yet barbarian cousins outside, as long as they were in luck:
but the moment the luck turned against them, would call in those
barbarian cousins to help them, and invade England every ten years
with heathen hordes, armed no more with tulwar and matchlock, but
with Enfield rifle and Whitworth cannon. And that, it must be
agreed, would be about the last phase of the British empire. If you
will look through the names which figure in the high places of the
Roman empire, during the fourth and fifth centuries, you will see how
few of them are really Roman. If you will try to investigate, not
their genealogies--for they have none--not a grandfather among them--
but the few facts of their lives which have come down to us; you will
see how that Nemesis had fallen on her which must at last fall on
every nation which attempts to establish itself on slavery as a legal
basis. Rome had become the slave of her own slaves.
It is at this last period, the point when Rome has become the slave
of her own slaves, that I take up the story of our Teutonic race.
I do not think that anyone will call either Mr. Sheppard's
statements, or mine, exaggerated, who knows the bitter complaints of
the wickedness and folly of the time, which are to be found in the
writings of the Emperor Julian. Pedant and apostate as he was, he
devoted his short life to one great idea, the restoration of the
Roman Empire to what it had been (as he fancied) in the days of the
virtuous stoic Emperors of the second century. He found his dream a
dream, owing to the dead heap of frivolity, sensuality, brutality,
utter unbelief, not merely in the dead Pagan gods whom he vainly
tried to restore, but in any god at all, as a living, ruling,
judging, rewarding, punishing power.
No one, again, will call these statements exaggerated who knows the
Roman history of his faithful servant and soldier, Ammianus
Marcellinus, and especially the later books of it, in which he sets
forth the state of the Empire after Julian's death, under Jovian,
Procopius, Valentinian, (who kept close to his bed-chamber two she-
bears who used to eat men, one called Golden Camel, and the other
Innocence--which latter, when she had devoured a sufficiency of his
living victims, he set free in the forests as a reward for her
services--a brutal tyrant, whose only virtue seems to have been his
chastity); and Valens, the shameless extortioner who perished in that
great battle of Adrianople, of which more hereafter. The last five
remaining books of the honest soldier's story are a tissue of
horrors, from reading which one turns away as from a slaughter-house
or a witches' sabbath.
No one, again, will think these statements exaggerated who knows
Salvian's De Gubernatione Dei. It has been always and most justly
held in high esteem, as one great authority of the state of Gaul when
conquered by the Franks and Goths and Vandals.
Salvian was a Christian gentleman, born somewhere near Treves. He
married a Pagan lady of Cologne, converted her, had by her a
daughter, and then persuaded her to devote herself to celibacy, while
he did the like. His father-in-law, Hypatius, quarrelled with him on
this account; and the letter in which he tries to soothe the old man
is still extant, a curious specimen of the style of cultivated men in
that day. Salvian then went down to the south of France and became a
priest at Marseilles, and tutor to the sons of Eucherius, the Bishop
of Lyons. Eucherius, himself a good man, speaks in terms of
passionate admiration of Salvian, his goodness, sanctity, learning,
talents. Gennadius (who describes him as still living when he wrote,
about 490) calls him among other encomiums, the Master of Bishops;
and both mention familiarly this very work, by which he became
notorious in his own day, and which he wrote about 450 or 455, during
the invasion of the Britons. So that we may trust fully that we have
hold of an authentic contemporaneous work, written by a good man and
true.
Let me first say a few words on the fact of his having--as many good
men did then--separated from his wife in order to lead what was
called a religious life. It has a direct bearing on the History of
those days. One must not praise him because he (in common with all
Christians of his day) held, no doubt, the belief that marriage was a
degradation in itself; that though the Church might mend it somewhat
by exalting it into a sacrament, still, the less of a bad thing the
better: --a doctrine against which one need not use (thank God) in
England, the same language which Michelet has most justly used in
France. We, being safe from the poison, can afford to talk of it
calmly. But I boldly assert, that few more practically immoral
doctrines than that of the dignity of celibacy and the defilement of
marriage (which was the doctrine of all Christian devotees for 1000
years) have, as far as I know, ever been preached to man. That is a
strong statement. It will be answered perhaps, by the patent fact,
that during those very 1000 years the morality of Europe improved
more, and more rapidly, than it had ever done before. I know it; and
I thank God for it. But I adhere to my statement, and rejoin--And
how much more rapidly have the morals of Europe improved, since that
doctrine has been swept away; and woman, and the love of woman, have
been restored to their rightful place in the education of man?
But if we do not praise Salvian, we must not blame him, or any one
else who meant to be an honest and good man. Such did not see to
what their celibate notions would lead. If they had, we must believe
that they would have acted differently. And what is more, their
preference for celibacy was not fancy, but common sense of a very
lofty kind. Be sure that when two middle-aged Christian people
consider it best to part, they have very good reasons for such a
solemn step, at which only boys or cynics will laugh. And the
reasons, in Salvian's case, and many more in his day, are patent to
common human understanding. Do not fancy that he had any private
reason, such as we should very fairly assign now: public reasons,
and those, such as God grant no living man may see, caused wise men
to thank God that they were not burdened with wife and child.
Remember the years in which Salvian lived--from 416 perhaps to 490.
It was a day of the Lord such as Joel saw; 'a day of clouds and of
thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains; a great
people and strong; there had not been ever the like, neither should
be any more after it: the land was a garden of Eden before them, and
behind them a desolate wilderness: Yea, and nothing should escape
them.' All things were going to wrack; the country was overrun by
foreign invaders; bankruptcy, devastation, massacre, and captivity
were for perhaps 100 years the normal state of Gaul, and of most
other countries besides. I have little doubt that Salvian was a
prudent man, when he thought fit to bring no more human beings into
the world. That is an ugly thought--I trust that you feel how ugly,
unnatural, desperate a thought it is. If you do not, think over it
till you do, till it frightens you. You will gain a great step
thereby in human sympathy, and therefore in the understanding of
history. For many times, and in many places, men have said, rightly
or wrongly, 'It is better to leave none behind me like myself. The
miseries of life (and of what comes after this life) are greater than
its joys. I commit an act of cruelty by bringing a fresh human being
into the world.' I wish you to look at that thought steadily, and
apply it for yourselves. It has many applications: and has
therefore been a very common one.
But put to yourselves--it is too painful for me to put to you--the
case of a married gentleman who sees his country gradually devastated
and brought to utter ruin by foreign invaders; and who feels--as poor
Salvian felt, that there is no hope or escape; that the misery is
merited, deserved, fairly EARNED (for that is the true meaning of
those words), and therefore must come. Conceive him seeing around
him estates destroyed, farms burnt, ladies and gentlemen, his own
friends and relations, reduced in an hour to beggary, plundered,
stript, driven off in gangs--I do not choose to finish the picture:
but ask yourselves, would an honourable man wish to bring sons--much
more daughters--into the world to endure that?
Put yourselves in Salvian's place. Forget for a few minutes that you
are Englishmen, the freest and bravest nation upon earth, strong in
all that gives real strength, and with a volunteer army which is now
formidable by numbers and courage--which, did the terrible call come,
might be increased ten times in as many months. Forget all that
awhile; and put yourselves in Salvian's place, the gentleman of Gaul,
while Franks and Goths, Burgunds and Vandals were sweeping, wave
after wave, over that lovely land; and judge him rationally, and talk
as little as possible of his superstition, and as much as possible of
his human feeling, prudence, self-control, and common sense. Believe
me, neither celibacy, nor any other seemingly unnatural superstition
would have held its ground for a generation if there had not been
some practical considerations of common sense to back them. We
wonder why men in old times went into monasteries. The simplest
answer is, common sense sent them thither. They were tired of being
the slaves of their own passions; they were tired of killing, and of
running the chance of being killed. They saw society, the whole
world, going to wrack, as they thought, around them: what could they
do better, than see that their own characters, morals, immortal souls
did not go to wrack with the rest. We wonder why women, especially
women of rank, went into convents; why, as soon as a community of
monks was founded, a community of nuns sprung up near them. The
simplest answer is, common sense sent them thither. The men,
especially of the upper fighting classes, were killed off rapidly;
the women were not killed off, and a large number always remained,
who, if they had wished to marry, could not. What better for them
than to seek in convents that peace which this world could not give?
They may have mixed up with that simple wish for peace the notion of
being handmaids of God, brides of Christ, and so forth. Be it so.
Let us instead of complaining, thank heaven that there was some
motive, whether quite right or not, to keep alive in them self-
respect, and the feeling that they were not altogether useless and
aimless on earth. Look at the question in this light, and you will
understand two things; first, how horrible the times were, and
secondly, why there grew up in the early middle age a passion for
celibacy.
Salvian, in a word, had already grown up to manhood and reason, when
he saw a time come to his native country, in which were fulfilled,
with fearful exactness, the words of the prophet Isaiah:-
'Behold, the Lord maketh the land empty, and maketh it waste, and
turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants
thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as
with the slave, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her
mistress; as with the seller, so with the buyer; as with the lender,
so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver
of usury to him. The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly
spoiled; for the Lord hath spoken this word.'
And Salvian desired to know the reason why the Lord had spoken that
word, and read his Bible till he found out, and wrote thereon his
book De Gubernatione Dei, of the government of God; and a very noble
book it is. He takes his stand on the ground of Scripture, with
which he shews an admirable acquaintance. The few good were
expecting the end of the world. Christ was coming to put an end to
all these horrors: but why did he delay his coming? The many weak
were crying that God had given up the world; that Christ had deserted
his Church, and delivered over Christians to the cruelties of heathen
and Arian barbarians. The many bad were openly blaspheming, throwing
off in despair all faith, all bonds of religion, all common decency,
and crying, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Salvian
answers them like an old Hebrew prophet: 'The Lord's arm is not
shortened. The Lord's eyes are not closed. The Lord is still as
near as ever. He is governing the world as He has always governed
it: by the everlasting moral laws, by which the wages of sin are
death. Your iniquities have withheld good things from you. You have
earned exactly what God has paid you. Yourselves are your own
punishment. You have been wicked men, and therefore weak men; your
own vices, and not the Goths, have been your true conquerors.' As I
said in my inaugural lecture--that is after all the true theory of
history. Men may forget it in piping times of peace. God grant that
in the dark hour of adversity, God may always raise up to them a
prophet, like good old Salvian, to preach to them once again the
everlasting judgments of God; and teach them that not faulty
constitutions, faulty laws, faulty circumstances of any kind, but the
faults of their own hearts and lives, are the causes of their misery.
M. Guizot, in his elaborate work on the History of Civilization in
France, has a few curious pages, on the causes of the decline of
civil society in Roman Gaul, and its consequent weakness and ruin.
He tells you how the Senators or Clarissimi did not constitute a true
aristocracy, able to lead and protect the people, being at the mercy
of the Emperor, and nominated and removed at his pleasure. How the
Curiales, or wealthy middle class, who were bound by law to fulfil
all the municipal offices, and were responsible for the collection of
the revenue, found their responsibilities so great, that they by
every trick in their power, avoided office. How, as M. Guizot well
puts it, the central despotism of Rome stript the Curiales of all
they earned, to pay its own functionaries and soldiers; and gave them
the power of appointing magistrates, who were only after all the
imperial agents of that despotism, for whose sake they robbed their
fellow-citizens. How the plebs, comprising the small tradesmen and
free artizans, were utterly unable to assert their own opinions or
rights. How the slave population, though their condition was much
improved, constituted a mere dead weight of helpless brutality.
And then he says, that the Roman Empire was dying. Very true: but
often as he quotes Salvian, he omits always to tell us what Roman
society was dying of. Salvian says, that it was dying of vice. Not
of bad laws and class arrangements, but of bad men. M. Guizot
belongs to a school which is apt to impute human happiness and
prosperity too exclusively to the political constitution under which
they may happen to live, irrespectively of the morality of the people
themselves. From that, the constitutionalist school, there has been
of late a strong reaction, the highest exponent, nay the very
coryphaeus of which is Mr. Carlyle. He undervalues, even despises,
the influence of laws and constitutions: with him private virtue,
from which springs public virtue, is the first and sole cause of
national prosperity. My inaugural lecture has told you how deeply I
sympathize with his view--taking my stand, as Mr. Carlyle does, on
the Hebrew prophets.
There is, nevertheless, a side of truth in the constitutionalist
view, which Mr. Carlyle, I think, overlooks. A bad political
constitution does produce poverty and weakness: but only in as far
as it tends to produce moral evil; to make men bad. That it can help
to do. It can put a premium on vice, on falsehood, on peculation, on
laziness, on ignorance; and thus tempt the mass to moral degradation,
from the premier to the slave. Russia has been, for two centuries
now but too patent a proof of the truth of this assertion. But even
in this case, the moral element is the most important, and just the
one which is overlooked. To have good laws, M. Guizot is apt to
forget, you must first have good men to make them; and second, you
must have good men to carry them out, after they are made. Bad men
can abuse the best of laws, the best of constitutions. Look at the
working of our parliaments during the reigns of William III and Anne,
and see how powerless good constitutions are, when the men who work
them are false and venal. Look, on the other hand, at the Roman
Empire from the time of Vespasian to that of the Antonines, and see
how well even a bad constitution will succeed, when good men are
working it.
Bad laws, I say, will work tolerably under good men, if fitted to the
existing circumstances by men of the world, as all Roman laws were.
If they had not been such, how was the Roman Empire, at least in its
first years, a blessing to the safety, prosperity, and wealth of
every country it enslaved? But when defective Roman laws began to be
worked by bad men, and that for 200 years, then indeed came times of
evil. Let us take, then, Salvian's own account of the cause of Roman
decay. He, an eye-witness, imputes it all to the morals of Roman
citizens. They were, according to him, of the very worst. To the
general dissoluteness he attributes, in plain words, the success of
the Frank and Gothic invaders. And the facts which he gives, and
which there is no reason to doubt, are quite enough to prove him in
the right. Every great man's house, he says, was a sink of
profligacy. The women slaves were at the mercy of their master; and
the slaves copied his morals among themselves. It is an ugly
picture: but common sense will tell us, if we but think a little,
that such will, and must, be the case in slave-holding countries,
wherever Christianity is not present in its purest and strongest
form, to control the passions of arbitrary power.
But there was not merely profligacy among these Gauls. That alone
would not have wrought their immediate ruin. Morals were bad enough
in old Greece and Rome; as they were afterwards among the Turks:
nevertheless as long as a race is strong; as long as there is
prudence, energy, deep national feeling, outraged virtue does not
avenge itself at once by general ruin. But it avenges itself at
last, as Salvian shews--as all experience shews. As in individuals
so in nations, unbridled indulgence of the passions must produce, and
does produce, frivolity, effeminacy, slavery to the appetite of the
moment, a brutalized and reckless temper, before which, prudence,
energy, national feeling, any and every feeling which is not centered
in self, perishes utterly. The old French noblesse gave a proof of
this law, which will last as a warning beacon to the end of time.
The Spanish population of America, I am told, gives now a fearful
proof of this same terrible penalty. Has not Italy proved it
likewise, for centuries past? It must be so, gentlemen. For
national life is grounded on, is the development of, the life of the
family. And where the root is corrupt, the tree must be corrupt
likewise. It must be so. For Asmodeus does not walk alone. In his
train follow impatience and disappointment, suspicion and jealousy,
rage and cruelty, and all the passions which set man's hand against
his fellow-man. It must be so. For profligacy is selfishness; and
the family, and the society, the nation, exists only by casting away
selfishness and by obeying law:- not only the outward law, which says
in the name of God, 'Thou shalt not,' but the inward law, the Law of
Christ, which says, 'Thou must;' the law of self-sacrifice, which
selfish lust tramples under foot, till there is no more cohesion left
between man and man, no more trust, no more fellow-help, than between
the stags who fight for the hinds; and God help the nation which has
brought itself to that!
No wonder, therefore, if Salvian's accounts of Gaulish profligacy be
true, that Gaulish recklessness reached at last a pitch all but
incredible. It is credible, however shocking, that as he says, he
himself saw, both at Treves, and another great city (probably
Cologne, Colonia Agrippina, or 'The Colony' par excellence) while the
destruction of the state was imminent, 'old men of rank, decrepit
Christians, slaves to gluttony and lust, rabid with clamour, furious
with bacchanalian orgies.' It is credible, however shocking, that
all through Gaul the captivity was 'foreseen, yet never dreaded.'
And 'so when the barbarians had encamped almost in sight, there was
no terror among the people, no care of the cities. All was possest
by carelessness and sloth, gluttony, drunkenness, sleep, according to
that which the prophet saith: A sleep from the Lord had come over
them.' It is credible, however shocking, that though Treves was four
times taken by the barbarians, it remained just as reckless as ever;
and that--I quote Salvian still--when the population was half
destroyed by fire and sword, the poor dying of famine, corpses of men
and women lying about the streets breeding pestilence, while the dogs
devoured them, the few nobles who were left comforted themselves by
sending to the Emperor to beg for Circensian games.
Those Circensian games, and indeed all the public spectacles, are
fresh proofs of what I said just now; that if a bad people earn bad
government, still a bad government makes a bad people.
They were the most extraordinary instance which the world ever saw,
of a government setting to work at a vast expense to debauch its
subjects. Whether the Roman rulers set that purpose consciously
before them, one dare not affirm. Their notion probably was (for
they were as worldly wise as they were unprincipled) that the more
frivolous and sensual the people were, the more quietly they would
submit to slavery; and the best way to keep them frivolous and
sensual, the Romans knew full well; so well, that after the Empire
became Christian, and many heathen matters were done away with, they
did not find it safe to do away with the public spectacles. The
temples of the Gods might go: but not the pantomimes.
In one respect, indeed, these government spectacles became worse, not
better, under Christianity. They were less cruel, no doubt: but
also they were less beautiful. The old custom of exhibiting
representations of the old Greek myths, which had something of grace
and poetry about them, and would carry back the spectators' thoughts
to the nobler and purer heroic ages, disappeared before Christianity;
but the old vice did not. That was left; and no longer ennobled by
the old heroic myths round which it had clustered itself, was simply
of the silliest and most vulgar kind. We know in detail the
abominations, as shameless and ridiculous, which went on a century
after Salvian, in the theatres of Constantinople, under the eyes of
the most Christian Emperor Justinian, and which won for that most
infamous woman, Theodora, a share in his imperial crown, and the
right to dictate doctrine to the Christian Bishops of the East, and
to condemn the soul of Origen to everlasting damnation, for having
exprest hopes of the final pardon of sinners. We can well believe,
therefore, Salvian's complaints of the wickedness of those pantomimes
of which he says, that 'honeste non possunt vel accusari;' he cannot
even accuse them without saying what he is ashamed to say; I believe
also his assertion, that they would not let people be modest, even if
they wished; that they inflamed the passions, and debauched the
imaginations of young and old, man and woman, and--but I am not here
to argue that sin is sin, or that the population of London would be
the worse if the most shameless persons among them were put by the
Government in possession of Drury Lane and Covent Garden; and that,
and nothing less than that, did the Roman pantomimes mean, from the
days of Juvenal till those of the most holy and orthodox Empress
Theodora.
'Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they who do such things are
worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that
do them.'
Now in contrast to all these abominations, old Salvian sets, boldly
and honestly, the superior morality of the barbarians. That, he
says, is the cause of their strength and our weakness. We,
professing orthodoxy, are profligate hypocrites. They, half
heathens, half Arians, are honester men, purer men than we. There is
no use, he says, in despising the Goths as heretics, while they are
better men than we. They are better Christians than the Romans,
because they are better men. They pray to God for success, and trust
in him, and we presumptuously trust in ourselves. We swear by
Christ: but what do we do but blaspheme him, when we swear 'Per
Christum tollo eum,' 'I will make away with him,' 'Per Christum hunc
jugulo,' 'I will cut his throat,' and then believe ourselves bound to
commit the murder which we have vowed? . . . 'The Saxons,' he says,
'are fierce, the Franks faithless, the Gepidae inhuman, the Huns
shameless. But is the Frank's perfidy as blameable as ours? Is the
Alman's drunkenness, or the Alan's rapacity, as damnable as a
Christian's? If a Hun or a Gepid deceives you, what wonder? He is
utterly ignorant that there is any sin in falsehood. But what of the
Christian who does the same? The Barbarians,' he says, 'are better
men than the Christians. The Goths,' he says, 'are perfidious, but
chaste. The Alans unchaste, but less perfidious. The Franks are
liars, but hospitable; the Saxons ferociously cruel, but venerable
for their chastity. The Visigoths who conquered Spain,' he says,
'were the most "ignavi" (heavy, I presume he means, and loutish) of
all the barbarians: but they were chaste, and therefore they
conquered.'
In Africa, if we are to believe Salvian, things stood even worse, at
the time of the invasion of the Vandals. In his violent invectives
against the Africans, however, allowance must be made. Salvian was a
great lover of monks; and the Africans used, he says, to detest them,
and mob them wherever they appeared; for which offence, of course, he
can find no words too strong. St. Augustine, however, himself a
countryman of theirs, who died, happily, just before the storm burst
on that hapless land, speaks bitterly of their exceeding profligacy--
of which he himself in his wild youth, had had but too sad
experience. Salvian's assertion is, that the Africans were the most
profligate of all the Romans; and that while each barbarian tribe had
(as we have just seen) some good in them, the Africans had none.
But there were noble souls left among them, lights which shone all
the more brightly in the surrounding darkness. In the pages of
Victor Vitensis, which tell the sad story of the persecution of the
African Catholics by the Arian Vandals, you will find many a moving
tale which shews that God had his own, even among those degraded
Carthaginians.
The causes of the Arian hatred to the Catholics is very obscure. You
will find all that is known in Dean Milman's History of Latin
Christianity. A simple explanation may be found in the fact that the
Catholics considered the Arians, and did not conceal their opinion,
as all literally and actually doomed to the torments of everlasting
fire; and that, as Gibbon puts it, 'The heroes of the north, who had
submitted with some reluctance, to believe that all their ancestors
were in hell, were astonished and exasperated to learn, that they
themselves had only changed the mode of their eternal condemnation.'
The Teutons were (Salvian himself confesses it) trying to serve God
devoutly, in chastity, sobriety, and honesty, according to their
light. And they were told by the profligates of Africa, that this
and no less, was their doom. It is not to be wondered at, again, if
they mistook the Catholic creed for the cause of Catholic immorality.
That may account for the Vandal custom of re-baptizing the Catholics.
It certainly accounts for the fact (if after all it be a fact) which
Victor states, that they tortured the nuns to extort from them
shameful confessions against the priests. But the history of the
African persecution is the history of all persecutions, as confest
again and again by the old fathers, as proved by the analogies of
later times. The sins of the Church draw down punishment, by making
her enemies confound her doctrine and her practice. But in return,
the punishment of the Church purifies her, and brings out her
nobleness afresh, as the snake casts his skin in pain, and comes out
young and fair once more; and in every dark hour of the Church, there
flashes out some bright form of human heroism, to be a beacon and a
comfort to all future time. Victor, for instance, tells the story of
Dionysia, the beautiful widow whom the Vandals tried to torture into
denying the Divinity of our Lord.--How when they saw that she was
bolder and fairer than all the other matrons, they seized her, and
went to strip her: and she cried to them, 'Qualiter libet occidite:
verecunda tamen membra nolite nudare,' but in vain. They hung her up
by the hands, and scourged her till streams of blood ran down every
limb. Her only son, a delicate boy, stood by trembling, knowing that
his turn would come next; and she saw it, and called to him in the
midst of her shame and agony. 'He had been baptized into the name of
the Blessed Trinity; let him die in that name, and not lose the
wedding-garment. Let him fear the pain that never ends, and cling to
the life that endures for ever.' The boy took heart, and when his
turn came, died under the torture; and Dionysia took up the little
corpse, and buried it in her own house; and worshipped upon her boy's
grave to her dying day.
Yes. God had his own left, even among those fallen Africans of
Carthage.
But neither there, nor in Spain, could the Vandals cure the evil.
'Now-a-days,' says Salvian, 'there are no profligates among the
Goths, save Romans; none among the Vandals, save Romans. Blush,
Roman people, everywhere, blush for your morals. There is hardly a
city free from dens of sin, and none at all from impurity, save those
which the barbarians have begun to occupy. And do we wonder if we
are surpassed in power, by an enemy who surpasses us in decency? It
is not the natural strength of their bodies which makes them conquer
us. We have been conquered only by the vices of our own morals.'
Yes. Salvian was right. Those last words were no mere outburst of
national vanity, content to confess every sin, save that of being
cowards. He was right. It was not the mere muscle of the Teuton
which enabled him to crush the decrepit and debauched slave-nations,
Gaul and Briton, Iberian and African, as the ox crushes the frogs of
the marsh. The 'sera juvenum Venus, ideoque inexhausta pubertas,'
had given him more than his lofty stature, and his mighty limbs. Had
he had nought but them, he might have remained to the end a blind
Samson, grinding among the slaves in Caesar's mill, butchered to make
a Roman holiday. But it had given him more, that purity of his; it
had given him, as it may give you, gentlemen, a calm and steady
brain, and a free and loyal heart; the energy which springs from
health; the self-respect which comes from self-restraint; and the
spirit which shrinks from neither God nor man, and feels it light to
die for wife and child, for people, and for Queen.
PREFACE TO LECTURE III.--ON DR. LATHAM'S 'GERMANIA.'
If I have followed in these lectures the better known and more widely
received etymology of the name Goth, I have done so out of no
disrespect to Dr. Latham; but simply because his theory seems to me
adhuc sub judice. It is this, as far as I understand it. That
'Goth' was not the aboriginal name of the race. That they were
probably not so called till they came into the land of the Getae,
about the mouths of the Danube. That the Teutonic name for the
Ostrogoths was Grutungs, and that of the Visigoths (which he does not
consider to mean West-Goths) Thervings, Thuringer. That on reaching
the land of the Getae they took their name; 'just as the Kentings of
Anglo-Saxon England took name from the Keltic country of Kent;' and
that the names Goth, Gothones, Gothini were originally given to
Lithuanians by their Sclavonic neighbours. I merely state the
theory, and leave it for the judgment of others.
The principal points which Dr. Latham considers himself to have
established, are -
That the area and population of the Teutonic tribes have been, on the
authority of Tacitus, much overrated; many tribes hitherto supposed
to be Teutonic being really Sclavonic, &c.
This need not shock our pride, if proved--as it seems to me to be.
The nations who have influenced the world's destiny have not been
great, in the modern American sense of 'big;' but great in heart, as
our forefathers were. The Greeks were but a handful at Salamis; so
were the Romans of the Republic; so were the Spaniards of America;
so, probably, were the Aztecs and Incas whom they overthrew; and
surely our own conquerors and re-conquerers of Hindostan have shewn
enough that it is not numbers, but soul, which gives a race the power
to rule.
Neither need we object to Dr. Latham's opinion, that more than one of
the tribes which took part in the destruction of the Empire were not
aboriginal Germans, but Sclavonians Germanized, and under German
leaders. It may be so. The custom of enslaving captives would
render pure Teutonic blood among the lower classes of a tribe the
exception and not the rule; while the custom of chiefs choosing the
'thegns,' 'gesitha,' or 'comites,' who lived and died as their
companions-in-arms, from among the most valiant of the unfree, would
tend to produce a mixed blood in the upper classes also, and
gradually assimilate the whole mass to the manners and laws of their
Teutonic lords. Only by some such actual superiority of the upper
classes to the lower can I explain the deep respect for rank and
blood, which distinguishes, and will perhaps always distinguish, the
Teutonic peoples. Had there even been anything like a primaeval
equality among our race, a hereditary aristocracy could never have
arisen, or if arising for a while, never could have remained as a
fact which all believed in, from the lowest to the highest. Just, or
unjust, the institution represented, I verily believe, an
ethnological fact. The golden-haired hero said to his brown-haired
bondsman, 'I am a gentleman, who have a "gens," a stamm, a pedigree,
and know from whom I am sprung. I am a Garding, an Amalung, a
Scylding, an Osing, or what not. I am a son of the gods. The blood
of the Asas is in my veins. Do you not see it? Am I not wiser,
stronger, more virtuous, more beautiful than you? You must obey me,
and be my man, and follow me to the death. Then, if you prove a
worthy thane, I will give you horse, weapons, bracelets, lands; and
marry you, it may be, to my daughter or my niece. And if not, you
must remain a son of the earth, grubbing in the dust of which you
were made.' And the bondsman believed him; and became his lord's
man, and followed him to the death; and was thereby not degraded, but
raised out of selfish savagery and brute independence into loyalty,
usefulness, and self-respect. As a fact, that is the method by which
the thing was done: done;--very ill indeed, as most human things are
done; but a method inevitable--and possibly right; till (as in
England now) the lower classes became ethnologically identical with
the upper, and equality became possible in law, simply because it
existed in fact.
But the part of Dr. Latham's 'Germania' to which I am bound to call
most attention, because I have not followed it, is that interesting
part of the Prolegomena, in which he combats the generally received
theory, that, between the time of Tacitus and that of Charlemagne,
vast masses of Germans had migrated southward from between the Elbe
and the Vistula; and that they had been replaced by the Sclavonians
who certainly were there in Charlemagne's days.
Dr. Latham argues against this theory with a great variety of facts
and reasons. But has he not overstated his case on some points?
Need the migrations necessary for this theory have been of
'unparalleled magnitude and rapidity'?
As for the 'unparalleled completeness' on which he lays much stress,
from the fact that no remnants of Teutonic population are found in
the countries evacuated:
Is it the fact that 'history only tells us of German armies having
advanced south'? Do we not find four famous cases--the irruption of
the Cimbri and Teutons into Italy; the passage of the Danube by the
Visigoths; and the invasions of Italy first by the Ostrogoths, then
by the Lombards--in which the nations came with men, women, and
children, horses, cattle, and dogs, bag and baggage? May not this
have been the custom of the race, with its strong feeling for the
family tie; and may not this account for no traces of them being left
behind?
Does not Dr. Latham's theory proceed too much on an assumption that
the Sclavonians dispossest the Teutons by force? And is not this
assumption his ground for objecting that the movement was effected
improbably 'by that division of the European population (the
Sclavonic and Lithuanian) which has, within the historic period,
receded before the Germanic'?
Are these migrations, though 'unrepresented in any history' (i.e.
contemporaneous), really 'unrepresented in any tradition'? Do not
the traditions of Jornandes and Paulus Diaconus, that the Goths and
the Lombards came from Scandinavia, represent this very fact?--and
are they to be set aside as naught? Surely not. Myths of this kind
generally embody a nucleus of truth, and must be regarded with
respect; for they often, after all arguments about them are spent,
are found to contain the very pith of the matter.
Are the 'phenomena of replacement and substitution' so very strange--
I will not say upon the popular theory, but at least on one half-way
between it and Dr. Latham's? Namely -
That the Teutonic races came originally, as some of them say they
did, from Scandinavia, Denmark, the South Baltic, &c.
That they forced their way down, wave after wave, on what would have
been the line of least resistance--the Marches between the Gauls,
Romanized or otherwise, and the Sclavonians. And that the Alps and
the solid front of the Roman Empire turned them to the East, till
their vanguard found itself on the Danube.
This would agree with Dr. Latham's most valuable hint, that Markmen,
'Men of the Marches,' was perhaps the name of many German tribes
successively.
That they fought, as they went, with the Sclavonian and other tribes
(as their traditions seem to report), and rolled them back to the
eastward; and that as each Teutonic tribe past down the line, the
Sclavonians rolled back again, till the last column was past.
That the Teutons also carried down with them, as slaves or allies, a
portion of this old Sclavonic population (to which Dr. Latham will
perhaps agree); and that this fact caused a hiatus, which was
gradually filled by tribes who after all were little better than
nomad hunters, and would occupy (quite nominally) a very large tract
with a small population.
Would not this theory agree at once tolerably with the old traditions
and with Dr. Latham's new facts?
The question still remains--which is the question of all. What put
these Germanic peoples on going South? Were there no causes
sufficient to excite so desperate a resolve?
(1) Did they all go? Is not Paulus Diaconus' story that one-third
of the Lombards was to emigrate by lot, and two-thirds remain at
home, a rough type of what generally happened--what happens now in
our modern emigrations? Was not the surplus population driven off by
famine toward warmer and more hopeful climes?
(2) Are not the Teutonic populations of England, North Germany, and
the Baltic, the descendants, much intermixed, and with dialects much
changed, of the portions which were left behind? This is the
opinion, I believe, of several great ethnologists. Is it not true?
If philological objections are raised to this, I ask (but in all
humility), Did not these southward migrations commence long before
the time of Tacitus? If so, may they not have commenced before the
different Teutonic dialects were as distinct as they were in the
historic period? And are we to suppose that the dialects did not
alter during the long journeyings through many nations? Is it
possible that the Thervings and Grutungs could have retained the same
tongue on the Danube, as their forefathers spoke in their native
land? Would not the Moeso-Gothic of Ulfilas have been all but
unintelligible to the Goth who, upon the old theory, remained in
Gothland of Sweden?
(3) But were there not more causes than mere want, which sent them
south? Had the peculiar restlessness of the race nothing to do with
it? A restlessness not nomadic, but migratory: arising not from
carelessness of land and home, but from the longing to found a home
in a new land, like the restlessness of us, their children? As soon
as we meet them in historic times, they are always moving, migrating,
invading. Were they not doing the same in pre-historic times, by
fits and starts, no doubt with periods of excitement, periods of
collapse and rest? When we recollect the invasion of the Normans;
the wholesale eastward migration of the Crusaders, men, women, and
children; and the later colonization by Teutonic peoples, of every
quarter of the globe, is there anything wonderful in the belief that
similar migratory manias may have seized the old tribes; that the
spirit of Woden, 'the mover,' may have moved them, and forced them to
go ahead, as now? Doubtless the theory is strange. But the Teutons
were and are a strange people; so strange, that they have conquered--
one may almost say that they are--all nations which are alive upon
the globe; and we may therefore expect them to have done strange
things even in their infancy.
The Romans saw them conquer the empire; and said, the good men among
them, that it was on account of their superior virtue. But beside
the virtue which made them succeed, there must have been the
adventurousness which made them attempt. They were a people fond of
'avanturen,' like their descendants; and they went out to seek them;
and found enough and to spare.
(4) But more, had they never heard of Rome? Surely they had, and at
a very early period of the empire. We are apt to forget, that for
every discovery of the Germans by the Romans, there was a similar
discovery of the Romans by the Germans, and one which would tell
powerfully on their childish imagination. Did not one single Kemper
or Teuton return from Marius' slaughter, to spread among the tribes
(niddering though he may have been called for coming back alive) the
fair land which they had found, fit for the gods of Valhalla; the
land of sunshine, fruits and wine, wherein his brothers' and sisters'
bones were bleaching unavenged? Did no gay Gaul of the Legion of the
Lark, boast in a frontier wine-house to a German trapper, who came in
to sell his peltry, how he himself was a gentleman now, and a
civilized man, and a Roman; and how he had followed Julius Caesar,
the king of men, over the Rubicon, and on to a city of the like of
which man never dreamed, wherein was room for all the gods of heaven?
Did no captive tribune of Varus' legions, led with horrid shouts
round Thor's altar in the Teutoburger Wald, ere his corpse was hung
among the horses and goats on the primaeval oaks, turn to bay like a
Roman, and tell his wild captors of the Eternal City, and of the
might of that Caesar who would avenge every hair upon his head with a
German life; and receive for answer a shout of laughter, and the cry-
-'You have come to us: and some day we will go to you?' Did no
commissary, bargaining with a German for cattle to be sent over the
frontier by such a day of the week, and teaching him to mistranslate
into those names of Thor, Woden, Freya, and so forth, which they now
carry, the Jewish-Assyrian-Roman days of the se'nnight, amuse the
simple forester by telling him how the streets of Rome were paved
with gold, and no one had anything to do there but to eat and bathe
at the public expense, and to go to the theatre, and see 20,000
gladiators fight at once? Did no German 'Regulus,' alderman, or
king, enter Rome on an embassy, and come back with uplifted eyes and
hands, declaring that he had seen things unspeakable--a 'very fine
plunder,' as Blucher said of London; and that if it were not for the
walls, they might get it all; for not only the ladies, but the
noblemen, went about in litters of silver and gold, and wore gauze
dresses, the shameless wretches, through which you might see every
limb, so that as for killing them, there was no more fear of them
than of a flock of sheep: but that he did not see as well as he
could have wished how to enter the great city, for he was more or
less the worse for liquor the whole time, with wondrous stuff which
they called wine? Or did no captive, escaped by miracle from the
butcheries of the amphitheatre, return to tell his countrymen how all
the rest had died like German men; and call on them to rise and
avenge their brothers' blood? Yes, surely the Teutons knew well,
even in the time of Tacitus, of the 'micklegard,' the great city and
all its glory. Every fresh tribe who passed along the frontier of
Gaul or of Noricum would hear more and more of it, see more and more
men who had actually been there. If the glory of the city exercised
on its own inhabitants an intoxicating influence, as of a place
omnipotent, superhuman, divine--it would exercise (exaggerated as it
would be) a still stronger influence on the barbarians outside: and
what wonder if they pressed southwards at first in the hope of taking
the mighty city; and afterwards, as her real strength became more
known, of at least seizing some of those colonial cities, which were
as superhuman in their eyes as Rome itself would have been? In the
crusades, the children, whenever they came to a great town, asked
their parents if that was not Jerusalem. And so, it may be, many a
gallant young Teuton, on entering for the first time such a city as
Cologne, Lyons, or Vienna, whispered half trembling to his lord--
'Surely this must be Rome.'
Some such arguments as these might surely be brought in favour of a
greater migration than Dr. Latham is inclined to allow: but I must
leave the question for men of deeper research and wider learning,
than I possess.
LECTURE III.--THE HUMAN DELUGE
'I have taken in hand,' said Sir Francis Drake once to the crew of
the immortal Pelican, 'that which I know not how to accomplish. Yea,
it hath even bereaved me of my wits to think of it.'
And so I must say on the subject of this lecture. I wish to give you
some notion of the history of Italy for nearly one hundred years; say
from 400 to 500. But it is very difficult. How can a man draw a
picture of that which has no shape; or tell the order of absolute
disorder? It is all a horrible 'fourmillement des nations,' like the
working of an ant-heap; like the insects devouring each other in a
drop of water. Teuton tribes, Sclavonic tribes, Tartar tribes, Roman
generals, empresses, bishops, courtiers, adventurers, appear for a
moment out of the crowd, dim phantoms--nothing more, most of them--
with a name appended, and then vanish, proving their humanity only by
leaving behind them one more stain of blood.
And what became of the masses all the while? of the men, slaves the
greater part of them, if not all, who tilled the soil, and ground the
corn--for man must have eaten, then as now? We have no hint. One
trusts that God had mercy on them, if not in this world, still in the
world to come. Man, at least, had none.
Taking one's stand at Rome, and looking toward the north, what does
one see for nearly one hundred years? Wave after wave rising out of
the north, the land of night, and wonder, and the terrible unknown;
visible only as the light of Roman civilization strikes their crests,
and they dash against the Alps, and roll over through the mountain
passes, into the fertile plains below. Then at last they are seen
but too well; and you discover that the waves are living men, women,
and children, horses, dogs, and cattle, all rushing headlong into
that great whirlpool of Italy: and yet the gulf is never full. The
earth drinks up the blood; the bones decay into the fruitful soil;
the very names and memories of whole tribes are washed away. And the
result of an immigration which may be counted by hundreds of
thousands is this--that all the land is waste.
The best authorities which I can give you (though you will find many
more in Gibbon) are--for the main story, Jornandes, De Rebus Geticis.
Himself a Goth, he wrote the history of his race, and that of Attila
and his Huns, in good rugged Latin, not without force and sense.
Then Claudian, the poet, a bombastic panegyrist of contemporary Roman
scoundrels; but full of curious facts, if one could only depend on
them.
Then the earlier books of Procopius De Bello Gothico, and the
Chronicle of Zosimus.
Salvian, Ennodius and Sidonius Apollinaris, as Christians, will give
you curious details, especially as to South France and North Italy;
while many particulars of the first sack of Rome, with comments
thereon which express the highest intellects of that day, you will
find in St. Jerome's Letters, and St. Augustine's City of God.
But if you want these dreadful times EXPLAINED to you, I do not think
you can do better than to take your Bibles, and to read the
Revelations of St. John the Apostle. I shall quote them, more than
once, in this lecture. I cannot help quoting them. The words come
naturally to my lips, as fitter to the facts than any words of my
own.
I do not come here to interpret the Book of Revelations. I do not
understand that book. But I do say plainly, though I cannot
interpret the book, that the book has interpreted those times to me.
Its awful metaphors give me more living and accurate pictures of what
went on than any that Gibbon's faithful details can give.
You may see, if you have spiritual eyes wherewith to see, the Dragon,
the serpent, symbol of political craft and the devilish wisdom of the
Roman, giving authority to the Beast, the symbol of brute power; to
mongrel AEtiuses and Bonifaces, barbarian Stilichos, Ricimers and
Aspars, and a host of similar adventurers, whose only strength was
force.
You may see the world wondering after the beast, and worshipping
brute force, as the only thing left to believe in.
You may see the nations of the world gnawing their tongues for pain,
and blaspheming God, but not repenting of their deeds.
You may see the faith and patience of the saints--men like Augustine,
Salvian, Epiphanius, Severinus, Deogratias of Carthage, and a host
more, no doubt, whose names the world will never hear--the salt of
the earth, which kept it all from rotting.
You may see Babylon the great fallen, and all the kings and merchants
of the earth bewailing her afar off, and watching the smoke of her
torment.
You may see, as St. John warns you, that--after her fall, mind--if
men would go on worshipping the beast, and much more his image--the
phantom and shadow of brute force, after the reality had passed away-
-they should drink of the wine of the wrath of God, and be tormented
for ever. For you may see how those degenerate Romans did go on
worshipping the shadow of brute force, and how they were tormented
for ever; and had no rest day or night, because they worshipped the
Beast and his image.
You may see all the fowl of the heavens flocking together to the
feast of the great God, to eat the flesh of kings and captains, horse
and rider, bond and free.--All carrion-birds, human as well as brute-
-All greedy villains and adventurers, the scoundreldom of the whole
world, flocking in to get their share of the carcass of the dying
empire; as the vulture and the raven flock in to the carrion when the
royal eagles have gorged their fill.
And lastly, you may see, if God give you grace, One who is faithful
and true, with a name which no man knew, save Himself, making war in
righteousness against all evil; bringing order out of disorder, hope
out of despair, fresh health and life out of old disease and death;
executing just judgment among all the nations of the earth; and
sending down from heaven the city of God, in the light of which the
nations of those who are saved should walk, and the kings of the
earth should bring their power and their glory into it; with the tree
of life in the midst of it, whose leaves should be for the healing of
the nations.
Again, I say, I am not here to interpret the Book of Revelations; but
this I say, that that book interprets those times to me.
Leaving, for the present at least, to better historians than myself
the general subject of the Teutonic immigrations; the conquest of
North Gaul by the Franks, of Britain by the Saxons and Angles, of
Burgundy by the Burgundians, of Africa by the Vandals, I shall speak
rather of those Teutonic tribes which actually entered and conquered
Italy; and first, of course, of the Goths. Especially interesting to
us English should their fortunes be, for they are said to be very
near of kin to us; at least to those Jutes who conquered Kent. As
Goths, Geats, Getae, Juts, antiquarians find them in early and
altogether mythic times, in the Scandinavian peninsula, and the isles
and mainland of Denmark.
Their name, it is said, is the same as one name for the Supreme
Being. Goth, Guth, Yuth, signifies war. 'God' is the highest
warrior, the Lord of hosts, and the progenitor of the race, whether
as an 'Eponym hero' or as the supreme Deity. Physical force was
their rude notion of Divine power, and Tiu, Tiv, or Tyr, in like
manner, who was originally the god of the clear sky, the Zeus or Jove
of the Greeks and Romans, became by virtue of his warlike character,
identical with the Roman Mars, till the dies Martis of the Roman week
became the German Tuesday.
Working their way down from Gothland and Jutland, we know not why nor
when, thrusting aside the cognate Burgunds, and the Sclavonic tribes
whom they met on the road, they had spread themselves, in the third
century, over the whole South of Russia, and westward over the
Danubian Provinces, and Hungary. The Ostrogoths (East-goths) lay
from the Volga to the Borysthenes, the Visigoths (West-goths?) from
the Borysthenes to the Theiss. Behind them lay the Gepidae, a German
tribe, who had come south-eastward with them, and whose name is said
to signify the men who had 'bided' (remained) behind the rest.
What manner of men they were it is hard to say, so few details are
left to us. But we may conceive them as a tall, fair-haired people,
clothed in shirts and smocks of embroidered linen, and gaiters cross-
strapped with hide; their arms and necks encircled with gold and
silver rings; the warriors, at least of the upper class, well horsed,
and armed with lance and heavy sword, with chain-mail, and helmets
surmounted with plumes, horns, towers, dragons, boars, and the other
strange devices which are still seen on the crests of German nobles.
This much we can guess; for in this way their ancestors, or at least
relations, the War-Geats, appear clothed in the grand old song of
Beowulf. Their land must have been tilled principally by slaves,
usually captives taken in war: but the noble mystery of the forge,
where arms and ornaments were made, was an honourable craft for men
of rank; and their ladies, as in the middle age, prided themselves on
their skill with the needle and the loom. Their language has been
happily preserved to us in Ulfilas' Translation of the Scriptures.
For these Goths, the greater number of them at least, were by this
time Christians, or very nearly such. Good Bishop Ulfilas, brought
up a Christian and consecrated by order of Constantine the Great, had
been labouring for years to convert his adopted countrymen from the
worship of Thor and Woden. He had translated the Bible for them, and
had constructed a Gothic alphabet for that purpose. He had omitted,
however (prudently as he considered) the books of Kings, with their
histories of the Jewish wars. The Goths, he held, were only too fond
of fighting already, and 'needed in that matter the bit, rather than
the spur.' He had now a large number of converts, some of whom had
even endured persecution from their heathen brethren. Athanaric,
'judge,' or alderman of the Thervings, had sent through the camp--so
runs the story--the waggon which bore the idol of Woden, and had
burnt, with their tents and their families, those who refused to
worship.
They, like all other German tribes, were ruled over by two royal
races, sons of Woden and the Asas. The Ostrogoth race was the
Amalungs--the 'heavenly,' or 'spotless' race; the Visigoth race was
the Balthungs--the 'bold' or 'valiant' race; and from these two
families, and from a few others, but all believed to be lineally
descended from Woden, and now much intermixed, are derived all the
old royal families of Europe, that of the House of Brunswick among
the rest.
That they were no savages, is shewn sufficiently by their names, at
least those of their chiefs. Such names as Alaric, 'all rich' or
'all powerful,' Ataulf, 'the helping father,' Fridigern, 'the willing
peace-maker,' and so forth--all the names in fact, which can be put
back into their native form out of their Romanized distortions, are
tokens of a people far removed from that barbarous state in which men
are named after personal peculiarities, natural objects, or the
beasts of the field. On this subject you may consult, as full of
interest and instruction, the list of Teutonic names given in
Muratori.
They had broken over the Roman frontier more than once, and taken
cities. They had compelled the Emperor Gratian to buy them off.
They had built themselves flat-bottomed boats without iron in them
and sailed from the Crimea round the shores of the Black Sea, once
and again, plundering Trebizond, and at last the temple itself of
Diana at Ephesus. They had even penetrated into Greece and Athens,
plundered the Parthenon, and threatened the capitol. They had fought
the Emperor Decius, till he, and many of his legionaries, were
drowned in a bog in the moment of victory. They had been driven with
difficulty back across the Danube by Aurelian, and walled out of the
Empire with the Allemanni by Probus's 'Teufels-Mauer,' stretching
from the Danube to the Rhine. Their time was not yet come by a
hundred years. But they had seen and tasted the fine things of the
sunny south, and did not forget them amid the steppes and snows.
At last a sore need came upon them. About 350 there was a great king
among them, Ermanaric, 'the powerful warrior,' comparable, says
Jornandes, to Alexander himself, who had conquered all the conquered
tribes around. When he was past 100 years old, a chief of the
Roxolani (Ugrians, according to Dr. Latham; men of Ros, or Russia),
one of these tribes, plotted against him, and sent for help to the
new people, the Huns, who had just appeared on the confines of Europe
and Asia. Old Ermanaric tore the traitor's wife to pieces with wild
horses: but the Huns came nevertheless. A magic hind, the Goths
said, guided the new people over the steppes to the land of the
Goths, and then vanished. They fought with the Goths, and defeated
them. Old Ermanaric stabbed himself for shame, and the hearts of the
Goths became as water before the tempest of nations. They were
supernatural creatures, the Goths believed, engendered of witches and
demons on the steppes; pig-eyed hideous beings, with cakes instead of
faces, 'offam magis quam faciem,' under ratskin caps, armed with
arrows tipped with bone, and lassos of cord, eating, marketing,
sleeping on horseback, so grown into the saddle that they could
hardly walk in their huge boots. With them were Acatzirs, painted
blue, hair as well as skin; Alans, wandering with their waggons like
the Huns, armed with heavy cuirasses of plaited horn, their horses
decked with human scalps; Geloni armed with a scythe, wrapt in a
cloak of human skin; Bulgars who impaled their prisoners--savages
innumerable as the locust swarms. Who could stand against them?
In the year 375, the West Goths came down to the Danube-bank and
entreated the Romans to let them cross. There was a Christian party
among them, persecuted by the heathens, and hoping for protection
from Rome. Athanaric had vowed never to set foot on Roman soil, and
after defending himself against the Huns, retired into the forests of
'Caucaland.' Good Bishop Ulfilas and his converts looked longingly
toward the Christian Empire. Surely the Christians would receive
them as brothers, welcome them, help them. The simple German fancied
a Roman even such a one as themselves.
Ulfilas went on embassy to Antioch, to Valens the Emperor. Valens,
low-born, cruel, and covetous, was an Arian, and could not lose the
opportunity of making converts. He sent theologians to meet Ulfilas,
and torment him into Arianism. When he arrived, Valens tormented him
himself. While the Goths starved he argued, apostasy was the
absolute condition of his help, till Ulfilas, in a weak moment, gave
his word that the Goths should become Arians, if Valens would give
them lands on the South bank of the Danube. Then they would be the
Emperor's men, and guard the marches against all foes. From that
time Arianism became the creed, not only of the Goths, but of the
Vandals, the Sueves, and almost all the Teutonic tribes.
It was (if the story be true) a sinful and foolish compact, forced
from a good man by the sight of his countrymen's extreme danger and
misery. It avenged itself, soon enough, upon both Goths and Romans.
To the Goths themselves the change must have seemed not only
unimportant, but imperceptible. Unaccustomed to that accuracy of
thought, which is too often sneered at by Gibbon as 'metaphysical
subtlety,' all of which they would have been aware was the change of
a few letters in a creed written in an unknown tongue. They could
not know, (Ulfilas himself could not have known, only two years after
the death of St. Athanasius at Alexandria; while the Nicaean Creed
was as yet received by only half of the Empire; and while he
meanwhile had been toiling for years in the Danubian wilds, ignorant
perhaps of the controversy which had meanwhile convulsed the Church)-
-neither the Goths nor he, I say, could have known that the Arianism,
which they embraced, was really the last, and as it were apologetic,
refuge of dying Polytheism; that it, and not the Catholic Faith,
denied the abysmal unity of the Godhead; that by making the Son
inferior to the Father, as touching his Godhead, it invented two
Gods, a greater and a lesser, thus denying the absoluteness, the
infinity, the illimitability, by any category of quantity, of that
One Eternal, of whom it is written, that God is a Spirit. Still less
could they have guessed that when Arius, the handsome popular
preacher (whose very name, perhaps, Ulfilas never heard) asked the
fine ladies of Alexandria--'Had you a son before that son was born?'-
-'No.' 'Then God could have no son before that son was begotten,
&c.'--that he was mingling up the idea of Time with the idea of that
Eternal God who created Time, and debasing to the accidents of before
and after that Timeless and Eternal Generation, of which it is
written, 'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.' Still
less could Ulfilas, or his Goths, have known, that the natural human
tendency to condition God by Time, would be, in later ages, even long
after Arianism was crushed utterly, the parent of many a cruel,
gross, and stupid superstition. To them it would have been a mere
question whether Woden, the All-father, was superior to one of his
sons, the Asas: and the Catholic faith probably seemed to them an
impious assumption of equality, on the part of one of those Asas,
with Woden himself.
Of the battle between Arianism and Orthodoxy I have said enough to
shew you that I think it an internecine battle between truth and
falsehood. But it has been long ago judged by wager of battle: by
the success of that duel of time, of which we must believe (as our
forefathers believed of all fair duels) that God defends the right.
So the Goths were to come over the Danube stream: but they must give
up their arms, and deliver their children (those of rank, one
supposes), as hostages, to be educated by the Romans, as Romans.
They crossed the fatal river; they were whole days in crossing; those
set to count them gave it up in despair; Ammianus says: 'He who
wishes to know their number,'
'Libyci velit aequoris idem
Discere quam multae Zephyro volvuntur arenae.'
And when they were across, they gave up the children. They had not
the heart to give up the beloved weapons. The Roman commissioners
let them keep the arms, at the price of many a Gothic woman's honour.
Ugly and foul things happened, of which we have only hints. Then
they had to be fed for the time being, till they could cultivate
their land. Lupicinus and Maximus, the two governors of Thrace
pocketed the funds which Valens sent, and starved the Goths. The
markets were full of carrion and dogs' flesh. Anything was good
enough for a barbarian. Their fringed carpets, their beautiful
linens, all went. A little wholesome meat cost 10 pounds of silver.
When all was gone, they had to sell their children. To establish a
slave-trade in the beautiful boys and girls was just what the wicked
Romans wanted.
At last the end came. They began to rise. Fridigern, their king,
kept them quiet till the time was ripe for revenge. The Romans,
trying to keep the West Goths down, got so confused, it seems, that
they let the whole nation of the East Goths (of whom we shall hear
more hereafter) dash across the Danube, and establish themselves in
the north of the present Turkey, to the east of the West Goths.
Then at Marcianopolis, the capital of Lower Moesia, Lupicinus asked
Fridigern and his chiefs to a feast. The starving Goths outside were
refused supplies from the market, and came to blows with the guards.
Lupicinus, half drunk, heard of it, and gave orders for a massacre.
Fridigern escaped from the palace, sword in hand. The smouldering
embers burst into flame, the war-cry was raised, and the villain
Lupicinus fled for his life.
Then began war south of the Danube. The Roman legions were defeated
by the Goths, who armed themselves with the weapons of the dead.
Moesia was overrun with fire and sword. Adrianople was attacked, but
in vain. The slaves in the gold mines were freed from their misery,
and shewed the Goths the mountain-passes and the stores of grain. As
they went on, the Goths recovered their children. The poor things
told horrid tales; and the Goths, maddened, avenged themselves on the
Romans of every age and sex. 'They left,' says St. Jerome, 'nothing
alive--not even the beasts of the field; till nothing was left but
growing brambles and thick forests.'
Valens, the Emperor, was at Antioch. Now he hurried to
Constantinople, but too late. The East Goths had joined the West
Goths; and hordes of Huns, Alans, and Taifalae (detestable savages,
of whom we know nothing but evil) had joined Fridigern's confederacy.
Gratian, Valens' colleague and nephew, son of Valentinian the bear-
ward, had just won a great victory over the Allemanni at Colmar in
Alsace; and Valens was jealous of his glory. He is said to have been
a virtuous youth, whose monomania was shooting. He fell in love with
the wild Alans, in spite of their horse-trappings of scalps, simply
because of their skill in archery; formed a body-guard of them, and
passed his time hunting with them round Paris. Nevertheless, he won
this great victory by the help, it seems, of one Count Ricimer
('ever-powerful'), Count of the Domestics, whose name proclaims him a
German.
Valens was jealous of Gratian's fame; he was stung by the reproaches
of the mob of Constantinople; and he undervalued the Goths, on
account of some successes of his lieutenants, who had recovered much
of the plunder taken by them, and had utterly overpowered the foul
Taifalae, transporting them to lands about Modena and Parma in Italy.
He rejected Count Ricimer's advice to wait till Gratian reinforced
him with the victorious western legions, and determined to give
battle a few miles from Adrianople. Had he waited for Gratian, the
history of the whole world might have been different.
For on the ninth of August, A.D. 378, the fatal day, the second
Cannae, from which Rome never recovered as from that first, the young
world and the old world met, and fought it out; and the young world
won. The light Roman cavalry fled before the long lances and heavy
swords of the German knights. The knights turned on the infantry,
broke them, hunted them down by charge after charge, and left the
footmen to finish the work.
Two-thirds of the Roman army were destroyed; four Counts of the
Empire; generals and officers without number. Valens fled wounded to
a cottage. The Goths set it on fire, and burned him and his staff
therein, ignorant that they had in their hands the Emperor of Rome.
Verily there is a God who judgeth the earth.
So thought the Catholics of that day, who saw in the fearful death of
Valens a punishment for his having forced the Goths to become Arians.
'It was just,' says one, 'that he should burn on earth, by whose
counsels so many barbarians will burn in hell for ever.' There are
(as I have shewn) still darker counts in the conduct of the Romans
toward the Goths; enough (if we believe our Bibles) to draw down on
the guilty the swift and terrible judgments of God.
At least, this was the second Cannae, the death-wound of Rome. From
that day the end was certain, however slow. The Teuton had at last
tried his strength against the Roman. The wild forest-child had
found himself suddenly at death-grips with the Enchanter whom he had
feared, and almost worshipped, for so long; and behold, to his own
wonder, he was no more a child, but grown into a man, and the
stronger, if not the cunninger of the two. There had been a spell
upon him; the 'Romani nominis umbra.' But from that day the spell
was broken. He had faced a Roman Emperor, a Divus Caesar, the man-
god by whose head all nations swore, rich with the magic wealth, wise
with the magic cunning, of centuries of superhuman glory; and he had
killed him, and behold he died, like other men. That he had done.
What was there left for him now that he could not do?
The stronger he was, but not yet the cunninger of the two. The Goths
could do no more. They had to leave Adrianople behind them, with the
Emperor's treasures safe within its walls; to gaze with childish
wonder at the Bosphorus and its palaces; to recoil in awe from the
'long walls' of Constantinople, and the great stones which the
engines thereon hurled at them by 'arsmetricke and nigromancy,' as
their descendants believed of the Roman mechanicians, even five
hundred years after; to hear (without being able to avenge) the
horrible news, that the Gothic lads distributed throughout Asia, to
be educated as Romans, had been decoyed into the cities by promises
of lands and honours, and then massacred in cold blood; and then to
settle down, leaving their children unavenged, for twenty years on
the rich land which we now call Turkey in Europe, waiting till the
time was come.
Waiting, I say, till the time was come. The fixed idea that Rome, if
not Constantinople, could be taken at last, probably never left the
minds of the leading Goths after the battle of Adrianople. The
altered policy of the Caesars was enough of itself to keep that idea
alive. So far from expelling them from the country which they had
seized, the new Emperor began to flatter and to honour them.
They had been heretofore regarded as savages, either to be driven
back by main force, or tempted to enlist in the Roman ranks.
Theodosius regarded them as a nation, and one which it was his
interest to hire, to trust, to indulge at the expense of his Roman
subjects.
Theodosius has received the surname of Great--seemingly by
comparison; 'Inter caecos luscus rex;' and it was highly creditable
to a Roman Emperor in those days to be neither ruffian nor villain,
but a handsome, highbred, courteous gentleman, pure in his domestic
life, an orthodox Christian, and sufficiently obedient to the Church
to forgive the monks who had burnt a Jewish synagogue, and to do
penance in the Cathedral of Milan for the massacre of Thessalonica.
That the morals of the Empire (if Zosimus is to be at all believed)
grew more and more effeminate, corrupt, reckless; that the soldiers
(if Vegetius is to be believed) actually laid aside, by royal
permission, their helmets and cuirasses, as too heavy for their
degenerate bodies; that the Roman heavy infantry, which had conquered
the world, ceased to exist, while its place was taken by that
Teutonic heavy cavalry, which decided every battle in Europe till the
English yeoman, at Crecy and Poictiers, turned again the balance of
arms in favour of the men who fought on foot; that the Goths became
the 'foederati' or allies of the Empire, paid to fight its battles
against Maximus the Spaniard, and Arbogast the Frank, the rebels who,
after the murder of young Gratian, attempted to set up a separate
empire in the west; that Stilicho the Vandal was the Emperor's
trusted friend, and master of the horse; that Alaric the Balth, and
other noble Goths, were learning to combine with their native courage
those Roman tactics which they only needed to become masters of the
world; that in all cities, even in the Royal Palace, the huge Goth
swaggered in Roman costume, his neck and arms heavy with golden torcs
and bracelets; or even (as in the case of Fravitta and Priulf)
stabbed his enemy with impunity at the imperial table; that [Greek
text which cannot be reproduced], to disturb the Goths, was a deadly
offence throughout the Empire: all these things did not prevent a
thousand new statues from rising in honour of the great Caesar, and
excited nothing more than grumblings of impotent jealousy from a
people whose maxim had become, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die.'
Three anecdotes will illustrate sufficiently the policy of Theodosius
toward his inconvenient guests. Towards the beginning of his reign,
when the Goths, after the death of the great Fridigern, were broken
up, and quarreling among themselves, he tempted a royal Amal, Modar
by name, by the title of Master-General, to attack and slaughter in
their sleep a rival tribe of Goths, and carry off an immense spoil to
the imperial camp. To destroy the German by the German was so old a
method of the Roman policy, that it was not considered derogatory to
the 'greatness' of Theodosius.
The old Athanaric, the Therving--he who had sworn never to set foot
on Roman soil, and had burnt them who would not fall down and worship
before Woden's waggon, came over the Danube, out of the forests of
'Caucaland,' and put himself at the head of the Goths. The great
Caesar trembled before the heathen hero; and they made peace
together; and old Athanaric went to him at Constantinople, and they
became as friends. And the Romani nominis umbra, the glamour of the
Roman name, fell on the old man, too feeble now to fight; and as he
looked, says Jornandes, on the site of the city, and on the fleets of
ships, and the world-famous walls, and the people from all the
nations upon earth, he said, 'Now I behold what I have often heard
tell, and never believed. The Kaiser is a God on earth, and he who
shall lift his hand against him, is guilty of his own blood.' The
old hero died in Constantinople, and the really good-natured Emperor
gave him a grand funeral, and a statue, and so delighted the simple
Goths, that the whole nation entered his service bodily, and became
the Emperor's men.
The famous massacre of Thessalonica, and the penance of Theodosius,
immortalized by the pencil of Vandyke, is another significant example
of the relation between Goth and Roman. One Botheric (a Vandal or
other Teuton by his name) was military commandant of that important
post. He put in prison a popular charioteer of the circus, for a
crime for which the Teutonic language had to borrow a foreign name,
and which the Teutons, like ourselves, punished with death, though it
was committed with impunity in any Roman city. At the public games,
the base mob clamoured, but in vain, for the release of their
favourite; and not getting him, rose on Botheric, murdered him and
his officers, and dragged their corpses through the streets.
This was indeed [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]; and
Theodosius, partly in honest indignation, partly perhaps in fear of
the consequences, issued orders from Milan which seem to have
amounted to a permission to the Goths to avenge themselves. The
populace were invited as usual to the games of the circus, and
crowded in, forgetful of their crime, heedless of danger, absorbed in
the one greed of frivolous, if not sinful pleasure. The Gothic
troops concealed around entered, and then began a 'murder grim and
great.' For three hours it lasted. Every age and sex, innocent or
guilty, native or foreigner, to the number of at least 7,000,
perished, or are said to have perished; and the soul of Botheric had
'good company on its way to Valhalla.'
The Goths, doubtless, considered that they were performing an act of
public justice upon villains: but the Bishops of the Church looked
at the matter in another light. The circumstances of treachery, the
confusion of the innocent with the guilty, the want of any judicial
examination and sentence, aroused their sense of humanity and
justice. The offence was aggravated by the thought that the victims
were Roman and orthodox, the murderers barbarians and Arians; St.
Ambrose, with a noble courage, stopped the Emperor at the door of the
Basilica of Milan, and forbad him to enter, till he had atoned for
the fatal order by public penance. The Caesar submitted nobly to the
noble demand; and the repentance of Theodosius is the last scene in
the downward career of the Caesars, which can call forth a feeling of
admiration and respect.
In January 395 Theodosius died; and after him came the deluge.
The Empire was parted between his two worthless sons. Honorius had
the west, Arcadius the east; while the real master of the Empire was
Stilicho the Vandal, whose virtues and valour and mighty stature are
sung (and not undeservedly) in the pompous verses of Claudian. Of
the confusion which ensued; of the murder (well-deserved) of Rufinus,
the infamous minister whose devout hypocrisy had so long cajoled
Theodosius; of the revolt and atrocities of Gildo in Africa, you must
read in the pages of Gibbon. These lectures confine themselves, at
present, to the history of the Goths.
In January 395, I said, Theodosius died. Before the end of the
winter the Goths were in arms, with Alaric the Balth at their head.
They had been refused, at least for the time, the payment of their
usual subsidy. He had been refused the command of the Roman armies.
Any excuse was sufficient. The fruit was ripe for plucking. The
wrongs of centuries were to be avenged. Other tribes crost the
Danube on the ice, and joined the Goths; and the mighty host swept
down through Greece, passing Thermopylae unopposed, ransoming Athens
(where Alaric enjoyed a Greek bath and a public banquet, and tried to
behave for a day like a Roman gentleman); sacking Corinth, Argos,
Sparta, and all the cities and villages far and wide, and carrying
off plunder inestimable, and troops of captive women.
Stilicho threw himself into the Peloponnese at Corinth to cut off the
Goths, and after heavy fighting, Alaric, who seems to have been a
really great general, out-manoeuvred him, crost the Gulf of Corinth
at Rhium, with all his plunder and captives, and got safe away into
northern Greece.
There Arcadius, the terrified Emperor of the East, punished him for
having devastated Greece, by appointing him Master-General of the
very country which he had ravaged. The end was coming very near.
The Goths lifted him on the shield, and proclaimed him King of the
West Goths; and there he staid, somewhere about the head of the
Adriatic, poised like an eagle in mid-air, watching Rome on one side,
and Byzant on the other, uncertain on which quarry he should swoop.
He made up his mind for Rome. He would be the man to do the deed at
last. There was a saga in which he trusted. Claudian gives it in an
hexameter,
'Alpibus Italiae ruptis penetrabis ad urbem.'
Yes, he would take The City, and avenge the treachery of Valens, and
all the wrongs which Teutons had endured from the Romans for now four
centuries. And he did it.
But not the first time. He swept over the Alps. Honorius fled to
Asta, and Alaric besieged him there. The faithful Stilicho came to
the rescue; and Alaric was driven to extremities. His warriors
counselled him to retreat. No, he would take Rome, or die. But at
Pollentia, Stilicho surprised him, while he and his Goths were
celebrating Easter Sunday, and a fearful battle followed. The Romans
stormed his camp, recovered the spoils of Greece, and took his wife,
decked in the jewels in which she meant to enter Rome. One longs to
know what became of her.
At least, so say the Romans: the Goths tell a very different story;
and one suspects that Pollentia may be one more of those splendid
paper victories, in which the Teutons were utterly exterminated, only
to rise out of the ground, seemingly stronger and more numerous than
ever. At least, instead of turning his head to the Alps, he went on
toward Rome. Stilicho dared not fight him again, and bought him off.
He turned northward toward Gaul, and at Verona Stilicho got him at an
advantage, and fought him once more, and if we are to believe Rosino
and Claudian, beat him again. 'Taceo de Alarico, saepe victo, saepe
concluso, semperque dimisso.' 'It is ill work trapping an eagle,'
says some one. When you have caught him, the safest thing very often
is to let him go again.
Meanwhile poured down into Italy, as far as Florence (a merely
unimportant episode in those fearful days), another wave of German
invaders under one Radogast, 200,000 strong. Under the walls of
Florence they sat down, and perished of wine, and heat, and
dysentery. Like water they flowed in, and like water they sank into
the soil: and every one of them a human soul.
Stilicho and Honorius went to Rome, and celebrated their triumph over
the Goths, with (for the last time in history) gladiatorial sports.
Three years past, and then Stilicho was duly rewarded for having
saved Rome, in the approved method for every great barbarian who was
fool enough to help the treacherous Roman; namely, by being murdered.
Alaric rose instantly, and with him all the Gothic tribes. Down
through Italy he past, almost without striking a blow. Ravenna,
infamous, according to Sidonius, for its profligacy, where the
Emperor's court was, he past disdainfully, and sat down before the
walls of Rome. He did not try to storm it. Probably he could not.
He had no such machines, as those with which the Romans battered
walls. Quietly he sat, he and his Goths, 'as wolves wait round the
dying buffalo;' waiting for the Romans within to starve and die.
They did starve and die; men murdered each other for food; mothers
ate their own babes; but they sent out embassies, boasting of their
strength and numbers. Alaric laughed,--'The thicker the hay, the
easier it is mowed.' What terms would he take? 'All your gold, all
your silver, the best of your precious things. All your barbarian
slaves.' That last is significant. He would deliver his own flesh
and blood. The Teuton man should be free. The trolls should drag no
more of the forest children into their accursed den. 'What then will
you leave us?' 'Your lives.'
They bought him off with a quaint ransom: 5000 pounds weight of
gold, 30,000 of silver, 4000 robes of silk, 3000 pieces of scarlet
cloth, and 3000 lbs. of pepper, possibly spices of all kinds. Gold,
and finery, and spices--gifts fit for children, such as those Goths
were.
But he got, too, 40,000 Teuton slaves safe out of the evil place, and
embodied them into his army. He had now 100,000 fighting men. Why
did he not set up as king of Italy? Was it that the awe of the
place, the prestige of the Roman name, cowed him? It cowed each of
the Teutonic invaders successively. To make themselves emperors of
Rome was a thing of which they dared not dream. Be that as it may,
all he asked was, to be received as some sort of vassal of the
Emperor. The Master-Generalship of Italy, subsidies for his army, an
independent command in the Tyrolese country, whence he had come, were
his demand.
Overblown with self-conceit, the Romans refused him. They would
listen to no conditions. They were in a thoroughly Chinese temper.
You will find the Byzantine empire in the same temper centuries
after; blinded to present weakness by the traditions of their
forefathers' strength. They had worshipped the beast. Now that only
his image was left, they worshipped that.
Alaric seized Ostia, and cut off their supplies. They tried to
appease him by dethroning Honorius, and setting up some puppet
Attalus. Alaric found him plotting; or said that he had done so; and
degraded him publicly at Rimini before his whole army. Again he
offered peace. The insane Romans proclaimed that his guilt precluded
him for ever from the clemency of the Empire.
Then came the end. He marched on Rome. The Salarian gate was thrown
open at midnight, probably by German slaves within; and then, for
five dreadful days and nights, the wicked city expiated in agony the
sins of centuries.
And so at last the Nibelungen hoard was won.
'And the kings of the earth who had lived delicately with her, and
the merchants of the earth who were made rich by her, bewailed her,
standing afar off for the fear of her torment, and crying, Alas!
alas, that great Babylon! for in one hour is thy judgment come.'
St. John passes in those words from the region of symbol to that of
literal description. A great horror fell upon all nations, when the
news came. Rome taken? Surely the end of all things was at hand.
The wretched fugitives poured into Egypt and Syria--especially to
Jerusalem; perhaps with some superstitious hope that Christ's tomb,
or even Christ himself, might save them.
St. Jerome, as he saw day by day patrician men and women who had
passed their lives in luxury, begging their bread around his
hermitage at Bethlehem, wrote of the fall of Rome as a man astonied.
St. Augustine, at Hippo, could only look on it as the end of all
human power and glory, perhaps of the earth itself. Babylon the
great had fallen, and now Christ was coming in the clouds of heaven
to set up the city of God for ever. In that thought he wrote his De
Civitate Dei. Read it, gentlemen--especially you who are to be
priests--not merely for its details of the fall of Rome, but as the
noblest theodicy which has yet proceeded from a human pen.
Followed by long trains of captives, long trains of waggons bearing
the spoils of all the world, Alaric went on South, 'with the native
instinct of the barbarian,' as Dr. Sheppard well says. Always toward
the sun. Away from Muspelheim and the dark cold north, toward the
sun, and Valhalla, where Odin and the Asas dwell in everlasting
light.
He tried to cross into Sicily: but a storm wrecked his boats, and
the Goths were afraid of the sea. And after a while he died. And
the wild men made a great mourning over him. They had now no plan
left; no heart to go south, and look for Odin over the sea. But of
one thing they were resolved, that the base Romans should not dig up
Alaric out of his barrow and scatter his bones to the winds.
So they put no barrow over the great king; but under the walls of
Cosenza they turned the river-bed, and in that river-bed they set
Alaric, armed and mailed, upright upon his horse, with gold, and
jewels, and arms, and it may be captive youths and maids, that he
might enter into Valhalla in royal pomp, and make a worthy show among
the heroes in Odin's hall. And then they turned back the river into
its bed, and slew the slaves who had done the work, that no man might
know where Alaric lies: and no man does know till this day.
As I said, they had no plan left now. Two years they stayed in
Campania, basking in the villas and gardens, drinking their fill of
the wine; and then flowed away northward again, no one knows why.
They had no wish to settle, as they might have done. They followed
some God-given instinct, undiscoverable now by us. Ataulf, Alaric's
kinsman, married Placidia, the Emperor's beautiful young sister, and
accepted from him some sort of commission to fight against his
enemies in Gaul. So to the south of Gaul they went, and then into
Spain, crushing before them Alans, Sueves, and Vandals, and
quarrelling among themselves. Ataulf was murdered, and all his
children; Placidia put to shame. Then she had her revenge. To me it
is not so much horrible as pitiful. They had got the Nibelungen
hoard; and with it the Nibelungen curse.
A hundred years afterwards, when the Franks pillaged the Gothic
palace of Narbonne, they found the remnants of it. Things
inestimable, indescribable; tables of solid emerald; the Missorium, a
dish 2500 lbs. weight, covered with all the gems of India. They had
been in Solomon's Temple, fancied the simple Franks--as indeed some
of them may well have been. The Arabs got the great emerald table at
last, with its three rows of great pearls. Where are they all now?
What is become, gentlemen, of the treasures of Rome? Jewels,
recollect, are all but indestructible; recollect, too, that vast
quantities were buried from time to time, and their places forgotten.
Perhaps future generations will discover many such hoards.
Meanwhile, many of those same jewels must be in actual use even now.
Many a gem which hangs now on an English lady's wrist saw Alaric sack
Rome--and saw before and since--What not? The palaces of the
Pharaohs, or of Darius; then the pomp of the Ptolemies, or of the
Seleucids--came into Europe on the neck of some vulgar drunken wife
of a Roman proconsul, to glitter for a few centuries at every
gladiator's butchery in the amphitheatre; then went away with
Placidia on a Gothic ox-waggon, to pass into an Arab seraglio at
Seville; and then, perhaps, back from Sultan to Sultan again to its
native India, to figure in the peacock-throne of the Great Mogul, and
be bought at last by some Armenian for a few rupees from an English
soldier, and come hither--and whither next? When England shall be
what Alexandria and Rome are now, that little stone will be as bright
as ever.--An awful symbol, if you will take it so, of the permanence
of God's works and God's laws, amid the wild chance and change of
sinful man.
Then followed for Rome years of peace,--such peace as the wicked make
for themselves--A troubled sea, casting up mire and dirt. Wicked
women, wicked counts (mayors of the palace, one may call them) like
Aetius and Boniface, the real rulers of a nominal Empire.
Puppet Valentinian succeeded his father, puppet Honorius. In his
days appeared another great portent--another comet, sweeping down out
of infinite space, and back into infinite space again.--Attila and
his Huns. They lay in innumerable hordes upon the Danube, until
Honoria, Valentinian's sister, confined in a convent at
Constantinople for some profligacy, sent her ring to Attila. He must
be her champion, and deliver her. He paused a while, like Alaric
before him, doubting whether to dash on Constantinople or Rome, and
at last decided for Rome. But he would try Gaul first; and into Gaul
he poured, with all his Tartar hordes, and with them all the Teuton
tribes, who had gathered in his progress, as an avalanche gathers the
snow in its course. At the great battle of Chalons, in the year 451,
he fought it out: Hun, Sclav, Tartar, and Finn, backed by Teutonic
Gepid and Herule, Turkling, East Goth and Lombard, against Roman and
West Goth, Frank and Burgund, and the Bretons of Armorica. Wicked
Aetius shewed himself that day, as always, a general and a hero--the
Marlborough of his time--and conquered. Attila and his hordes rolled
away eastward, and into Italy for Rome.
That is the Hunnenschlacht; 'a battle,' as Jornandes calls it,
'atrox, multiplex, immane, pertinax.' Antiquity, he says, tells of
nothing like it. No man who had lost that sight could say that he
had seen aught worth seeing.--A fight gigantic, supernatural in
vastness and horror, and the legends which still hang about the
place. You may see one of them in Von Kaulbach's immortal design--
the ghosts of the Huns and the ghosts of the Germans rising from
their graves on the battle-night in every year, to fight it over
again in the clouds, while the country far and wide trembles at their
ghostly hurrah. No wonder men remember that Hunnenschlacht. Many
consider that it saved Europe; that it was one of the decisive
battles of the world.
Not that Attila was ruined. Within the year he had swept through
Germany, crossed the Alps, and devastated Italy almost to the walls
of Rome. And there the great Pope Leo, 'the Cicero of preaching, the
Homer of theology, the Aristotle of true philosophy,' met the wild
heathen: and a sacred horror fell upon Attila, and he turned, and
went his way, to die a year or two after no man knows how. Over and
above his innumerable wives, he took a beautiful German girl. When
his people came in the morning, the girl sat weeping, or seeming to
weep; but Etzel, the scourge of God, lay dead in a pool of gore. She
said that he had burst a blood-vessel. The Teutons whispered among
themselves, that like a free-born Teuton, she had slain her tyrant.
One longs to know what became of her.
And then the hordes broke up. Ardarich raised the Teuton Gepids and
Ostrogoths. The Teutons who had obeyed Attila, turned on their
Tartar conquerors, the only people who had ever subdued German men,
and then only by brute force of overpowering numbers. At Netad, upon
the great plain between the Drave and the Danube, they fought the
second Hunnenschlacht, and the Germans conquered. Thirty thousand
Huns fell on that dreadful day, and the rest streamed away into the
heart of Asia, into the infinite unknown deserts from whence the foul
miscreants had streamed forth, and left the Teutons masters of the
world. The battle of Netad; that, and not Chalons, to my mind, was
the saving battle of Europe.
So Rome was saved; but only for a few years. Puppet Valentinian
rewarded Aetius for saving Rome, by stabbing with his own hand in his
own palace, the hero of Chalons; and then went on to fill up the cup
of his iniquity. It is all more like some horrible romance than
sober history. Neglecting his own wife Eudoxia, he took it into his
wicked head to ravish her intimate friend, the wife of a senator.
Maximus stabbed him, retaliated on the beautiful empress, and made
himself Emperor. She sent across the seas to Africa, to Genseric the
Vandal, the cruel tyrant and persecutor. He must come and be her
champion, as Attila had been Honoria's. And he came, with Vandals,
Moors, naked Ausurians from the Atlas. The wretched Romans, in their
terror, tore Maximus in pieces; but it was too late. Eudoxia met
Genseric at the gates in royal robes and jewels. He stript her of
her jewels on the spot, and sacked Rome; and that was her reward.
This is the second sack. More dreadful far than the first--455 is
its date. Then it was that the statues, whose fragments are still
found, were hurled in vain on the barbarian assailants. Not merely
gold and jewels, but the art-treasures of Rome were carried off to
the Vandal fleet, and with them the golden table and the seven-
branched candlestick which Titus took from the Temple of Jerusalem.
How had these things escaped the Goths forty years before? We cannot
tell. Perhaps the Gothic sack, which only lasted five days, was less
complete than this one, which went on for fourteen days of
unutterable horrors. The plunderers were not this time sturdy honest
Goths; not even German slaves, mad to revenge themselves on their
masters: they were Moors, Ausurian black savages, and all the
pirates and cut-throats of the Mediterranean.
Sixty thousand prisoners were carried off to Carthage. All the
statues were wrecked on the voyage to Africa, and lost for ever.
And yet Rome did not die. She lingered on; her Emperor still calling
himself an Emperor, her senate a senate; feeding her lazy plebs, as
best she could, with the remnant of those revenues which former
Emperors had set aside for their support--their public bread, public
pork, public oil, public wine, public baths,--and leaving them to
gamble and quarrel, and listen to the lawyers in rags and rascality,
and to rise and murder ruler after ruler, benefactor after
benefactor, out of base jealousy and fear of any one less base than
themselves. And so 'the smoke of her torment went up continually.'
But if Rome would not die, still less would she repent; as it is
written--'The remnant of the people repented not of their deeds, but
gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven.'
As the century runs on, the confusion becomes more and more dreadful.
Anthemius, Olybrius, Orestes, and the other half-caste Romans with
Greek names who become quasi-emperors and get murdered; Ricimer the
Sueve, the king-maker and king-murderer; even good Majorian, who as
puppet Emperor set up by Ricimer, tries to pass a few respectable
laws, and is only murdered all the sooner. None of these need detain
us. They mean nothing, they represent no idea, they are simply kites
and crows quarrelling over the carcase, and cannot possibly teach us
anything, but the terrible lesson, that in all revolutions the worst
men are certain to rise to the top.
But only for a while, gentlemen, only for a while. Villany is by its
very essence self-destructive, and if rogues have their day, the time
comes when rogues fall out, and honest men come by their own.
That day, however, was not come for wretched Rome. A third time she
was sacked by Ricimer her own general; and then more villains ruled
her; and more kites and crows plundered her. The last of them only
need keep us a while. He is Odoacer, the giant Herule, Houd-y-
wacker, as some say his name really is, a soubriquet perhaps from his
war-cry, 'Hold ye stoutly,' 'Stand you steady.' His father was
AEdecon, Attila's secretary, chief of the little Turkling tribe, who,
though Teutonic, had clung faithfully to Attila's sons, and after the
battle of Netad, came to ruin. There are strange stories of Odoacer.
One from the Lives of St. Severinus, how Odoacer and his brothers
started over the Alps, knapsacks at back, to seek their fortunes in
Italy, and take service with the Romans; and how they came to St.
Severinus' cell near Vienna, and went in, heathens as they probably
were, to get a blessing from the holy hermit; and how Odoacer had to
stoop, and stand stooping, so huge he was. And how the saint saw
that he was no common lad, and said, 'Go into Italy, clothed in thy
ragged sheep-skins: thou shalt soon give greater gifts to thy
friends.' So he went, and his brother with him. One of them at
least ought to interest us. He was Onulf, Hunwulf, Wulf, Guelph, the
Wolf-cub, who went away to Constantinople, and saw strange things,
and did strange things likewise, and at last got back to Germany, and
settled in Bavaria, and became the ancestor of all the Guelphs, and
of Victoria, queen of England. His son, Wulfgang, fought under
Belisarius against the Goths; his son again, Ulgang, under Belisarius
against Persian and Lombard; his son or grandson was Queen
Brunhilda's confidant in France, and became Duke of Burgundy; and
after that the fortunes of his family were mixed up with the
Merovingian kings of France, and then again with the Lombards in
Italy, till one of them emerges as Guelf, count of Altorf, the
ancestor of our Guelphic line.
But to return to Odoacer. He came to Rome, seeking his fortune.
There he found in power Orestes, his father's old colleague at
Attila's court, the most unprincipled turn-coat of his day; who had
been the Emperor's man, then Attila's man, and would be anybody's man
if needed: but who was now his own man, being king-maker for the
time being, and father of the puppet Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, a
pretty little lad, with an ominous name.
Odoacer took service under Orestes in the bodyguards, became a great
warrior and popular; watched his time; and when Orestes refused the
mercenaries, Herules, Rugians, Scyrings, Turklings and Alans--all the
weak or half-caste frontier tribes who had as yet little or no share
in the spoils of Italy--their demand of the third of the lands of
Italy, he betrayed his benefactor; promised the mercenaries to do for
them what Orestes would not, and raises his famous band of
confederates. At last he called himself King of Nations, burnt
Pavia, and murdered Orestes, as a due reward for his benefits.
Stript of his purple, the last Emperor of Rome knelt crying at the
feet of the German giant, and begged not to be murdered like his
father. And the great wild beast's hard heart smote him, and he sent
the poor little lad away, to live in wealth and peace in Lucullus'
villa at Misenum, with plenty of money, and women, and gewgaws, to
dream away his foolish life looking out over the fair bay of Naples--
the last Emperor of Rome.
Then Odoacer set to work, and not altogether ill. He gave his
confederates the third of Italy, in fief under himself as king, and
for fourteen years (not without the help of a few more murders) he
kept some sort of rude order and justice in the wretched land.
Remember him, for, bad man as he is, he does represent a principle.
He initiated, by that gift of the lands to his soldiers, the feudal
system in Italy. I do not mean that he invented it. It seems rather
to be a primaeval German form, as old as the days of Tacitus, who
describes, if you will recollect, the German war-kings as parting the
conquered lands among their 'comites,' thanes, or companions in arms.
So we leave Odoacer king of Italy, for fourteen years, little
dreaming, perhaps, of the day when as he had done unto others so
should it be done to him. But for that tale of just and terrible
retribution you must wait till the next lecture.
And now, to refresh us with a gleam of wholesome humanity after all
these horrors, let us turn to our worthy West Goth cousins for a
while. They have stopt cutting each other's throats, settled
themselves in North Spain and South France, and good bishop Sidonius
gets to like them. They are just and honest men on the whole,
kindly, and respectable in morals, living according to their strange
old Gothic Law. But above all Sidonius likes their king--Theodoric
is his name. A man of blood he has been in his youth: but he has
settled down, like his people; and here is a picture of him. A real
photograph of a live old Goth, nearly 1400 years ago. Gibbon gives a
good translation of it. I will give you one, but Sidonius is prolix
and florid, and I have had to condense.
A middle-sized, stout man, of great breadth of chest, and thickness
of limb, a large hand, and a small foot, curly haired, bushy eye-
browed, with remarkably large eyes and eyelids, hook-nosed, thin-
lipped; brilliant, cheerful, impassioned, full of health and strength
in mind and body. He goes to chapel before day-light, sits till
eight doing justice, while the crowd, let into a latticed enclosure,
is admitted one by one behind a curtain into the presence. At eight
he leaves the throne, and goes either to count his money, or look at
his horses. If he hunts, he thinks it undignified to carry his bow,
and womanish to keep it strung, a boy carries it behind him; and when
game gets up, he asks you (or the Bishop, who seems to have gone
hunting with him) what you would wish him to aim at; strings his bow,
and then (says Sidonius) never misses his shot. He dines at noon,
quietly in general, magnificently on Saturdays; drinks very little,
and instead of sleeping after dinner, plays at tables and dice. He
is passionately fond of his game, but never loses his temper, joking
and talking to the dice, and to every one round him, throwing aside
royal severity, and bidding all be merry (says the bishop); for, to
speak my mind, what he is afraid of is, that people should be afraid
of him. If he wins he is in immense good humour; then is the time to
ask favours of him; and, says the crafty bishop, many a time have I
lost the game, and won my cause thereby. At three begins again the
toil of state. The knockers return, and those who shove them away
return too; everywhere the litigious crowd murmurs round; and follows
him at evening, when he goes to supper, or gets its matters settled
by the officers of the court, who have to stay there till bed-time.
At supper, though there are but rarely 'mimici sales,' which I cannot
translate--some sort of jesting: but biting and cruel insults
(common at the feasts of the Roman Emperors) are never allowed. His
taste in music is severe. No water-organs, flute-player, lyrist,
cymbal or harp-playing woman is allowed. All he delights in is the
old Teutonic music, whose virtue (says the bishop) soothes the soul
no less than does its sound the ear. When he rises from table the
guards for the night are set, and armed men stand at all the doors,
to watch him through the first hours of sleep.
LECTURE IV.--THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER
Let us follow the fortunes of Italy and of Rome. They are not only a
type of the fortunes of the whole western world, but the fortunes of
that world, as you will see, depend on Rome.
You must recollect, meanwhile, that by the middle of the fifth
century, the Western Empire had ceased to exist. The Angles and
Saxons were fighting their way into Britain. The Franks were settled
in north France and the lower Rhineland. South of them, the centre
of Gaul still remained Roman, governed by Counts of cities, who were
all but independent sovereigns, while they confessed a nominal
allegiance to the Emperor of Constantinople. Their power was
destined soon to be annihilated by the conquests of Clovis and his
Franks--as false and cruel ruffians as their sainted king, the first-
born son of the Church. The history of Gaul for some centuries
becomes henceforth a tissue of internecine horrors, which you must
read for yourselves in the pages of M. Sismondi, or of Gregory of
Tours. The Allemanni (whose name has become among the Franks the
general name for Germans) held the lands from the Maine to the
Rhaetian Alps. The Burgunds, the lands to the south-west of them,
comprising the greater part of south-east Gaul. The West Goths held
the south-west of Gaul, and the greater part of Spain, having thrust
the Sueves, and with them some Alans, into Gallicia, Asturias, and
Portugal; and thrust, also, the Vandals across the straits of
Gibraltar, to found a prosperous kingdom along the northern shore of
Africa. The East Goths, meanwhile, after various wanderings to the
north of the Alps, lay in the present Austria and in the Danube
lands, resting after their great struggle with the Huns, and their
crowning victory of Netad.
To follow the fortunes of Italy, we must follow those of these East
Goths, and especially of one man among them, Theodoric, known in
German song as Dietrich of Bern or Verona.
Interesting exceedingly to us should this great hero be. No man's
history better shows the strange relations between the Teutons and
the dying Empire: but more; his life is the first instance of a
Teuton attempting to found a civilized and ordered state, upon
experience drawn from Roman sources; of the young world trying to
build itself up some sort of dwelling out of the ruins of the old.
Dietrich failed, it is true. But if the thing had been then
possible, he seems to have been the man to have done it. He lived
and laboured like what he was--a royal Amal, a true son of Woden.
Unable to write, he founded a great kingdom by native virtue and
common sense. Called a barbarian, he restored prosperity to ruined
Italy, and gave to it (and with it to the greater part of the western
world), peace for three and thirty years. Brought up among hostile
sects, he laid down that golden law of religious liberty which the
nineteenth century has not yet courage and humanity enough to accept.
But if his life was heroic, his death was tragic. He failed after
all in his vast endeavours, from causes hidden from him, but visible,
and most instructive, to us; and after having toiled impartially for
the good of conquerors and of conquered alike, he died sadly, leaving
behind him a people who, most of them, believed gladly the news that
a holy hermit had seen his soul hurled down the crater of Stromboli,
as a just punishment for the inexpiable crime of being wiser than his
generation.
Some have complained of Gibbon's 'hero-worship' of Dietrich--I do
not. The honest and accurate cynic so very seldom worshipped a hero,
or believed in the existence of any, that we may take his good
opinion as almost final and without appeal. One author, for whose
opinion I have already exprest a very high respect, says that he was
but a wild man of the woods to the last; polished over skin-deep with
Roman civilization; 'Scratch him, and you found the barbarian
underneath {p101}.' It may be true. If it be true, it is a very
high compliment. It was not from his Roman civilization, but from
his 'barbarian' mother and father, that he drew the 'vive
intelligence des choses morales, et ces inspirations elevees et
heroiques,' which M. Thierry truly attributes to him. If there was,
as M. Thierry truly says, another nature struggling within him--is
there not such in every man? And are not the struggles the more
painful, the temptations more dangerous, the inconsistencies too
often the more shameful, the capacities for evil as well as for good,
more huge, just in proportion to the native force and massiveness of
the soul? The doctrine may seem dangerous. It is dangerous, like
many truths; and woe to those who, being unlearned and unstable,
wrest it to their own destruction; and presume upon it to indulge
their own passions under Byronic excuses of 'genius,' or 'muscular
Christianity.' But it is true nevertheless: so at least the Bible
tells us, in its wonderful delineations of David, 'the man after
God's own heart,' and of St. Peter, the chief of the apostles. And
there are points of likeness between the character of Dietrich, and
that of David, which will surely suggest themselves to any acute
student of human nature. M. Thierry attributes to him, as his worse
self, 'les instincts les plus violents; la cruaute, l'astuce,
l'egoisme impitoyable.' The two first counts are undeniable--at
least during his youth: they were the common vices of the age. The
two latter I must hold as not proven by facts: but were they proven,
they would still be excusable, on the simple ground of his Greek
education. 'Cunning and pitiless egotism' were the only moral
qualities which Dietrich is likely to have seen exercised at the
court of Constantinople: and what wonder, if he was somewhat
demoralized by the abominable atmosphere which he breathed from
childhood? Dietrich is an illustration of the saga with which these
lectures began. He is the very type of the forest child, bewitched
by the fine things of the wicked Troll garden. The key to the man's
character, indeed the very glory of it, is the long struggle within
him, between the Teutonic and the Greek elements. Dazzled and
debauched, at times, by the sinful glories of the Bosphorus, its
palaces, its gold, and its women, he will break the spell
desperately. He will become a wild Goth and an honest man once more;
he will revenge his own degradation on that court and empire which he
knows well enough to despise, distrust and hate. Again and again the
spell comes over him. His vanity and his passions make him once more
a courtier among the Greeks; but the blood of Odin is strong within
him still; again and again he rises, with a noble shame, to virtue
and patriotism, trampling under foot selfish luxury and glory, till
the victory is complete; and he turns away in the very moment of the
greatest temptation, from the bewitching city, to wander, fight,
starve, and at last conquer a new land for himself and for his
nation; and shew, by thirty years of justice and wisdom, what that
true Dietrich was, which had been so long overlaid by the false
Dietrich of his sinful youth.
Look at the facts of his history, as they stand, and see whether they
do not bear out this, and no other, theory of his character.
The year was 455, two years after Attila's death. Near Vienna a boy
was born, of Theodemir one of the Gothic kings and his favourite
Erleva. He was sent when eight years old to Constantinople as a
hostage. The Emperor Leo had agreed to pay the Goths 300 pounds of
gold every year, if they would but leave him in peace; and young
Dietrich was the pledge of the compact. There he grew up amid all
the wisdom of the Romans, watching it all, and yet never even
learning to write. It seems to some that the German did not care to
learn; it seems to me rather that they did not care to teach. He
came back to his people at eighteen, delighted them by his strength
and stature, and became, to all appearance, a Goth of the Goths;
going adventures with six thousand volunteers against the Sarmatae,
who had just defeated the Greeks, and taken a city--which he retook,
but instead of restoring it to the Emperor, kept himself. Food
becoming scarce in Austria, the Ostrogoths moved some into Italy,
some down on Illyria and Thessaly; and the Emperor gracefully
presented them with the country of which they had already taken
possession.
In every case, you see, this method went on. The failing Emperors
bought off the Teutons where they could; submitted to them where they
could not; and readily enough turned on them when they had a chance.
The relations between the two parties can be hardly better explained,
than by comparing them to those between the English adventurers in
Hindostan and the falling Rajahs and Sultans of the last century.
After a while Theodoric, or Dietrich, found himself, at his father's
death, sole king of the Ostrogoths. This period of his life is very
obscure: but one hint at least we have, which may explain his whole
future career. Side by side with him and with his father before him,
there was another Dietrich--Dietrich the One-eyed, son of Triar, a
low-born adventurer, who had got together the remnants of some low-
caste tribes, who were called the Goths of Thrace, and was swaggering
about the court of Constantinople, as, when the East Goths first met
him, what we call Warden of the Marches, with some annual pay for his
Goths. He was insolent to Theodemir and his family, and they
retaliated by bitter hatred. It was intolerable for them, Amals,
sons of Odin, to be insulted by this upstart. So they went on for
years, till the miserable religious squabble fell out--you may read
it in Gibbon--which ended in the Emperor Zeno, a low-born and cunning
man, suspected of the murder of his own son by the princess Ariadne,
being driven out of Constantinople by Basiliscus. We need not enter
into such matters, except as far as they bear on the history of
Dietrich the Amal. Dietrich the One-eyed helped Basiliscus--and then
Zeno seems to have sent for Dietrich the Amal to help him. He came,
but too late. Basiliscus' party had already broken up; Basiliscus
and his family had taken refuge in a church, from whence Zeno enticed
him, on the promise of shedding no blood, which he did not: but
instead, put him, his wife and children, in a dry cistern, walled it
up and left them.
Dietrich the Amal rose into power and great glory, and became 'son-
in-arms' to the Emperor. But the young Amal longed for adventures.
He offered to take his Ostrogoths into Italy, drive out Odoacer, and
seat on the throne of the West, Nepos, one of the many puppets who
had been hurled off it a few years before. Zeno had need of the
young hero nearer home, and persuaded him to stay in Constantinople,
eat, drink, and be merry.
Whereon Odoacer made Romulus Agustulus and the Roman Senate write to
Zeno that they wanted no Emperor save him at Constantinople; that
they were very happy under the excellent Odoacer, and that they
therefore sent to Zeno, as the rightful owner, all the Imperial
insignia and ornaments; things which may have been worn, some of
them, by Augustus himself. And so ended, even in name, the Empire of
Rome. All which the Amal saw, and, as will appear, did not forget.
Zeno gave the Amal all that the One-eyed had had before him, and paid
the Ostrogoths yearly as he had paid the One-eye's men. The One-eyed
was banished to his cantonments, and of course revolted. Zeno wanted
to buy him off, but the Amal would not hear of it; he would not help
the Romans against his rival, unless they swore perpetual enmity
against him.
They did so, and he marched to the assistance of the wretched Empire.
He was to be met by Roman reinforcements at the Haemus. They never
came; and the Amal, disgusted and disheartened, found himself
entangled in the defiles of the Haemus, starving and worn out; with
the One-eyed entrenched on an inaccessible rock, where he dared not
attack him.
Then followed an extraordinary scene. The One-eyed came down again
and again from his rock, and rode round the Amal's camp, shouting to
him words so true, that one must believe them to have been really
spoken.
'Perjured boy, madman, betrayer of your race--do you not see that the
Roman plan is as always to destroy Goths by Goths? Whichever of us
falls, they, not we, will be the stronger. They never met you as
they promised, at the cities, nor here. They have sent you out here
to perish in the desert.'
Then the East Goths raised a cry. 'The One-eyed is right. The Amal
cares not that these men are Goths like ourselves.'
Then the One-eyed appeals to the Goths themselves, as he curses the
Amal.
'Why are you killing your kinsmen? Why have you made so many widows?
Where is all their wealth gone, they who set out to fight for you?
Each of them had two or three horses: but now they are walking on
foot behind you like slaves,--free-men as well-born as yourself:- and
you promised to measure them out gold by the bushel.'
Was it not true? If young Dietrich had in him (and he shewed that he
had in after years) a Teuton's heart, may not that strange interview
have opened his eyes to his own folly, and taught him that the Teuton
must be his own master, and not the mercenary of the Romans?
The men cried out that it was true. He must make peace with the One-
eyed, or they would do it themselves; and peace was made. They both
sent ambassadors to Zeno; the Amal complaining of treachery; the One-
eyed demanding indemnity for all his losses. The Emperor was
furious. He tried to buy off the Amal by marrying him to a princess
of the blood royal, and making him a Caesar. Dietrich would not
consent; he felt that it was a snare. Zeno proclaimed the One-eyed
an enemy to the Empire; and ended by reinstating him in his old
honours, and taking them from the Amal. The Amal became furious,
burnt villages, slaughtered the peasants, even (the Greeks say) cut
off the hands of his captives. He had broken with the Romans at
last. The Roman was astride of him, and of all Teutons, like
Sindbad's old man of the sea. The only question, as with Sindbad,
was whether he should get drunk, and give them a chance of throwing
the perfidious tyrant. And now the time was come. He was compelled
to ask himself, not--what shall I be in relation to myself: but what
shall I be in relation to the Kaiser of the Romans--a mercenary, a
slave, or a conqueror--for one of the three I must be?
So it went on, year after year--sometimes with terrible reverses for
Dietrich, till the year 480. Then the old One-eyed died, in a
strange way. Mounting a wild horse at the tent-door, the beast
reared before he could get his seat; afraid of pulling it over by the
curb, he let it go. A lance, in Gothic fashion, was hanging at the
tent-door, and the horse plunged the One-eyed against it. The point
went deep into his side, and the old fighting man was at rest for
ever.
And then came a strange peripeteia for the Amal. Zeno, we know not
why, sent instantly for him. He had been ravaging, pursuing,
defeating Roman troops, or being defeated by them. Now he must come
to Rome. His Goths should have the Lower Danube. He should have
glory and honour to spare. He came. His ideal, at this time, seems
actually to have been to live like a Roman citizen in Constantinople,
and help to govern the Empire. Recollect, he was still little more
than five and twenty years old.
So he went to Constantinople, and I suppose with him the faithful
mother, and faithful sister, who had been with him in all his
wanderings. He had a triumph decreed him at the Emperor's expense,
was made Consul Ordinarius ('which,' saith Jornandes, 'is accounted
the highest good and chief glory in the world') and Master-general,
and lodged in the palace.
What did it all mean? Dietrich was dazzled by it, at least for a
while. What it meant, he found out too soon. He was to fight the
Emperor's battles against all rebels, and he fought them, to return
irritated, complaining (justly or unjustly) of plots against his
life; to be pacified, like a child, with the honour of an equestrian
statue; then to sink down into Byzantine luxury for seven inglorious
years, with only one flashing out of the ancient spirit, when he
demanded to go alone against the Bulgars, and killed their king with
his own hand.
What woke him from his dream? The cry of his starving people.
The Goths, settled on the lower Danube, had been living, as wild men
and mercenaries live, recklessly from hand to mouth, drinking and
gambling till their families were in want. They send to the Amal.
'While thou art revelling at Roman banquets, we are starving--come
back ere we are ruined.'
They were jealous, too, of the success of Odoacer and his
mercenaries. He was growing now to be a great power; styling himself
'King of nations {p109},' giving away to the Visigoths the
Narbonnaise, the last remnant of the Western Empire; collecting round
him learned Romans like Symmachus, Boethius, and Cassiodorus;
respecting the Catholic clergy; and seemingly doing his best to
govern well. His mercenaries, however, would not be governed. Under
their violence and oppression agriculture and population were both
failing; till Pope Gelasius speaks of 'AEmilia, Tuscia, ceteraeque
provinciae in quibus nullus prope hominum existit.'
Meanwhile there seems to have been a deep hatred on the part of the
Goths to Odoacer and his mercenaries. Dr. Sheppard thinks that they
despised him himself as a man of low birth. But his father AEdecon
had been chief of the Turklings, and was most probably of royal
blood. It is very unlikely, indeed, that so large a number of
Teutons would have followed any man who had not Odin's blood in his
veins. Was there a stain on Odoacer from his early connexion with
Attila? Or was the hatred against his men more than himself,
contempt especially of the low-caste Herules,--a question of race,
springing out of those miserable tribe-feuds, which kept the Teutons
always divided and weak? Be that as it may, Odoacer had done a deed
which raised this hatred to open fury. He had gone over the Alps
into Rugiland (then Noricum, and the neighbourhood of Vienna) and
utterly destroyed those of the Rugier who had not gone into Italy
under his banner. They had plundered, it is said, the cell of his
old friend St. Severinus, as soon as the saint died, of the garments
laid up for the poor, and a silver cup, and the sacred vessels of the
mass. Be that as it may, Odoacer utterly exterminated them, and
carried their king Feletheus, or Fava, back to Italy, with Gisa his
'noxious wife;' and with them many Roman Christians, and (seemingly)
the body of St. Severinus himself. But this had been a small thing,
if he had not advised himself to have a regular Roman triumph, with
Fava, the captive king, walking beside his chariot; and afterwards,
in the approved fashion of the ancient Romans on such occasions, to
put Fava to death in cold blood.
The records of this feat are to be found, as far as I know them, in
one short chapter (I. xix.) of Paulus Diaconus, and in Muratori's
notes thereto; but however small the records, the deed decided the
fate of Italy. Frederic, son of Fava, took refuge with the
Ostrogoths, and demanded revenge in the name of his royal race; and
it is easy to conceive that the sympathies of the Goths would be with
him. An attack (seemingly unprovoked) on an ancient Teutonic nation
by a mere band of adventurers was--or could easily be made--a
grievous wrong, and clear casus belli, over and above the innate
Teutonic lust for fighting and adventures, simply for the sake of
'the sport.'
Dietrich went back, and from that day, the dream of eastern luxury
was broken, and young Dietrich was a Goth again, for good and for
evil.
He assembled the Goths, and marched straight on Constantinople,
burning and pillaging as he went. So say, at least, the Greek
historians, of whom, all through this strange story, no one need
believe more than he likes. Had the Goths had the writing of the
life of Dietrich, we should have heard another tale. As it is, we
have, as it were, a life of Lord Clive composed by the court scribes
of Delhi.
To no Roman would he tell what was in his mind. Five leagues from
Constantinople he paused. Some say that he had compassion on the
city where he had been brought up. Who can tell? He demanded to
speak to Zeno alone, and the father in arms and his wild son met once
more. There was still strong in him the old Teutonic feudal
instinct. He was 'Zeno's man,' in spite of all. He asked (says
Jornandes) Zeno's leave to march against Odoacer, and conquer Italy.
Procopius and the Valesian Fragment say that Zeno sent him, and that
in case of success, he was to reign there till Zeno came. Zeno was,
no doubt, glad to get rid of him at any price. As Ennodius well
says, 'Another's honour made him remember his own origin, and fear
the very legions which obeyed him--for that obedience is suspected
which serves the unworthy.' Rome was only nominally under Zeno's
dominion; and it mattered little to him whether Herule or Gothic
adventurer called himself his representative.
Then was held a grand function. Dietrich, solemnly appointed
'Patrician,' had Italy ceded to him by a 'Pragmatic' sanction, and
Zeno placed on his head the sacrum velamen, a square of purple,
signifying in Constantinople things wonderful, august, imperial--if
they could only be made to come to pass. And he made them come to
pass. He gathered all Teutonic heroes of every tribe, as well as his
own; and through Roumelia, and through the Alps, a long and dangerous
journey, went Dietrich and his Goths, with their wives and children,
and all they had, packed on waggons; living on their flocks and
herds, grinding their corn in hand-mills, and hunting as they went,
for seven hundred miles of march; fighting as they went with Bulgars
and Sarmatians, who had swarmed into the waste marches of Hungary and
Carniola, once populous, cultivated, and full of noble cities;
fighting a desperate battle with the Gepidae, up to their knees in a
morass; till over the passes of the Julian Alps, where icicles hung
upon their beards, and their clothes cracked with frost, they poured
into the Venetian plains. It was a daring deed; and needed a spirit
like Dietrich's to carry it through.
Odoacer awaited him near the ruins of Aquileia. On the morning of
the fight, as he was arming, Dietrich asked his noble mother to bring
him some specially fine mantle, which she had embroidered for him,
and put it over his armour, 'that all men may see how he goes gayer
into the fight than ever he did into feast. For this day she shall
see whether she have brought a man-child into the world, or no.'
And in front of Verona (where the plain was long white with human
bones), he beat Odoacer, and after a short and sharp campaign, drove
him to Ravenna. But there, Roman fortifications, and Roman
artillery, stopped, as usual, the Goth; and Odoacer fulfilled his
name so well, and stood so stout, that he could only be reduced by
famine; and at last surrendered on terms, difficult now to discover.
Gibbon says, that there was a regular compact that they should enjoy
equal authority, and refers to Procopius: but Procopius only says,
that they should live together peaceably 'in that city.' Be that as
it may, Odoacer and his party were detected, after awhile, conspiring
against Dietrich, and put to death in some dark fashion. Gibbon, as
advocatus diaboli, of course gives the doubt against Dietrich, by his
usual enthymeme--All men are likely to be rogues, ergo, Dietrich was
one. Rather hard measure, when one remembers that the very men who
tell the story are Dietrich's own enemies. By far the most important
of them, the author of the Valesian Fragment, who considers Dietrich
damned as an Arian, and the murderer of Boethius and Symmachus, says
plainly that Odoacer plotted against his life. But it was a dark
business at best.
Be that as it may, Dietrich the Amal found himself in one day king of
all Italy, without a peer. And now followed a three and thirty
years' reign of wisdom, justice, and prosperity, unexampled in the
history of those centuries. Between the days of the Antonines and
those of Charlemagne, I know no such bright spot in the dark history
of Europe.
As for his transferring the third of the lands of Italy, which had
been held by Odoacer's men, to his own Goths,--that was just or
unjust (even putting out of the question the rights of conquest),
according to what manner of men Odoacer's mercenaries were, and what
right they had to the lands. At least it was done so, says
Cassiodorus, that it notoriously gave satisfaction to the Romans
themselves. One can well conceive it. Odoacer's men had been
lawless adventurers; and now law was installed as supreme. Dietrich,
in his long sojourn at the Emperor's court, had discovered the true
secret of Roman power, which made the Empire terrible even in her
fallen fortunes; and that was Law. Law, which tells every man what
to expect, and what is expected of him; and so gives, if not content,
still confidence, energy, industry. The Goths were to live by the
Gothic law, the Romans by the Roman. To amalgamate the two races
would have been as impossible as to amalgamate English and Hindoos.
The parallel is really tolerably exact. The Goth was very English;
and the over-civilized, learned, false, profligate Roman was the very
counterpart of the modern Brahmin. But there was to be equal justice
between man and man. If the Goths were the masters of much of the
Roman soil, still spoliation and oppression were forbidden; and the
remarkable edict or code of Theodoric, shews how deeply into his
great mind had sunk the idea of the divineness of Law. It is short,
and of Draconic severity, especially against spoliation, cheating,
false informers, abuse by the clergy of the rights of sanctuary, and
all offences against the honour of women. I advise you all to study
it, as an example of what an early Teutonic king thought men ought to
do, and could be made to do.
The Romans were left to their luxury and laziness; and their country
villas (long deserted) were filled again by the owners. The Goths
were expected to perform military service, and were drilled from
their youth in those military evolutions which had so often given the
disciplined Roman the victory over the undisciplined Goth, till every
pomoerium (boulevard), says Ennodius, might be seen full of boys and
lads, learning to be soldiers. Everything meanwhile was done to
soothe the wounded pride of the conquered. The senate of Rome was
still kept up in name (as by Odoacer), her nobles flattered by
sonorous titles, and the officers of the kingdom and the palace bore
the same names as they would have done under Roman emperors. The
whole was an attempt to develop Dietrich's own Goths by the only
civilization which he knew, that of Constantinople: but to engraft
on it an order, a justice, a freedom, a morality, which was the
'barbarian' element. The treasures of Roman art were placed under
the care of government officers; baths, palaces, churches, aqueducts,
were repaired or founded; to build seems to have been Dietrich's
great delight; and we have left us, on a coin, some image of his own
palace at Verona, a strange building with domes and minarets,
something like a Turkish mosque; standing, seemingly, on the arcades
of some older Roman building. Dietrich the Goth may, indeed, be
called the founder of 'Byzantine' architecture throughout the Western
world.
Meanwhile, agriculture prospered once more; the Pontine Marshes were
drained; the imperial ports restored, and new cities sprang up. 'The
new ones,' says Machiavelli, 'were Venice, Siena, Ferrara, Aquileia;
and those which became extended were Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Milan,
Naples, and Bologna.' Of these the great sea-ports, especially
Venice, were founded not by Goths, but by Roman and Greek fugitives:
but it was the security and liberality of Dietrich's reign which made
their existence possible; and Venice really owes far more to the
barbarian hero, than to the fabled patronage of St. Mark.
'From this devastation and new population,' continues Machiavelli,
'arose new languages, which, partaking of the native idiom of the new
people, and of the old Roman, formed a new manner of discourse.
Besides, not only were the names of provinces changed, but also of
lakes, rivers, seas, and men; for France, Spain, and Italy are full
of fresh names, wholly different from the ancient.'
This reign of Dietrich was, in fact, the birth-hour of modern Italy;
and, as Machiavelli says, 'brought the country to such a state of
greatness, that her previous sufferings were unrecognizable.' We
shall see hereafter how the great Goth's work was all undone; and (to
their everlasting shame) by whom it was undone.
The most interesting records of the time are, without doubt, the
letters of Cassiodorus, the king's secretary and chancellor, which
have come down to us in great numbers. There are letters among them
on all questions of domestic and foreign policy: to the kings of the
Varni, kings of the Herules, kings of the Thuringer (who were still
heathens beyond the Black forest), calling on them all to join him
and the Burgundians, and defend his son-in-law Alaric II., king of
the Visigoths, against Clovis and his Franks. There are letters,
too, bearing on the religious feuds of the Roman population, and on
the morals and social state of Rome itself, of which I shall say
nothing in this lecture, having cause to refer to them hereafter.
But if you wish to know the times, you must read Cassiodorus
thoroughly.
In his letters you will remark how most of the so-called Roman names
are Greek. You will remark, too, as a sign of the decadence of taste
and art, that though full of wisdom and practical morality, the
letters are couched in the most wonderful bombast to be met with,
even in that age of infimae Latinitatis. One can only explain their
style by supposing that King Dietrich, having supplied the sense,
left it for Cassiodorus to shape it as he thought best; and when the
letter was read over to him, took for granted (being no scholar) that
that was the way in which Roman Caesars and other cultivated
personages ought to talk; admired his secretary's learning; and
probably laughed in his sleeve at the whole thing, thinking that ten
words of honest German would have said all that he meant. As for
understanding these flights of rhetoric, it is impossible that
Dietrich could have done so: perhaps not even Cassiodorus himself.
Take as one example, such a letter as this.--After a lofty moral
maxim, which I leave for you to construe--'In partem pietatis recidit
mitigata districtio; et sub beneficio praestat, qui poenam debitam
moderatione considerata palpaverit,'--Jovinus the curial is informed,
after the most complex method, that having first quarrelled with a
fellow-curial, and then proceeded to kill him, he is banished for
life to the isle of Volcano, among the Liparis. As a curial is a
gentleman and a government magistrate, the punishment is just enough;
but why should Cassiodorus (certainly not King Dietrich) finish a
short letter by a long dissertation on volcanoes in general, and
Stromboli in particular, insisting on the wonder that the rocks,
though continually burnt, are continually renewed by 'the
inextricable potency of nature;' and only returning to Jovinus to
inform him that he will henceforth follow the example of a
salamander, which always lives in fire, 'being so contracted by
natural cold, that it is tempered by burning flame. It is a thin and
small animal, connected with worms, and clothed with a yellow
colour;' . . . Cassiodorus then returns to the main subject of
volcanoes, and ends with a story of Stromboli having broken out just
as Hannibal poisoned himself at the court of Prusias;--information
which may have been interesting, though not consoling, to poor
Jovinus, in the prospect of living there; but of which one would like
to have had king Dietrich's opinion. Did he felicitate himself like
a simple Teuton, on the wonderful learning and eloquence of his
Greek-Roman secretary? Or did he laugh a royal laugh at the whole
letter, and crack a royal joke at Cassiodorus and all quill-driving
schoolmasters and lawyers--the two classes of men whom the Goths
hated especially, and at the end to which they by their pedantries
had brought imperial Rome? One would like to know. For not only was
Dietrich no scholar himself, but he had a contempt for the very
scholarship which he employed, and forbade the Goths to learn it--as
the event proved, a foolish and fatal prejudice. But it was
connected in his mind with chicanery, effeminacy, and with the cruel
and degrading punishments of children. Perhaps the ferula had been
applied to him at Constantinople in old days. If so, no wonder that
he never learnt to write. 'The boy who trembles at a cane,' he used
to say, 'will never face a lance.' His mother wit, meanwhile, was so
shrewd that 'many of his sayings (says the unknown author of the
invaluable Valesian Fragment) remain among us to this day.' Two
only, as far as I know, have been preserved, quaint enough:
'He that hath gold, or a devil, cannot hide it.'
And
'The Roman, when poor, apes the Goth: the Goth,
when rich, apes the Roman.'
There is a sort of Solomon's judgment, too, told of him, in the case
of a woman who refused to acknowledge her own son, which was
effectual enough; but somewhat too homely to repeat.
As for his personal appearance, it was given in a saga; but I have
not consulted it myself, and am no judge of its authenticity. The
traditional description of him is that of a man almost beardless--a
rare case among the Goths--with masses of golden ringlets, and black
eyebrows over 'oculos caesios,' the blue grey eyes common to so many
conquerors. A complexion so peculiar, that one must believe it to be
truly reported.
His tragic death, and the yet more tragic consequences thereof, will
be detailed in the next lecture.
LECTURE V--DIETRICH'S END.
I have now to speak to you on the latter end of Dietrich's reign--
made so sadly famous by the death of Boethius--the last Roman
philosopher, as he has been called for centuries, and not unjustly.
His De Consolatione Philosophiae is a book good for any man, full of
wholesome and godly doctrine. For centuries it ranked as high as the
highest classics; higher perhaps at times than any book save the
Bible, among not merely scholars, but statesmen. It is the last
legacy of the dying old world to the young world which was trampling
it out of life; and therefore it is full of sadness. But beneath the
sadness there is faith and hope; for God is just, and virtue must be
triumphant and immortal, and the absolute and only good for man. The
whole story is very sad. Dietrich was one of those great men, who
like Henry VIII, Elizabeth, Napoleon, or the late Czar Nicholas, have
lived too long for their own honour. The old heathen would have
attributed his misadventures to a [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced], an envy of the Gods, who will not abide to see men as
prosperous as they themselves are. We may attribute it more simply
and more piously to the wear and tear of frail humanity. For it may
be that very few human souls can stand for many years the strain of a
great rule. I do not mean that they break down from overwork, but
that they are pulled out of shape by it; and that, especially, the
will becomes enormously developed at the expense of the other powers
of the soul, till the man becomes, as he grows older, imperious,
careless of, or irritated by counsel, determined to have his own way
because it is his own way. We see the same tendency in all
accustomed for a long while to absolute rule, even in petty matters;-
-in the old ship's captain, the old head of a factory, the old master
of hounds; and we do not blame them for it. It is a disease incident
to their calling, as pedantry is to that of a scholar, or astuteness
to that of an attorney. But it is most dangerous in the greatest
minds, and in the highest places; and only to be kept off by them, as
by us, each in our place, by honest self-examination, diligent
prayer, and the grace of God which comes thereby. Once or twice in
the world's history a great ruler, like Charles the Fifth, cuts the
Gordian knot, and escapes into a convent: but how few can or ought
to do that? There are those who must go on ruling, or see their
country ruined; for all depends on them. So had Queen Elizabeth to
do; so had Dietrich of Bern likewise. After them would come the
deluge, and did come; and they must endure to the last, whatever it
may cost to their own health of character, or peace of mind.
But most painful, and most dangerous to the veteran sovereign, is it
to have learnt to suspect, perhaps to despise, those whom he rules;
to have thrown away all his labour upon knaves and fools; to have
cast his pearls before swine, and find them turning again and rending
him. That feeling, forced from Queen Elizabeth, in her old age, that
tragic cry, 'I am a miserable forlorn woman. There is none about me
whom I can trust.' She was a woman, always longing for some one to
love; and her heart broke under it all. But do you not see that
where the ruler is not an affectionate woman, but a strong proud man,
the effect may be very different, and very terrible?--how, roused to
indignation, scorn, suspicion, rage, he may turn to bay against his
own subjects, with 'Scoundrels! you have seen the fair side of my
character, and in vain. Now you shall see the foul, and beware for
yourselves.'
Even so, I fancy, did old Dietrich turn to bay, and did deeds which
have blackened his name for ever. Heaven forgive him! for surely he
had provocation enough and to spare.
I have told you of the simple, half-superstitious respect which the
Teuton had for the prestige of Rome. Dietrich seems to have partaken
of it, like the rest. Else why did he not set himself up as Caesar
of Rome? Why did he always consider himself as son-in-arms, and
quasi-vassal, of the Caesar of Constantinople? He had been in youth
overawed by the cunning civilization which he had seen in the great
city. He felt, with a noble modesty, that he could not emulate it.
He must copy it afar off. He must take to his counsels men like
Cassiodorus, Symmachus, Boethius, born and bred in it; trained from
childhood in the craft by which, as a patent fact, the Kaisers of
Rome had been for centuries, even in their decay and degradation, the
rulers of the nations. Yet beneath that there must have been a
perpetual under-current of contempt for it and for Rome--the
'colluvies gentium'--the sink of the nations, with its conceit, its
pomposity, its beggary, its profligacy, its superstition, its
pretence of preserving the Roman law and rights, while practically it
cared for no law nor right at all. Dietrich had had to write letter
upon letter, to prevent the green and blue factions cutting each
other's throats at the public spectacles; letters to the tribunus
voluptatum, who had to look after the pantomimes and loose women,
telling him to keep the poor wretches in some decent order, and to
set them and the city an example of a better life, by being a chaste
and respectable man himself. Letter upon letter of Cassiodorus',
written in Dietrich's name, disclose a state of things in Rome on
which a Goth could look only with disgust and contempt.
And what if he discovered (or thought that he discovered) that these
prating coxcombs--who were actually living on government bounty, and
had their daily bread, daily bath, daily oil, daily pork, daily wine,
found for them at government expense, while they lounged from the
theatre to the church, and the church to the theatre--were plotting
with Justin the scoundrel and upstart Emperor at Constantinople, to
restore forsooth the liberties of Rome? And that that was their
answer to his three and thirty years of good government, respect,
indulgence, which had raised them up again out of all the miseries of
domestic anarchy and foreign invasion?
And what if he discovered (or thought that he discovered) that the
Catholic Clergy, with Pope John at their head, were in the very same
plot for bringing in the Emperor of Constantinople, on the grounds of
religion; because he was persecuting the Arian Goths at
Constantinople, and therefore would help them to persecute them in
Italy? And that that was their answer to his three and thirty years
of unexampled religious liberty? Would not those two facts (even the
belief that they were facts) have been enough to drive many a wise
man mad?
How far they were facts, we never shall exactly know. Almost all our
information comes from Catholic historians--and he would be a rash
man who would pin his faith on any statement of theirs concerning the
actions of a heretic. But I think, even with no other help than
theirs, we may see why Dietrich would have looked with horror on any
intimacy between the Church of Rome and the Court of Constantinople.
We must remember first what the Greek Empire was then, and who was
the new Emperor. Anastasius the poor old Emperor, dying at eighty
with his heart broken by monks and priests, had an ugly dream; and
told it to Amantius the eunuch and lord chamberlain. Whereon
Amantius said he had had a dream too;--how a great hog flew at him as
he was in waiting in the very presence, and threw him down and eat
him fairly up. Which came true--though not in the way Amantius
expected. On the death of Anastasius he determined to set up as
Emperor a creature of his own. For this purpose he must buy the
guards; to which noble end he put a large sum of treasure into the
hands of Justin, senator, and commander-in-chief of the said guards,
who takes the money, and spends it on his own account; so that the
miserable eunuch finds, not his man, but Justin himself, Emperor, and
his hard-earned money spent against him. The mere rise of this
unscrupulous swindler and his still more unscrupulous nephew,
Justinian, would have been enough to rouse Dietrich's suspicion, if
not fear.
Deep and unspeakable must have been the royal Amal's contempt for the
man. For he must have known him well at Constantinople in his youth;
known how he was a Goth or other Teuton after all, though he was
called a Dardanian; how his real name was Uprauda (upright), the son
of Stock--which Uprauda he had latinized into Justinus. The Amal
knew well how he had entered the Emperor's guard; how he had
intrigued and fought his way up (for the man did not lack courage and
conduct) to his general's commission; and now, by a crowning act of
roguery, to the Empire. He had known too, most probably, the man's
vulgar peasant wife, who, in her efforts to ape royalty, was making
herself the laughing-stock of the people, and who was urging on her
already willing husband to persecute. And this man he saw ready to
convulse his own Empire by beginning a violent persecution against
the Arians. He was dangerous enough as a villain, doubly dangerous
as a bigot also.
We must remember next what the Greek Church was then; a chaos of
intrigue, villainy, slander, and wild fury, tearing to pieces itself
and the whole Empire by religious feuds, in which the doctrine in
question becomes invisible amid the passions and crimes of the
disputants, while the Lords of the Church were hordes of wild monks,
who swarm out of their dens to head the lowest mobs, or fight pitched
battles with each other. The ecclesiastical history of the fifth
century in the Eastern Empire is one, which not even the genius of a
Gibbon or a Milman can make interesting, or even intelligible.
Recollect that Dietrich had seen much of this with his own eyes; had
seen actually, as I told you, the rebellion of Basiliscus and the
Eutychian Bishops headed by the mad Daniel the Stylite against his
foster father the Emperor Zeno; had seen that Emperor (as Dean Milman
forcibly puts it) 'flying before a naked hermit, who had lost the use
of his legs by standing sixteen years upon a column.' Recollect that
Dietrich and his Goths had helped to restore that Emperor to his
throne; and then understand in what a school he had learnt his great
ideas of religious toleration: how deep must have been the
determination to have no such doings in his kingdom; how deep, too,
the dread of any similar outbreak at Rome.
Recollect, also, that now in his old age he had just witnessed the
same iniquities again rending the Eastern Empire; the old Emperor
Anastasius hunted to death by armies of mad monks about the
Monophysite Heresy; the cities, even the holiest places of the East,
stained with Christian blood; everywhere mob-law, murder, treachery,
assassination even in the house of God; and now the new Emperor
Justin was throwing himself into the party of the Orthodox with all
the blind rage of an ignorant peasant; persecuting, expelling,
shutting up the Arian Churches of the Goths, refusing to hear
Dietrich's noble appeals; and evidently organizing a great movement
against those peaceable Arians, against whom, during the life-time of
Dietrich, their bitterest enemies do not allege a single case of
persecution.
Remember, too, that Dietrich had had experience of similar outbreaks
of fanaticism at Rome; that the ordination of two rival Popes had
once made the streets run with blood; that he had seen priests
murdered, monasteries fired, nuns insulted, and had had to interfere
with the strong arm of the law, and himself decide in favour of the
Pope who had the most votes, and was first chosen; and that in the
quarrels, intrigues, and slanders, which followed that election, he
had had too good proof that the ecclesiastics and the mob of Rome, if
he but let them, could behave as ill as that of Constantinople; and,
moreover, that this new Pope John, who seems to have been a hot-
headed fanatic, had begun his rule by whipping and banishing
Manichees--by whose permission, does not appear.
Recollect too, that for some reason or other, Dietrich, when he had
interfered in Eastern matters, had been always on the side of the
Orthodox and the Council of Chalcedon. He had fought for the
Orthodox against Basiliscus. He had backed the Orthodox and
Vitalianus their champion, against the late Emperor Anastasius; and
now as soon as the Orthodox got into power under Justin, this was the
reward of his impartiality. If he did not distrust and despise the
Church and Emperor of the East, he must have been not a hero, but a
saint.
Recollect, too, that in those very days, Catholic bigotry had broken
out in a general plunder of the Jews. At Rome, at Milan, and Genoa
their houses had been sacked, and their synagogues burnt; and
Dietrich, having compelled the Catholics to rebuild them at their own
expense, had earned the hatred of a large portion of his subjects.
And now Pope John was doing all he could to thwart him. Dietrich
bade him go to Constantinople, and plead with Justin for the
persecuted Arians. He refused. Dietrich shipt him off, nolentem
volentem. But when he got to Constantinople he threw his whole
weight into the Emperor's scale. He was received by Justin as if he
was St. Peter himself, the Emperor coming out to meet him with
processions and wax-lights, imploring his blessing; he did exactly
the opposite to what Dietrich bade him do; and published on his
return a furious epistle to the bishops of Italy, calling upon them
to oppress and extirpate the Arian perfidy, so that no root of it is
left: to consecrate the Arian churches wheresoever he found them,
pleading the advice of the most pious and Christian Emperor Justin,
talking of Dietrich as tainted inwardly and wrapt up outwardly with
the pest of heresy. On which Cochlaeus (who religiously believes
that Dietrich was damned for his Arianism, and that all his virtues
went for nothing because he had not charity, which exists, he says,
alone within the pale of the Church), cannot help the naive comment,
that if the Pontiff did really write that letter, he cannot wonder at
Dietrich's being a little angry. Kings now, it is true, can afford
to smile at such outbursts; they could not afford to do so in
Dietrich's days. Such words meant murder, pillage, civil war,
dethronement, general anarchy; and so Dietrich threw Pope John into
prison. He had been in bad health before he sailed to
Constantinople, and in a few months he died, and was worshipped as a
saint.
As for the political conspiracy, we shall never know the truth of it.
The 'Anonymus Valesii,' meanwhile says, that when Cyprian accused
Albinus, Boethius answered, 'It is false: but if Albinus has done
it, so have I, and the whole senate, with one consent. It is false,
my Lord King!' Whatever such words may prove, they prove at least
this, that Boethius, as he says himself, was the victim of his own
chivalry. To save Albinus, and the senate, he thrust himself into
the fore-front of the battle, and fell at least like a brave man.
Whether Albinus, Boethius, and Symmachus did plot to bring in Justin;
whether the senate did send a letter to him, I cannot tell.
Boethius, in his De Consolatione, denies it all; and Boethius was a
good man. He says that the letters in which he hoped for the liberty
of Rome were forged; how could he hope for the impossible? but he
adds, 'would that any liberty could have been hoped for! I would
have answered the king as Cassius did, when falsely accused of
conspiring by Caligula: "If I had known of it, you should not."'
One knows not whether Dietrich ever saw those words: but they prove
at least that all his confidence, justice, kindness to the patrician
philosopher, had not won him from the pardonable conceit about the
Romani nominis umbram.
Boethius' story is most probably true. One cannot think that that
man would die with a lie in his mouth. One cannot pass by, as the
utterances of a deliberate hypocrisy, those touching appeals to his
guiding mistress, that heavenly wisdom who has led him so long upon
the paths of truth and virtue, and who seems to him, in his miserable
cell, to have betrayed him in his hour of need. Heaven forbid.
Better to believe that Dietrich committed once in his life, a fearful
crime, than that good Boethius' famous book is such another as the
Eikon Basilike.
Boethius, again, says that the Gothic courtiers hated him, and
suborned branded scoundrels to swear away his life and that of the
senate, because he had opposed 'the hounds of the palace,' Amigast,
Trigulla, and other greedy barbarians. There was, of course, a
Gothic party and a Roman party about the court; and each hated the
other bitterly. Dietrich had favoured the Romans. But the Goths
could not have seen such men as Symmachus and Boethius the confidants
and counsellors of the Amal, without longing for their downfall; and
if, as Boethius and the Catholic historians say, the whole tragedy
arose out of a Gothic plot to destroy the Roman party, such things
have happened but too often in the world's history. The only facts
which make against the story are, that Cyprianus the accuser was a
Roman, and that Cassiodorus, who must have belonged to the Roman
party, not only is never mentioned during the whole tragedy, but was
high in power under Theodatus and Athalaric afterwards.
Add to this, that there were vague but wide-spread reports that the
Goths were in danger; that Dietrich at least could not be ignorant of
the ambition and the talents of that terrible Justinian, Justin's
nephew, who was soon to alter, for a generation, the fortunes of the
whole Empire, and to sweep the Goths from Italy; that men's minds
must have been perplexed with fear of change, when they recollected
that Dietrich was seventy years old, without a son to succeed him,
and that a woman and a child would soon rule that great people in a
crisis, which they could not but foresee. We know that the ruin
came; is it unreasonable to suppose that the Goths foresaw it, and
made a desperate, it may be a treacherous, effort to crush once and
for all, the proud and not less treacherous senators of Rome?
So, maddened with the fancied discovery that the man whom he had
honoured, trusted, loved, was conspiring against him, Dietrich sent
Boethius to prison. He seems, however, not to have been eager for
his death; for Boethius remained there long enough to write his noble
book.
However, whether fresh proofs of his supposed guilt were discovered
or not, the day came when he must die. A cord was twisted round his
head (probably to extort confession), till his eyes burst from their
sockets, and then he was put out of his misery by a club; and so
ended the last Roman philosopher. Symmachus, his father-in-law, was
beheaded; and Pope John, as we have heard, was thrown into prison on
his return, and died after a few months. These are the tragedies
which have stained for ever the name of 'Theodoric the Great.'
Pope John seems to have fairly earned his imprisonment. For the two
others, we can only, I fear, join in the sacred pity in which their
memories have been embalmed to all succeeding generations. But we
must recollect, that after all, we know but one side of the question.
The Romans could write; the Goths could not: they may have been able
to make out a fair case for themselves; they may have believed truly
in the guilt of Boethius; and if they did, nothing less could have
happened, by such rules of public law and justice as were then in
vogue, than did happen.
Be that as it may, the deed was done; and the punishment, if
deserved, came soon enough. Sitting at dinner (so the story runs),
the head of a fish took in Dietrich's fancy the shape of Symmachus'
head, the upper teeth biting the lip, the great eyes staring at him.
He sprang up in horror; took to his bed; and there, complaining of a
mortal chill, wrapping himself up in heaps of blankets, and bewailing
to his physician the death of his two victims, he died sadly in a few
days. And a certain holy hermit, name not given, nor date of the
vision, saw the ghosts of Boethius and Symmachus lead the Amal's soul
up the cone of Stromboli, and hurl him in, as the English sailors saw
old Boots, the Wapping usurer, hurled into the same place, for
offences far more capable of proof.
So runs the story of Dietrich's death. It is perfectly natural, and
very likely true. His contemporaries, who all believed it, saw in it
proof of his enormous guilt, and the manifest judgment of God. We
shall rather see in it a proof of the earnest, child-like, honest
nature of the man, startled into boundless horror and self-abasement,
by the sudden revelation of his crime. Truly bad men die easier
deaths than that; and go down to the grave, for the most part, blind
and self-contented, and, as they think, unpunished; and perhaps
forgiven.
After Dietrich came the deluge. The royal head was gone. The royal
heart remained in Amalasuentha 'the heavenly beauty,' a daughter
worthy of her father.
One of her first acts was to restore to the widows and children of
the two victims the estates which Dietrich had confiscated. That
may, or may not, prove that she thought the men innocent. She may
have only felt it royal not to visit the sins of the fathers on the
children; and those fathers, too, her own friends and preceptors.
Beautiful, learned, and wise, she too was, like her father, before
her age. She, the pupil of Boethius, would needs bring up her son
Athalaric in Roman learning, and favour the Romans in all ways; never
putting to death or even fining any of them, and keeping down the
rough Goths, who were ready enough, now Dietrich's hand was off them,
to ill-use the conquered Italians. The Goths soon grew to dislike
her, and her Roman tendencies, her Roman education of the lad. One
day she boxed his ears for some fault. He ran crying out into the
Heldensaal, and complained to the heroes. They sent a deputation to
Amalasuentha, insolent enough. 'The boy should not be made a scholar
of.' 'She meant to kill the boy and marry again. Had not old
Dietrich forbidden free Goths to go to schoolmasters, and said, that
the boy who was taught to tremble at a cane, would never face a
lance?' So they took the lad away from the women, and made a ruffian
of him. What with drink, women, idleness, and the company of wild
young fellows like himself, he was early ruined, body and soul. Poor
Amalasuentha, not knowing whither to turn, took the desperate
resolution of offering Italy to the Emperor Justinian. She did not
know that her cousin Theodatus had been beforehand with her--a bad
old man, greedy and unjust, whose rapacity she had had to control
again and again, and who hated her in return. Both send messages to
Justinian. The wily Emperor gave no direct answer: but sent his
ambassador to watch the course of events. The young prince died of
debauchery, and the Goths whispered that his mother had poisoned him.
Meanwhile Theodatus went on from bad to worse; accusations flowed in
to Amalasuentha of his lawless rapacity: but he was too strong for
her; and she, losing her head more and more, made the desperate
resolve of marrying him, as the only way to keep him quiet. He was
the last male heir of the royal Amalungs. The marriage would set him
right in the eyes of the Goths, while it would free her from the
suspicion of having murdered her son, in order to reign alone.
Theodatus meanwhile was to have the name of royalty; but she was to
keep the power and the money--a foolish, confused plan, which could
have but one ending. Theodatus married her of course, and then cast
her into prison, seized all her treasures, and threw himself into the
arms of that party among the Goths, who hated Amalasuentha for having
punished their oppressions. The end was swift and sad. By the time
that Justinian's ambassador landed, Amalasuentha was strangled in her
bath; and all that Peter the ambassador had to do was, to catch at
the cause of quarrel, and declare 'inexpiable war' on the part of
Justinian, as the avenger of the Queen.
And then began that dreadful East Goth war, which you may read for
yourselves in the pages of an eye-witness, Procopius;--a war which
destroyed utterly the civilization of Dietrich's long and prosperous
reign, left Italy a desert, and exterminated the Roman people.
That was the last woe: but of it I must tell you in my next Lecture.
LECTURE VI--THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS.
Of this truly dreadful Gothic war I can give you but a hasty sketch;
of some of the most important figures in it, not even a sketch. I
cannot conceive to myself, and therefore cannot draw for you, the
famous Belisarius. Was he really the strange compound of strength
and weakness which Procopius, and after him Gibbon, represent him?--a
caricature, for good and evil, of our own famous Marlborough? You
must read and judge for yourselves. I cannot, at least as yet, offer
you any solution of the enigma.
Still less can I conceive to myself Narses, living till his grey
hairs in the effeminate intrigues of the harem, and then springing
forth a general; the Warrior Eunuch; the misanthrope avenging his
great wrong upon all mankind in bloody battle-fields; dark of
counsel, and terrible of execution; him to whom in after years the
Empress Sophia sent word that he was more fit to spin among maids
than to command armies, and he answered, that he would spin her such
a thread as she could not unravel; and kept his word (as legends say)
by inviting the Lombards into Italy.
Least of all can I sketch Justinian the Great, the half-Teuton
peasant, whom his uncle Justin sent for out of the Dardanian hills,
to make him a demigod upon earth. Men whispered in after years that
he was born of a demon, a demon himself, passing whole days without
food, wandering up and down his palace corridors all night, resolving
dark things, and labouring all day with Herculean force to carry them
out. No wonder he was thought to be a demon, wedded to a demon-wife.
The man is unfathomable, inexplicable;--marrying deliberately the
wickedest of all women, plainly not for mere beauty's sake, but
possibly because he saw in her a congenial intellect;--faithful and
loving to her and she to him, amid all the crimes of their following
years;--pious with exceeding devotion and orthodoxy, and yet with a
piety utterly divorced from, unconscious of, the commonest morality;-
-discerning and using the greatest men, Belisarius and Narses for
example, and throwing them away again, surely not in weak caprice,
whenever they served him too well;--conquering Persians, Vandals,
Goths; all but re-conquering, in fact, the carcase Roman Empire;--and
then trying (with a deep discernment of the value of Roman law) to
put a galvanic life into the carcase by codifying that law.
In whatever work I find this man, during his long life, he is to me
inexplicable. Louis XI of France is the man most like Justinian whom
I know, but he, too, is a man not to be fathomed by me. All the
facts about Justinian you will find in Gibbon. I have no theory by
which to arrange and explain them, and therefore can tell you no more
than Gibbon does.
So to this Gothic war; which, you must remember, became possible for
Justinian by Belisarius' having just destroyed the Vandals out of
Africa. It began by Belisarius invading the south of Italy. Witigis
was elected war-king of the Goths, 'the man of witty counsels,' who
did not fulfil his name; while Theodatus (Theod-aht 'esteemed by the
people' as his name meant) had fallen into utter disesteem, after
some last villainy about money; had been struck down in the road by
the man he had injured; and there had his throat cut, 'resupinus
instar victimae jugulatus.'
He had consulted a Jew diviner just before, who had given him a
warning. Thirty pigs, signifying the unclean Gentiles, the Jew shut
up in three sties; naming ten Goths, ten Romans, and ten Imperialists
of Belisarius' army, and left them to starve. At the end they found
dead all the Goths but two, hardly any of the Imperialists, and half
the Romans: but the five Roman pigs who were left had lost their
bristles--bare to the skin, as the event proved.
After that Theodatus had no heart to fight, and ended his dog's life
by a dog's death, as we have seen.
Note also this, that there was a general feeling of coming ruin; that
there were quaint signs and omens. We have heard of the pigs which
warned the Goths. Here is another. There was a Mosaic picture of
Theodoric at Naples; it had been crumbling to pieces at intervals,
and every fresh downfall had marked the death of an Amal. Now the
last remains went down, to the very feet, and the Romans believed
that it foretold the end of the Amal dynasty. There was a Sibylline
oracle too;
'Quintili mense Roma nihil Geticum metuet.'
Here, too, we find the last trace of heathenism, of that political
mythology which had so inextricably interwoven itself with the life
and history of the city. The shrine of Janus was still standing, all
of bronze, only just large enough, Procopius says, to contain the
bronze image of Janus Bifrons. The gates, during Christian
centuries, had never been opened, even in war time. Now people went
by night, and tried to force them open: but hardly succeeded.
Belisarius garrisoned Rome, and the Goths attacked it, but in vain.
You must read the story of that famous siege in the really brilliant
pages of old Procopius, the last good historian of the old world.
Moreover, and this is most important, Belisarius raised the native
population against the Goths. As he had done in Africa, when in one
short campaign he utterly destroyed the now effeminate aristocracy of
the Vandals, so he did in Italy. By real justice and kindness; by
proclaiming himself the deliverer of the conquered from the yoke of
foreign tyrants, he isolated the slave-holding aristocracy of the
Goths from the mass of the inhabitants of Italy.
Belisarius and the Goths met, and the Goths conquered. But to take
Rome was beyond their power; and after that a long miserable war
struggled and wrangled up and down over the wretched land; city after
city was taken and destroyed, now by Roman, now by Goth. The lands
lay waste, the people disappeared in tens of thousands. All great
Dietrich's work of thirty years was trampled into mud.
There were horrible sieges and destructions by both parties;--sack of
Milan by Goths, sack of Rimini and the country round by Romans;
horrors of famine at Auximum; two women who kept an inn, killing and
eating seventeen men, till the eighteenth discovered the trap and
killed them. Everywhere, as I say, good Dietrich's work of thirty
years trampled into gory mud.
Then Theudebert and his false Franks came down to see what they could
get; all (save a few knights round the king) on foot, without bow or
lance; but armed with sword, shield, and heavy short-handled double-
edged francisc, or battle-axe. At the bridge over the Ticinus they
(nominal Catholics) sacrificed Gothic women and children with horrid
rites, fought alike Goths and Romans, lost a third of their army by
dysentery, and went home again.
At last, after more horrors, Vitigis and his Goths were driven into
Ravenna. Justinian treated for peace; and then followed a strange
peripeteia, which we have, happily, from an eye-witness, Procopius
himself. The Roman generals outside confessed their chance of
success hopeless. The Goths inside, tired of the slow Vitigis, send
out to the great Belisarius, Will he be their king? King over them
there in Italy? He promised, meaning to break his promise; and to
the astonishment and delight of the Romans, the simple and honest
barbarians opened the gates of Ravenna, and let in him and his
Romans, to find themselves betrayed and enslaved. 'When I saw our
troops march in,' says Procopius, 'I felt it was God's doing, so to
turn their minds. The Goths,' he says, 'were far superior in numbers
and in strength; and their women, who had fancied these Romans to be
mighty men of valour, spit in the faces of their huge husbands, and
pointing to the little Romans, reproached them with having
surrendered to such things as that.' But the folly was committed.
Belisarius carried them away captive to Constantinople, and so ended
the first act of the Gothic war.
In the moment of victory the envy of the Byzantine court undid all
that it had done. Belisarius returned with his captives to Rome, not
for a triumph, but for a disgrace; and Italy was left open to the
Goths, if they had men and heart to rise once more.
And they did rise. Among the remnant of the race was left a hero,
Totila by name;--a Teuton of the ancient stamp. Totilas, 'free from
death'--'the deathless one,' they say his name means. Under him the
nation rose once more as out of the ground.
A Teuton of the ancient stamp he was, just and merciful exceedingly.
Take but two instances of him, and know the man by them. He retook
Naples. The Romans within were starving. He fed them; but lest they
should die of the sudden repletion, he kept them in by guards at each
gate, and fed them up more and more each day, till it was safe to let
them out, to find food for themselves in the country. A Roman came
to complain that a Goth had violated his daughter. He shall die,
said Totila. He shall not die, said the Goths. He is a valiant
hero. They came clamouring to the king. He answered them quietly
and firmly. They may choose to-day, whether to let this man go
unpunished, or to save the Gothic nation and win the victory. Do
they not recollect how at the beginning of the war, they had brave
soldiers, famous generals, countless treasures, horses, weapons, and
all the forts of Italy? And yet under Theodatus, a man who loved
gold better than justice, they had so angered God by their
unrighteous lives, that--what had happened they knew but too well.
Now God had seemed to have avenged himself on them enough. He had
begun a new course with them. They must begin a new course with him;
and justice was the only path. As for the man's being a valiant
hero: let them know that the unjust and the ravisher were never
brave in fight; but that according to a man's life, such was his luck
in battle.
His noble words came all but true. The feeble generals who were
filling Belisarius's place were beaten one by one, and almost all
Italy was reconquered. Belisarius had to be sent back again to
Italy: but the envy, whether of Justinian himself, or of the two
wicked women who ruled his court, allowed him so small a force that
he could do nothing.
Totila and the Goths came down once more to Rome. Belisarius in
agony sent for reinforcements, and got them; but too late. He could
not relieve Rome. The Goths had massed themselves round the city,
and Belisarius, having got to Ostia (Portus) at the Tiber's mouth,
could get no further. This was the last woe; the actual death-agony
of ancient Rome. The famine grew and grew. The wretched Romans
cried to Bessas and his garrison, either to feed them or to kill them
out of their misery. They would do neither. They could hardly at
last feed themselves. The Romans ate nettles off the ruins, and
worse things still. There was not a dog or a rat left. They even
killed themselves. One father of five children could bear no longer
their cries for food. He wrapped his head in his mantle, and sprang
into the Tiber, while the children looked on. The survivors wandered
about like spectres, brown with hunger, and dropped dead with half-
chewed nettles between their lips. To this, says Procopius, had
fortune brought the Roman senate and people. Nay, not fortune, but
wickedness. They had wished to play at being free, while they
themselves were the slaves of sin.
And still Belisarius was coming,--and still he did not come. He was
forcing his way up the Tiber; he had broken Totila's chain, burnt a
tower full of Goths, and the city was on the point of being relieved,
when one Isaac made a fool of himself, and was taken by the Goths.
Belisarius fancied that Portus, his base of operations, with all his
supplies, and Antonia, the worthless wife on whom he doted, were
gone. He lost his head, was beaten terribly, fell back on Ostia, and
then the end came. Isaurians from within helped in Goths by night.
The Asinarian gate was opened, and Rome was in the hands of the
Goths.
And what was left? What of all the pomp and glory, the spoils of the
world, the millions of inhabitants?
Five or six senators, who had taken refuge in St. Peter's, and some
five hundred of the plebs; Pope Pelagius crouching at Totila's feet,
and crying for mercy; and Rusticiana, daughter of Symmachus,
Boethius' widow, with other noble women, in slaves' rags, knocking
without shame at door after door to beg a bit of bread. And that was
what was left of Rome.
Gentlemen, I make no comment. I know no more awful page in the
history of Europe. Through such facts as these God speaks. Let man
be silent; and look on in fear and trembling, knowing that it was
written of old time--The wages of sin are death.
The Goths wanted to kill Rusticiana. She had sent money to the Roman
generals; she had thrown down Dietrich's statues, in revenge for the
death of her father and her husband. Totila would not let them touch
her. Neither maid, wife, nor widow, says Procopius, was the worse
for any Goth.
Next day he called the heroes together. He is going to tell them the
old tale, he says--How in Vitigis' time at Ravenna, 7000 Greeks had
conquered and robbed of kingdom and liberty 200,000 rich and well-
armed Goths. And now that they were raw levies, few, naked,
wretched, they had conquered more than 20,000 of the enemy. And why?
Because of old they had looked to everything rather than to justice;
they had sinned against each other and the Romans. Therefore they
must choose, and be just men henceforth, and have God with them, or
unjust, and have God against them.
Then he sends for the wretched remnant of the senators and tells them
the plain truth:- How the great Dietrich and his successors had
heaped them with honour and wealth; and how they had returned his
benefits by bringing in the Greeks. And what had they gained by
changing Dietrich for Justinian? Logothetes, who forced them by
blows to pay up the money which they had already paid to their Gothic
rulers; and revenue exacted alike in war and in peace. Slaves they
deserve to be; and slaves they shall be henceforth.
Then he sends to Justinian. He shall withdraw his army from Italy,
and make peace with him. He will be his ally and his son in arms, as
Dietrich had been to the Emperors before him, or if not, he will kill
the senate, destroy Rome, and march into Illyricum.
Justinian leaves it to Belisarius.
Then Totila begins to destroy Rome. He batters down the walls, he is
ready to burn the town. He will turn the evil place into a sheep-
pasture. Belisarius flatters and cajoles him from his purpose, and
he marches away with all his captives, leaving not a living soul in
Rome.
But Totila shews himself a general unable to cope with that great
tactician. He divides his forces, and allows Belisarius to start out
of Ostia and fortify himself in Rome. The Goths are furious at his
rashness: but it is too late, and the war begins again, up and down
the wretched land, till Belisarius is recalled by some fresh court
intrigue of his wicked wife, and another and even more terrible enemy
appears on the field, Narses the eunuch, avenging his wrong upon his
fellow-men by cunning and courage almost preternatural. He comes
upon them with a mighty host: but not of Romans alone. He has
gathered the Teuton tribes;--Herules, the descendants probably of
Odoacer's confederates; Gepids, who have a long blood-feud against
the Goths; and most terrible of all, Alboin with his five thousand
more Burgundians, of whom you will hear enough hereafter. We read
even of multitudes of Huns, and even of Persian deserters from the
Chosroo. But Narses' policy is the old Roman one--Teuton must
destroy Teuton. And it succeeds.
In spite of some trouble with the Franks, who are holding Venetia, he
marches down victorious through the wasted land, and Totila marches
to meet him in the Apennines. The hero makes his last speech. He
says, 'There will be no need to talk henceforth. This day will end
the war. They are not to fear these hired Huns, Herules, Lombards,
fighting for money. Let them hold together like desperate men.' So
they fight it out. The Goths depending entirely on the lance, the
Romans on a due use of every kind of weapon. The tremendous charge
of the Gothic knights is stopped by showers of Hun and Herule arrows,
and they roll back again and again in disorder on the foot: but in
spite of the far superior numbers of the Romans, it is not till
nightfall that Narses orders a general advance of his line. The
Goths try one last charge; but appalled by the numbers of the enemy,
break up, and, falling back on the foot, throw them into confusion,
and all is lost.
The foot are cut down flying. The knights ride for their lives.
Totila and five horsemen are caught up by Asbad the Gepid chief.
Asbad puts his lance in rest, not knowing who was before him. 'Dog,'
cries Totila's page, 'wilt thou strike thy lord?' But it is too
late. Asbad's lance goes through his back, and he drops on his
horse's neck. Scipwar (Shipward) the Goth wounds Asbad, and falls
wounded himself. The rest carry off Totila. He dies that night,
after reigning eleven stormy years.
The Goths flee across the Po. There is one more struggle for life,
and one more hero left. Teia by name, 'the slow one,' slow, but
strong. He shall be king now. They lift him on the shield, and
gather round him desperate, but determined to die hard. He finds the
treasure of Totila, hid in Pisa. He sends to Theudebald and his
Franks. Will they help him against the Roman, and they shall have
the treasure; the last remnant of the Nibelungen hoard. No. The
Luegenfelden will not come. They will stand by and see the butchery,
on the chance of getting all Italy for themselves. Narses storms
Rome--or rather a little part of it round Hadrian's Mole, which the
Goths had fortified; and the Goths escape down into Campania, mad
with rage.
That victory of Narses, says Procopius, brought only a more dreadful
destruction on the Roman senate and people. The Goths, as they go
down, murder every Roman they meet. The day of grace which Totila
had given them is over. The Teutons in Narses' army do much the
same. What matter to Burgunds and Herules who was who, provided they
had any thing to be plundered of? Totila has allowed many Roman
senators to live in Campania. They hear that Narses has taken Rome,
they begin to flock to the ghastly ruin. Perhaps there will be once
again a phantom senate, phantom consuls, under the Romani nominis
umbram. The Goths catch them, and kill them to a man. And there is
an end of the Senatus Populusque Romanus.
The end is near now. And yet these terrible Goths cannot be killed
out of the way. On the slopes of Vesuvius, by Nuceria, they fortify
a camp; and as long as they are masters of the neighbouring sea, for
two months they keep Narses at bay. At last he brings up an
innumerable fleet, cuts off their supplies; and then the end comes.
The Goths will die like desperate men on foot. They burst out of
camp, turn their horses loose, after the fashion of German knights--
One hears of the fashion again and again in the middle age,--and rush
upon the enemy in deep solid column. The Romans have hardly time to
form some sort of line; and then not the real Romans, I presume, but
the Burgunds and Gepids, turn their horses loose like the Goths.
There is no need for tactics; the fight is hand to hand; every man,
says Procopius, rushing at the man nearest him.
For a third of the day Teia fights in front, sheltered by his long
pavisse, stabbing with a mighty lance at the mob which makes at him,
as dogs at a boar at bay. Procopius is awed by the man. Most
probably he saw him with his own eyes. Second in valour, he says, to
none of the Heroes.
Again and again his shield is full of darts. Without moving a foot,
without turning an inch right or left, says Procopius, he catches
another from his shield-bearer, and fights on. At last he has twelve
lances in his shield, and cannot move it: coolly he calls for a
fresh one, as if he were fixed to the soil, thrusts back the enemy
with his left hand, and stabs at them with his right. But his time
is come. As he shifts his shield for a moment his chest is exposed,
and a javelin is through him. And so ends the last hero of the East
Goths. They put his head upon a pole, and carry it round the lines
to frighten the Goths. The Goths are long past frightening.
All day long, and all the next day, did the Germans fight on, Burgund
and Gepid against Goth, neither giving nor taking quarter, each man
dying where he stood, till human strength could bear up no longer,
while Narses sat by, like an ugly Troll as he was, smiling to see the
Teuton slay the Teuton, for the sake of their common enemy. Then the
Goths sent down to Narses. They were fighting against God. They
would give in, and go their ways peaceably, and live with some other
Teuton nations after their own laws. They had had enough of Italy,
poor fellows, and of the Nibelungen hoard. Only Narses, that they
might buy food on the journey back, must let them have their money,
which he had taken in various towns of Italy.
Narses agreed. There was no use fighting more with desperate men.
They should go in peace. And he kept his faith with them. Perhaps
he dared not break it. He let them go, like a wounded lion crawling
away from the hunter, up through Italy, and over the Po, to vanish.
They and their name became absorbed in other nations, and history
knows the East Goths no more.
So perished, by their own sins, a noble nation; and in perishing,
destroyed utterly the Roman people. After war and famine followed as
usual dreadful pestilence, and Italy lay waste for years. Henceforth
the Italian population was not Roman, but a mixture of all races,
with a most powerful, but an entirely new type of character. Rome
was no more Senatorial, but Papal.
And why did these Goths perish, in spite of all their valour and
patriotism, at the hands of mercenaries?
They were enervated, no doubt, as the Vandals had been in Africa, by
the luxurious southern climate, with its gardens, palaces, and wines.
But I have indicated a stronger reason already:- they perished
because they were a slave-holding aristocracy.
We must not blame them. All men then held slaves: but the original
sin was their ruin, though they knew it not. It helped, doubtless,
to debauch them; to tempt them to the indulgence of those fierce and
greedy passions, which must, in the long run, lower the morality of
slaveholders; and which, as Totila told them, had drawn down on them
the anger of heaven. But more; though they reformed their morals,
and that nobly, under the stern teaching of affliction, that could
not save them. They were ruined by the inherent weakness of all
slaveholding states; the very weakness which had ruined, in past
years, the Roman Empire. They had no middle class, who could keep up
their supplies, by exercising for them during war the arts of peace.
They had no lower class, whom they dare entrust with arms, and from
whom they might recruit their hosts. They could not call a whole
population into the field, and when beaten in that field, carry on,
as Britain would when invaded, a guerilla warfare from wood to wood,
and hedge to hedge, as long as a coign of vantage-ground was left.
They found themselves a small army of gentlemen, chivalrous and
valiant, as slaveholders of our race have always been; but lessening
day by day from battle and disease, with no means of recruiting their
numbers; while below them and apart from them lay the great mass of
the population, helpless, unarmed, degraded, ready to side with any
or every one who would give them bread, or let them earn it for
themselves (for slaves must eat, even though their masters starve),
and careless of, if not even hostile to, their masters' interests,
the moment those masters were gone to the wars.
In such a case, nothing was before them, save certain defeat at last
by an enemy who could pour in ever fresh troops of mercenaries, and
who had the command of the seas.
I may seem to be describing the case of a modern and just as valiant
and noble a people. I do not mention its name. The parallel, I
fear, is too complete, not to have already suggested itself to you.
LECTURE VII--PAULUS DIACONUS
And now I come to the final settlement of Italy and the Lombard race;
and to do that well, I must introduce you to-day to an old
chronicler--a very valuable, and as far as we know, faithful writer--
Paul Warnefrid, alias Paul the Deacon.
I shall not trouble you with much commentary on him; but let him, as
much as possible, tell his own story. He may not be always quite
accurate, but you will get no one more accurate. In the long run,
you will know nothing about the matter, save what he tells you; so be
content with what you can get. Let him shew you what sort of an
account of his nation, and the world in general, a Lombard gentleman
and clergyman could give, at the end of the 8th century.
You recollect the Lombards, of whom Tacitus says, 'Longobardos
paucitas nobilitat.' Paulus Warnefrid was one of their descendants,
and his history carries out the exact truth of Tacitus' words. He
too speaks of them as a very small tribe. He could not foresee how
much the 'nobilitat' meant. He knew his folk as a brave semi-feudal
race, who had conquered the greater part of Italy, and tilled and
ruled it well; who were now conquered by Charlemagne, and annexed to
the great Frank Empire, but without losing anything of their
distinctive national character. He did not foresee that they would
become the architects, the merchants, the goldsmiths, the bankers,
the scientific agriculturists of all Europe. We know it. Whenever
in London or any other great city, you see a 'Lombard Street,' an old
street of goldsmiths and bankers--or the three golden balls of
Lombardy over a pawnbroker's shop--or in the country a field of rye-
grass, or a patch of lucerne--recollect this wise and noble people,
and thank the Lombards for what they have done for mankind.
Paulus is a garrulous historian, but a valuable one, just because he
is garrulous. Though he turned monk and deacon in middle life, he
has not sunk the man in the monk, and become a cosmopolite, like most
Roman ecclesiastics, who have no love or hate for human beings save
as they are friends or enemies of the pope, or their own abbey. He
has retained enough of the Lombard gentleman to be proud of his
family, his country, and the old legends of his race, which he tells,
half-ashamed, but with evident enjoyment.
He was born at beautiful Friuli, with the jagged snow-line of the
Alps behind him, and before him the sun and the sea, and the plains
of Po; he was a courtier as a boy in Desiderius' court at Pavia, and
then, when Charlemagne destroyed the Lombard monarchy, seems to have
been much with the great king at Aix. He certainly ended his life as
a Benedictine monk, at Monte Casino, about 799; having written a Life
of St. Gregory; Homilies long and many; the Appendix to Eutropius
(the Historia Miscella, as it is usually called) up to Justinian's
time; and above all, this history of the Lombards, his forefathers,
which I shall take as my text.
To me, and I believe to the great German antiquaries, his history
seems a model history of a nation. You watch the people and their
story rise before you out of fable into fact; out of the dreary
darkness of the unknown north, into the clear light of civilized
Roman history.
The first chapter is 'Of Germany, how it nourishes much people, and
therefore many nations go forth of it.' The reason which he gives
for the immense population is significant. The further to the north,
and the colder, the more healthy he considers the world to be, and
more fit for breeding human beings; whereas the south, being nearer
to the heat of the sun, always abounds with diseases. The fact
really is, I presume, that Italy (all the south which he knew), and
perhaps most of the once Roman empire, were during the 6th and 7th
centuries pestilential. Ruined cities, stopt watercourses,
cultivated land falling back into marsh and desert, a soil too often
saturated with human corpses--offered all the elements for
pestilence. If the once populous Campagna of Rome be now
uninhabitable from malaria, what must it have been in Paul
Warnefrid's time?
Be that as it may, this is his theory.
Then he tells us how his people were at first called Winils; and how
they came out of Scania Insula. Sweden is often, naturally, an
island with the early chroniclers; only the south was known to them.
The north was magical, unknown, Quenland, the dwelling-place of
Yotuns, Elves, Trolls, Scratlings, and all other uncanny
inhumanities. The Winils find that they are growing too many for
Scanland, and they divide into three parties. Two shall stay behind,
and the third go out to seek their fortunes. Which shall go is to be
decided by lot. The third on whom the lot falls choose as war-kings,
two brothers, Ayo and Ibor, and with them their mother, Gambara, the
Alruna-wife, prudent and wise exceedingly--and they go forth.
But before Paul can go too, he has a thing or two to say, which he
must not forget, about the wild mysterious north from which his
forefathers came. First how, in those very extreme parts of Germany,
in a cave on the ocean shore, lie the seven sleepers. How they got
thither from Ephesus, I cannot tell, still less how they should be at
once there on the Baltic shore, and at Ephesus--as Mohammed himself
believed, and Edward the Confessor taught--and at Marmoutier by
Tours, and probably elsewhere beside. Be that as it may, there they
are, the seven martyrs, sleeping for ever in their Roman dresses,
which some wild fellow tried to pull off once, and had his arms
withered as a punishment. And Paul trusts that they will awake some
day, and by their preaching save the souls of the heathen Wends and
Finns who haunt those parts.
The Teutonic knights, however, and not the seven sleepers, did that
good work.
Only their dog is not with them, it appears;--the sacred dog which
watches them till the judgment day, when it is to go up to heaven,
with Noah's dove, and Balaam's ass, and Alborah the camel, and all
the holy beasts. The dog must have been left behind at Ephesus.
Then he must tell us about the Scritofinns of the Bothnia gulf; wild
Lapps and Finns, who have now retreated before the Teutonic race. In
Paul Warnefrid's eyes they are little wild hopping creatures--whence
they derive their name, he says--Scritofinns, the hopping, or
scrambling Finns.
Scrattels, Skretles, often figure in the Norse tales as hopping
dwarfs, half magical {p158}. The Norse discoverers of America
recognized the Skraellings in the Esquimaux, and fled from them in
panic terror; till that furious virago Freydisa, Thorvard's wife, and
Eirek the Red's daughter, caught up a dead man's sword, and put to
flight, single-handed, the legion of little imps.
Others, wiser, or too wise, say that Paul is wrong; that Skrikfins is
the right name, so called from their 'screeking', screaming, and
jabbering, which doubtless the little fellows did, loudly enough.
Be that as it may, they appear to Paul (or rather to his informants,
Wendish merchants probably, who came down to Charlemagne's court at
Aix, to sell their amber and their furs) as hopping about, he says,
after the rein-deer, shooting them with a little clumsy bow, and
arrows tipt with bone, and dressing themselves in their skins.
Procopius knew these Scritfins too (but he has got (as usual) addled
in his geography, and puts them in ultima Thule or Shetland), and
tells us, over and above the reindeer-skin dresses, that the women
never nursed their children, but went out hunting with their
husbands, hanging the papoose up to a tree, as the Lapps do now, with
a piece of deer's marrow in its mouth to keep it employed; and
moreover, that they sacrificed their captives to a war-god (Mars he
calls him) in cruel ugly ways. All which we may fully believe.
Then Paul has to tell us how in the Scritfin country there is little
or no night in midsummer, little or no day in winter; and how the
shadows there are exceeding long, and shorten to nothing as they
reach the equator,--where he puts not merely Egypt, but Jerusalem.
And how on Christmas days a man's shadow is nine feet long in Italy,
whereas at Totonis Villam (Thionville), as he himself has measured,
it is nineteen feet and a half. Because, he says, shrewdly enough,
the further you go from the sun, the nearer the sun seems to the
horizon. Of all which if you answer--But this is not history: I
shall reply--But it is better than history. It is the history of
history. It helps you to see how the world got gradually known; how
history got gradually to be written; how each man, in each age, added
his little grain to the great heap of facts, and gave his rough
explanation thereof; and how each man's outlook upon this wondrous
world grew wider, clearer, juster, as the years rolled on.
And therefore I have no objection at all to listen to Paul in his
next chapter, concerning the two navels of the ocean, one on each
side Britain--abysses which swallow up the water twice a day, and
twice a day spout it up again. Paul has seen, so he seems to say,
the tide, the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], that
inexplicable wonder of the old Greeks and Romans, running up far
inland at the mouths of the Seine and Loire; and he has to get it
explained somehow, before he can go forward with a clear conscience.
One of the navels seems to be the Mahlstrom in Norway. Of the place
of the other there is no doubt. It is close to Evodia insula,
seemingly Alderney. For a high noble of the French told him so; he
was sucked into it, ships and all, and only escaped by clinging to a
rock. And after awhile the margins of that abyss were all left bare,
leaving the Frenchman high and dry, 'palpitating so with fear,' says
Paul, 'that he could hardly keep his seat.' But when all the water
had been sucked in, out and up it came pouring again, in huge
mountains, and upon them the Frenchman's ships, to his intense
astonishment, reappeared out of the bottomless pit; into one of which
he jumped; being, like a true Frenchman, thoroughly master of the
situation; and got safe home to tell Paul the deacon. It is not
quite the explanation of the tides which one would have wished for:
but if a French nobleman of high rank will swear that he saw it with
his own eyes, what can Paul do, in common courtesy, but believe him?
Paul has observed, too, which is a fact, that there is a small tide
in his own Adriatic; and suggests modestly that there may be a
similar hole in the bottom of that sea, only a little one, the tide
being very little. After which, 'his praelibatis,' he will return,
he says, to his story. And so he goes back to the famous Langbard
Saga, the old story, which he has turned out of living Teutonic verse
into dead Latin prose, and calls De Woden et Frea quaedam ridicula
fabula; but can't help for the life of him telling it, apologizing
all the time. How the Winils (his own folk) went out to fight the
Wendels, many more than them in number; and how Gambara, the Alruna-
wife, cried to Freia the goddess, and Freia told her that whichsoever
of the two armies first greeted Woden at the sunrise should win. But
the Winils are far away on the war-road, and there is no time to send
to them. So Freia bids her take the Winil women, and dress them as
warriors, and plait their tresses over their lips for beards, and cry
to Woden; and Woden admires their long beards, and thinks them such
valiant 'war-beasts,' that he grants them the victory.
Then Freia tells him how he has been taken in, and the old god laughs
till the clouds rattle again, and the Winils are called Langbardr
ever after.
But then comes in the antiquary, and says that the etymology is
worthless, and that Langbardr means long axes--(bard=an axe)--a word
which we keep in halbert, a hall-axe, or guard's pole-axe; and
perhaps the antiquary is right.
But again comes in a very learned man, Dr. Latham {p162}, and more
than hints that the name is derived from the Lange Borde, the long
meadows by the side of the Elbe: and so a good story crumbles to
pieces, and
'All charms do fly
Beneath the touch of cold philosophy.'
Then follows another story, possibly from another saga. How by
reason of a great famine they had to leave Scoringia, the shore-land,
and go into Mauringia, a word which Mr. Latham connects with the
Merovingi, or Meerwing conquerors of Gaul. Others say that it means
the moorland, others something else. All that they will ever find
out we may see for ourselves already.--A little tribe of valiant
fair-haired men, whether all Teutons, or, as Mr. Latham thinks,
Sclavonians with Teuton leaders, still intimately connected with our
own English race both by their language and their laws, struggling
for existence on the bleak brown bogs and moors, sowing a little
barley and flax, feeding a few rough cattle, breeding a few great
black horses; generation after generation fighting their way
southward, as they exhausted the barren northern soils, or became too
numerous for their marches, or found land left waste in front of them
by the emigration of some Suevic, Vandal, or Burgund tribe. We know
nothing about them, and never shall know, save that they wore white
linen gaiters, and carried long halberts, or pole-axes, and had each
an immortal soul in him, as dear to God as yours or mine, with
immense unconscious capabilities, which their children have proved
right well.
Then comes another saga, how they met the Assipitti, of whom, whether
they were Tacitus's Usipetes, of the Lower Rhine, or Asabiden, the
remnant of the Asen, who went not to Scandinavia with Odin, we know
not, and need not know; and how the Assipitti would not let them
pass; and how they told the Lombards that they had dogheaded men in
their tribe who drank men's blood, which Mr. Latham well explains by
pointing out, in the Traveller's Song, a tribe of Hundings
(Houndings) sons of the hound; and how the Lombards sent out a
champion, who fought the champion of the Assipitti, and so gained
leave to go on their way.
Forward they go, toward the south-east, seemingly along the German
marches, the debateable land between Teuton and Sclav, which would,
mechanically speaking, be the line of least resistance. We hear of
Gothland--wherever that happened to be just then; of Anthaib, the
land held by the Sclavonian Anten, and Bathaib, possibly the land
held by the Gepidae, or remnant of the Goths who bided behind (as
Wessex men still say), while the Goths moved forward; and then of
Burgundhaib, wherever the Burgunds might be then. I know not; and I
will dare to say, no man can exactly know. For no dates are given,
and how can they be? The Lombards have not yet emerged out of the
dismal darkness of the north into the light of Roman civilization;
and all the history they have are a few scraps of saga.
At last they take a king of the family of the Gungings, Agilmund, son
of Ayo, like the rest of the nations, says Jornandes; for they will
be no more under duces, elective war-kings. And then follows a fresh
saga (which repeats itself in the myths of several nations), how a
woman has seven children at a birth, and throws them for shame into a
pond; and Agilmund the king, riding by, stops to see, and turns them
over with his lance; and one of the babes lays hold thereof; and the
king says, 'This will be a great man;' and takes him out of the pond,
and calls him Lamissohn, 'the son of the fishpond,' (so it is
interpreted;) who grows to be a mighty Kemper-man, and slays an
Amazon. For when they come to a certain river, the Amazons forbid
them to pass, unless they will fight their she-champion; and
Lamissohn swims over and fights the war-maiden, and slays her; and
they go on and come into a large land and quiet, somewhere about
Silesia, it would seem, and abode there a long while.
Then down on them come the savage Bulgars by night, and slay king
Agilmund, and carry off his daughter; and Lamissohn follows them, and
defeats them with a great slaughter, and is made king; and so forth:
till at last they have got--how we shall never know--near history and
historic lands. For when Odoacer and his Turklings and other
confederates went up into Rugiland, the country north of Vienna, and
destroyed the Rugians, and Fava their king, then the Lombards went
down into the waste land of the Rugians, because it was fertile, and
abode there certain years.
Then they moved on again, we know not why, and dwelt in the open
plains, which are called feld. One says 'Moravia;' but that they had
surely left behind. Rather it is the western plain of Hungary about
Comorn. Be that as it may, they quarrelled there with the Heruli.
Eutropius says that they paid the Herules tribute for the land, and
offered to pay more, if the Herules would not attack them. Paul
tells a wild saga, or story, of the Lombard king's daughter insulting
a Herule prince, because he was short of stature: he answered by
some counter-insult; and she, furious, had him stabbed from behind
through a window as he sat with his back to it. Then war came. The
Herules, old and practised warriors, trained in the Roman armies,
despised the wild Lombards, and disdained to use armour against them,
fighting with no clothes save girdles. Rodulf their king, too
certain of victory, sat playing at tables, and sent a man up a tree
to see how the fight went, telling him that he would cut his head off
if he said that the Herules fled; and then, touched by some secret
anxiety as to the end, spoke the fatal words himself; and a madness
from God came on the Herules; and when they came to a field of flax,
they took the blue flowers for water, and spread out their arms to
swim through, and were all slaughtered defencelessly.
Then they fought with the Suevi; and their kings' daughters married
with the kings of the Franks; and then ruled Aldwin (a name which Dr.
Latham identifies with our English Eadwin, or Edwin, 'the noble
conqueror,' though Grotius translates it Audwin, 'the old or auld
conqueror'), who brought them over the Danube into Pannonia, between
the Danube and the Drave, about the year 526. Procopius says, that
they came by a grant from the Emperor Justinian, who gave as wife to
Aldwin a great niece of Dietrich the Good, carried captive with
Witigis to Byzant.
Thus at last they too have reached the forecourt of the Roman Empire,
and are waiting for their turn at the Nibelungen hoard. They have
one more struggle, the most terrible of all; and then they will be
for a while the most important people of the then world.
The Gepidae are in Hungary before them, now a great people. Ever
since they helped to beat the Huns at Netad, they have been holding
Attila's old kingdom for themselves and not attempting to move
southward into the Empire; so fulfilling their name.
There is continual desultory war; Justinian, according to Procopius'
account, playing false with each, in order to make them destroy each
other. Then, once (this is Procopius' story, not Paul's) they meet
for a great fight; and both armies run away by a panic terror; and
Aldwin the Lombard and Thorisend the Gepid are left alone, face to
face.--It is the hand of God, say the two wild kings--God does not
mean these two peoples to destroy each other. So they make a truce
for two years. Then the Gepidae call in Cutuguri, a Hunnic tribe, to
help them; then, says Procopius, Aldwin, helped by Roman mercenaries,
under Amalfrid the Goth, Theodoric's great nephew, and brother-in-law
of Aldwin, has a great fight with the Gepidae. But Paul knows naught
of all this: with him it is not Aldwin, but Alboin his son, who
destroys the Gepidae. Alboin, Grotius translates as Albe-win, 'he
who wins all:' but Dr. Latham, true to his opinion that the Lombards
and the Angles were closely connected, identifies it with our
AElfwine, 'the fairy conqueror.'
Aldwin, Paul says, and Thorisend fought in the Asfeld,--wherever that
may be,--and Alboin the Lombard prince slew Thorisend the Gepid
prince, and the Gepidae were defeated with a great slaughter.
Then young Alboin asked his father to let him sit at the table with
him. No, he could not do that, by Lombard custom, till he has become
son-at-arms to some neighbouring king.
Young Alboin takes forty thanes, and goes off to Thorisend's court,
as the guest of his enemy. The rites of hospitality are sacred. The
king receives him, feasts him, seats him, the slayer of his son, in
his dead son's place. And as he looks on him he sighs; and at last
he can contain no longer. The seat, he says, I like right well: but
not the man who sits in it. One of his sons takes fire, and begins
to insult the Lombards and their white gaiters. You Lombards have
white legs like so many brood mares. A Lombard flashes up. Go to
the Asfeld, and you will see how Lombard mares can kick. Your
brother's bones are lying about there like any sorry nag's. This is
too much; swords are drawn; but old Thorisend leaps up. He will
punish the first man who strikes. Guests are sacred. Let them sit
down again, and drink their liquor in peace. And after they have
drunk, he gives Alboin his dead son's weapons, and lets them go in
peace, like a noble gentleman.
This grand old King dies in peace. Aldwin dies likewise, and to them
succeed their sons, Alboin and Cunimund--the latter probably the
prince who made the jest about the brood-mares--and they two will
fight the quarrel out. Cunimund, says Paul, began the war--of course
that is his story. Alboin is growing a great man; he has married a
daughter of Clotaire, king of the Franks: and now he takes to his
alliance the Avars, who have just burst into the Empire, wild people
who afterwards founded a great kingdom in the Danube lands, and they
ravage Cunimund's lands. He will fight the Lombards first,
nevertheless: he can settle the Avars after. He and his, says Paul,
are slain to a man. Alboin makes a drinking-cup of his skull,
carries off his daughter Rosamund ('Rosy-mouth'), and a vast
multitude of captives and immense wealth. The Gepidae vanish from
history; to this day (says Paul) slaves either of the Lombards or the
Huns (by whom he rather means Avars); and Alboin becomes the hero of
his time, praised even to Paul's days in sagas, Saxon and Bavarian as
well as Lombard, for his liberality and his glory. We shall see now
how he has his chance at the Nibelungen hoard.
He has heard enough (as all Teutons have) of Italy, its beauty, and
its weakness. He has sent five thousand chosen warriors to Narses,
to help him against Totila and the Ostrogoths; and they have told him
of the fair land and large, with its vineyards, olive-groves, and
orchards, waste by war and pestilence, and crying out for human
beings to come and till it once more.
There is no force left in Italy now, which can oppose him. Hardly
any left in the Roman world. The plague is come; to add its horrors
to all the other horrors of the time--the true old plague, as far as
I can ascertain; bred, men say, from the Serbonian bog; the plague
which visited Athens in the time of Socrates, and England in the
seventeenth century: and after the plague a famine; woe on woe,
through all the dark days of Justinian the demon-emperor. The
Ostrogoths, as you know, were extinct as a nation. The two deluges
of Franks and Allmen, which, under the two brothers Buccelin and
Lothaire, all on foot (for the French, as now, were no horsemen), had
rolled into Italy during the Gothic war, had been swallowed up, as
all things were, in the fatal gulf of Italy. Lothaire and his army,
returning laden with plunder, had rotted away like sheep by Lake
Benacus (Garda now) of drink, and of the plague. Buccelin,
entrenched among his plunder-waggons by the Volturno stream in the
far south, had waited in vain for that dead brother and his dead
host, till Narses came on him, with his army of trained Herules and
Goths; the Francisc axe and barbed pike had proved useless before the
arrows and the cavalry of the Romans; and no more than five Allmen,
says one, remained of all that mighty host. Awful to think of:
75,000 men, they say, in one column, 100,000 in the other: and like
water they flowed over the land; and like water they sank into the
ground, and left no trace.
And now Narses, established as exarch of Ravenna, a sort of satrap,
like those of the Persian Emperors, and representing the Emperor of
Constantinople, was rewarded for all his conquests and labours by
disgrace. Eunuch-like, he loved money, they said; and eunuch-like,
he was harsh and cruel. The Empress Sophia, listening too readily to
court-slanders, bade him 'leave to men the use of arms, and come back
to the palace, to spin among the maids.' --'Tell her,' said the
terrible old imp, 'I will spin her such a thread as she shall not
unravel.'
He went, superseded by Longinus; but not to Constantinople. From
Naples he sent (so says Paul the Deacon) to Alboin, and bade him come
and try his fortune as king of Italy. He sent, too, (so says old
Paul) presents to tempt the simple Lombard men--such presents as
children would like--all fruits which grew in Italian orchards.
Though the gold was gone, those were still left. Great babies they
were, these Teutons, as I told you at the first; and Narses knew it
well, and had used them for his ends for many a year.
Then were terrible signs seen in Italy by night; fiery armies
fighting in the sky, and streams of blood aloft, foreshadowing the
blood which should be shed.
Sent for or not, King Alboin came; and with him all his army, and a
mighty multitude, women, and children, and slaves; Bavarians,
Gepidae, Bulgars, Sarmatae, Pannonians, Sueves, and Noricans; whose
names (says Paul) remain unto this day in the names of the villages
where they settled. With Alboin, too, came Saxons, twenty thousand
of them at the least, with wife and child. And Sigebert king of the
Franks put Suevic settlers into the lands which the Saxons had left.
Alboin gave up his own Hungarian land to his friends the Avars, on
the condition that he should have them back if he had to return. But
return he never did, he nor his Lombard host. This is the end. The
last invasion of Italy. The sowing, once for all, of an Italian
people. Fresh nations were still pressing down to the rear of the
Alps, waiting for their turn to enter the Fairy Land--not knowing,
perhaps, that nothing was left therein, but ashes and blood: --but
their chance was over now: a people were going into Italy who could
hold what they got.
On Easter Tuesday, in the year of grace 568, they came, seemingly by
the old road; the path of Alaric and Dietrich and the rest; the pass
from Carniola, through which the rail runs now from Laybach to
Trieste. It must have been white, in those days, with the bones of
nigh 200 years. And they found bisons, aurochsen, in the mountains,
Paul says, and is not surprised thereat, because there are plenty of
them in Hungary near by. An old man told him he had seen a skin in
which fifteen men might lie side by side. None, you must know, are
left now, save a very few in the Lithuanian forests. Paul goes out
of his way to note this fact, and so shall I.
Alboin left a strong guard in Friuli, and Paul's ancestor among them,
under Gisulf his nephew, and Marphrais or master of the horse, who
now became duke of Friuli and warden of the marches, bound to prevent
the Avars following them into their new abode. Then the human deluge
spread itself slowly over the Lombard plains. None fought with them,
and none gainsaid; for all the land was waste. The plague of three
years before, and the famine which followed it had, says Paul,
reduced the world into primaeval silence. The villages had no
inhabitants but dogs; the sheep were pasturing without a shepherd;
the wild birds swarmed unhurt about the fields. The corn was
springing self-sown under the April sun, the vines sprouting
unpruned, the lucerne fields unmown, when the great Lombard people
flowed into that waste land, and gave to it their own undying name.
The scanty population, worn out with misery, fled to rocks and
islands in the lakes, and to the seaport towns; but they seem to have
found the Lombards merciful masters, and bowed their necks meekly to
the inevitable yoke. The towns alone seem to have offered
resistance. Pavia Alboin besieged three years, and could not take.
He swore some wild oath of utter destruction to all within, and would
have kept it. At last they capitulated. As Alboin rode in at St.
John's gate, his horse slipped up; and could not rise, though the
grooms beat him with their lance-butts. A ghostly fear came on the
Lombards. 'Remember, lord king, thy cruel oath, and cancel it; for
there are Christian folk in the city.' Alboin cancelled his oath,
and the horse rose at once. So Alboin spared the people of Pavia,
and entered the palace of old Dietrich the Ostrogoth, as king of
Italy, as far as the gates of Rome and Ravenna.
And what was his end? Such an end as he deserved; earned and worked
out for himself. A great warrior, he had destroyed many nations, and
won a fair land. A just and wise governor, he had settled North
Italy on some rough feudal system, without bloodshed or cruelty. A
passionate savage, he died as savages deserve to die. You recollect
Rosamund his Gepid bride? In some mad drinking-bout (perhaps
cherishing still his old hatred of her family) he sent her her
father's skull full of wine, and bade her drink before all. She
drank, and had her revenge.
The story has become world-famous from its horror: but I suppose I
must tell it you in its place.--How she went to Helmichis the shield-
bearer, and he bade her get Peredeo the Kemper-man to do the deed:
and how Peredeo intrigued with one of her bower-maidens, and how
Rosamund did a deed of darkness, and deceived Peredeo; and then said
to him, I am thy mistress; thou must slay thy master, or thy master
thee. And how he, like Gyges in old Herodotus's tale, preferred to
survive; and how Rosamund bound the king's sword to his bedstead as
he slept his mid-day sleep, and Peredeo did the deed; and how Alboin
leapt up, and fought with his footstool, but in vain. And how, after
he was dead, Rosamund became Helmichis' leman, as she had been
Peredeo's, and fled with him to Ravenna, with all the treasure and
Alpswintha, Alboin's daughter by the Frankish wife; and how Longinus
the exarch persuaded her to poison Helmichis, and marry him; and how
she gave Helmichis the poisoned cup as he came out of the bath, and
he saw by the light of her wicked eyes that it was poison, and made
her drink the rest; and so they both fell dead. And then how Peredeo
and the treasure were sent to the Emperor at Constantinople; and how
Peredeo slew a great lion in the theatre; and how Tiberius, when he
saw that he was so mighty a man of his hands, bade put his eyes out;
and how he hid two knives in his sleeves, and slew with them two
great chamberlains of the Emperor; and so died, like Samson, says old
Paul, having got good weregeld for the loss of his eyes--a man for
either eye.
And old Narses died at Rome, at a great age; and they wrapt him in
lead, and sent him to Byzant with all his wealth. But some say that
while he was still alive, he hid his wealth in a great cistern, and
slew all who knew of it save one old man, and swore him never to
reveal the place. But after Narses' death that old man went to
Constantinople to Tiberius the Caesar, and told him how he could not
die with that secret on his mind; and so Tiberius got all the money,
so much that it took many days to carry away, and gave it all to the
poor, as was his wont.
A myth--a fable: but significant, as one more attempt to answer the
question of all questions in a Teuton's mind--What had become of the
Nibelungen hoard? What had become of all the wealth of Rome?
LECTURE VIII--THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN
I asked in my first lecture, 'What would become of the forest
children, unless some kind saint or hermit took pity on them?'
I used the words saint and hermit with a special purpose. It was by
the influence, actual or imaginary, of such, that the Teutons, after
the destruction of the Roman empire, were saved from becoming hordes
of savages, destroying each other by continual warfare.
What our race owes, for good and for evil, to the Roman clergy, I
shall now try to set before you.
To mete out to them their due share of praise and blame is, I
confess, a very difficult task. It can only be fulfilled by putting
oneself, as far as possible, in their place, and making human
allowance for the circumstances, utterly novel and unexpected, in
which they found themselves during the Teutonic invasions. Thus,
perhaps, we may find it true of some of them, as of others, that
'Wisdom is justified of all her children.'
That is a hard saying for human nature. Justified of her children
she may be, after we have settled which are to be her children and
which not: but of all her children? That is a hard saying. And yet
was not every man from the beginning of the world, who tried with his
whole soul to be right, and to do good, a child of wisdom, of whom
she at least will be justified, whether he is justified or not? He
may have had his ignorances, follies, weaknesses, possibly crimes:
but he served the purpose of his mighty mother. He did, even by his
follies, just what she wanted done; and she is justified of all her
children.
This may sound like optimism: but it also sounds like truth to any
one who has fairly studied that fantastic page of history, the
contrast between the old monks and our own heathen forefathers. The
more one studies the facts, the less one is inclined to ask, 'Why was
it not done better?'--the more inclined to ask, 'Could it have been
done better?' Were not the celibate clergy, from the fifth to the
eighth centuries, exceptional agents fitted for an exceptional time,
and set to do a work which in the then state of the European races,
none else could have done? At least, so one suspects, after
experience of their chronicles and legends, sufficient to make one
thoroughly detest the evil which was in their system: but sufficient
also to make one thoroughly love many of the men themselves.
A few desultory sketches, some carefully historical, the rest as
carefully compiled from common facts, may serve best to illustrate my
meaning.
The monk and clergyman, whether celibate or not, worked on the
heathen generally in one of three capacities: As tribune of the
people; as hermit or solitary prophet; as colonizer; and in all three
worked as well as frail human beings are wont to do, in this most
piecemeal world.
Let us look first at the Hermits. All know what an important part
they play in old romances and ballads. All are not aware that they
played as important a part in actual history. Scattered through all
wildernesses from the cliffs of the Hebrides to the Sclavonian
marches, they put forth a power, uniformly, it must be said, for
good.
Every one knows how they appear in the old romances.--How some Sir
Bertrand or other, wearied with the burden of his sins, stumbles on
one of these Einsiedler, 'settlers alone,' and talks with him; and
goes on a wiser and a better man. How he crawls, perhaps, out of
some wild scuffle, 'all-to bebled,' and reeling to his saddlebow; and
'ever he went through a waste land, and rocks rough and strait, so
that it him seemed he must surely starve; and anon he heard a little
bell, whereat he marvelled; and betwixt the water and the wood he was
aware of a chapel, and an hermitage; and there a holy man said mass,
for he was a priest, and a great leech, and cunning withal. And Sir
Bertrand went in to him and told him all his case--how he fought Sir
Marculf for love of the fair Ellinore, and how the king bade part
them, and how Marculf did him open shame at the wineboard, and how he
went about to have slain him privily, but could not; and then how he
went and wasted Marculf's lands, house with byre, kine with corn,
till a strong woman smote him over the head with a quern-stone, and
all-to broke his brain-pan;' and so forth--the usual story of mad
passion, drink, pride, revenge.
'And there the holy man a-read him right godly doctrine, and shrived
him, and gave him an oath upon the blessed Gospels, that fight he
should not, save in his liege lord's quarrel, for a year and a day.
And there he abode till he was well healed, he and his horse.'
Must not that wild fighting Bertrand have gone away from that place a
wiser and a better man? Is it a matter to be regretted, or
otherwise, that such men as the hermit were to be found in that
forest, to mend Bertrand's head and his morals, at the same time? Is
it a matter to be regretted, or otherwise, that after twenty or
thirty years more of fighting and quarrelling and drinking, this same
Sir Bertrand--finding that on the whole the lust of the flesh, the
lust of the eye, and the pride of life, were poor paymasters, and
having very sufficient proof, in the ends of many a friend and foe,
that the wages of sin are death--'fell to religion likewise, and was
a hermit in that same place, after the holy man was dead; and was
made priest of that same chapel; and died in honour, having succoured
many good knights, and wayfaring men'?
One knows very well that it would not be right now; that it is not
needed now. It is childish to repeat that, when the question is, was
it right then--or, at least, as right as was possible then? Was it
needed then--or, at least, the nearest thing to that which was
needed?
If it was, why should not wisdom be justified of all her children?
One hopes that she was; for certainly, if any men ever needed to be
in the right, lest they should be of all men most miserable, it was
these same old hermits. Praying and preaching continually, they
lived on food which dogs would not eat, in dens in which dogs ought
not to live. They had their reasons. Possibly they knew their own
business best. Possibly also they knew their neighbour's business
somewhat; they knew that such generations as they lived in could not
be taught, save by some extravagant example of this kind, some
caricature, as it were, of the doctrines which were to be enforced.
Nothing less startling, perhaps, could have touched the dull hearts,
have convinced the dull brains, of fierce, ignorant, and unreasoning
men.
Ferocity, lawlessness, rapine, cruelty, and--when they were glutted
and debauched by the spoils of the Roman empire--sensuality, were the
evils which were making Europe uninhabitable for decent folk, and
history--as Milton called it--a mere battle of kites and crows. What
less than the example of the hermit--especially when that hermit was
a delicate and high-born woman--could have taught men the absolute
superiority of soul to body, of spiritual to physical force, of
spiritual to physical pleasure, and have said to them, not in vain
words, but solid acts--'All that you follow is not the way of life.
The very opposite to it is the way of life. The wages of sin are
death; and you will find them so,--in this life the victims of your
own passions, and of the foes whom your crimes arouse, and in life to
come of hell for ever. But I tell you I have no mind to go to hell.
I have a mind to go to heaven; and I know my mind right well. If the
world is to be such as this, and the rulers thereof such as you, I
will flee from you. I will not enter into the congregation of
sinners, neither will I cast in my lot with the bloodthirsty. I will
be alone with God and His universe. I will go to the mountain cave
or to the ocean cliff, and there, while the salt wind whistles
through my hair, I will be stronger than you, safer than you, richer
than you, happier than you. Richer than you, for I shall have for my
companion the beatific vision of God, and of all things and beings
God-like, fair, noble, just, and merciful. Stronger than you,
because virtue will give me a power over the hearts of men such as
your force cannot give you; and you will have to come to my lonely
cell, and ask me to advise you, and teach you, and help you against
the consequences of your own sins. Safer than you, because God in
whom I trust will protect me: and if not, I have still the
everlasting life of heaven, which this world cannot give or take
away. So go your ways, fight and devour one another, the victims of
your own lusts. I am minded to be a good man; and to be that, I will
give up--as you have made all other methods impossible for me--all
which seems to make life worth having'? Oh! instead of finding fault
with such men; instead of, with vulturine beak, picking out the
elements of Manichaeism, of conceit, of discontent, of what not human
frailty and ignorance, which may have been in them, let us honour the
enormous moral force which enabled them so to bear witness that not
the mortal animal, but the immortal spirit, is the Man; and that when
all which outward circumstance can give is cast away, the Man still
lives for ever, by God, and in God.
And they did teach that lesson. They were good, while other men were
bad; and men saw the beauty of goodness, and felt the strength of it,
and worshipped it in blind savage admiration. Read Roswede's Vitae
Patrum Eremiticorum; read the legends of the hermits of the German
forests; read Colgan's Lives of the Irish Saints; and see whether,
amid all fantastic, incredible, sometimes immoral myths, the goodness
of life of some one or other is not the historic nucleus, round which
the myths, and the worship of the saint, have crystallized and
developed.
Take, for instance, the exquisite hymn of St. Bridget, which Colgan
attributes to the sixth century: though it is probably much later;
that has nothing to do with the argument:-
'Bridget, the victorious, she loved not the world;
She sat on it as a gull sits on the ocean;
She slept the sleep of a captive mother,
Mourning after her absent child.
She suffered not much from evil tongues;
She held the blessed faith of the Trinity;
Bridget, the mother of my Lord of Heaven,
The best among the sons of the Lord.
She was not querulous, nor malevolent;
She loved not the fierce wrangling of women;
She was not a backbiting serpent, or a liar;
She sold not the Son of God for that which passes away.
She was not greedy of the goods of this life;
She gave away without gall, without slackness;
She was not rough to wayfaring men;
She handled gently the wretched lepers.
She built her a town in the plains (of Kildare);
And dead, she is the patroness of many peoples.'
* * *
I might comment much on this quotation. I might point out how St.
Bridget is called the mother of the Lord, and by others, the Mary of
the Irish, the 'Automata coeli regina,' and seems to have been
considered at times as an avatar or incarnation of the blessed
Virgin. I might more than hint how that appellation, as well as the
calling of Christ 'the best of the sons of the Lord,' in an orthodox
Catholic hymn, seems to point to the remnants of an older creed,
possibly Buddhist, the transition whence towards Catholic
Christianity was slow and imperfect. I might make merry over the
fact that there are many Bridgets, some say eleven; even as there are
three or four St. Patricks; and raise learned doubts as to whether
such persons ever existed, after that Straussian method of pseudo-
criticism which cometh not from above, from the Spirit of God, nor
yet indeed from below, from the sound region of fact, but from
within, out of the naughtiness of the heart, defiling a man. I might
weaken, too, the effect of the hymn by going on with the rest of it,
and making you smile at its childish miracles and portents; but I
should only do a foolish thing, by turning your minds away from the
broad fact that St. Bridget, or various persons who got, in the lapse
of time, massed together under the name of St. Bridget, were
eminently good women.
It matters little whether these legends are historically correct.
Their value lies in the moral of them. And as for their real
historical correctness, the Straussian argument that no such persons
existed, because lies are told of them, is, I hold, most irrational.
The falsehood would not have been invented unless it had started in a
truth. The high moral character ascribed to them would never have
been dreamed of by persons who had not seen living instances of that
character. Man's imagination does not create; it only reproduces and
recombines its own experience. It does so in dreams. It does so, as
far as the moral character of the saint is concerned, in the legend;
and if there had not been persons like St. Bridget in Ireland, the
wild Irish could never have imagined them.
Therefore it matters little to a wise man, standing on the top of
Croagh Patrick, the grandest mountain perhaps, with the grandest
outlook, in these British isles, as he looks on the wild Irish there
on pattern days, up among the Atlantic clouds, crawling on bare and
bleeding knees round St. Patrick's cell,--it matters little, I say,
to the wise man, whether St. Patrick himself owned the ancient image
which is worshipped on that mountain peak, or the ancient bell which
till late years hung in the sanctuary,--such a strange oblong bell as
the Irish saints carried with them to keep off the demons--the magic
bells which appear (as far as I am aware) in the legends of no
country till you get to Tartary and the Buddhists;--such a bell as
came (or did not come) down from heaven to St. Senan; such a bell as
St. Fursey sent flying through the air to greet St. Cuanady at his
devotions when he could not come himself; such a bell as another
saint, wandering in the woods, rang till a stag came out of the
covert, and carried his burden for him on his horns. It matters as
little to the wise man whether that bell belonged to St. Patrick, as
whether all these child's dreams are dreams. It matters little to
him, too, whether St. Patrick did, or did not stand on that mountain
peak, 'in the spirit and power of Elias' (after whom it was long
named), fasting, like Elias, forty days and forty nights, wrestling
with the demons of the storm, and the snakes of the fen, and the
Peishta-more (the monstrous Python of the lakes), which assembled at
the magic ringing of his bell, till he conquered not by the brute
force of a Hercules and Theseus, and the monster-quellers of old
Greece, but by the spiritual force of which (so the text was then
applied) it is written, 'This kind cometh not out but by prayer and
fasting,' till he smote the evil things with 'the golden rod of
Jesus,' and they rolled over the cliff, in hideous rout, and perished
in the Atlantic far below. But it matters much to a wise man that
under all these symbols (not childish at all, but most grand, to the
man who knows the grand place of which they are told), there is set
forth the victory of a good and beneficent man over evil, whether of
matter or of spirit. It matters much to him that that cell, that
bell, that image are tokens that if not St. Patrick, some one else,
at least, did live and worship on that mountain top, in remote
primaeval times, in a place in which we would not, perhaps could not,
endure life a week. It matters much to him that the man who so dwelt
there, gained such a power over the minds of the heathen round him,
that five millions of their Christian descendants worship him, and
God on account of him, at this day.
St. Ita, again. It matters little that she did not--because she
could not--perform the miracles imputed to her. It matters little
whether she had or not--as I do not believe her to have had--a
regularly organized convent of nuns in Ireland during the sixth
century. It matters little if the story which follows is a mere
invention of the nuns in some after-century, in order to make a good
title for the lands which they held--a trick but too common in those
days. But it matters much that she should have been such a person,
that such a story as this, when told of her, should have gained
belief:- How the tribes of Hy-Connell, hearing of her great holiness,
came to her with their chiefs, and offered her all the land about her
cell. But she, not wishing to be entangled with earthly cares,
accepted but four acres round her cell, for a garden of herbs for her
and her nuns. And the simple wild Irish were sad and angry, and
said, 'If thou wilt not take it alive, thou shalt take it when thou
art dead. So they chose her then and there for their patroness, and
she blessed them with many blessings, which are fulfilled unto this
day; and when she migrated to the Lord they gave her all the land,
and her nuns hold it to this day, the land of Hy-Connell on the east
Shannon bank, at the roots of Luachra mountain.'
What a picture! One hopes that it may be true, for the sake of its
beauty and its pathos. The poor, savage, half-naked, and, I fear, on
the authority of St. Jerome and others, now and then cannibal Celts,
with their saffron scarfs, and skenes, and darts, and glibs of long
hair hanging over their hypo-gorillaceous visages, coming to the
prophet maiden, and asking her to take their land, for they could
make no decent use of it themselves; and look after them, body and
soul, for they could not look after themselves; and pray for them to
her God, for they did not know how to pray to Him themselves. If any
man shall regret that such an event happened to any savages on this
earth, I am, I confess, sorry for him.
St. Severinus, again, whom I have mentioned to you more than once:-
none of us can believe that he made a dead corpse (Silvinus the
priest, by name) sit up and talk with him on its road to burial.
None of us need believe that he stopped the plague at Vienna by his
prayers. None of us need attribute to anything but his sagacity the
Divine revelations whereby he predicted the destruction of a town for
its wickedness, and escaped thence, like Lot, alone; or by which he
discovered, during the famine of Vienna, that a certain rich widow
had much corn hidden in her cellars: but there are facts enough,
credible and undoubted, concerning St. Severinus, the apostle of
Austria, to make us trust that in him, too, wisdom was justified of
all her children.
You may remark, among the few words which have been as yet said of
St. Severinus, a destruction, a plague, and a famine. Those words
are a fair sample of St. Severinus's times, and of the circumstances
into which he voluntarily threw himself. About the middle of the
fifth century there appears in the dying Roman province of Noricum
(Austria we now call it) a strange gentleman, eloquent and learned
beyond all, and with the strangest power of melting and ruling the
hearts of men. Who he is he will not tell, save that his name is
Severinus, a right noble name without doubt. Gradually it oozes out
that he has been in the far East, through long travels and strange
dangers, through many cities and many lands; but he will tell
nothing. He is the servant of God, come hither to try to be of use.
He certainly could have come for no other reason, unless to buy
slaves; for Austria was at that time the very highway of the nations,
the centre of the human Mahlstrom, in which Huns, Gepiden, Allmannen,
Rugen, and a dozen wild tribes more, wrestled up and down round the
starving and beleaguered Roman towns of that once fertile and happy
province. A man who went there for his own pleasure, or even
devotion, would have been as wise as one who had built himself last
summer a villa on the Rappahannock, or retired for private meditation
to the orchard of Hougoumont during the battle of Waterloo.
Nevertheless, there Severinus stayed till men began to appreciate
him; and called him, and not unjustly, Saint. Why not? He preached,
he taught, he succoured, he advised, he fed, he governed; he turned
aside the raids of the wild German kings; he gained a divine power
over their hearts; he taught them something of God and of Christ,
something of justice and mercy; something of peace and unity among
themselves; till the fame ran through all the Alps, and far away into
the Hungarian marches, that there was a prophet of God arisen in the
land; and before the unarmed man, fasting and praying in his solitary
cell on the mountain above Vienna, ten thousand knights and champions
trembled, who never had trembled at the sight of armed hosts.
Who would deny that man the name of saint? And who, if by that
sagacity which comes from the combination of intellect and virtue, he
sometimes seemed miraculously to foretell coming events, would deny
him the name of prophet also?
If St. Severinus be the type of the monk as prophet, St. Columba may
stand as the type of the missionary monk; the good man strengthened
by lonely meditation; but using that strength not for selfish
fanaticism, but for the good of men; going forth unwillingly out of
his beloved solitude, that he may save souls. Round him, too,
cluster the usual myths. He drives away with the sign of the cross a
monster which attacks him at a ford. He expels from a fountain the
devils who smote with palsy and madness all who bathed therein. He
sees by a prophetic spirit, he sitting in his cell in Ireland, a
great Italian town destroyed by a volcano. His friends behold a
column of light rising from his head as he celebrates mass. Yes; but
they also tell of him, 'that he was angelical in look, brilliant in
speech, holy in work, clear in intellect, great in council.' That he
'never passed an hour without prayer, or a holy deed, or reading of
the Scriptures (for these old monks had Bibles, and knew them by
heart too, in spite of all that has been written to the contrary),
that he was of so excellent a humility and charity, bathing his
disciples' feet when they came home from labour, and carrying corn
from the mill on his own back, that he fulfilled the precept of his
Master, 'He that will be the greatest among you, let him be as your
servant.'
They also tell of him (and this is fact and history) how he left his
monastery of Derm Each, 'the field of oaks,' which we call Derry, and
went away at the risk of his life to preach to the wild Picts of
Galloway, and founded the great monastery of Iona, and that
succession of abbots from whom Christianity spread over the south of
Scotland and north of England, under his great successor Aidan.
Aidan has his myths likewise. They tell of him how he stilled the
sea-waves with holy oil; how he turned back on Penda and his Saxons
the flames with which the heathen king was trying to burn down
Bamborough walls. But they tell, too (and Bede had heard it from
those who had known Aidan in the flesh) of 'his love of peace and
charity, his purity and humility, his mind superior to avarice or
pride, his authority, becoming a minister of Christ, in reproving the
haughty and powerful, and his tenderness in relieving the afflicted,
and defending the poor.' Who, save one who rejoiceth in evil,
instead of rejoicing in the truth, will care to fix his eyes for a
moment upon the fairy tales which surround such a story, as long as
there shines out from among them clear and pure, in spite of all
doctrinal errors, the grace of God, the likeness of Jesus Christ our
Lord?
Let us look next at the priest as Tribune of the people, supported
usually by the invisible, but most potent presence of the saint,
whose relics he kept. One may see that side of his power in
Raphael's immortal design of Attila's meeting with the Pope at the
gates of Rome, and recoiling as he sees St. Peter and St. Paul
floating terrible and threatening above the Holy City. Is it a myth,
a falsehood? Not altogether. Such a man as Attila probably would
have seen them, with his strong savage imagination, as incapable as
that of a child from distinguishing between dreams and facts, between
the subjective and the objective world. And it was on the whole well
for him and for mankind, that he should think that he saw them, and
tremble before the spiritual and the invisible; confessing a higher
law than that of his own ambition and self-will; a higher power than
that of his brute Tartar hordes.
Raphael's design is but a famous instance of an influence which
wrought through the length and breadth of the down-trodden and dying
Roman Empire, through the four fearful centuries which followed the
battle of Adrianople. The wild licence, the boyish audacity, of the
invading Teutons was never really checked, save by the priest and the
monk who worshipped over the bones of some old saint or martyr, whose
name the Teutons had never heard.
Then, as the wild King, Earl, or Comes, with his wild reiters at his
heels, galloped through the land, fighting indiscriminately his Roman
enemies, and his Teutonic rivals--harrying, slaughtering, burning by
field and wild--he was aware at last of something which made him
pause. Some little walled town, built on the ruins of a great Roman
city, with its Byzantine minster towering over the thatched roofs,
sheltering them as the oak shelters the last night's fungus at its
base. More than once in the last century or two, has that same town
been sacked. More than once has the surviving priest crawled out of
his hiding-place when the sound of war was past, called the surviving
poor around him, dug the dead out of the burning ruins for Christian
burial, built up a few sheds, fed a few widows and orphans, organized
some form of orderly life out of the chaos of blood and ashes, in the
name of God and St. Quemdeusvult whose bones he guards; and so he has
established a temporary theocracy, and become a sort of tribune of
the people, magistrate and father--the only one they have. And now
he will try the might of St. Quemdeusvult against the wild king, and
see if he can save the town from being sacked once more. So out he
comes--a bishop perhaps, with priests, monks, crucifixes, banners,
litanies. The wild king must come no further. That land belongs to
no mortal man, but to St. Quemdeusvult, martyred here by the heathen
five hundred years ago. Some old Kaiser of Rome, or it may be some
former Gothic king, gave that place to the saint for ever, and the
saint will avenge his rights. He is very merciful to those who duly
honour him: but very terrible in his wrath if he be aroused. Has
not the king heard how the Count of such a place, only forty years
before, would have carried off a maiden from St. Quemdeusvult's town;
and when the bishop withstood him, he answered that he cared no more
for the relics of the saint than for the relics of a dead ass, and so
took the maiden and went? But within a year and a day, he fell down
dead in his drink, and when they came to lay out the corpse, behold
the devils had carried it away, and put a dead ass in its place.
All which the bishop would fully believe. Why not? He had no
physical science to tell him that it was impossible. Morally, it was
in his eyes just, and therefore probable; while as for testimony, men
were content with very little in those days, simply because they
could get very little. News progressed slowly in countries desolate
and roadless, and grew as it passed from mouth to mouth, as it did in
the Highlands a century ago, as it did but lately in the Indian
Mutiny; till after a fact had taken ten years in crossing a few
mountains and forests, it had assumed proportions utterly fantastic
and gigantic.
So the wild king and his wild knights pause. They can face flesh and
blood: but who can face the quite infinite terrors of an unseen
world? They are men of blood too, men of evil lives; and conscience
makes them cowards. They begin to think that they have gone too far.
Could they see the saint, and make it up with him somewhat?
No. The saint they cannot see. To open his shrine would be to
commit the sin of Uzzah. Palsy and blindness would be the least that
would follow. But the dome under which he lies all men may see; and
perhaps the saint may listen, if they speak him fair.
They feel more and more uncomfortable. This saint, in heaven at
God's right hand, and yet there in the dom-church--is clearly a
mysterious, ubiquitous person, who may take them in the rear very
unexpectedly. And his priests, with their book-learning, and their
sciences, and their strange dresses and chants--who knows what secret
powers, magical or other, they may not possess?
They bluster at first: being (as I have said) much of the temper and
habits, for good and evil, of English navvies. But they grow more
and more uneasy, full of childish curiosity, and undefined dread. So
into the town they go, on promise (which they will honourably keep,
being German men) of doing no harm to the plebs, the half Roman
artisans and burghers who are keeping themselves alive here--the last
dying remnants of the civilization, and luxury, and cruelty, and
wickedness, of a great Roman colonial city; and they stare at arts
and handicrafts new to them; and are hospitably fed by bishops and
priests; and then they go, trembling and awkward, into the great dom-
church; and gaze wondering at the frescoes, and the carvings of the
arcades--marbles from Italy, porphyries from Egypt, all patched
together out of the ruins of Roman baths, and temples, and theatres;
and at last they arrive at the saint's shrine itself--some marble
sarcophagus, most probably covered with vine and ivy leaves, with
nymphs and satyrs, long since consecrated with holy water to a new
and better use. Inside that lies the saint, asleep, yet ever awake.
So they had best consider in whose presence they are, and fear God
and St. Quemdeusvult, and cast away the seven deadly sins wherewith
they are defiled; for the saint is a righteous man, and died for
righteousness' sake; and those who rob the orphan and the widow, and
put the fatherless to death, them he cannot abide; and them he will
watch like an eagle of the sky, and track like a wolf of the wood,
fill he punishes them with a great destruction. In short, the bishop
preaches to the king and his men a right noble and valiant sermon,
calling things by their true names without fear or favour, and
assuming, on the mere strength of being in the right, a tone of calm
superiority which makes the strong armed men blush and tremble before
the weak and helpless one.
Yes. Spirit is stronger than flesh. 'Meekly bend thy neck,
Sicamber!' said St. Remigius to the great conquering King Clovis,
when he stept into the baptismal font--(not 'Most Gracious Majesty,'
or 'Illustrious Caesar,' or 'by the grace of God Lord of the Franks,'
but Sicamber, as a missionary might now say Maori, or Caffre,--and
yet St. Remigius's life was in Clovis's hand then and always),--'Burn
what thou hast adored, and adore what thou hast burned!' And the
terrible Clovis trembled and obeyed.
So does the wild king at the shrine of St. Quemdeusvult. He takes
his bracelet, or his jewel, and offers it civilly enough. Will the
bishop be so good as to inform the great Earl St. Quemdeusvult, that
he was not aware of his rights, or even of his name; that perhaps he
will deign to accept this jewel, which he took off the neck of a
Roman General--that--that on the whole he is willing to make the
amende honorable, as far as is consistent with the feelings of a
nobleman; and trusts that the saint, being a nobleman too, will be
satisfied therewith.
After which, probably, it will appear to the wild king that this
bishop is the very man that he wants, the very opposite to himself
and his wild riders; a man pure, peaceable, just, and brave;
possessed, too, of boundless learning; who can read, write, cipher,
and cast nativities; who has a whole room full of books and
parchments, and a map of the whole world; who can talk Latin, and
perhaps Greek, as well as one of those accursed man-eating Grendels,
a Roman lawyer, or a logothete from Ravenna; possessed, too, of
boundless supernatural power;--Would the bishop be so good as to help
him in his dispute with the Count Boso, about their respective
marches in such and such a forest? If the bishop could only settle
that without more fighting, of course he should have his reward. He
would confirm to the saint and his burg all the rights granted by
Constantine the Kaiser; and give him moreover all the meadow land in
such and such a place, with the mills and fisheries, on service of a
dish of trout from the bishop and his successors, whenever he came
that way: for the trout there were exceeding good, that he knew.
And so a bargain would be struck, and one of those curious
compromises between the spiritual and temporal authorities take root,
of which one may read at length in the pages of M. Guizot, or Sir
James Stephen.
And after a few years, most probably, the king would express a wish
to be baptized, at the instance of his queen who had been won over by
the bishop, and had gone down into the font some years before; and he
would bid his riders be baptized also; and they would obey, seeing
that it could do them no harm, and might do them some good; and they
would agree to live more or less according to the laws of God and
common humanity; and so one more Christian state would be formed; one
more living stone (as it was phrased in those days) built into the
great temple of God which was called Christendom.
So the work was done. Can we devise any better method of doing it?
If not, let us be content that it was done somehow, and believe that
wisdom is justified of all her children.
We may object to the fact, that the dom-church and its organization
grew up (as was the case in the vast majority of instances) round the
body of a saint or martyr; we may smile at the notion of an invisible
owner and protector of the soil: but we must not overlook the broad
fact, that without that prestige the barbarians would never have been
awed into humanity; without that prestige the place would have been
swept off the face of the earth, till not one stone stood on another:
and he who does not see what a disaster for humanity that would have
been, must be ignorant that the civilization of Europe is the child
of the towns; and also that our Teutonic forefathers were by
profession destroyers of towns, and settlers apart from each other on
country freeholds. Lonely barbarism would have been the fate of
Europe, but for the monk who guarded the relics of the saint within
the walled burg.
This good work of the Church, in the preservation and even
resuscitation of the municipal institutions of the towns, has been
discust so well and fully by M. Guizot, M. Sismondi, and Sir James
Stephen, that I shall say no more about it, save to recommend you to
read what they have written. I go on to point out to you some other
very important facts, which my ideal sketch exemplifies.
The difference between the Clergy and the Teuton conquerors was more
than a difference of creed, or of civilization. It was an actual
difference of race. They were Romans, to whom the Teuton was a
savage, speaking a different tongue, obeying different laws, his
whole theory of the universe different from the Roman. And he was,
moreover, an enemy and a destroyer. The Teuton was to them as a
Hindoo is to us, with the terrible exception, that the positions were
reversed; that the Teuton was not the conquered, but the conqueror.
It is easy for us to feel humanity and Christian charity toward races
which we have mastered. It was not so easy for the Roman priest to
feel them toward a race which had mastered him. His repugnance to
the 'Barbarian' must have been at first intense. He never would have
conquered it; he never would have become the willing converter of the
heathen, had there not been in him the Spirit of God, and firm belief
in a Catholic Church, to which all men of all races ought alike to
belong. This true and glorious idea, the only one which has ever
been or ever will be able to break down the barriers of race, and the
animal antipathy which the natural man has to all who are not of his
own kin: this idea was the sole possession of the Roman clergy; and
by it they conquered, because it was true, and came from God.
But this very difference of race exposed the clergy to great
temptations. They were the only civilized men left, west of
Constantinople. They looked on the Teuton not as a man, but as a
child; to be ruled; to be petted when he did right, punished when he
did wrong; and too often cajoled into doing right, and avoiding
wrong. Craft became more and more their usual weapon. There were
great excuses for them. Their lives and property were in continual
danger. Craft is the natural weapon of the weak against the strong.
It seemed to them, too often, to be not only natural, but spiritual
also, and therefore just and right.
Again, the clergy were the only organic remnants of the Roman Empire.
They claimed their privileges and lands as granted to them by past
Roman Emperors, under the Roman law. This fact made it their
interest, of course, to perpetuate that Roman law, and to introduce
it as far as they could among their conquerors, to the expulsion of
the old Teutonic laws; and they succeeded on the whole. Of that more
hereafter. Observe now, that as their rights dated from times which
to the Teutons were pre-historic, their statements could not be
checked by conquerors who could not even read. Thence rose the
temptation to forge; to forge legends, charters, dotations,
ecclesiastical history of all kinds--an ugly and world-famous
instance of which you will hear of hereafter. To that temptation
they yielded more and more as the years rolled on, till their
statements on ecclesiastical history became such as no historian can
trust, without the most plentiful corroboration.
There were great excuses for them, in this matter, as in others.
They could not but look on the Teuton as--what in fact and law he
was--an unjust and intrusive usurper. They could not but look on
their Roman congregations, and on themselves, as what in fact and law
they were, the rightful owners of the soil. They were but defending
or recovering their original rights. Would not the end justify the
means?
But more. Out of this singular position grew a doctrine, which looks
to us irrational now, but was by no means so then. If the Church
derived her rights from the extinct Roman Caesars, how could the
Teuton conquerors interfere with those rights? If she had owed
allegiance to Constantine or Theodosius, she certainly owed none to
Dietrich, Alboin, or Clovis. She did not hold their lands of them;
and would pay them, if she could avoid it, neither tax nor toll. She
did not recognize the sovereignty of these Teutons as 'ordained by
God.'
Out of this simple political fact grew up vast consequences. The
Teuton king was a heathen or Arian usurper. He was not a king de
jure, in the eyes of the clergy, till he was baptized into the
Church, and then lawfully anointed king by the clergy. Thus the
clergy gradually became the makers of kings; and the power of making
involved a corresponding power of unmaking, if the king rebelled
against the Church, and so cut himself off from Christendom. At
best, he was one of 'the Princes of this world,' from whom the Church
was free, absolutely in spiritual matters, and in temporal matters,
also de jure, and therefore de facto as far as she could be made
free. To keep the possessions of the Church from being touched by
profane hands, even that they might contribute to the common needs of
the nation, became a sacred duty, a fixed idea, for which the clergy
must struggle, anathematize, forge if need be: but also--to do them
justice--die if need be as martyrs. The nations of this world were
nothing to them. The wars of the nations were nothing. They were
the people of God, 'who dwelt alone, and were not reckoned among the
nations;' their possessions were the inheritance of God: and from
this idea, growing (as I have shewn) out of a political fact, arose
the extra-national, and too often anti-national position, which the
Roman clergy held for many ages, and of which the instinct, at least,
lingers among them in many countries. Out of it arose, too, all
after struggles between the temporal and ecclesiastical powers.
Becket, fighting to the death against Henry II., was not, as M.
Thierry thinks, the Anglo-Saxon defying the Norman. He was the
representative of the Christian Roman defying the Teuton, on the
ground of rights which he believed to have existed while the Teuton
was a heathen in the German forests. Gradually, as the nations of
Europe became really nations, within fixed boundaries, and separate
Christian organizations, these demands of the Church became
intolerable in reason, because unnecessary in fact. But had there
not been in them at the first an instinct of right and justice, they
would never have become the fixed idea of the clerical mind; the
violation of them the one inexpiable sin; and the defence of them (as
may be seen by looking through the Romish Calendar) the most potent
qualification for saintship.
Yes. The clergy believed that idea deeply enough to die for it. St.
Alphege at Canterbury had been, it is said, one of the first advisers
of the ignominious payment of the Danegeld: but there was one thing
which he would not do. He would advise the giving up of the money of
the nation: but the money of his church he would not give up. The
Danes might thrust him into a filthy dungeon: he would not take the
children's bread and cast it unto the dogs. They might drag him out
into their husting, and threaten him with torture: but to the
drunken cry of 'Gold! Bishop! Gold!' his only answer would be--Not
a penny. He could not rob the poor of Christ. And when he fell,
beaten to death with the bones and horns of the slaughtered oxen, he
died in faith; a martyr to the great idea of that day, that the gold
of the Church did not belong to the conquerors of this world.
But St. Alphege was an Englishman, and not a Roman. True in the
letter: but not in the spirit. The priest or monk, by becoming
such, more or less renounced his nationality. It was the object of
the Church to make him renounce it utterly; to make him regard
himself no longer as Englishman, Frank, Lombard, or Goth: but as the
representatives by an hereditary descent, considered all the more
real because it was spiritual and not carnal, of the Roman Church; to
prevent his being entangled, whether by marriage or otherwise, in the
business of this life; out of which would flow nepotism, Simony, and
Erastian submission to those sovereigns who ought to be the servants,
not the lords of the Church. For this end no means were too costly.
St. Dunstan, in order to expel the married secular priests, and
replace them by Benedictine monks of the Italian order of Monte
Casino, convulsed England, drove her into civil war, paralysed her
monarchs one after the other, and finally left her exhausted and
imbecile, a prey to the invading Northmen: but he had at least done
his best to make the royal House of Cerdic, and the nations which
obeyed that House, understand that the Church derived its rights not
from them, but from Rome.
This hereditary sense of superiority on the part of the clergy may
explain and excuse much of their seeming flattery. The most vicious
kings are lauded, if only they have been 'erga servos Dei benevoli;'
if they have founded monasteries; if they have respected the rights
of the Church. The clergy too often looked on the secular princes as
more or less wild beasts, of whom neither common decency, justice, or
mercy was to be expected; and they had too often reason enough to do
so. All that could be expected of the kings was, that if they would
not regard man, they should at least fear God; which if they did, the
proof of 'divine grace' on their part was so unexpected, as well as
important, that the monk chroniclers praised them heartily and
honestly, judging them by what they had, not by what they had not.
Thus alone can one explain such a case as that of the monastic
opinion of Dagobert the Second, king of the Franks. We are told in
the same narrative, seemingly without any great sense of incongruity,
how he murdered his own relations and guests, and who not?--how he
massacred 9000 Bulgars to whom he had given hospitality; how he kept
a harem of three queens, and other women so numerous that Fredegarius
cannot mention them; and also how, accompanied by his harem, he
chanted among the monks of St. Denis; how he founded many rich
convents; how he was the friend, or rather pupil, of St. Arnulf of
Metz, St. Omer, and above all of St. Eloi--whose story I recommend
you to read, charmingly told, in Mr. Maitland's 'Dark Ages,' pp. 81-
122. The three saints were no hypocrites--God forbid! They were
good men and true, to whom had been entrusted the keeping of a wild
beast, to be petted and praised whenever it shewed any signs of
humanity or obedience.
But woe to the prince, however useful or virtuous in other respects,
who laid sacrilegious hands on the goods of the Church. He might,
like Charles Martel, have delivered France from the Pagans on the
east, and from the Mussulmen on the south, and have saved Christendom
once and for all from the dominion of the Crescent, in that great
battle on the plains of Poitiers, where the Arab cavalry (says
Isidore of Beja) broke against the immoveable line of Franks, like
'waves against a wall of ice.'
But if, like Charles Martel, he had dared to demand of the Church
taxes and contributions toward the support of his troops, and the
salvation both of Church and commonweal, then all his prowess was in
vain. Some monk would surely see him in a vision, as St. Eucherius,
Bishop of Orleans, saw Charles Martel (according to the Council of
Kiersy), 'with Cain, Judas, and Caiaphas, thrust into the Stygian
whirlpools and Acherontic combustion of the sempiternal Tartarus.'
Those words, which, with slight variations, are a common formula of
cursing appended to monastic charters against all who should infringe
them, remind us rather of the sixth book of Virgil's AEneid than of
the Holy Scriptures; and explain why Dante naturally chooses that
poet as a guide through his Inferno.
The cosmogony from which such an idea was derived was simple enough.
I give, of course, no theological opinion on its correctness: but as
professor of Modern History, I am bound to set before you opinions
which had the most enormous influence on the history of early Europe.
Unless you keep them in mind, as the fixed and absolute background of
all human thought and action for more than 1000 years, you will never
be able to understand the doings of European men.
This earth, then, or at least the habitable part of it, was
considered as most probably a flat plane. Below that plane, or in
the centre of the earth, was the realm of endless fire. It could be
entered (as by the Welsh knight who went down into St. Patrick's
Purgatory) by certain caves. By listening at the craters of
volcanoes, which were its mouths, the cries of the tortured might be
heard in the depths of the earth.
In that 'Tartarus' every human being born into the world was doomed
to be endlessly burnt alive: only in the Church, 'extra quam nulla
salus,' was there escape from the common doom. But to that doom,
excommunication, which thrust a man from the pale of the Church,
condemned the sinner afresh, with curses the most explicit and most
horrible.
The superior clergy, therefore, with whom the anathematizing power
lay, believed firmly that they could, proprio motu, upon due cause
shewn, cause any man or woman to be burned alive through endless
ages. And what was more, the Teutonic laity, with that intense awe
of the unseen which they had brought with them out of the wilderness,
believed it likewise, and trembled. It paralysed the wisest, as well
as the fiercest, that belief. Instead of disgusting the kings of the
earth, it gave them over, bound hand and foot by their own guilty
consciences, into the dominion of the clergy; and the belief that
Charles Martel was damned, only knit (as M. Sismondi well remarks)
his descendants the Carlovingians more closely to the Church which
possest so terrible a weapon.
Whether they were right or wrong in these beliefs is a question not
to be discussed in this chair. My duty is only to point out to you
the universal existence of those beliefs, and the historic fact that
they gave the clergy a character supernatural, magical, divine, with
a reserve of power before which all trembled, from the beggar to the
king; and also, that all struggles between the temporal and spiritual
powers, like that between Henry and Becket, can only be seen justly
in the light of the practical meaning of that excommunication which
Becket so freely employed. I must also point out to you that so
enormous a power (too great for the shoulders of mortal man) was
certain to be, and actually was, fearfully abused, not only by its
direct exercise, but also by bargaining with men, through indulgences
and otherwise, for the remission of that punishment, which the clergy
could, if they would, inflict; and worst of all, that out of the
whole theory sprang up that system of persecution, in which the worst
cruelties of heathen Rome were imitated by Christian priests, on the
seemingly irrefragable ground that it was merciful to offenders to
save them, or, if not, at least to save others through them, by
making them feel for a few hours in this world what they would feel
for endless ages in the next.
LECTURE IX--THE MONK A CIVILIZER
Historians are often blamed for writing as if the History of Kings
and Princes were the whole history of the world. 'Why do you tell
us,' is said, 'of nothing but the marriages, successions, wars,
characters, of a few Royal Races? We want to know what the people,
and not the princes, were like. History ought to be the history of
the masses, and not of kings.'
The only answer to this complaint seems to be, that the defect is
unavoidable. The history of the masses cannot be written, while they
have no history; and none will they have, as long as they remain a
mass; ere their history begins, individuals, few at first, and more
and more numerous as they progress, must rise out of the mass, and
become persons, with fixed ideas, determination, conscience, more or
less different from their fellows, and thereby leavening and
elevating their fellows, that they too may become persons, and men
indeed. Then they will begin to have a common history, issuing out
of each man's struggle to assert his own personality and his own
convictions. Till that point is reached, the history of the masses
will be mere statistic concerning their physical well-being or ill-
being, which (for the early ages of our race) is unwritten, and
therefore undiscoverable.
The early history of the Teutonic race, therefore, is, and must
always remain, simply the history of a few great figures. Of the
many of the masses, nothing is said; because there was nothing to
say. They all ate, drank, married, tilled, fought, and died, not
altogether brutally, we will hope, but still in a dull monotony,
unbroken by any struggle of principles or ideas. We know that large
masses of human beings have so lived in every age, and are living so
now--the Tartar hordes, for instance, or the thriving negroes of
central Africa: comfortable folk, getting a tolerable living, son
after father, for many generations, but certainly not developed
enough, or afflicted enough, to have any history.
I believe that the masses, during the early middle age, were very
well off; quite as well off as they deserved; that is, earned for
themselves. They lived in a rough way, certainly: but roughness is
not discomfort, where the taste has not been educated. A Red Indian
sleeps as well in a wigwam as we in a spring bed; and the Irish
babies thrive as well among the peat ashes as on a Brussels carpet.
Man is a very well constructed being, and can live and multiply
anywhere, provided he can keep warm, and get pure water and enough to
eat. Indeed, our Teutonic fathers must have been comfortably off, or
they could not have multiplied as they did. Even though their
numbers may have been overstated, the fact is patent, that howsoever
they were slaughtered down, by the Romans or by each other, they rose
again as out of the soil, more numerous than ever. Again and again
you read of a tribe being all but exterminated by the Romans, and in
a few years find it bursting over the Pfalzgrab or the Danube, more
numerous and terrible than before. Never believe that a people
deprest by cold, ill-feeding, and ill-training, could have conquered
Europe in the face of centuries of destructive war. Those very wars,
again, may have helped in the long run the increase of population,
and for a reason simple enough, though often overlooked. War throws
land out of cultivation; and when peace returns, the new settlers
find the land fallow, and more or less restored to its original
fertility; and so begins a period of rapid and prosperous increase.
In no other way can I explain the rate at which nations after the
most desolating wars spring up, young and strong again, like the
phoenix, from their own funeral pile. They begin afresh as the
tillers of a virgin soil, fattened too often with the ashes of burnt
homesteads, and the blood of the slain.
Another element of comfort may have been the fact, that in the rough
education of the forest, only the strong and healthy children lived,
while the weakly died off young, and so the labour-market, as we
should say now, was never overstocked. This is the case with our own
gipsies, and with many savage tribes--the Red Indians, for instance--
and accounts for their general healthiness: the unhealthy being all
dead, in the first struggle for existence. But then these gipsies,
and the Red Indians, do not increase in numbers, but the contrary;
while our forefathers increased rapidly. On the other hand, we have,
at least throughout the middle ages, accounts of such swarms of
cripples, lepers, deformed, and other incapable persons, as to make
some men believe that there were more of them, in proportion to the
population, than there are now. And it may have been so. The
strongest and healthiest men always going off to be killed in war,
the weakliest only would be left at home to breed; and so an
unhealthy population might spring up. And again--and this is a
curious fact--as law and order enter a country, so will the
proportion of incapables, in body and mind, increase. In times of
war and anarchy, when every one is shifting for himself, only the
strongest and shrewdest can stand. Woe to those who cannot take care
of themselves. The fools and cowards, the weakly and sickly, are
killed, starved, neglected, or in other ways brought to grief. But
when law and order come, they protect those who cannot protect
themselves, and the fools and cowards, the weakly and sickly, are
supported at the public expense, and allowed to increase and multiply
as public burdens. I do not say that this is wrong, Heaven forbid!
I only state the fact. A government is quite right in defending all
alike from the brute competition of nature, whose motto is--Woe to
the weak. To the Church of the middle age is due the preaching and
the practice of the great Christian doctrine, that society is bound
to protect the weak. So far the middle age saw: but no further.
For our own times has been reserved the higher and deeper doctrine,
that it is the duty of society to make the weak strong; to reform, to
cure, and above all, to prevent by education, by sanitary science, by
all and every means, the necessity of reforming and of curing.
Science could not do that in the middle age. But if Science could
not do it, Religion would at least try to do the next best thing to
it. The monasteries were the refuges, whither the weak escaped from
the competition of the strong. Thither flocked the poor, the
crippled, the orphan, and the widow, all, in fact, who could not
fight for themselves. There they found something like justice,
order, pity, help. Even the fool and the coward, when they went to
the convent-door, were not turned away. The poor half-witted rascal,
who had not sense enough to serve the king, might still serve the
abbot. He would be set to drive, plough, or hew wood--possibly by
the side of a gentleman, a nobleman, or even a prince--and live under
equal law with them; and under, too, a discipline more strict than
that of any modern army; and if he would not hew the wood, or drive
the bullocks, as he ought, then the abbot would have him flogged
soundly till he did; which was better for him, after all, than
wandering about to be hooted by the boys, and dying in a ditch at
last.
The coward, too--the abbot could make him of use, even though the
king could not. There were, no doubt, in those days, though fewer in
number than now, men who could not face physical danger, and the
storm of the evil world,--delicate, nervous, imaginative, feminine
characters; who, when sent out to battle, would be very likely to run
away. Our forefathers, having no use for such persons, used to put
such into a bog-hole, and lay a hurdle over them, in the belief that
they would sink to the lowest pool of Hela for ever more. But the
abbot had great use for such. They could learn to read, write, sing,
think; they were often very clever; they might make great scholars;
at all events they might make saints. Whatever they could not do,
they could pray. And the united prayer of those monks, it was then
believed, could take heaven by storm, alter the course of the
elements, overcome Divine justice, avert from mankind the anger of an
offended God. Whether that belief were right or wrong, people held
it; and the man who could not fight with carnal weapons, regained his
self-respect, and therefore his virtue, when he found himself
fighting, as he held, with spiritual weapons against all the powers
of darkness {p214}. The first light in which I wish you to look at
the old monasteries, is as defences for the weak against the strong.
But what has this to do with what I said at first, as to the masses
having no history? This:- that through these monasteries the masses
began first to have a history; because through them they ceased to be
masses, and became first, persons and men, and then, gradually, a
people. That last the monasteries could not make them: but they
educated them for becoming a people; and in this way. They brought
out, in each man, the sense of individual responsibility. They
taught him, whether warrior or cripple, prince or beggar, that he had
an immortal soul, for which each must give like account to God.
Do you not see the effect of that new thought? Treated as slaves, as
things and animals, the many had learnt to consider themselves as
things and animals. And so they had become 'a mass,' that is, a mere
heap of inorganic units, each of which has no spring of life in
itself as distinguished from a whole, a people, which has one bond,
uniting each to all. The 'masses' of the French had fallen into that
state, before the Revolution of 1793. The 'masses' of our
agricultural labourers,--the 'masses' of our manufacturing workmen,
were fast falling into that state in the days of our grandfathers.
Whether the French masses have risen out of it, remains to be seen.
The English masses, thanks to Almighty God, have risen out of it; and
by the very same factor by which the middle-age masses rose--by
Religion. The great Methodist movement of the last century did for
our masses, what the monks did for our forefathers in the middle age.
Wesley and Whitfield, and many another noble soul, said to Nailsea
colliers, Cornish miners, and all manner of drunken brutalized
fellows, living like the beasts that perish,--'Each of you--thou--and
thou--and thou--stand apart and alone before God. Each has an
immortal soul in him, which will be happy or miserable for ever,
according to the deeds done in the body. A whole eternity of shame
or of glory lies in you--and you are living like a beast.' And in
proportion as each man heard that word, and took it home to himself,
he became a new man, and a true man. The preachers may have mixed up
words with their message with which we may disagree, have appealed to
low hopes and fears which we should be ashamed to bring into our
calculations;--so did the monks: but they got their work done
somehow; and let us thank them, and the old Methodists, and any man
who will tell men, in whatever clumsy and rough fashion, that they
are not things, and pieces of a mass, but persons, with an
everlasting duty, an everlasting right and wrong, an everlasting God
in whose presence they stand, and who will judge them according to
their works. True, that is not all that men need to learn. After
they are taught, each apart, that he is a man, they must be taught,
how to be an united people: but the individual teaching must come
first; and before we hastily blame the individualizing tendencies of
the old Evangelical movement, or that of the middle-age monks, let us
remember, that if they had not laid the foundation, others could not
build thereon.
Besides, they built themselves, as well as they could, on their own
foundation. As soon as men begin to be really men, the desire of
corporate life springs up in them. They must unite; they must
organize themselves. If they possess duties, they must be duties to
their fellow-men; if they possess virtues and graces, they must mix
with their fellow-men in order to exercise them.
The solitaries of the Thebaid found that they became selfish wild
beasts, or went mad, if they remained alone; and they formed
themselves into lauras, 'lanes' of huts, convents, under a common
abbot or father. The evangelical converts of the last century formed
themselves into powerful and highly organized sects. The middle-age
monasteries organized themselves into highly artificial communities
round some sacred spot, generally under the supposed protection of
some saint or martyr, whose bones lay there. Each method was good,
though not the highest. None of them rises to the idea of a people,
having one national life, under one monarch, the representative to
each and all of that national life, and the dispenser and executor of
its laws. Indeed, the artificial organization, whether monastic or
sectarian, may become so strong as to interfere with national life,
and make men forget their real duty to their king and country, in
their self-imposed duty to the sect or order to which they belong.
The monastic organization indeed had to die, in many countries, in
order that national life might develop itself; and the dissolution of
the monasteries marks the birth of an united and powerful England.
They or Britain must have died. An imperium in imperio--much more
many separate imperia--was an element of national weakness, which
might be allowed in times of peace and safety, but not in times of
convulsion and of danger.
You may ask, however, how these monasteries became so powerful, if
they were merely refuges for the weak? Even if they were (and they
were) the homes of an equal justice and order, mercy and beneficence,
which had few or no standing-places outside their walls, still, how,
if governed by weak men, could they survive in the great battle of
life? The sheep would have but a poor life of it, if they set up
hurdles against the wolves, and agreed at all events not to eat each
other.
The answer is, that the monasteries were not altogether tenanted by
incapables. The same causes which brought the low-born into the
monasteries, brought the high-born, many of the very highest. The
same cause which brought the weak into the monasteries, brought the
strong, many of the very strongest.
The middle-age records give us a long list of kings, princes, nobles,
who having done (as they held) their work in the world outside, went
into those convents to try their hands at what seemed to them (and
often was) better work than the perpetual coil of war, intrigue, and
ambition, which was not the crime, but the necessary fate, of a ruler
in the middle ages. Tired of work, and tired of life; tired too, of
vain luxury and vain wealth, they fled to the convent, as to the only
place where a man could get a little peace, and think of God, and his
own soul; and recollected, as they worked with their own hands by the
side of the lowest-born of their subjects, that they had a human
flesh and blood, a human immortal soul, like those whom they had
ruled. Thank God that the great have other methods now of learning
that great truth; that the work of life, if but well done, will teach
it to them: but those were hard times, and wild times; and fighting
men could hardly learn, save in the convent, that there was a God
above who watched the widows' and the orphans' tears, and when he
made inquisition for blood, forgot not the cause of the poor.
Such men and women of rank brought into the convent, meanwhile, all
the prestige of their rank, all their superior knowledge of the
world; and became the patrons and protectors of the society; while
they submitted, generally with peculiar humility and devotion, to its
most severe and degrading rules. Their higher sensibilities, instead
of making them shrink from hardship, made them strong to endure self-
sacrifices, and often self-tortures, which seem to us all but
incredible; and the lives, or rather living deaths, of the noble and
princely penitents of the early middle age, are among the most
beautiful tragedies of humanity.
To these monasteries, too, came the men of the very highest
intellect, of whatsoever class. I say, of the very highest
intellect. Tolerably talented men might find it worth while to stay
in the world, and use their wits in struggling upward there. The
most talented of all would be the very men to see a better 'carriere
ouverte aux talens' than the world could give; to long for deeper and
loftier meditation than could be found in the court; for a more
divine life, a more blessed death, than could be found in the camp
and the battle-field.
And so it befals, that in the early middle age the cleverest men were
generally inside the convent, trying, by moral influence and superior
intellect, to keep those outside from tearing each other to pieces.
But these intellects could not remain locked up in the monasteries.
The daily routine of devotion, even of silent study and
contemplation, was not sufficient for them, as it was for the average
monk. There was still a reserve of force in them, which must be up
and doing; and which, in a man inspired by that Spirit which is the
Spirit of love to man as well as to God, must needs expand outwards
in all directions, to Christianize, to civilize, to colonize.
To colonize. When people talk loosely of founding an abbey for
superstitious uses, they cannot surely be aware of the state of the
countries in which those abbeys were founded; either primaeval
forest, hardly-tilled common, or to be described by that terrible
epithet of Domesday-book, 'wasta'--wasted by war. A knowledge of
that fact would lead them to guess that there were almost certainly
uses for the abbey which had nothing to do with superstition; which
were as thoroughly practical as those of a company for draining the
bog of Allen, or running a railroad through an American forest.
Such, at least, was the case, at least for the first seven centuries
after the fall of Rome; and to these missionary colonizers Europe
owes, I verily believe, among a hundred benefits, this which all
Englishmen will appreciate; that Roman agriculture not only revived
in the countries which were once the Empire, but spread from thence
eastward and northward, into the principal wilderness of the Teuton
and Sclavonic races.
I cannot, I think, shew you better what manner of men these monk-
colonizers were, and what sort of work they did, than by giving you
the biography of one of them; and out of many I have chosen that of
St. Sturmi, founder whilome of the great abbey of Fulda, which lies
on the central watershed of Germany, about equidistant, to speak
roughly, from Frankfort, Cassel, Gotha, and Coburg.
His life is matter of history, written by one Eigils (sainted like
himself), who was his disciple and his friend. Naturally told it is,
and lovingly; but if I recollect right, without a single miracle or
myth; the living contemporaneous picture of such a man, living in
such a state of society, as we shall never (and happily need never)
see again, but which is for that very reason worthy to be preserved,
for a token that wisdom is justified of all her children.
It stands at length in Pertz's admirable 'Monumenta Historica,' among
many another like biography, and if I tell it here somewhat at
length, readers must forgive me.
Every one has heard of little king Pepin, and many may have heard
also how he was a mighty man of valour, and cut off a lion's head at
one blow; and how he was a crafty statesman, and first consolidated
the temporal power of the Popes, and helped them in that detestable
crime of overthrowing the noble Lombard kingdom, which cost Italy
centuries of slavery and shame, and which has to be expiated even
yet, it would seem, by some fearful punishment.
But every one may not know that Pepin had great excuses--if not for
helping to destroy the Lombards--yet still for supporting the power
of the Popes. It seemed to him--and perhaps it was--the only
practical method of uniting the German tribes into one common people,
and stopping the internecine wars by which they were tearing
themselves to pieces. It seemed to him--and perhaps it was--the only
practical method for civilizing and Christianizing the still wild
tribes, Frisians, Saxons, and Sclaves, who pressed upon the German
marches, from the mouth of the Elbe to the very Alps. Be that as it
may, he began the work; and his son Charlemagne finished it; somewhat
well, and again somewhat ill--as most work, alas! is done on earth.
Now in the days of little king Pepin there was a nobleman of Bavaria,
and his wife, who had a son called Sturmi; and they brought him to
St. Boniface, that he might make him a priest. And the child loved
St. Boniface's noble English face, and went with him willingly, and
was to him as a son. And who was St. Boniface? That is a long
story. Suffice it that he was a man of Devon, brought up in a
cloister at Exeter; and that he had crossed over into Frankenland,
upon the lower Rhine, and become a missionary of the widest and
loftiest aims; not merely a preacher and winner of souls, though
that, it is said, in perfection; but a civilizer, a colonizer, a
statesman. He, and many another noble Englishman and Scot (whether
Irish or Caledonian) were working under the Frank kings to convert
the heathens of the marches, and carry the Cross into the far East.
They led lives of poverty and danger; they were martyred, half of
them, as St. Boniface was at last. But they did their work; and
doubtless they have their reward. They did their best, according to
their light. God grant that we, to whom so much more light has been
given, may do our best likewise. Under this great genius was young
Sturmi trained. Trained (as was perhaps needed for those who had to
do such work in such a time) to have neither wife, nor child, nor
home, nor penny in his purse; but to do all that he was bid, learn
all that he could, and work for his living with his own hands; a life
of bitter self-sacrifice. Such a life is not needed now. Possibly,
nevertheless, it was needed then.
So St. Boniface took Sturmi about with him in his travels, and at
last handed him over to Wigbert, the priest, to prepare him for the
ministry. 'Under whom,' says his old chronicler, 'the boy began to
know the Psalms thoroughly by heart; to understand the Holy
Scriptures of Christ with spiritual sense; took care to learn most
studiously the mysteries of the four Gospels, and to bury in his
heart, by assiduous reading, the treasures of the Old and New
Testament. For his meditation was in the Law of the Lord day and
night; profound in understanding, shrewd of thought, prudent of
speech, fair of face, sober of carriage, honourable in morals,
spotless in life, by sweetness, humility, and alacrity, he drew to
him the love of all.'
He grew to be a man; and in due time he was ordained priest, 'by the
will and consent of all;' and he 'began to preach the words of Christ
earnestly to the people;' and his preaching wrought wonders among
them.
Three years he preached in his Rhineland parish, winning love from
all. But in the third year 'a heavenly thought' came into his mind
that he would turn hermit and dwell in the wild forest. And why?
Who can tell? He may, likely enough, have found celibacy a fearful
temptation for a young and eloquent man, and longed to flee from the
sight of that which must not be his. And that, in his circumstances,
was not a foolish wish. He may have wished to escape, if but once,
from the noise and crowd of outward things, and be alone with God and
Christ, and his own soul. And that was not a foolish wish. John
Bunyan so longed, and found what he wanted in Bedford Jail, and set
it down and printed it in a Pilgrim's Progress, which will live as
long as man is man. George Fox longed for it, and made himself
clothes of leather which would not wear out, and lived in a hollow
tree, till he, too, set down the fruit of his solitude in a diary
which will live likewise as long as man is man. Perhaps, again,
young Sturmi longed to try for once in a way what he was worth upon
God's earth; how much he could endure; what power he had of helping
himself, what courage to live by his own wits, and God's mercy, on
roots and fruits, as wild things live. And surely that was not
altogether a foolish wish. At least, he longed to be a hermit; but
he kept his longing to himself, however, till St. Boniface, his
bishop, appeared; and then he told him all his heart.
And St. Boniface said: 'Go; in the name of God;' and gave him two
comrades, and sent him into 'the wilderness which is called Buchonia,
the Beech Forest, to find a place fit for the servants of the Lord to
dwell in. For the Lord is able to provide his people a home in the
desert.'
So those three went into the wild forest. And 'for three days they
saw nought but earth and sky and mighty trees. And they went on,
praying Christ that He would guide their feet into the way of peace.
And on the third day they came to the place which is called Hersfelt
(the hart's down?), and searched it round, and prayed that Christ
would bless the place for them to dwell in; and then they built
themselves little huts of beech-bark, and abode there many days,
serving God with holy fastings, and watchings, and prayers.'
Is it not a strange story? so utterly unlike anything which we see
now;--so utterly unlike anything which we ought to see now? And yet
it may have been good in its time. It looks out on us from the dim
ages, like the fossil bone of some old monster cropping out of a
quarry. But the old monster was good in his place and time. God
made him and had need of him. It may be that God made those three
poor monks, and had need of them likewise.
As for their purposes being superstitious, we shall be better able to
judge of that when we have seen what they were--what sort of a house
they meant to build to God. As for their having self-interest in
view, no doubt they thought that they should benefit their own souls
in this life, and in the life to come. But one would hardly blame
them for that, surely?
One would not blame them as selfish and sordid if they had gone out
on a commercial speculation? Why, then, if on a religious one? The
merchant adventurer is often a noble type of man, and one to whom the
world owes much, though his hands are not always clean, nor his eye
single. The monk adventurer of the middle age is, perhaps, a still
nobler type of man, and one to whom the world owes more, though his
eye, too, was not always single, nor his hands clean.
As for selfishness, one must really bear in mind that men who walked
away into that doleful 'urwarld' had need to pray very literally
'that Christ would guide their feet into the way of peace;' and must
have cared as much for their wordly interests as those who march up
to the cannon's mouth. Their lives in that forest were not worth
twenty-four hours' purchase, and they knew it. It is an ugly thing
for an unarmed man, without a compass, to traverse the bush of
Australia or New Zealand, where there are no wild beasts. But it was
uglier still to start out under the dark roof of that primaeval wood.
Knights, when they rode it, went armed cap-a-pie, like Sintram
through the dark valley, trusting in God and their good sword.
Chapmen and merchants stole through it by a few tracks in great
companies, armed with bill and bow. Peasants ventured into it a few
miles, to cut timber, and find pannage for their swine, and whispered
wild legends of the ugly things therein--and sometimes, too, never
came home. Away it stretched from the fair Rhineland, wave after
wave of oak and alder, beech and pine, God alone knew how far, into
the land of night and wonder, and the infinite unknown; full of elk
and bison, bear and wolf, lynx and glutton, and perhaps of worse
beasts still. Worse beasts, certainly, Sturmi and his comrades would
have met, if they had met them in human form. For there were waifs
and strays of barbarism there, uglier far than any waif and stray of
civilization, border ruffian of the far west, buccaneer of the Tropic
keys, Cimaroon of the Panama forests; men verbiesterte, turned into
the likeness of beasts, wildfanger, huner, ogres, wehr-wolves, strong
thieves and outlaws, many of them possibly mere brutal maniacs;
naked, living in caves and coverts, knowing no law but their own
hunger, rage, and lust; feeding often on human flesh; and woe to the
woman or child or unarmed man who fell into their ruthless clutch.
Orson, and such like human brutes of the wilderness, serve now to
amuse children in fairy tales; they were then ugly facts of flesh and
blood. There were heathens there, too, in small colonies: heathen
Saxons, cruelest of all the tribes; who worshipped at the Irmensul,
and had an old blood-feud against the Franks; heathen Thuringer, who
had murdered St. Kilian the Irishman at Wurzburg; heathen Slaves, of
different tribes, who had introduced into Europe the custom of
impaling their captives: and woe to the Christian priest who fell
into any of their hands. To be knocked on the head before some ugly
idol was the gentlest death which they were like to have. They would
have called that martyrdom, and the gate of eternal bliss; but they
were none the less brave men for going out to face it.
And beside all these, and worse than all these, there were the
terrors of the unseen world; very real in those poor monks' eyes,
though not in ours. There were Nixes in the streams, and Kobolds in
the caves, and Tannhauser in the dark pine-glades, who hated the
Christian man, and would lure him to his death. There were fair
swan-maidens and elf-maidens; nay, dame Venus herself, and Herodias
the dancer, with all their rout of revellers; who would tempt him to
sin, and having made him sell his soul, destroy both body and soul in
hell. There was Satan and all the devils, too, plotting to stop the
Christian man from building the house of the Lord, and preaching the
gospel to the heathen; ready to call up storms, and floods, and
forest fires; to hurl the crag down from the cliffs, or drop the
rotting tree on their defenceless heads--all real and terrible in
those poor monks' eyes, as they walked on, singing their psalms, and
reading their Gospels, and praying to God to save them, for they
could not save themselves; and to guide them, for they knew not, like
Abraham, whither they went; and to show them the place where they
should build the house of the Lord, and preach righteousness, peace,
and joy in the Holy Spirit to the heathen round. We talk still,
thank heaven, of heroes, and understand what that great word should
mean. But were not these poor monks heroes? Knights-errant of God,
doing his work as they best knew how. We have a purer gospel than
they: we understand our Bibles better. But if they had not done
what they did, where would have been now our gospel, and our Bible?
We cannot tell. It was a wise old saw of our forefathers--'Do not
speak ill of the bridge which carries you over.'
If Sturmi had had a 'holy longing' to get into the wild wood, now he
had a 'holy longing' to go back; and to find St. Boniface, and tell
him what a pleasant place Hersfelt was, and the quality of the soil,
and the direction of the watershed, and the meadows, and springs, and
so forth, in a very practical way. And St. Boniface answered, that
the place seemed good enough; but that he was afraid for them, on
account of the savage heathen Saxons. They must go deeper into the
forest, and then they would be safe. So he went back to his fellow-
hermits, and they made to themselves a canoe; and went paddling up
and down the Fulda stream, beneath the alder boughs, 'trying the
mouths of the mountain-streams, and landing to survey the hills and
ridges,'--pioneers of civilization none the less because they
pioneered in the name of Him who made earth and heaven: but they
found nothing which they thought would suit the blessed St. Boniface,
save that they stayed a little at the place which is called Ruohen-
bah, 'the rough brook,' to see if it would suit; but it would not.
So they went back to their birch huts to fast and pray once more.
St. Boniface sent for Sturmi after awhile, probably to Maintz, to ask
of his success; and Sturmi threw himself on his face before him; and
Boniface raised him up, and kissed him, and made him sit by his side-
-which was a mighty honour; for St. Boniface, the penniless monk, was
at that moment one of the most powerful men of Europe; and he gave
Sturmi a good dinner, of which, no doubt, he stood in need; and bade
him keep up heart, and seek again for the place which God had surely
prepared, and would reveal in His good time.
And this time Sturmi, probably wiser from experience, determined to
go alone; but not on foot. So he took to him a trusty ass, and as
much food as he could pack on it; and, axe in hand, rode away into
the wild wood, singing his psalms. And every night, before he lay
down to sleep, he cut boughs, and stuck them up for a ring fence
round him and the ass, to the discomfiture of the wolves, which had,
and have still, a great hankering after asses' flesh. It is a quaint
picture, no doubt; but let us respect it, while we smile at it; if
we, too, be brave men.
Then one day he fell into a great peril. He came to the old road (a
Roman one, I presume; for the Teutons, whether in England or
elsewhere, never dreamed of making roads till three hundred years
ago, but used the old Roman ones), which led out of the Thuringen
land to Maintz. And at the ford over the Fulda he met a great
multitude bathing, of Sclavonian heathens, going to the fair at
Maintz. And they smelt so strong, the foul miscreants, that Sturmi's
donkey backed, and refused to face them; and Sturmi himself was much
of the donkey's mind, for they began to mock him (possibly he nearly
went over the donkey's head), and went about to hurt him.
'But,' says the chronicler, 'the power of the Lord held them back.'
Then he went on, right thankful at having escaped with his life, up
and down, round and round, exploring and surveying--for what purpose
we shall see hereafter. And at last he lost himself in the place
which is called Aihen-loh, 'the glade of oaks;' and at night-fall he
heard the plash of water, and knew not whether man or wild beast made
it. And not daring to call out, he tapped a tree-trunk with his axe
(some backwoodsman's sign of those days, we may presume), and he was
answered. And a forester came to him, leading his lord's horse; a
man from the Wetterau, who knew the woods far and wide, and told him
all that he wanted to know. And they slept side by side that night;
and in the morning they blest each other, and each went his way.
Yes, there were not merely kings and wars, popes and councils, in
those old days;--there were real human beings, just such as we might
meet by the wayside any hour, with human hearts and histories within
them. And we will be thankful if but one of them, now and then,
starts up out of the darkness of twelve hundred years, like that good
forester, and looks at us with human eyes, and goes his way again,
blessing, and not unblest.
And now Sturmi knew all that he needed to know; and after awhile,
following the counsel of the forester, he came to 'the blessed place,
long ago prepared of the Lord. And when he saw it, he was filled
with immense joy, and went on exulting; for he felt that by the
merits and prayers of the holy Bishop Boniface that place had been
revealed to him. And he went about it, and about it, half the day;
and the more he looked on it the more he gave God thanks;' and those
who know Fulda say, that Sturmi had reason to give God thanks, and
must have had a keen eye, moreover, for that which man needs for
wealth and prosperity, in soil and water, meadow and wood. So he
blessed the place, and signed it with the sign of the Cross (in token
that it belonged thenceforth neither to devils nor fairies, but to
his rightful Lord and Maker), and went back to his cell, and thence a
weary journey to St. Boniface, to tell him of the fair place which he
had found at last.
And St. Boniface went his weary way, either to Paris or to Aix, to
Pepin and Carloman, kings of the Franks; and begged of them a grant
of the Aihenloh, and all the land for four miles round, and had it.
And the nobles about gave up to him their rights of venison, and
vert, and pasture, and pannage of swine; and Sturmi and seven
brethren set out thither, 'in the year of our Lord 744, in the first
month (April, presumably), in the twelfth day of the month, unto the
place prepared of the Lord,' that they might do what?
That they might build an abbey. Yes; but the question is, what
building an abbey meant, not three hundred, nor five hundred, but
eleven hundred years ago--for centuries are long matters, and men and
their works change in them.
And then it meant this: Clearing the back woods for a Christian
settlement; an industrial colony, in which every man was expected to
spend his life in doing good--all and every good which he could for
his fellow-men. Whatever talent he had he threw into the common
stock; and worked, as he was found fit to work, at farming,
gardening, carpentering, writing, doctoring, teaching in the schools,
or preaching to the heathen round. In their common church they met
to worship God; but also to ask for grace and strength to do their
work, as Christianizers and civilizers of mankind. What Christianity
and civilization they knew (and they knew more than we are apt now to
believe) they taught it freely; and therefore they were loved, and
looked up to as superior beings, as modern missionaries, wherever
they do their work even decently well, are looked up to now.
So because the work could be done in that way, and (as far as men
then, or now, can see) in no other way, Pepin and Carloman gave
Boniface the glade of oaks, that they might clear the virgin forest,
and extend cultivation, and win fresh souls to Christ, instead of
fighting, like the kings of this world, for the land which was
already cleared, and the people who were already Christian.
In two months' time they had cut down much of the forest; and then
came St. Boniface himself to see them, and with him a great company
of workmen, and chose a place for a church. And St. Boniface went up
to the hill which is yet called Bishop's Mount, that he might read
his Bible in peace, away from kings and courts, and the noise of the
wicked world; and his workmen felled trees innumerable, and dug peat
to burn lime withal; and then all went back again, and left the
settlers to thrive and work.
And thrive and work they did, clearing more land, building their
church, ploughing up their farm, drawing to them more and more
heathen converts, more and more heathen school-children; and St.
Boniface came to see them from time to time, whenever he could get a
holiday, and spent happy days in prayer and study, with his pupil and
friend. And ten years after, when St. Boniface was martyred at last
by the Friesland heathens, and died, as he had lived, like an apostle
of God, then all the folk of Maintz wanted to bring his corpse home
to their town, because he had been Archbishop there. But he
'appeared in a dream to a certain deacon, and said: "Why delay ye to
take me home to Fulda, to my rest in the wilderness which God bath
prepared for me?"'
So St. Boniface sleeps at Fulda,--unless the French Republican armies
dug up his bones, and scattered them, as they scattered holier
things, to the winds of heaven. And all men came to worship at his
tomb, after the fashion of those days. And Fulda became a noble
abbey, with its dom-church, library, schools, workshops, farmsteads,
almshouses, and all the appanages of such a place, in the days when
monks were monks indeed. And Sturmi became a great man, and went
through many troubles and slanders, and conquered in them all,
because there was no fault found in him, as in Daniel of old; and
died in a good old age, bewept by thousands, who, but for him, would
have been heathens still. And the Aihen-loh became rich corn-land
and garden, and Fulda an abbey borough and a principality, where men
lived in peace under mild rule, while the feudal princes quarrelled
and fought outside; and a great literary centre, whose old records
are now precious to the diggers among the bones of bygone times; and
at last St. Sturmi and the Aihen-lob had so developed themselves,
that the latest record of the Abbots of Fulda which I have seen is
this, bearing date about 1710:-
'The arms of the most illustrious Lord and Prince, Abbot of Fulda,
Archchancellor of the most Serene Empress, Primate of all Germany and
Gaul, and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire.' Developed, certainly:
and not altogether in the right direction. For instead of the small
beer, which they had promised St. Boniface to drink to the end of the
world, the abbots of Fulda had the best wine in Germany, and the best
table too. Be that as it may, to have cleared the timber off the
Aihen-lob, and planted a Christian colony instead, was enough to make
St. Sturmi hope that he had not read his Bible altogether in vain.
Surely such men as St. Sturmi were children of wisdom, put what sense
on the word you will. In a dark, confused, lawless, cut-throat age,
while everything was decided by the sword, they found that they could
do no good to themselves, or any man, by throwing their swords into
either scale. They would be men of peace, and see what could be done
so. Was that not wise? So they set to work. They feared God
exceedingly, and walked with God. Was not that wise? They wrought
righteousness, and were merciful and kind, while kings and nobles
were murdering around them; pure and temperate, while other men were
lustful and drunken; just and equal in all their ways, while other
men were unjust and capricious; serving God faithfully, according to
their light, while the people round them were half or wholly heathen;
content to do their work well on earth, and look for their reward in
heaven, while the kings and nobles, the holders of the land, were
full of insane ambition, every man trying to seize a scrap of ground
from his neighbour, as if that would make them happier. Was that not
wise? Which was the wiser, the chief killing human beings, to take
from them some few square miles which men had brought into
cultivation already, or the monk, leaving the cultivated land, and
going out into the backwoods to clear the forest, and till the virgin
soil? Which was the child of wisdom, I ask again? And do not tell
me that the old monk worked only for fanatical and superstitious
ends. It is not so. I know well his fanaticism and his
superstition, and the depths of its ignorance and silliness: but he
had more in him than that. Had he not, he would have worked no
lasting work. He was not only the pioneer of civilization, but he
knew that he was such. He believed that all knowledge came from God,
even that which taught a man to clear the forest, and plant corn
instead; and he determined to spread such knowledge as he had
wherever he could. He was a wiser man than the heathen Saxons, even
than the Christian Franks, around him; a better scholar, a better
thinker, better handicraftsman, better farmer; and he did not keep
his knowledge to himself. He did not, as some tell you, keep the
Bible to himself. It is not so; and those who say so, in this
generation, ought to be ashamed of themselves. The monk knew his
Bible well himself, and he taught it. Those who learnt from him to
read, learnt to read their Bibles. Those who did not learn (of
course the vast majority, in days when there was no printing), he
taught by sermons, by pictures, afterward by mystery and miracle
plays. The Bible was not forbidden to the laity till centuries
afterwards--and forbidden then, why? Because the laity throughout
Europe knew too much about the Bible, and not too little. Because
the early monks had so ingrained the mind of the masses, throughout
Christendom, with Bible stories, Bible personages, the great facts,
and the great doctrines, of our Lord's life, that the masses knew too
much; that they could contrast too easily, and too freely, the fallen
and profligate monks of the 15th and 16th centuries, with those Bible
examples, which the old monks of centuries before had taught their
forefathers. Then the clergy tried to keep from the laity, because
it testified against themselves, the very book which centuries before
they had taught them to love and know too well. In a word, the old
monk missionary taught all he knew to all who would learn, just as
our best modern missionaries do; and was loved, and obeyed, and
looked on as a superior being, as they are.
Of course he did not know how far civilization would extend. He
could not foretell railroads and electric telegraphs, any more than
he could political economy, or sanitary science. But the best that
he knew, he taught--and did also, working with his own hands. He was
faithful in a few things, and God made him ruler over many things.
For out of those monasteries sprang--what did not spring? They
restored again and again sound law and just government, when the good
old Teutonic laws, and the Roman law also, was trampled underfoot
amid the lawless strife of ambition and fury. Under their shadow
sprang up the towns with their corporate rights, their middle
classes, their artizan classes. They were the physicians, the alms-
givers, the relieving officers, the schoolmasters of the middle-age
world. They first taught us the great principle of the division of
labour, to which we owe, at this moment, that England is what she is,
instead of being covered with a horde of peasants, each making and
producing everything for himself, and starving each upon his rood of
ground. They transcribed or composed all the books of the then
world; many of them spent their lives in doing nothing but writing;
and the number of books, even of those to be found in single
monasteries, considering the tedious labour of copying, is altogether
astonishing. They preserved to us the treasures of classical
antiquity. They discovered for us the germs of all our modern
inventions. They brought in from abroad arts and new knowledge; and
while they taught men to know that they had a common humanity, a
common Father in heaven taught them also to profit by each other's
wisdom instead of remaining in isolated ignorance. They, too, were
the great witnesses against feudal caste. With them was neither
high-born nor low-born, rich nor poor: worth was their only test;
the meanest serf entering there might become the lord of knights and
vassals, the counsellor of kings and princes. Men may talk of
democracy--those old monasteries were the most democratic
institutions the world had ever till then seen. 'A man's a man for
a' that,' was not only talked of in them, but carried out in
practice--only not in anarchy, and as a cloak for licentiousness:
but under those safeguards of strict discipline, and almost military
order, without which men may call themselves free, and yet be really
only slaves to their own passions. Yes, paradoxical as it may seem,
in those monasteries was preserved the sacred fire of modern liberty,
through those feudal centuries when all the outside world was doing
its best to trample it out. Remember, as a single instance, that in
the Abbot's lodging at Bury St. Edmunds, the Magna Charta was drawn
out, before being presented to John at Runymede. I know what they
became afterwards, better than most do here; too well to defile my
lips, or your ears, with tales too true. They had done their work,
and they went. Like all things born in time, they died; and decayed
in time; and the old order changed, giving place to the new; and God
fulfilled himself in many ways. But in them, too, he fulfilled
himself. They were the best things the world had seen; the only
method of Christianizing and civilizing semi-barbarous Europe. Like
all human plans and conceptions, they contained in themselves
original sin; idolatry, celibacy, inhuman fanaticism; these were
their three roots of bitterness; and when they bore the natural fruit
of immorality, the monasteries fell with a great and just
destruction. But had not those monasteries been good at first, and
noble at first; had not the men in them been better and more useful
men than the men outside, do you think they would have endured for
centuries? They would not even have established themselves at all.
They would soon, in those stormy times, have been swept off the face
of the earth. Ill used they often were, plundered and burnt down.
But men found that they were good. Their own plunderers found that
they could not do without them; and repented, and humbled themselves,
and built them up again, to be centres of justice and mercy and
peace, amid the wild weltering sea of war and misery. For all things
endure, even for a generation, only by virtue of the good which is in
them. By the Spirit of God in them they live, as do all created
things; and when he taketh away their breath they die, and return
again to their dust.
And what was the original sin of them? We can hardly say that it was
their superstitious and partially false creed: because that they
held in common with all Europe. It was rather that they had
identified themselves with, and tried to realize on earth, one of the
worst falsehoods of that creed--celibacy. Not being founded on the
true and only ground of all society, family life, they were merely
artificial and self-willed arrangements of man's invention, which
could not develop to any higher form. And when the sanctity of
marriage was revindicated at the Reformation, the monasteries, having
identified themselves with celibacy, naturally fell. They could not
partake in the Reformation movement, and rise with it into some
higher form of life, as the laity outside did. I say, they were
altogether artificial things. The Abbot might be called the Abba,
Father, of his monks: but he was not their father--just as when
young ladies now play at being nuns, they call their superior,
Mother: but all the calling in the world will not make that sacred
name a fact and a reality, as they too often find out.
And celibacy brought serious evils from the first. It induced an
excited, hysterical tone of mind, which is most remarkable in the
best men; violent, querulous, suspicious, irritable, credulous,
visionary; at best more womanly than manly; alternately in tears and
in raptures. You never get in their writings anything of that manly
calmness, which we so deservedly honour, and at which we all aim for
ourselves. They are bombastic; excited; perpetually mistaking
virulence for strength, putting us in mind for ever of the
allocutions of the Popes. Read the writings of one of the best of
monks, and of men, who ever lived, the great St. Bernard, and you
will be painfully struck by this hysterical element. The fact is,
that their rule of life, from the earliest to the latest,--from that
of St. Benedict of Casino, 'father of all monks,' to that of Loyola
the Jesuit, was pitched not too low, but too high. It was an ideal
which, for good or for evil, could only be carried out by new
converts, by people in a state of high religious excitement, and
therefore the history of the monastic orders is just that of the
protestant sects. We hear of continual fallings off from their first
purity; of continual excitements, revivals, and startings of new
orders, which hoped to realize the perfection which the old orders
could not. You must bear this in mind, as you read mediaeval
history. You will be puzzled to know why continual new rules and new
orders sprung up. They were so many revivals, so many purist
attempts at new sects. You will see this very clearly in the three
great revivals which exercised such enormous influence on the history
of the 13th, the 16th and the 17th centuries,--I mean the rise first
of the Franciscans and Dominicans, next of the Jesuits, and lastly of
the Port Royalists. They each professed to restore monachism to what
it had been at first; to realize the unnatural and impossible ideal.
Another serious fault of these monasteries may be traced to their
artificial celibate system. I mean their avarice. Only one
generation after St. Sturmi, Charlemagne had to make indignant laws
against Abbots who tried to get into their hands the property of
everybody around them: but in vain. The Abbots became more and more
the great landholders, till their power was intolerable. The reasons
are simple enough. An abbey had no children between whom to divide
its wealth, and therefore more land was always flowing in and
concentrating, and never breaking up again; while almost every Abbot
left his personalities, all his private savings and purchases, to his
successor.
Then again, in an unhappy hour, they discovered that the easiest way
of getting rich was by persuading sinners, and weak persons, to
secure the safety of their souls by leaving land to the Church, in
return for the prayers and masses of monks; and that shameful mine of
wealth was worked by them for centuries, in spite of statutes of
mortmain, and other checks which the civil power laid on them, very
often by most detestable means. One is shocked to find good men
lending themselves to such base tricks: but we must recollect, that
there has always been among men a public and a private conscience,
and that these two, alas! have generally been very different. It is
an old saying, that 'committees have no consciences;' and it is too
true. A body of men acting in concert for a public purpose will do
things which they would shrink from with disgust, if the same trick
would merely put money into their private purses; and this is too
often the case when the public object is a good one. Then the end
seems to sanctify the means, to almost any amount of chicanery.
So it was with those old monks. An abbey had no conscience. An
order of monks had no conscience. A Benedictine, a Dominican, a
Franciscan, who had not himself a penny in the world, and never
intended to have one, would play tricks, lie, cheat, slander, forge,
for the honour and the wealth of his order; when for himself, and in
himself, he may have been an honest God-fearing man enough. So it
was; one more ugly fruit of an unnatural attempt to be not good men,
but something more than men; by trying to be more than men, they
ended by being less than men. That was their sin, and that sin, when
it had conceived, brought forth death.
LECTURE X--THE LOMBARD LAWS
I have tried to shew you how the Teutonic nations were Christianized.
I have tried to explain to you why the clergy who converted them
were, nevertheless, more or less permanently antagonistic to them. I
shall have, hereafter, to tell you something of one of the most
famous instances of that antagonism: of the destruction of the
liberties of the Lombards by that Latin clergy. But at first you
ought to know something of the manners of these Lombards; and that
you may learn best by studying their Code.
They are valuable to you, as giving you a fair specimen of the laws
of an old Teutonic people. You may profitably compare them with the
old Gothic, Franco-Salic, Burgundian, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian
laws, all formed on the same primaeval model, agreeing often in
minute details, and betokening one primaeval origin, of awful
antiquity. By studying them, moreover, you may gain some notion of
that primaeval liberty and self-government, common at first to all
the race, but preserved alone by England;--to which the descendants
of these very Lombards are at this very moment so manfully working
their way back.
These laws were collected and published in writing by king Rothar,
A.D. 643, 76 years after Alboin came into Italy. The cause, he says,
was the continual wearying of the poor, and the superfluous
exactions, and even violence, of the strong against those who were
weak. They are the 'laws of our fathers, as far as we have learnt
them from ancient men, and are published with the counsel and consent
of our princes, judges, and all our most prosperous army,' i.e. the
barons, or freemen capable of bearing arms; 'and are confirmed
according to the custom of our nation by garathinx,' that is, as far
as I can ascertain from Grimm's German Law, by giving an earnest,
garant, or warrant of the bargain.
Among these Lombards, as among our English forefathers, when a man
thingavit, i.e. donavit, a gift or bequest to any one, it was
necessary, according to law CLXXII., to do it before gisiles,
witnesses, and to give a garathinx, or earnest, of his bequest--a
halm of straw, a turf, a cup of drink, a piece of money--as to this
day a drover seals his bargain with a shilling, and a commercial
traveller with a glass of liquor. Whether Rothar gave the garathinx
to his barons, or his barons to him, I do not understand: but at
least it is clear from the use of this one word that the publication
of these laws was a 'social contract'--a distinct compact between
king and people. From all which you will perceive at once that these
Lombards, like all Teutons, were a free people, under a rough kind of
constitutional monarchy. They would have greeted with laughter the
modern fable of the divine right of kings, if by that they were
expected to understand that the will of the king was law, or that the
eldest son of a certain family had any God-given ipso-facto right to
succeed his father. Sixteen kings, says the preface, had reigned
from Agilmund to Rothar; and seven times had the royal race been
changed. That the king should belong to one of the families who
derived their pedigree from Wodin, and that a son should, as natural,
succeed his father, were old rules: but the barons would, as all
history shews, make little of crowning a younger son instead of an
elder, if the younger were a hero, and the elder an 'arga'--a lazy
loon; and little, also, would they make of setting aside the whole
royal family, and crowning the man who would do their business best.
The king was, as this preface and these laws shew, the commander in
chief of the exercitus, the militia, and therefore of every free man
in the state; (for all were bound to fight when required). He was
also the supreme judge, the head of the executive, dispenser and
fountain of law: but with no more power of making the law, of
breaking the law, or of arbitrarily depriving a man of his property,
than an English sovereign has now; and his power was quamdiu se bene
gesserit, and no longer, as history proves in every page.
The doctrine of the divine right of kings as understood in England in
the seventeenth century, and still in some continental countries,
was, as far as I can ascertain, invented by the early popes, not for
the purpose of exalting the kings, but of enslaving them, and through
them the nations. A king and his son's sons had divine 'right to
govern wrong' not from God, but from the vicar of God and the
successor of St. Peter, to whom God had given the dominion of the
whole earth, and who had the right to anoint, or to depose,
whomsoever he would. Even in these old laws, we see that new idea
obtruding itself. 'The king's heart,' says one of them 'is in the
hand of God.' That is a text of Scripture. What it was meant to
mean, one cannot doubt, or by whom it was inserted. The
'Chancellor,' or whoever else transcribed those laws in Latin, was,
of course, a cleric, priest or monk. From his hand comes the first
hint of arbitrary power; the first small blot of a long dark stain of
absolutism, which was to darken and deepen through centuries of
tyranny and shame.
But to plead the divine right of kings, in a country which has thrown
off its allegiance to the pope, is to assert the conclusion of a
syllogism, the major and minor premiss of which are both denied by
the assertor. The arguments for such a right drawn from the Old
Testament, which were common among the high-church party from James
I. to James II. and the Nonjurors, are really too inconsequent to
require more than a passing smile. How can you prove that a king has
the power to make laws, from the history of the Jewish nation, when
that very history represents it all through as bound by a primaeval
and divinely revealed law, to which kings and people were alike
subject? How can you prove that the eldest son's eldest son has a
divine right to wear the crown as 'God's anointed,' when the very
persons to whom that title is given are generally either not eldest
sons, or not of royal race at all? The rule that the eldest son's
eldest son should succeed, has been proved by experience to be in
practice a most excellent one: but it rests, as in England, so in
Lombardy, or Spain, or Frankreich of old time, simply upon the
consent of the barons, and the will of the thing or parliament.
There is a sentimental admiration of 'Imperialism' growing up now-a-
days, under the pretentious titles of 'hero-worship,' and 'strong
government;' and the British constitution is represented as a clumsy
and artificial arrangement of the year 1688. 1688 after Christ?
1688 before Christ would be nearer the mark. It is as old, in its
essentials, as the time when not only all the Teutons formed one
tribe, but when Teutons and Scandinavians were still united--and when
that was, who dare say? We at least brought the British constitution
with us out of the bogs and moors of Jutland, along with our smock-
frocks and leather gaiters, brown bills and stone axes; and it has
done us good service, and will do, till we have carried it right
round the world.
As for these Lombard kings, they arose on this wise. After Alboin's
death the Lombards were for ten years under dukes, and evil times
came, every man doing what was right in his own eyes; enlarging their
frontier by killing the Roman landholders, and making the survivors
give them up a portion of their lands, as Odoacer first, and the
Ostrogoths next, had done. At last, tired of lawlessness, dissension
and weakness, and seemingly dreading an invasion from Childebert,
king of the Franks, they chose a king, Autharis the son of Cleph, and
called him Flavius, by which Roman title the Lombard kings were
afterwards known. Moreover, they agreed to give him (I conclude only
once for all) the half of all their substance, to support the
kingdom. There were certain tributes afterwards paid into the king's
treasury every three years; and certain fines, and also certain
portions of the property of those who died without direct heirs, seem
to have made up the revenue. Whereon, Paul says, perfect peace and
justice followed.
Now for the laws, which were reduced into writing about sixty years
afterwards. The first thing that you will remark about these laws,
is that duel, wager of battle under shield, 'diremptio causae per
pugnam sub uno scuto,' is the earliest form of settling a lawsuit.
If you cannot agree, fight it out fairly, either by yourself or per
campionem, a champion or kemper man, and God defend the right. Then
follows 'faida,' blood-feud, from generation to generation. To stop
which a man is allowed to purge himself by oath; his own and that of
certain neighbours, twelve in general, who will swear their belief in
his innocence. This was common to the northern nations, and was the
origin of our trial by jury. If guilty, the offender has to pay the
weregeld, or legal price, set upon the injury he has inflicted. When
the composition is paid, there is an end of the feud; if after taking
the composition the plaintiff avenges himself, he has to pay it back.
Hence our system of fines.
This method of composition by fines runs through all the Teutonic
laws; and makes the punishment of death, at least among freemen, very
rare.
Punishments by stripes, by imprisonment, or by cruel or degrading
methods, there are none. The person of a freeman is sacred, 'Vincire
et verberare nefas,' as Tacitus said of these Germans 600 years
before.
The offences absolutely punishable by death seem to be, treason
against the king's life; cowardice in battle; concealment of robbers;
mutinies and attempts to escape out of the realm; and therefore
(under the then military organization) to escape from the duty of
every freeman, to bear arms in defence of the land.
More than a hundred of these laws define the different fines, or
'weregelds,' by which each offence is to be compounded for, from 900
solidi aurei, gold pieces, for a murder, downwards to the smallest
breach of the peace. Each limb has its special price. For the loss
of an eye, half the price of the whole man is to be paid. A front
tooth is worth 16s., solidi aurei; their loss being a disfigurement;
but a back tooth is worth only 8s. A slave's tooth, on the other
hand, is worth but 4s.; and in every case, the weregeld of a slave is
much less than that of a freeman.
The sacredness of the household, and the strong sense of the
individual rights of property, are to be remarked. One found in a
'court,' courtledge (or homestead), by night (as we say in old
English), may be killed. You know, I dare say, that in many Teutonic
and Scandinavian nations the principle that a man's house is his
castle was so strongly held that men were not allowed to enter a
condemned man's house to carry him off to execution; but if he would
not come out, could only burn the house over his head. Shooting, or
throwing a lance into any man's homestead, costs 20s. 'Oberos,' or
'curtis ruptura,' that is, making violent entry into a man's
homestead, costs 20s. also. Nay, merely to fetch your own goods out
of another man's house secretly, and without asking leave, was
likewise punished as oberos.
So of personal honour. 'Schelte' or insult, for instance, to call a
man arga, i.e. a lazy loon, is a serious offence. If the defendant
will confess that he said it in a passion, and will take oath that he
never knew the plaintiff to be arga, he must still pay 12s.; but if
he will stand to his word, then he must fight it out by duel, sub uno
scuto.
The person, for the same reason, was sacred. If a man had lain in
wait for a freeman, 'cum virtute et solatio,' with valour and
comfort, i.e. with armed men to back him, and had found him standing
or walking simply, and had shamefully held him, or 'battiderit,'
committed assault and battery on him, he must pay half the man's
weregeld; the 'turpiter et ridiculum' being considered for a freeman
as half as bad as death. Here you find in private life, as well as
in public, the vincire et verberare nefas.
If, again, one had a mind to lose 80 shillings of gold, he need but
to commit the offence of 'meerworphin,' a word which will puzzle you
somewhat, till you find it to signify 'mare warping,' to warp, or
throw one's neighbour off his mare or horse.
A blow with the closed fist, again, costs three shillings: but one
with the open hand, six. The latter is an insult as well as an
injury. A freeman is struck with the fist, but a slave with the palm
of the hand. Breaking a man's head costs six solidi. But if one had
broken his skull, then (as in the Alemannic laws) one must pay twelve
shillings, and twelve more for each fracture up to three--after which
they are not counted. But a piece of bone must come out which will
make a sound when thrown into a shield twelve feet off; which feet
are to be measured by that of a man of middle stature. From which
strange law may be deduced, not only the toughness of the Lombard
brain-pan, but the extreme necessity of defining each particular, in
order to prevent subsequent disputes, followed up by a blood-feud,
which might be handed down from father to son. For by accepting the
legal fine, the injured man expressly renounced his primaeval right
of feud.
Then follow some curious laws in favour of the masters of Como,
Magistri Comacenes, who seem to have been a guild of architects,
perhaps the original germ of the great society of free-masons--
belonging, no doubt, to the Roman population--who were settled about
the lake of Como, and were hired, on contract, (as the laws
themselves express,) to build for the Lombards, who of course had no
skill to make anything beyond a skin-tent or a log-hall.
Then follow laws against incendiaries; a fine for damage by
accidental house-fire, if the offender have carried fire more than
nine feet from the hearth; a law against leaving a fire alight on a
journey, as in the Australian colonies now. Then laws to protect
mills; important matters in those days, being unknown to the Lombards
before their entrance into Italy.
Then laws of inheritance; on which I shall remark, that natural sons,
if free, are to have a portion of their father's inheritance; but
less than the legitimate sons: but that a natural son born of a
slave remains a slave, 'nisi pater liberum thingaverit.' This cruel
law was the law of Rome and of the Church; our Anglo-Saxon
forefathers, to their honour, held the reverse rule. 'Semper a
patre, non a matre, generationis ordo texitur.' Next, it is to be
remarked, that no free woman can live in Lombardy, or, I believe, in
any Teutonic state, save under the 'mundium' of some one. You should
understand this word 'mund.' Among most of the Teutonic races,
women, slaves, and youths, at least not of age to carry arms, were
under the mund of some one. Of course, primarily the father, head of
the family, and if he died, an uncle, elder brother, &c. The married
woman was, of course, under the mund of her husband. He was
answerable for the good conduct of all under his mund; he had to pay
their fines if they offended; and he was bound, on the other hand, to
protect them by all lawful means.
This system still lingers in the legal status of women in England,
for good and evil; the husband is more or less answerable for the
wife's debts; the wife, till lately, was unable to gain property
apart from her husband's control; the wife is supposed, in certain
cases of law, to act under the husband's compulsion. All these, and
many others, are relics of the old system of mund for women; and that
system has, I verily believe, succeeded. It has called out, as no
other system could have done, chivalry in the man. It has made him
feel it a duty and an honour to protect the physically weaker sex.
It has made the woman feel that her influence, whether in the state
or in the family, is to be not physical and legal, but moral and
spiritual; and that it therefore rests on a ground really nobler and
deeper than that of the man. The modern experiments for emancipating
women from all mund, and placing them on a physical and legal
equality with the man, may be right, and may be ultimately
successful. We must not hastily prejudge them. But of this we may
be almost certain; that if they succeed, they will cause a wide-
spread revolution in society, of which the patent danger will be, the
destruction of the feeling of chivalry, and the consequent
brutalization of the male sex.
Then follow laws relating to marriage and women, of which I may
remark, that (as in Tacitus' time), the woman brings her dowry, or
'fader fee,' to her husband; and that the morning after the wedding
she receives from him, if he be content with her, her morgen gap, or
morning gift; which remains her own private property, unless she
misbehaves.
The honour of women, whether in fact or merely in fame, is protected
by many severe laws, among which I shall only notice, that the
calling a free woman 'striga' (witch) is severely punishable. If any
one does so who has the mund of her, except her father or brother, he
loses his mund.
On the whole, woman's condition seems inferior to man's on some
points: but superior on others. e.g. A woman's weregeld--the price
of her life--is 1200 solidi; while the man's is only 900. For he can
defend himself, but she cannot. On the other hand, if a man kill his
wife, he pays only the 1200 solidi, and loses her dowry: but if she
kill him, she dies.
Again. If a free man be caught thieving, up to the amount of 20
siliquae, beans, i.e. one gold piece--though Pope Gregory makes the
solidus (aureus) 24 siliquae--he replaces the theft, and pays 80
solidi, or dies; and a slave one half, or dies.
But if a free woman is taken in theft, she only replaces it; for she
has suffered for her wrong-doing, and must lay it to her own shame,
that she has tried to do 'operam indecentem,' a foul deed. And if an
aldia or slave-woman steals, her master replaces the theft, and pays
40 solidi, minus the value of the stolen goods--and beats her
afterwards, I presume, if he chooses.
And now concerning slaves, who seem to have been divided into three
classes.
The Aldius and Aldia, masculine and feminine, who were of a higher
rank than other slaves.
The Aldius could marry a free woman, while the slave marrying a free
woman is punishable by death; and, as experimentum crucis, if an
Aldius married an Aldia or a free woman, the children followed the
father. If he married a slave, the children followed the mother, and
became slaves of his lord.
The Aldius, again, may not sell his lord's land or slaves, which
indicates that he held land and slaves under his lord.
What the word means, Grimm does not seem to know. He thinks it
synonymous with 'litus,' of whom we hear as early as Tacitus' time,
as one of the four classes, nobles, freemen, liti, slaves; and
therefore libertus, a freedman. But the word does not merely mean,
it appears, a slave half freed by his master; but one rather
hereditarily half free, and holding a farm under his lord.
Dio, however, is said to be an old German word for a slave; and it is
possible that aldius (a word only known, seemingly, in Lombardy) may
have signified originally an old slave, an old Roman colonus, or
peasant of some sort, found by the conquerors in possession of land,
and allowed to retain, and till it, from father to son. We, in
England, had the same distinction between 'Laet,' or 'villains'
settled on the land, glebae adscripti, and mere thralls or theows,
slaves pure and simple. No doubt such would have better terms than
the mere mancipia--slaves taken in war, or bought--for the simple
reason, that they would be agriculturists, practised in the Roman
tillage, understanding the mysteries of irrigation, artificial
grasses, and rotation of crops, as well as the culture of vines,
fruit, and olives.
Next to them you have different sorts of slaves; Servus massarius,
who seems to be also rusticanus, one who takes care of his lord's
'massa' or farm, and is allowed a peculium, it seems, some animals of
his own, which he may not sell, though he may give them away. And
again, servus doctus, an educated household slave, whose weregeld is
higher than that of others.
The laws relating to fugitive slaves seem as merciful as such things
can be; and the Lombards have always had the credit of being kind and
easy masters.
Connected with fugitive slaves are laws about portunarii, ferrymen,
who appear, as you know, in the old ballads as very important, and
generally formidable men. The fight between Von Troneg Hagen and the
old ferryman in the Nibelungen Lied, is a famous instance of the
ancient ferrymen's prowess. One can easily understand how necessary
strict laws were, to prevent these ferrymen carrying over fugitive
slaves, outlaws, and indeed any one without due caution; for each man
was bound to remain in his own province, that he might be ready when
called on for military service; and a traveller to foreign parts was
looked on as a deserter from his liege-lord and country.
Then follow a great number of laws, to me both amusing and
instructive, as giving us some glimpse of the country life of those
Lombards in the 8th century.
Scattered in the vast woodlands and marshes lie small farms, enclosed
by ditches and posts and rails, from which if you steal a rail, you
are fined 1s., if you steal a post, 3s. There were stake fences,
which you must be careful in making, for if a horse stakes himself by
leaping in, you pay nothing; but if he does so by leaping out, you
pay the price of the horse. Moreover, you must leave no sharp stakes
standing out of the hedge; for if a man or beast wounds himself
thereby in passing, you have to pay full weregeld.
Walking over sown land, or sending a woman of your mundium to do so,
in accordance with an ancient superstition, is a severe offence; so
is injuring a vineyard, or taking more than tres uvae (bunches of
grapes, I presume) from the vine. Injuring landmarks cut on the
trees (theclaturas and signaturas) or any other boundary mark, is
severely punishable either in a slave, or in a freeman.
In the vast woods range herds of swine, and in the pastures, horses,
cared for by law; for to take a herd of swine or brood mares as
pledge, without the king's leave, is punishable by death, or a fine
of 900s. Oxen or horses used to the yoke can be taken as pledge; but
only by leave of the king, or of the schuldhais (local magistrate),
on proof that the debtor has no other property; for by them he gets
his living. If, however, you find pigs routing in your enclosure,
you may kill one, under certain restrictions, but not the 'sornpair,'
sounder boar, who 'battit et vincit' all the other boars in the
sounder (old English for herd).
Rival swineherds, as is to be supposed, 'battidunt inter se,' and
'scandalum faciunt,' often enough. Whereon the law advises them to
fight it out, and then settle the damage between them.
Horses are cared for. To ride another man's horse costs 2s.; to dock
or crop him, eight-fold the damage; and so on of hurting another
man's horse. Moreover, if your neighbour's dog flies at you, you may
hit him with a stick or little sword, and kill him, but if you throw
a stone after him and kill him, you being then out of danger, you
must give the master a new dog.
Then there are quaint laws about hunting; and damage caused by wild
beasts caught in snares or brought to bay. A wounded stag belongs to
the man who has wounded it for twenty-four hours: but after that to
anyone. Tame deer, it is observable, are kept; and to kill a doe or
fawn costs 6s., to kill a buck, 12s. Tame hawks, cranes, and swans,
if taken in snares, cost 6s. But any man may take flying hawks out
of his neighbour's wood, but not out of the Gaias Regis, the king's
gehage, haies, hedges, or enclosed parks.
And now, I have but one more law to mention--would God that it had
been in force in later centuries -
'Let no one presume to kill another man's aldia or ancilla, as a
striga, witch, which is called masca; because it is not to be
believed by Christian minds, that a woman can eat up a live man from
within; and if any one does so he shall pay 60s. as her price, and
for his fault, half to her master, and half to the king.'
This last strange law forces on us a serious question, one which may
have been suggesting itself to you throughout my lecture. If these
were the old Teutonic laws, this the old Teutonic liberty, the
respect for man as man, for woman as woman, whence came the opposite
element? How is it that these liberties have been lost throughout
almost all Europe? How is it that a system of law prevailed over the
whole continent, up to the French revolution, and prevails still in
too many countries, the very opposite of all this?
I am afraid that I must answer, Mainly through the influence of the
Roman clergy during the middle age.
The original difference of race between the clergy and the Teutonic
conquerors, which I have already pointed out to you, had a curious
effect, which lingers to this day. It placed the Church in
antagonism, more or less open, to the civil administration of
justice. The criminal was looked on by the priest rather as a
sufferer to be delivered, than an offender to be punished. All who
are conversant with the lives of saints must recollect cases in which
the saint performs even miracles on behalf of the condemned.
Mediaeval tales are full of instances of the same feeling which
prompted the Italian brigands, even in our own times, to carry a
leaden saint's image in his hat as a safeguard. In an old French
fabliau, for instance, we read how a certain highway-robber was
always careful to address his prayers to the Blessed Virgin, before
going out to murder and steal; and found the practice pay him well.
For when he was taken and hanged, our Lady put her 'mains blanches'
under his feet, and supported him invisibly for a whole day, till the
executioner, finding it impossible to kill him, was forced to let him
retire peaceably into a monastery, where he lived and died devoutly.
We may laugh at such fancies; or express, if we will, our abhorrence
of their immorality: but it will be more useful to examine into the
causes which produced them. They seem to have been twofold. In the
first place, the Church did not look on the Teutonic laws, whether
Frank, Burgund, Goth or Lombard, as law at all. Her law, whether
ecclesiastical or civil, was formed on the Roman model; and by it
alone she wished herself, and those who were under her protection, to
be judged. Next--and this count is altogether to her honour--law,
such as it was, was too often administered, especially by the Franks,
capriciously and brutally; while the servile population, always the
great majority, can hardly be said to have been under the protection
of law at all. No one can read the pages of Fredegarius, or Gregory
of Tours, without seeing that there must have been cases weekly, even
daily, which called on the clergy, in the name of justice and
humanity, to deliver if possible, the poor from him that spoiled him;
which excused fully the rise of the right of sanctuary, and of
benefit of clergy, afterwards so much abused; which made it a pious
duty in prelates to work themselves into power at court, and there,
as the 'Chancellors' of princes, try to get something like regular
justice done; and naturally enough, to remodel the laws of each
nation on the time-honoured and scientific Roman form. Nevertheless,
the antagonism of the Church to the national and secular law remained
for centuries. It died out first perhaps, in England, after the
signature of Magna Charta. For then the English prelates began to
take up that truly Protestant and national attitude which issued in
the great Reformation: but it lingers still in Ireland and in Italy.
It lingered in France up to the French revolution, as may be seen
notably in the account of the execution of the Marquise de
Brinvilliers, by the priest who attended her. Horror at her
atrocious crimes is quite swallowed up, in the mind of the good
father, by sympathy with her suffering; and the mob snatch her bones
from the funeral pile, and keep them as the relics of a saint.
But more. While the Roman clergy did real good to Europe, in
preserving the scientific elements of Roman law, they did harm by
preserving therewith other elements--Roman chicane, and Roman
cruelty. In that respect, as in others, 'Rome conquered her
conquerors;' and the descendants of those Roman lawyers, whom the
honest Teutons called adders, and as adders killed them down,
destroyed, in course of time, Teutonic freedom.
But those descendants were, alas! the clergy. Weak, they began early
to adopt those arms of quibbling and craft, which religious men too
often fancy are the proper arms of 'the saints' against 'the world.'
Holding human nature in suspicion and contempt, they early gave way
to the maxim of the savage, that every one is likely to be guilty
till proved innocent, and therefore licensed the stupid brutalities
of torture to extract confession. Holding self-degradation to be a
virtue, and independence as a carnal vice; glorying in being slaves
themselves, till to become, under the name of holy obedience,
'perinde ac cadaver,' was the ideal of a good monk; and accustomed,
themselves, to degrading corporal punishment; they did not shrink
from inflicting, even on boys and women, tortures as dastardly as
indecent. Looking on the world, and on the future of the human race,
through a medium compared with which the darkest fancies of a modern
fanatic are bright and clear, they did not shrink from inflicting
penalties, the very mention of which makes the blood run cold.
Suspecting, if not alternately envying and despising, all women who
were not nuns; writing openly of the whole sex (until unsexed) as the
snare and curse of mankind; and possessed by a Manichaean belief in
the power and presence of innumerable demons, whose especial victims
were women; they erected witch-hunting into a science; they pandered
to, and actually formalized, and justified on scientific grounds, the
most cruel and cowardly superstitions of the mob; and again and again
raised literal crusades against women, torturing, exposing, burning,
young and old, not merely in the witch-mania of the 17th century, but
through the whole middle age. It is a detestable page of history. I
ask those who may think my statement exaggerated, to consult the
original authorities. Let them contrast Rothar's law about the
impossibility of witchcraft, with the pages of the Malleus
Maleficarum, Nider's Fornicarium, or Delrio the Jesuit, and see for
themselves who were the false teachers. And if they be told, that
the cruelties of the Inquisition were only those in vogue according
to the secular law of the day, let them recollect that the
formulizers of that law were none other than the celibate Roman
clergy.
I do not deny that there was in all this a just, though a terrible,
Nemesis. What was the essential fault of these Lombard laws--indeed
of all the Teutonic codes? This--that there was one law for the free
man, another for the slave. Ecclesiastical dominion was necessary,
to make one law for all classes, even though it were a law of common
slavery. As the free had done to the slave, even so, and far worse,
would the Roman clergy do to them. The Albigense persecutors,
burning sixty ladies in one day; Conrad of Marpurg scourging his own
sovereign, St. Elizabeth; shaving the Count of Saiym's head; and
burning noble ladies almost without trial; Sprenger and his compeers,
offering up female hecatombs of the highest blood thoughout Germany;
English bishops burning in Smithfield Anne Askew, the hapless court-
beauty, and her fellow-courtier Mr. Lascelles, just as if they had
been Essex or Berkshire peasants;--all these evildoers were welding
the different classes of the European nations, by a community of
suffering, into nations; into the belief that free and slave had one
blood, one humanity, one conscience, one capacity of suffering; and
at last, one capacity of rebelling, and making common cause, high and
low alike, against him who reigned in Italy under the 'Romani nominis
umbram.'
And if our English law, our English ideas of justice and mercy, have
retained, more than most European codes, the freedom, the
truthfulness, the kindliness, of the old Teutonic laws, we owe it to
the fact, that England escaped, more than any other land, the taint
of effete Roman civilization; that she therefore first of the lands,
in the 12th century, rebelled against, and first of them, in the 16th
century, threw off, the Ultramontane yoke.
And surely it will be so, in due time, with the descendants of these
very Lombards. We have seen them in these very years arise out of
the dust and shame of centuries, and determine to be Lombards once
again. We have seen a hero arise among them of the true old Teuton
stamp, bearing worthily the name which his forefathers brought over
the Alps with Alboin--Garibald, the 'bold in war.' May they succeed
in the same noble struggle as that in which we succeeded, and
returning, not in letter, but in spirit, to the old laws of Rothar
and their free forefathers, become the leading race of a free and
united Italy!
LECTURE XI--THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS
'Our Lady the Mother of God, even Virgin Maria, together with us,
protests to you, adjuring you with great obligations, and admonishes
and commands you, and with her the thrones, dominations, all the
heavenly angels, the martyrs and confessors of Christ, on behalf of
the Roman city, committed to us by the Lord God, and the sheep of the
Lord dwelling in it. Defend and free it speedily from the hands of
the persecuting Lombards, lest my body which suffered torments for
Christ, and my home in which it rests by the command of God, be
contaminated by the people of the Lombards, who are guilty of such
iniquitous perjury, and are proud transgressors of the divine
scripture. So will I at the day of judgment reward you with my
patronage, and prepare for you in the kingdom of God most shining and
glorious tabernacles, promising you the reward of eternal
retribution, and the infinite joys of paradise.
'Run, by the true and living God I exhort you, run, and help; before
the living fountain, whence you were consecrated and born again,
shall dry up: before the little spark remaining of that brilliant
flame, from which you knew the light, be extinguished; before your
spiritual mother, the holy Church of God, in which you hope to
receive eternal life, shall be humiliated, invaded, violated, and
defiled by the impious.
'But if not, may your provinces in return, and your possessions, be
invaded by people whom you know not. Separate not yourselves from my
Roman people; so you will not be aliens, and separate from the
kingdom of God, and eternal life. For whatever you shall ask of me,
I will surely give you, and be your patron. Assist my Roman people,
your brothers; and strive more perfectly; for it is written, No man
receiveth the crown, unless he strive lawfully.
'I conjure you, most beloved, by the living God, leave not this my
city of Rome to be any longer torn by the Lombards, lest your bodies
and souls be torn and tormented for ever, in inextinguishable and
Tartarian fire with the devil and his pestiferous angels; and let not
the sheep of the Lord's flock, which are the Roman people, be
dispersed any more, lest the Lord disperse you, and cast you forth as
the people of Israel was dispersed.'
You will conclude, doubtless, that this curious document can be
nothing but a papal allocution. Its peculiar scriptural style
(wrongly supposed to have been invented by the Puritans, who merely
learnt it from the old Roman clergy), as well as the self-conceit,
which fancies the fate of the whole world to depend on the prosperity
of a small half-ruined city in Italy, will be to you sufficient marks
of the Roman hand. But you will be somewhat mistaken. It is hardly
an epistle from the successor of St. Peter. It professes to be an
epistle from St. Peter himself, and sent by him through the hands of
Pope Stephen III. to Pepin the king of the Franks, in the year 755.
You will have concluded also from it, that Catholic Christianity is
in its extreme agony; that the worship and name of our Lord, and the
fountains of sacramental grace are about to be extinguished for ever,
and that nothing but heresy or heathendom can follow. Then you will
be quite mistaken. These Lombards are pious Catholics. Builders of
churches and monasteries, they are taking up the relics of the Roman
martyrs, to transfer them to the churches of Milan and Pavia. They
have just given Pope Stephen the most striking proof of their awe of
his person and office. But they are quarrelling with him about the
boundaries of his estates for the patrimony of St. Peter. They
consider that he and his predecessors have grossly wronged them at
different times; and now last of all, by calling in foreign invaders;
and they are at the gates of Rome laying waste the country, and
demanding a poll-tax as ransom. That is all.
The causes which led to this quarrel must be sought far back in
history. The original documents in which you will find the facts
will be Paulus Diaconus, as far as King Luitprand's death; then the
Life and Writings of Gregory the Great; and then Baronius' Annals,
especially his quotations from Anastasius' Life of Stephen III.,
bearing in mind that, as with the Ostrogoths, we have only the Roman
Papal story; that the Lombards have never stated their case, not even
through Paulus Diaconus, who, being a clergyman, prudently holds his
tongue about the whole matter. But by far the best account is to be
found in Dean Milman's 'Latin Christianity,' Vols. I. and II. Rome,
you must understand, has become gradually the patrimony of St. Peter;
the Popes are the practical kings of Rome, possessing, in the name of
the Church, much land round Rome, and many estates scattered
throughout Italy, and even in Sicily, Gaul, Africa, and the East--
estates probably bequeathed by pious people. They have succeeded to
this jurisdiction simply by default. They rule Rome, because there
is no one else to rule it. We find St. Gregory the Great feeding the
pauper-masses of Rome, on the first day of every month, from the
fruitful corn-bearing estates in Sicily; keeping up the 'Panem;' but
substituting, thank Heaven, for the 'Circenses' at least the services
of the Church. Of course, the man who could keep the Roman people
alive must needs become, ipso facto, their monarch.
The Pope acknowledges, of course, a certain allegiance to the Emperor
at Constantinople, and therefore to his representative, the Exarch of
Ravenna: that is to say, he meets them with flattery when they are
working on his side; with wrath when they oppose him. He intrigues
with them, too, whenever he can safely do so, against the Lombards.
Thus the Pope has become, during the four centuries which followed
the destruction of the Western Empire, the sole surviving
representative of that Empire. He is the head of the 'gens togata;'
of the 'Senatus Populusque Romanus.' In him Rome has risen again out
of her grave, to awe the peoples once more by the Romani nominis
umbra; and to found a new Empire; not as before, on physical force,
and the awe of visible power; but on the deeper and more enduring
ground of spiritual force, and the awe of the invisible world.
An Empire, I say. The Popes were becoming, from the 5th to the 8th
centuries, not merely the lords of Rome, but the lords of the Western
Church. Their spiritual Empire, to do them justice, was not so much
deliberately sought by them, as thrust upon them. As the clergy
were, all over the Empire, the representatives of the down-trodden
Romans, so they naturally gravitated toward the Eternal City, their
ancient mistress. Like all disciplined and organized bodies they
felt the need of unity, of monarchy. Where could they find it, save
at Rome? Rome was still, practically and in fact, the fountain of
their doctrine, of their superior civilization; and to submit
themselves to the Pope of Rome was their only means of keeping up one
faith, one practice, and the strength which comes from union.
To seat the Pope upon the throne of the Caesars; to attribute to him
powers weightier than all which the Caesars had possest . . . It was
a magnificent idea. A politic idea, too; for it would cover the
priesthood with all the prestige of ancient Rome, and enable them to
face the barbarian in the name of that great people whose very memory
still awed him; whose baths, aqueducts, palaces, he looked on as the
work of demons; whose sages and poets were to him enchanters; whose
very gems, dug out of the ruins by night, in fear and trembling,
possest magic influence for healing, for preservation, for good
fortune in peace or war.
Politic; and in their eyes, true. Easy enough to be believed
honestly, by men who already believed honestly in their own divine
mission. They were the representatives of Christ on earth. Of that
fact there could be then, or can be now, no doubt whatsoever.
Whatsoever truth, light, righteousness, there was in the West, came
to it through them. And Christ was the King of kings. But He
delayed his coming: at moments, He seemed to have deserted the
earth, and left mankind to tear itself in pieces, with wild war and
misrule. But it could not be so. If Christ were absent, He must at
least have left an authority behind Him to occupy till He came; a
head and ruler for his opprest and distracted Church. And who could
that be, if not the Pope of Rome?
It ought to be so.--It must be so--thought they. And to men in that
mood, proofs that it was so soon came to hand, and accumulated from
generation to generation; till the Pope at last found himself
proclaiming, and what was more, believing, that God had given the
whole world to St. Peter, and through St. Peter to him; and that he
was the only source of power, law, kingship, who could set up and
pull down whom he would, as the vicegerent of God on earth.
Such pretensions, of course, grew but slowly. It was not, I believe,
till the year 875, 180 years after the time of which I am speaking,
that Pope John VIII. distinctly asserted his right, as representative
of the ancient Roman Empire, to create the Caesar; and informed the
Synod of Pavia that he had 'elected and approved Charles the Bald,
with the consent of his brothers the bishops, of the other ministers
of the Holy Roman Church, and' (significant, though empty words) 'of
the Roman senate and people.'
At the time of which I speak, the power was still in embryo, growing,
through many struggles: but growing surely and strongly, and
destined speedily to avenge the fall of Rome on the simple barbarians
who were tearing each other to pieces over her spoils.
It is not easy to explain the lasting and hereditary hatred of the
Popes to the Lombards. Its origin is simple enough: but not so its
continuance. Why they should be nefandissimi in the eyes of Pope
Gregory the Great one sees: but why 100 years afterwards, they
should be still nefandissimi, and 'non dicenda gens Langobardorum,'
not to be called a nation, is puzzling.
At first, of course, the Pope could only look on them as a fresh
horde of barbarous conquerors; half heathen, half Arian. Their
virtuous and loyal life within the boundaries of Alboin's conquests--
of which Paulus Diaconus says, that violence and treachery were
unknown--that no one oppressed, no one plundered--that the traveller
went where he would in perfect safety--all this would be hid from the
Pope by the plain fact, that they were continually enlarging their
frontier toward Rome; that they had founded two half-independent
Dukedoms of Beneventum and Spoleto, that Autharis had swept over
South Italy, and ridden his horse into the sea at Reggio, to strike
with his lance a column in the waves, and cry, 'Here ends the Lombard
kingdom.'
The Pope (Gregory the Great I am speaking of) could only recollect,
again, that during the lawless interregnum before Autharis'
coronation, the independent Lombard dukes had plundered churches and
monasteries, slain the clergy, and destroyed the people, who had
'grown up again like corn.'
But as years rolled on, these Arian Lombards had become good
Catholics; and that in the lifetime of Gregory the Great.
Theodelinda, the Bavarian princess, she to whom Autharis had gone in
disguise to her father's court, and only confessed himself at his
departure, by rising in his stirrups, and burying his battle-axe in a
tree stem with the cry, 'Thus smites Autharis the Lombard,'--this
Theodelinda, I say, had married after his death Agilwulf his cousin,
and made him king of the Lombards.
She was a Catholic; and through her Gregory the Great converted
Autharis, and the Lombard nation. To her he addressed those famous
dialogues of his, full alike of true piety and earnestness, and of
childish superstition. But in judging them and him we must bear in
mind, that these Lombards became at least by his means Catholics, and
that Arians would have believed in the superstitions just as much as
Catholics. And it is surely better to believe a great truth, plus
certain mistakes which do not affect it in the least, than a great
lie, plus the very same mistakes likewise. Which is best, to believe
that the road to London lies through Bishopstortford, and that there
are dog-headed men on the road: or that it lies through Edinburgh,
but that there are dog-headed men on that road too?
Theodelinda had built at Modicaea, twelve miles above Milan, a fair
basilica to John the Baptist, enriched by her and the Lombard kings
and dukes, 'crowns, crosses, golden tables adorned with emeralds,
hyacinths, amber, carbuncles and pearls, gold and silver altar-
cloths, and that admirable cup of sapphire,' all which remained till
the eighteenth century. There, too, was the famous iron crown of
Lombardy, which Austria still claims as her own; so called from a
thin ring of iron inserted in it, made from a nail of the true cross
which Gregory had sent Agilwulf; just as he sent Childebert, the
Frankish king, some filings of St. Peter's chains; which however, he
says, did not always allow their sacred selves to be filed.
In return, Agilwulf had restored the church-property which he had
plundered, had reinstated the bishops; and why did not all go well?
Why are these Lombards still the most wicked of men?
Again, in the beginning of the eighth century came the days of the
good Luitprand, 'wise and pious, a lover of peace, and mighty in war;
merciful to offenders, chaste and modest, instant in prayer,
bountiful in alms, equal to the philosophers, though he knew no
letters, a nourisher of his people, an augmenter of the laws.' He it
was, who, when he had quarrelled with Pope Gregory II., and marched
on Rome, was stopped at the Gates of the Vatican by the Pontiff's
prayers and threats. And a sacred awe fell on him; and humbly
entering St. Peter's, he worshipped there, and laid on the Apostle's
tomb his royal arms, his silver cross and crown of gold, and
withdrawing his army, went home again in peace. But why were this
great king's good deeds towards the Pope and the Catholic faith
rewarded, by what we can only call detestable intrigue and treachery?
Again; Leo the Iconoclast Emperor destroyed the holy images in the
East, and sent commands to the Exarch of Ravenna to destroy them in
western Italy. Pope Gregory II. replied by renouncing allegiance to
the Emperor of Constantinople; and by two famous letters which are
still preserved; in which he tells the Iconoclast Emperor, that, 'if
he went round the grammar-schools at Rome, the children would throw
their horn-books at his head . . . that he implored Christ to send
the Emperor a devil, for the destruction of his body and the
salvation of his soul . . . that if he attempted to destroy the
images in Rome, the pontiff would take refuge with the Lombards, and
then he might as well chase the wind that the Popes were the
mediators of peace between East and West, and that the eyes of the
nations were fixed on the Pope's humility, and adored as a God on
earth the apostle St. Peter. And that the pious Barbarians, kindled
into rage, thirsted to avenge the persecution of the East.' Then
Luitprand took up the cause of the Pope and his images, and of the
mob, who were furious at the loss of their idols; and marched on
Ravenna, which opened her gates to him, so that he became master of
the whole Pentapolis; and image-worship, to which some plainspoken
people give a harsher name, was saved for ever and a day in Italy.
Why did Gregory II. in return, call in Orso, the first Venetian Doge,
to expel from Ravenna the very Luitprand who had fought his battles
for him, and to restore that Exarchate of Ravenna, of which it was
confessed, that its civil quarrels, misrule, and extortions, made it
the most miserable government in Italy? And why did he enter into
secret negotiations with the Franks to come and invade Italy?
Again, when Luitprand wanted to reduce the duchies of Beneventum and
Spoleto, which he considered as rebels against him, their feudal
suzerain; why did the next Pope, Gregory III., again send over the
Alps to Charles Martel to come and invade Italy, and deliver the
Church and Christ's people from ruin?
And who were these Franks, the ancestors of that magnificent, but
profligate aristocracy whose destruction our grandfathers beheld in
1793? I have purposely abstained from describing them, till they
appear upon the stage of Italy, and take part in her fortunes--which
were then the fortunes of the world.
They appear first on the Roman frontier in A.D. 241, and from that
time are never at rest till they have conquered the north of Gaul.
They are supposed (with reason) not to have been a race or tribe at
all; but a confederation of warriors, who were simply 'Franken,'
'free;' 'free companions,' or 'free lances,' as they would have been
called a few centuries later; who recruited themselves from any and
every tribe who would join them in war and plunder. If this was the
case; if they had thrown away, as adventurers, much of the old
Teutonic respect for law, for the royal races, for family life, for
the sacred bonds of kindred, many of their peculiarities are
explained. Falsehood, brutality, lawlessness, ignorance, and cruelty
to the conquered Romans, were their special sins; while their
special, and indeed only virtue, was that indomitable daring which
they transmitted to their descendants for so many hundred years. The
buccaneers of the young world, they were insensible to all influences
save that of superstition. They had become, under Clovis, orthodox
Christians: but their conversion, to judge from the notorious facts
of history, worked little improvement on their morals. The pages of
Gregory of Tours are comparable, for dreary monotony of horrors, only
to those of Johnson's History of the Pyrates.
But, as M. Sismondi well remarks, their very ignorance and brutality
made them the more easily the tools of the Roman clergy: 'Cette
haute veneration pour l'Eglise, et leur severe orthodoxie, d'autant
plus facile a conserver que, ne faisant aucune etude, et ne disputant
jamais sur la foi, ils ne connaissaient pas meme les questions
controversees, leur donnerent dans le clerge de puissants
auxiliaires. Les Francs se montrerent disposes a hair les Ariens, a
les combattres, et les depouiller sans les entendre; les eveques, en
retour, ne se montrerent pas scrupuleux sur le reste des
enseignements moraux de la religion: ils fermerent les yeux sur les
violences, le meurtre, le dereglement des moeurs; ils autoriserent en
quelque sorte publiquement la poligamie, et ils precherent le droit
divin des rois et le devoir le l'obeissance pour les peuples {p279}.'
A painful picture of the alliance: but, I fear, too true.
The history of these Franks you must read for yourselves. You will
find it well told in the pages of Sismondi, and in Mr. Perry's
excellent book, 'The Franks.' It suffices now to say, that in the
days of Luitprand these Franks, after centuries of confusion and
bloodshed, have been united into one great nation, stretching from
the Rhine to the Loire and the sea, and encroaching continually to
the southward and eastward. The government has long passed out of
the hands of their faineant Meerwing kings into that of the semi-
hereditary Majores Domus, or Mayors of the Palace; and Charles
Martel, perhaps the greatest of that race of great men, has just made
himself mayor of Austrasia (the real Teutonic centre of Frank life
and power), Neustria and Burgundy. He has crushed Eudo, the duke of
Romanized Aquitaine, and has finally delivered France and Christendom
from the invading Saracens. On his Franks, and on the Lombards of
Italy, rest, for the moment, the destinies of Europe.
For meanwhile another portent has appeared, this time out of the far
East. Another swarm of destroyers has swept over the earth. The
wild Arabs of the desert, awakening into sudden life and civilization
under the influence of a new creed, have overwhelmed the whole East,
the whole north of Africa, destroying the last relics of Roman and
Greek civilization, and with them the effete and semi-idolatrous
Christianity of the Empire. All the work of Narses and Belisarius is
undone. Arab Emirs rule in the old kingdom of the Vandals. The new
human deluge has crossed the Straits into Europe. The Visigoths,
enervated by the luxurious climate of Spain, have recoiled before the
Mussulman invaders. Roderick, the last king of the Goths, is
wandering as an unknown penitent in expiation of his sin against the
fair Cava, which brought down (so legends and ballads tell) the
scourge of God upon the hapless land; and the remnants of the old
Visigoths and Sueves are crushed together into the mountain
fastnesses of Asturias and Gallicia, thence to reissue, after long
centuries, as the noble Spanish nation, wrought in the forges of
adversity into the likeness of tempered steel; and destined to
reconquer, foot by foot, their native land from the Moslem invader.
But at present the Crescent was master of the Cross; and beyond the
Pyrenees all was slavery and 'miscreance.' The Arabs, invading
France in 732, in countless thousands, had been driven back at the
great fight of Tours, with a slaughter so great, that the excited
imagination of Paulus Diaconus sees 375,000 miscreants dead upon the
field, while only 1500 Franks had perished. But home troubles had
prevented 'the Hammer of the Moors' from following up his victory.
The Saracens had returned in force in 737, and again in 739. They
still held Narbonne. The danger was imminent. There was no reason
why they should not attempt a third invasion. Why should they not
spread along the shores of the Mediterranean, establishing themselves
there, as they were already doing in Sicily, and menacing Rome from
north as well as south? To unite, therefore, the two great Catholic
Teutonic powers, the Frank and the Lombard, for the defence of
Christendom, should have been the policy of him who called himself
the Chief Pontiff in Christendom. Yet the Pope preferred, in the
face of that great danger, to set the Teutonic nations on destroying
each other, rather than to unite them against the Moslem.
The bribe offered to the Frank was significant--the title of Roman
Consul; beside which he was to have filings of St. Peter's chains,
and the key of his tomb, to preserve him body and soul from all evil.
Charles would not come. Frank though he was, he was too honourable
to march at a priest's bidding against Luitprand, his old brother in
arms, to whom he had sent the boy Pepin, his son, that Luitprand
might take him on his knee, and cut his long royal hair, and become
his father-in-arms, after the good old Teuton fashion; Luitprand, who
with his Lombards had helped him to save Christendom a second time
from the Mussulman in 737. The Pope, one would think, should have
remembered that good deed of the good Lombard's whereof his epitaph
sings,
'Deinceps tremuere feroces
Usque Saraceni, quos dispulit impiger, ipsos
Cum premerent Gallos, Karolo poscente juvari.'
So Charles Martel took the title of Patrician from the Pope, but sent
him no armies; and the quarrel went on; while Charles filled up the
measure of his iniquity by meddling with that church-property in Gaul
which his sword had saved from the hordes of the Saracens; and is
now, as St. Eucherius (or Bishop Hincmar) saw in a vision, writhing
therefore in the lowest abyss of hell.
So one generation more passes by; and then Pepin le Bref, grown to
manhood, is less scrupulous than his father. He is bound to the Pope
by gratitude. The Pope has confirmed him as king, allowing him to
depose the royal house of the Merovingians, and so assumed the right
of making kings.--A right which future popes will not forget.
Meanwhile the Pope has persuaded the Lombard king Rachis to go into a
monastery. Astulf seizes the crown, and attacks Ravenna. The Pope
succeeding, Stephen III., opposes him; and he marches on Rome,
threatening to assault it, unless the citizens redeem their lives by
a poll-tax.
Stephen determines to go himself to Pepin to ask for help: and so
awful has the name and person of a Pope become, that he is allowed to
do it; allowed to pass safely and unarmed through the very land upon
which he is going to let loose all the horrors of invading warfare.
It is a strange, and instructive figure, that. The dread of the
unseen, the fear of spiritual power, has fallen on the wild Teutons;
on Frank and on Lombard alike. The Pope and his clergy are to them
magicians, against whom neither sword nor lance avails; who can heal
the sick and blast the sound; who can call to their aid out of the
clouds that pantheon of demi-gods, with which, under the name of
saints, they have peopled heaven; who can let loose on them the
legions of fiends who dwell in every cave, every forest, every ruin,
every cloud; who can, by the sentence of excommunication, destroy
both body and soul in hell. They were very loth to fear God, these
wild Teutons; therefore they had instead, as all men have who will
not fear God, to fear the devil.
So Pope Stephen goes to Pepin, the eldest son of the Church. He
promises to come with all his Franks. Stephen's conscience seems to
have been touched: he tries to have no fighting, only negotiation:
but it is too late now. Astolf will hear of no terms; Pepin sweeps
over the Alps, and at the gates of Pavia dictates his own terms to
the Lombards. The old Lombard spirit seems to have past away.
Pepin goes back again, and Astolf refuses to fulfil his promises.
The Pope sends Pepin that letter from St. Peter himself with which
this lecture commenced.
Astolf has marched down, as we heard, to the walls of Rome, laying
the land waste; cutting down the vines, carrying off consecrated
vessels, insulting the sacrament of the altar. The Lombards have
violated nuns; and tried to kill them, the Pope says; though, if they
had really tried, one cannot see why they should not have succeeded.
In fact, Pope Stephen's hysterical orations to Pepin must be received
with extreme caution. No Catholic historian of that age cares to
examine the truth of a fact which makes for him; nothing is too bad
to say of an enemy: and really the man who would forge a letter from
St. Peter might dare to tell a few lesser falsehoods into the
bargain. Pepin cannot but obey so august a summons; and again he is
in Italy, and the Lombards dare not resist him. He seizes not only
all that Astolf had taken from the Pope, but the Pentapolis and
Exarchate, the property, if of any one, of the Greek Emperors, and
bestows them on Stephen, the Pope, and 'the holy Roman Republic.'
The pope's commissioners received the keys of the towns, which were
placed upon the altar of St. Peter; and this, the Dotation of Pepin,
the Dotation of the Exarchate, was the first legal temporal
sovereignty of the Popes: --born in sin, and conceived in iniquity,
as you may see.
The Lombard rule now broke up rapidly. The Lombards of Spoleto
yielded to the double pressure of Franks and Romans, asked to be
'taken into the service of St. Peter,' and clipt their long German
locks after the Roman fashion.
Charlemagne, in his final invasion, had little left to do. He
confirmed Pepin's gift, and even, though he hardly kept his promise,
enlarged it to include the whole of Italy, from Lombardy to the
frontier of Naples, while he himself became king of Lombardy, and won
the iron crown.
And so by French armies--not for the last time--was the Pope propt up
on his ill-gotten throne.
But the mere support of French armies was not enough to seat the Pope
securely upon the throne of the western Caesars. Documentary
evidence was required to prove that they possessed Rome, not as the
vassals of the Frankish Kaisers, or of any barbarian Teutons
whatsoever; but in their own right, as hereditary sovereigns of Rome.
And the documents, when needed, were forthcoming. Under the name of
St. Isidore, some ready scribe produced the too-famous 'Decretals,'
and the 'Donation of Constantine,' and Pope Adrian I. saw no reason
against publishing them to Charlemagne and to the world.
It was discovered suddenly, by means of these remarkable documents,
that Constantine the Great had been healed of leprosy, and afterwards
baptized, by Pope Sylvester; that he had, in gratitude for his cure,
resigned to the Popes his western throne, and the patrimony of St.
Peter, and the sovereignty of Italy and the West; and that this was
the true reason of his having founded Constantinople, as a new seat
of government for the remnant of his empire.
This astounding falsehood was, of course, accepted humbly by the
unlettered Teutons; and did its work well, for centuries to come. It
is said--I trust not truly--to be still enrolled among the decrees of
the Canon law, though reprobated by all enlightened Roman Catholics.
Be that as it may, on the strength of this document the Popes began
to assume an all but despotic sovereignty over the western world,
and--the Teutonic peoples, and Rome's conquest of her conquerors was
at last complete.
What then were the causes of the Papal hatred of a race who were good
and devout Catholics for the last 200 years of their rule?
There were deep political reasons (in the strictest, and I am afraid
lowest sense of the word); but over and above them there were
evidently moral reasons, which lay even deeper still.
A free, plain-spoken, practical race like these Lombards; living by
their own laws; disbelieving in witchcraft; and seemingly doing
little for monasticism, were not likely to find favour in the eyes of
popes. They were not the material which the Papacy could mould into
the Neapolitan ideal of 'Little saints,--and little asses.' These
Lombards were not a superstitious race; they did not, like the Franks
and Anglo-Saxons, crowd into monasteries. I can only find four
instances of Lombard sovereigns founding monasteries in all Paulus'
history. One of them, strangely enough, is that of the very Astulf
against whom the Pope fulminated so loudly the letter from St. Peter
which I read you.
Moreover, it must be said in all fairness--the Lombards despised the
Romans exceedingly. So did all the Teutons. 'We Lombards,' says
Bishop Luitprand, 'Saxons, Franks, Lorrainers, Bavarians, Sueves,
Burgunds, consider it a sufficient insult to call our enemy a Roman;
comprehending in that one name of Roman, whatever is ignoble,
cowardly, avaricious, luxurious, false, in a word, every vice.' If
this was--as it very probably was--the feeling of the whole Teutonic
race; and if it was repaid--as it certainly was--on the part of the
Roman, by contempt for the 'barbarism' and 'ignorance' of the Teuton;
what must have been the feeling between Roman and Lombard? Contact
must have embittered mutual contempt into an utter and internecine
hatred, in which the Pope, as representative of the Roman people,
could not but share.
As for the political reasons, they are clear enough. It is absurd to
say that they wished to free Italy from Lombard tyrants. What did
they do but hand her over to Frankish tyrants instead? No. The true
reason was this. Gradually there had arisen in the mind of all
Popes, from Gregory the Great onward, the idea of a spiritual
supremacy, independent of all kings of the earth. It was a great
idea, as the event proved: it was a beneficent one for Europe; but a
ruinous one for Italy. For the Popes were not content with spiritual
power. They could not conceive of it as separated from temporal
power, and temporal power meant land. How early they set their
hearts on the Exarchate of Ravenna, we shall never know: the fact is
patent, that it was a Naboth's vineyard to them; and that to obtain
it they called in the Franks.
Their dread was, evidently, lest the Lombards should become masters
of the whole of Italy. A united Italy suited their views then, no
more than it does now. Not only did they conceive of Rome as still
the centre of the western world, but more, their stock in trade was
at Rome. The chains of St. Peter, the sepulchres of St. Peter and
St. Paul, the catacombs filled with the bones of innumerable
martyrs;--these were their stock in trade. By giving these, selling
these, working miracles with these, calling pilgrims from all parts
of Christendom to visit these in situ, they kept up their power and
their wealth. I do not accuse them of misusing that power and that
wealth in those days. They used them, on the contrary, better than
power and wealth had been ever used in the world before. But they
were dependent on the sanctity attached to a particular spot; and any
power, which, like the Lombard, tended to give Italy another centre
than Rome, they dreaded and disliked. That Lombard basilica, near
Milan, with all its treasures, must have been in their eyes, a
formidable rival. Still more frightful must it have been to them to
see Astulf, when he encamped before the walls of Rome, searching for
martyrs' relics, and carrying them off to Milan. That, as a fact,
seems to have been the exciting cause of Stephen's journey to Pepin.
This Astulf was a good Catholic. He founded a nunnery, and put his
own daughters in it. What could a man do more meritorious in the
eyes of the Pope? But he took away the lands of the Church, and
worse, the relics, the reserved capital by which the Church purchased
lands. This was indeed a crime only to be expiated by the horrors of
a Frank invasion.
On the same principle the Popes supported the Exarchs of Ravenna, and
the independent duchies of Spoleto and Beneventum. Well or ill
ruled, Iconoclast or not, they were necessary to keep Italy divided
and weak. And having obtained what they wanted from Pepin and
Charlemagne, it was still their interest to pursue the same policy;
to compound for their own independence, as they did with Charlemagne
and his successors, by defending the pretences of foreign kings to
the sovereignty of the rest of Italy. This has been their policy for
centuries. It is their policy still; and that policy has been the
curse of Italy. This fatal gift of the patrimony of St. Peter--as
Dante saw--as Machiavelli saw,--as all clear-sighted Italians have
seen,--as we are seeing it now in these very days--has kept her
divided, torn by civil wars, conquered and reconquered by foreign
invaders. Unable, as a celibate ecclesiastic, to form his dominions
into a strong hereditary kingdom; unable, as the hierophant of a
priestly caste, to unite his people in the bonds of national life;
unable, as Borgia tried to do, to conquer the rest of Italy for
himself; and form it into a kingdom large enough to have weight in
the balance of power; the Pope has been forced, again and again, to
keep himself on his throne by intriguing with foreign princes, and
calling in foreign arms; and the bane of Italy, from the time of
Stephen III. to that of Pius IX., has been the temporal power of the
Pope.
But on the popes, also, the Nemesis came. In building their power on
the Roman relics, on the fable that Rome was the patrimony of Peter,
they had built on a lie; and that lie avenged itself.
Had they been independent of the locality of Rome; had they been
really spiritual emperors, by becoming cosmopolitan, journeying, it
may be, from nation to nation in regular progresses, then their power
might have been as boundless as they ever desired it should be.
Having committed themselves to the false position of being petty
kings of a petty kingdom, they had to endure continual treachery and
tyranny from their foreign allies; to see not merely Italy, but Rome
itself insulted, and even sacked, by faithful Catholics; and to
become more and more, as the centuries rolled on, the tools of those
very kings whom they had wished to make their tools.
True, they defended themselves long, and with astonishing skill and
courage. Their sources of power were two, the moral, and the
thaumaturgic; and they used them both: but when the former failed,
the latter became useless. As long as their moral power was real; as
long as they and their clergy were on the whole, in spite of enormous
faults, the best men in Europe; so long the people believed in them,
and in their thaumaturgic relics likewise. But they became by no
means the best men in Europe. Then they began to think that after
all it was more easy to work the material than the moral power--
easier to work the bones than to work righteousness. They were
deceived. Behold! when the righteousness was gone, the bones refused
to work. People began to question the virtues of the bones, and to
ask, We can believe that the bones may have worked miracles for good
men, but for bad men? We will examine whether they work any miracles
at all. And then, behold, it came out that the bones did not work
miracles, and that possibly they were not saints' bones at all; and
then the storm came: and the lie, as all lies do, punished itself.
The salt had lost its savour. The Teutonic intellect appealed from
its old masters to God, and to God's universe of facts, and
emancipated itself once and for all. They who had been the light of
Europe, became its darkness; they who had been first, became last; a
warning to mankind until the end of time, that on Truth and Virtue
depends the only abiding strength.
LECTURE XII--THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE
I no not know whether any of you know much of the theory of war. I
know very little myself. But something of it one is bound to know,
as Professor of History. For, unfortunately, a large portion of the
history of mankind is the history of war; and the historian, as a man
who wants to know how things were done--as distinct from the
philosopher, the man who wants to know how things ought to have been
done--ought to know a little of the first of human arts--the art of
killing. What little I know thereof I shall employ to-day, in
explaining to you the invasion of the Teutons, from a so-called
mechanical point of view. I wish to shew you how it was possible for
so small and uncivilized a people to conquer one so vast and so
civilized; and what circumstances (which you may attribute to what
cause you will: but I to God) enabled our race to conquer in the
most vast and important campaign the world has ever seen.
I call it a campaign rather than a war. Though it lasted 200 years
and more, it seems to me (it will, I think, seem to you) if you look
at the maps, as but one campaign: I had almost said, one battle.
There is but one problem to be solved; and therefore the operations
of our race take a sort of unity. The question is, how to take Rome,
and keep it, by destroying the Roman Empire.
Let us consider the two combatants--their numbers, and their
position.
One glance at the map will shew you which are the most numerous.
When you cast your eye over the vastness of the Roman Empire from
east to west--Italy, Switzerland, half Austria, Turkey and Greece,
Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, France, Britain--and
then compare it with the narrow German strip which reaches from the
mouth of the Danube to the mouth of the Rhine, the disparity of area
is enormous; ten times as great at least; perhaps more, if you
accept, as I am inclined to do, the theory of Dr. Latham, that we
were always 'Markmen,' men of the Marches, occupying a narrow
frontier between the Slavs and the Roman Empire; and that Tacitus has
included among Germans, from hearsay, many tribes of the interior of
Bohemia, Prussia, and Poland, who were Slavs or others; and that the
numbers and area of our race has been, on Tacitus' authority, greatly
overrated.
What then were the causes of the success of the Teutons? Native
courage and strength?
They had these: but you must recollect what I have told you, that
those very qualities were employed against them; that they were
hired, in large numbers, into the Roman armies, to fight against
their own brothers.
Unanimity? Of that, alas! one can say but little. The great
Teutonic army had not only to fight the Romans, but to fight each
brigade the brigade before it, to make them move on; and the brigade
behind it likewise, to prevent their marching over them; while too
often two brigades quarrelled like children, and destroyed each other
on the spot.
What, then, was the cause of their success? I think a great deal of
it must be attributed to their admirable military position.
Look at a map of Europe; putting yourself first at the point to be
attacked--at Rome, and looking north, follow the German frontier from
the Euxine up the Danube and down the Rhine. It is a convex arc:
but not nearly as long as the concave arc of the Roman frontier
opposed to it. The Roman frontier overlaps it to the north-west by
all Britain, to the south-west by part of Turkey and the whole of
Asia Minor.
That would seem to make it weak, and liable to be outflanked on
either wing. In reality it made it strong.
Both the German wings rested on the sea; one on the Euxine, one on
the North Sea. That in itself would not have given strength; for the
Roman fleets were masters of the seas. But the lands in the rear, on
either flank, were deserts, incapable of supporting an army. What
would have been the fate of a force landed at the mouth of the Weser
on the north, or at the mouth of the Dnieper at the west? Starvation
among wild moors, and bogs, and steppes, if they attempted to leave
their base of operations on the coast. The Romans saw this, and
never tried the plan. To defend the centre of their position was the
safest and easiest plan.
Look at this centre. It is complicated. The Roman position is
guarded by the walls of Italy, the gigantic earthwork of the Alps.
To storm them, is impossible. But right and left of them, the German
position has two remarkable points--strategic points, which decided
the fate of the world.
They are two salient angles, promontories of the German frontier.
The one is north-east of Switzerland; the Allman country, between the
head-waters of the Danube and the Upper Rhine, Basle is its apex.
Mentz its northern point, Ratisbon its southern. That triangle
encloses the end of the Schwartzwald; the Black Forest of primaeval
oak. Those oaks have saved Europe.
The advantages of a salient angle of that kind, in invading an
enemy's country, are manifest. You can break out on either side, and
return at once into your own country on 'lines of interior
operation;' while the enemy has to march round the angle, three feet
for your one, on 'lines of exterior operation.' The early German
invaders saw that, and burst again and again into Gaul from that
angle. The Romans saw it also (admirable strategists as they were)
and built Hadrian's wall right across it, from the Maine to the
Danube, to keep them back. And why did not Hadrian's wall keep them
back? On account of the Black Forest. The Roman never dared to face
it; to attempt to break our centre, and to save Italy by carrying the
war into the heart of Germany. They knew (what the invaders of
England will discover to their cost) that a close woodland is a more
formidable barrier than the Alps themselves. The Black Forest, I
say, was the key of our position, and saved our race.
From this salient angle, and along the whole Rhine above it, the
Western Teutons could throw their masses into Gaul; Franks, Vandals,
Alans, Suevi, following each other in echellon. You know what an
echellon means? When bodies of troops move in lines parallel to each
other, but each somewhat in the rear of the other, so that their
whole position resembles an echelle--a flight of steps. This mode of
attack has two great advantages. It cannot be outflanked by the
enemy; and he dare not concentrate his forces on the foremost
division, and beat the divisions in detail. If he tries to do so, he
is out-flanked himself; and he is liable to be beaten in detail by
continually fresh bodies of troops. Thus only a part of his line is
engaged at a time. Now it was en echellon, from necessity, that the
tribes moved down. They could not follow immediately in each other's
track, because two armies following each other would not have found
subsistence in the same country. They had to march in parallel
lines; those nearest to Italy moving first; and thus forming a vast
echellon, whose advanced left rested on, and was protected by, the
Alps.
But you must remember (and this is important) that all these western
attacks along the Rhine and Rhone were mistakes, in as far as they
were aimed at Rome. The Teutons were not aware, I suppose, that the
Alps turned to the South between Gaul and Italy, and ran right down
to the Mediterranean. There they found themselves still cut off from
Rome by them. Hannibal's pass over the Mont Cenis they seem not to
have known. They had to range down to the Mediterranean; turn
eastward along the Genoese coast at Nice; and then, far away from
their base of operations, were cut off again and again, just as the
Cimbri and Teutons were cut off by Marius. All attempts to take Rome
from the Piedmontese entrance into Italy failed. But these western
attacks had immense effects. They cut the Roman position in two.
And then came out the real weakness of that great ill-gotten Empire,
conquered for conquering's sake. To the north-west, the Romans had
extended their line far beyond what they could defend. The whole of
North Gaul was taken by the Franks. Britain was then isolated, and
had to be given up to its fate. South Gaul, being nearer to Italy
their base, they could defend, and did, like splendid soldiers as
they were; but that defence only injured them. It thrust the
foremost columns of the enemy on into Spain. Spain was too far from
their base of operation to be defended, and was lost likewise, and
seized by Vandals and Suevi. The true point of attack was at the
other salient angle of our position, on the Roman right centre.
You know that the Danube as you ascend it lies east and west from the
Black Sea to Belgrade; but above the point where the Save enters it,
it turns north almost at right angles. This is the second salient
point; the real key of the whole Roman Empire. For from this point
the Germans could menace--equally, Constantinople and Turkey on the
right (I speak always as standing at Rome and looking north), and
Italy and Rome on the left. The Danube once crossed, between them
and Constantinople was nothing but the rich rolling land of Turkey;
between them and Rome nothing but the easy passes of the Carnic Alps,
Laybach to Trieste. Trieste was the key of the Roman position. It
was, and always will be, a most important point. It might be the
centre of a great kingdom. The nation which has it ought to spend
its last bullet in defending it.
The Teutons did cross the Danube, as you know, in 376, and had a
great victory, of which nothing came but moral force. They waited
long in Moesia before they found out the important step which they
had made. The genius of Alaric first discovered the key of the Roman
position, and discovered that it was in his own hands.
I do not say that no Germans had crossed the Laybach pass before him.
On the contrary, Markmen, Quadi, Vandals, seem to have come over it
as early as 180, and appeared under the walls of Aquileia. Of
course, some one must have gone first, or Alaric would not have known
of it. There were no maps then, at least among our race. Their
great generals had to feel their way foot by foot, trusting to
hearsays of old adventurers, deserters, and what not, as to whether a
fruitful country or an impassable alp, a great city or the world's
end, was twenty miles a-head of them. Yes, they had great generals
among them, and Alaric, perhaps, the greatest.
If you consider Alaric's campaigns, from A.D. 400 to A.D. 415, you
will see that the eye of a genius planned them. He wanted Rome, as
all Teutons did. He was close to Italy, in the angle of which I just
spoke; but instead of going hither, he resolved to go south, and
destroy Greece, and he did it. Thereby, if you will consider, he cut
the Roman Empire in two. He paralysed and destroyed the right wing
of its forces, which might, if he had marched straight for Italy,
have come up from Greece and Turkey, to take him in flank and rear.
He prevented their doing that; he prevented also their succouring
Italy by sea by the same destruction. And then he was free to move
on Rome, knowing that he leaves no strong place on his left flank,
save Constantinople itself; and that the Ostrogoths, and other tribes
left behind, would mask it for him. Then he moved into Italy over
the Carnic Alps, and was repulsed the first time at Pollentia. He
was not disheartened; he retired upon Hungary, waited five years,
tried it again, and succeeded, after a campaign of two years.
Yes. He was a great general. To be able to move vast masses of men
safely through a hostile country and in face of an enemy's army
(beside women and children) requires an amount of talent bestowed on
few. Alaric could do it. Dietrich the Ostrogoth could do it.
Alboin the Lombard could do it, though not under such fearful
disadvantages. There were generals before Marlborough or Napoleon.
And do not fancy that the work was easy; that the Romans were
degenerate enough to be an easy prey. Alaric had been certainly
beaten out of Italy, even though the victory of Pollentia was
exaggerated. And in 405, Radagast with 200,000 men had tried to take
Rome by Alaric's route, and had simply, from want of generalship,
been forced to capitulate under the walls of Florence, and the
remnant of his army sold for slaves.
Why was Alaric more fortunate? Because he was a great genius. And
why when he died, did the Goths lose all plan, and wander wildly up
Italy, and out into Spain? Because the great genius was gone.
Native Teuton courage could ensure no permanent success against Roman
discipline and strategy, unless guided by men like Alaric or
Dietrich.
You might fancy the campaign over now: but it was not. Along the
country of the Danube, from the Euxine to the Alps, the Teutons had
still the advantage of interior lines, and vast bodies of men--
Herules, Gepids, Ostrogoths, Lombards--were coming down in an
enormous echellon similar to that which forced the Rhine; to force
Italy at the same fatal point--Venetia. The party who could command
the last reserve would win, as is the rule. And the last reserves
were with our race. They must win. But not yet. They had, in the
mean time, taken up a concave line; a great arc running round the
whole west of the Mediterranean from Italy, France, Spain, Algeria,
as far as Carthage. They could not move forces round that length of
coast, as fast as the Romans could move them by sea; and they had no
fleets. Although they had conquered the Western Empire, they were in
a very dangerous position, and were about to be very nearly ruined.
For you see, the Romans in turn had changed front at more than a
right angle. They lay at first north-west and south-east. They lay
in Justinian's time, north and south. Their right was
Constantinople; their left Pentapolis; between those two points they
held Greece, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt; a position of wealth
incalculable. Meanwhile, as we must remember always, they were
masters of the sea, and therefore of the interior lines of operation.
They had been forced into this position; but, like Romans, they had
accepted it. With the boundless common sense of the race (however
fallen, debauched, pedantic), they worked it out, and with terrible
effect.
Their right in Constantinople was so strong that they cared nothing
for it, though it was the only exposed point. They would defend it
by hiring the Barbarians, and when they could not pay them, setting
them on to kill down each other; while they quietly drew into
Constantinople the boundless crops of Asia, Syria and Egypt.
The strength of Constantinople was infinite--commanding two seas and
two continents. It is, as the genius of Constantinople saw--as the
genius of the Czar Nicholas saw--the strongest spot, perhaps, in the
world. That fact was what enabled Justinian's Empire to arise again,
and enabled Belisarius and Narses to reconquer Africa and Italy.
Remember that, and see how strong the Romans were still.
The Teutons meanwhile had changed their front, by conquering the
Western Mediterranean, and were becoming weak, because scattered on
exterior lines, to their extreme danger.
I cannot exaggerate the danger of that position. It enabled the
Romans by rapid movements of their fleets, to reconquer Africa and
Italy. It might have enabled them to do much more.
Belisarius, with great wisdom, began by attacking the Vandals at
Carthage on the extreme right. They had put themselves into an
isolated position, and were destroyed without help. Then he moved on
Italy and the Ostrogoths. He was going to force the positions in
detail, and drive them back behind the Alps. What he did not finish,
Narses did; and the Teutons were actually driven back behind the Alps
for some years.
But Narses had to stop at Italy. Even if not recalled, he could have
gone no further. The next move should have been on Spain, if he had
really had strength in Italy. But to attack Spain from
Constantinople, would have been to go too far from home. The Franks
would have crost the Pyrenees, and fallen on his flank. The
Visigoths, even if beaten, would have been only pushed across the
Straits of Gibraltar, to reconquer the Vandal coast of Africa; while
to take troops from Italy for any such purpose, would have been to
let in the Lombards--who came, let in or not. There were reserves in
Germany still, of which Narses knew full well; for he had seen 5000
Lombards, besides Herules, and Huns, and Avars, fight for him at
Nuceria, and destroy the Ostrogoths; and he knew well that they
could, if they chose, fight against him.
On the other hand, the Roman Empire had no reserves; while the
campaign had just come to that point at which he who can bring up the
last reserve wins. Ours were so far from being exhausted, that the
heaviest of them, the Franks, came into action, stronger than ever,
200 years after.
But the Roman reserves were gone. If Greece, if Asia Minor, if
Egypt, had been the holds of a hardy people, the Romans might have
done still--Heaven alone knows what. At least, they might have
extended their front once more to the line of Carthage, Sicily,
Italy.
But the people of Syria and Egypt, were--what they were. No
recruits, as far as I know, were drawn from them. Had they been,
they would have been face to face with a Frank, or a Lombard, or a
Visigoth, much what--not a Sikh, a Rohilla, or a Ghoorka, but a
Bengalee proper--would be face to face with an Englishman. One
thousand Varangers might have walked from Constantinople to
Alexandria without fighting a pitched battle, if they had had only
Greeks and Syrians to face.
Thus the Romans were growing weak. If we had lost, so had they.
Every wild Teuton who came down to perish, had destroyed a Roman, or
more than one, before he died. Each column which the admirable skill
and courage of the Romans had destroyed, had weakened them as much,
perhaps more, than its destruction weakened the Teutons; and had, by
harrying the country, destroyed the Roman's power of obtaining
supplies. Italy and Turkey at last became too poor to be a fighting
ground at all.
But now comes in one of the strangest new elements in this strange
epic--Mohammed and his Arabs.
Suddenly, these Arab tribes, under the excitement of the new
Mussulman creed, burst forth of the unknown East. They take the
Eastern Empire in the rear; by such a rear attack as the world never
saw before or since; they cut it in two; devour it up: and save
Europe thereby.
That may seem a strange speech. I must explain it. I have told you
how the Eastern Empire and its military position was immensely
strong; that Constantinople was a great maritime base of operations,
mistress of the Mediterranean. What prevented the Romans from
reconquering all the shores of that sea, and establishing themselves
in strength in the Morea, or in Sicily, or in Carthage, or in any
central base of operations? What forced them to cling to
Constantinople, and fight a losing campaign thenceforth. Simply
this; the Mussulman had forced their position from the rear, and
deprived them of Syria, Egypt, Africa.
But the Teutons could not have opposed them. During the 7th century
the Lombards in Italy were lazy and divided; the Goths in Spain
lazier and more divided still; the Franks were tearing themselves in
pieces by civil war. The years from A.D. 550 to A.D. 750 and the
rise of the Carlovingian dynasty, were a period of exhaustion for our
race, such as follows on great victories, and the consequent
slaughter and collapse.
This was the critical period of the Teutonic race; little talked of,
because little known: but very perilous. Nevertheless, whatever the
Eastern Empire might have done, the Saracens prevented its doing; and
if you hold (with me) that the welfare of the Teutonic race is the
welfare of the world; then, meaning nothing less, the Saracen
invasion, by crippling the Eastern Empire, saved Europe and our race.
And now, gentlemen, was this vast campaign fought without a general?
If Trafalgar could not be won without the mind of a Nelson, or
Waterloo without the mind of a Wellington, was there no one mind to
lead those innumerable armies, on whose success depended the future
of the whole human race? Did no one marshal them in that impregnable
convex front, from the Euxine to the North Sea? No one guide them to
the two great strategic centres, of the Black Forest and Trieste? No
one cause them, blind barbarians without maps or science, to follow
those rules of war, without which victory in a protracted struggle is
impossible; and by the pressure of the Huns behind, force on their
flagging myriads to an enterprise which their simplicity fancied at
first beyond the powers of mortal men? Believe it who will: but I
cannot. I may be told that they gravitated into their places, as
stones and mud do. Be it so. They obeyed natural laws of course, as
all things do on earth, when they obeyed the laws of war: those too
are natural laws, explicable on simple mathematical principles. But
while I believe that not a stone or a handful of mud gravitates into
its place without the will of God; that it was ordained, ages since,
into what particular spot each grain of gold should be washed down
from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man might find it at a
certain moment and crisis of his life;--if I be superstitious enough
(as thank God I am) to hold that creed, shall I not believe that
though this great war had no general upon earth, it may have had a
general in Heaven? and that in spite of all their sins, the hosts of
our forefathers were the hosts of God?
APPENDIX: THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE AS APPLIED TO HISTORY.
It is with a feeling of awe, I had almost said of fear, that I find
myself in this place, upon this errand. The responsibility of a
teacher of History in Cambridge is in itself very heavy: but doubly
heavy in the case of one who sees among his audience many men as fit,
it may be some more fit, to fill this Chair: and again, more heavy
still, when one succeeds to a man whose learning, like his virtues,
one can never hope to equal.
But a Professor, I trust, is like other men, capable of improvement;
and the great law, 'docendo disces,' may be fulfilled in him, as in
other men. Meanwhile, I can only promise that such small powers as I
possess will be honestly devoted to this Professorate; and that I
shall endeavour to teach Modern History after a method which shall
give satisfaction to the Rulers of this University.
I shall do that best, I believe, by keeping in mind the lessons which
I, in common with thousands more, have learnt from my wise and good
predecessor. I do not mean merely patience in research, and accuracy
in fact. They are required of all men: and they may be learnt from
many men. But what Sir James Stephen's life and writings should
especially teach us, is the beauty and the value of charity; of that
large-hearted humanity, which sympathizes with all noble, generous,
earnest thought and endeavour, in whatsoever shape they may have
appeared; a charity which, without weakly or lazily confounding the
eternal laws of right and wrong, can make allowances for human
frailty; can separate the good from the evil in men and in theories;
can understand, and can forgive, because it loves. Who can read Sir
James Stephen's works without feeling more kindly toward many a man,
and many a form of thought, against which he has been more or less
prejudiced; without a more genial view of human nature, a more
hopeful view of human destiny, a more full belief in the great
saying, that 'Wisdom is justified of all her children'? Who, too,
can read those works without seeing how charity enlightens the
intellect, just as bigotry darkens it; how events, which to the
theorist and the pedant are merely monstrous and unmeaning, may
explain themselves easily enough to the man who will put himself in
his fellow-creatures' place; who will give them credit for being men
of like passions with himself; who will see with their eyes, feel
with their hearts, and take for his motto, 'Homo sum, nil humani a me
alienum puto'?
I entreat gentlemen who may hereafter attend my lectures to bear in
mind this last saying. If they wish to understand History, they must
first try to understand men and women. For History is the history of
men and women, and of nothing else; and he who knows men and women
thoroughly will best understand the past work of the world, and be
best able to carry on its work now. The men who, in the long run,
have governed the world, have been those who understood the human
heart; and therefore it is to this day the statesman who keeps the
reins in his hand, and not the mere student. He is a man of the
world; he knows how to manage his fellow-men; and therefore he can
get work done which the mere student (it may be) has taught him ought
to be done; but which the mere student, much less the mere trader or
economist, could not get done; simply because his fellow-men would
probably not listen to him, and certainly outwit him. Of course, in
proportion to the depth, width, soundness, of his conception of human
nature, will be the greatness and wholesomeness of his power. He may
appeal to the meanest, or to the loftiest motives. He may be a fox
or an eagle; a Borgia, or a Hildebrand; a Talleyrand, or a Napoleon;
a Mary Stuart, or an Elizabeth: but however base, however noble, the
power which he exercises is the same in essence. He makes History,
because he understands men. And you, if you would understand
History, must understand men.
If, therefore, any of you should ask me how to study history, I
should answer--Take by all means biographies: wheresoever possible,
autobiographies; and study them. Fill your minds with live human
figures; men of like passions with yourselves; see how each lived and
worked in the time and place in which God put him. Believe me, that
when you have thus made a friend of the dead, and brought him to life
again, and let him teach you to see with his eyes, and feel with his
heart, you will begin to understand more of his generation and his
circumstances, than all the mere history-books of the period would
teach you. In proportion as you understand the man, and only so,
will you begin to understand the elements in which he worked. And
not only to understand, but to remember. Names, dates, genealogies,
geographical details, costumes, fashions, manners, crabbed scraps of
old law, which you used, perhaps, to read up and forget again,
because they were not rooted, but stuck into your brain, as pins are
into a pincushion, to fall out at the first shake--all these you will
remember; because they will arrange and organize themselves around
the central human figure: just as, if you have studied a portrait by
some great artist, you cannot think of the face in it, without
recollecting also the light and shadow, the tone of colouring, the
dress, the very details of the background, and all the accessories
which the painter's art has grouped around; each with a purpose, and
therefore each fixing itself duly in your mind. Who, for instance,
has not found that he can learn more French history from French
memoirs, than even from all the truly learned and admirable histories
of France which have been written of late years? There are those,
too, who will say of good old Plutarch's lives (now-a-days, I think,
too much neglected), what some great man used to say of Shakspeare
and English history--that all the ancient history which they really
knew, they had got from Plutarch. I am free to confess that I have
learnt what little I know of the middle-ages, what they were like,
how they came to be what they were, and how they issued in the
Reformation, not so much from the study of the books about them (many
and wise though they are), as from the thumbing over, for years, the
semi-mythical saints' lives of Surius and the Bollandists.
Without doubt History obeys, and always has obeyed, in the long run,
certain laws. But those laws assert themselves, and are to be
discovered, not in things, but in persons; in the actions of human
beings; and just in proportion as we understand human beings, shall
we understand the laws which they have obeyed, or which have avenged
themselves on their disobedience. This may seem a truism: if it be
such, it is one which we cannot too often repeat to ourselves just
now, when the rapid progress of science is tempting us to look at
human beings rather as things than as persons, and at abstractions
(under the name of laws) rather as persons than as things.
Discovering, to our just delight, order and law all around us, in a
thousand events which seemed to our fathers fortuitous and arbitrary,
we are dazzled just now by the magnificent prospect opening before
us, and fall, too often, into more than one serious mistake.
First; students try to explain too often all the facts which they
meet by the very few laws which they know; and especially moral
phaenomena by physical, or at least economic laws. There is an
excuse for this last error. Much which was thought, a few centuries
since, to belong to the spiritual world, is now found to belong to
the material; and the physician is consulted, where the exorcist used
to be called in. But it is a somewhat hasty corollary therefrom, and
one not likely to find favour in this University, that moral laws and
spiritual agencies have nothing at all to do with the history of the
human race. We shall not be inclined here, I trust, to explain (as
some one tried to do lately) the Crusades by a hypothesis of over-
stocked labour-markets on the Continent.
Neither, again, shall we be inclined to class those same Crusades
among 'popular delusions,' and mere outbursts of folly and madness.
This is a very easy, and I am sorry to say, a very common method of
disposing of facts which will not fit into the theory, too common of
late, that need and greed have been always, and always ought to be,
the chief motives of mankind. Need and greed, heaven knows, are
powerful enough: but I think that he who has something nobler in
himself than need and greed, will have eyes to discern something
nobler than them, in the most fantastic superstitions, in the most
ferocious outbursts, of the most untutored masses. Thank God, that
those who preach the opposite doctrine belie it so often by a happy
inconsistency; that he who declares self-interest to be the
mainspring of the world, can live a life of virtuous self-sacrifice;
that he who denies, with Spinoza, the existence of free-will, can
disprove his own theory, by willing, like Spinoza, amid all the
temptations of the world, to live a life worthy of a Roman Stoic; and
that he who represents men as the puppets of material circumstance,
and who therefore has no logical right either to praise virtue, or to
blame vice, can shew, by a healthy admiration of the former, a
healthy scorn of the latter, how little his heart has been corrupted
by the eidola specus, the phantoms of the study, which have oppressed
his brain. But though men are often, thank heaven, better than their
doctrines, yet the goodness of the man does not make his doctrine
good; and it is immoral as well as unphilosophical to call a thing
hard names simply because it cannot be fitted into our theory of the
universe. Immoral, because all harsh and hasty wholesale judgments
are immoral; unphilosophical, because the only philosophical method
of looking at the strangest of phaenomena is to believe that it too
is the result of law, perhaps a healthy result; that it is not to be
condemned as a product of disease before it is proven to be such; and
that if it be a product of disease, disease has its laws, as much as
health; and is a subject, not for cursing, but for induction; so that
(to return to my example) if every man who ever took part in the
Crusades were proved to have been simply mad, our sole business would
be to discover why he went mad upon that special matter, and at that
special time. And to do that, we must begin by recollecting that in
every man who went forth to the Crusades, or to any other strange
adventure of humanity, was a whole human heart and brain, of like
strength and weakness, like hopes, like temptations, with our own;
and find out what may have driven him mad, by considering what would
have driven us mad in his place.
May I be permitted to enlarge somewhat on this topic? There is, as
you are aware, a demand just now for philosophies of History. The
general spread of Inductive Science has awakened this appetite; the
admirable contemporary French historians have quickened it by feeding
it; till, the more order and sequence we find in the facts of the
past, the more we wish to find. So it should be (or why was man
created a rational being?) and so it is; and the requirements of the
more educated are becoming so peremptory, that many thinking men
would be ready to say (I should be sorry to endorse their opinion),
that if History is not studied according to exact scientific method,
it need not be studied at all.
A very able anonymous writer has lately expressed this general
tendency of modern thought in language so clear and forcible that I
must beg leave to quote it: -
'Step by step,' he says, 'the notion of evolution by law is
transforming the whole field of our knowledge and opinion. It is not
one order of conception which comes under its influence: but it is
the whole sphere of our ideas, and with them the whole system of our
action and conduct. Not the physical world alone is now the domain
of inductive science, but the moral, the intellectual, and the
spiritual are being added to its empire. Two co-ordinate ideas
pervade the vision of every thinker, physicist or moralist,
philosopher or priest. In the physical and the moral world, in the
natural and the human, are ever seen two forces--invariable rule, and
continual advance; law and action; order and progress; these two
powers working harmoniously together, and the result, inevitable
sequence, orderly movement, irresistible growth. In the physical
world indeed, order is most prominent to our eyes; in the moral world
it is progress, but both exist as truly in the one as in the other.
In the scale of nature, as we rise from the inorganic to the organic,
the idea of change becomes even more distinct; just as when we rise
through the gradations of the moral world, the idea of order becomes
more difficult to grasp. It was the last task of the astronomer to
show eternal change even in the grand order of our Solar System. It
is the crown of philosophy to see immutable law even in the complex
action of human life. In the latter, indeed, it is but the first
germs which are clear. No rational thinker hopes to discover more
than some few primary actions of law, and some approximative theory
of growth. Much is dark and contradictory. Numerous theories
differing in method and degree are offered; nor do we decide between
them. We insist now only upon this, that the principle of
development in the moral, as in the physical, has been definitely
admitted; and something like a conception of one grand analogy
through the whole sphere of knowledge, has almost become a part of
popular opinion. Most men shrink from any broad statement of the
principle, though all in some special instances adopt it. It
surrounds every idea of our life, and is diffused in every branch of
study. The press, the platform, the lecture-room, and the pulpit
ring with it in every variety of form. Unconscious pedants are
proving it. It flashes on the statistician through his registers; it
guides the hand of simple philanthropy; it is obeyed by the instinct
of the statesman. There is not an act of our public life which does
not acknowledge it. No man denies that there are certain, and even
practical laws of political economy. They are nothing but laws of
society. The conferences of social reformers, the congresses for
international statistics and for social science bear witness of its
force. Everywhere we hear of the development of the constitution, of
public law, of public opinion, of institutions, of forms of society,
of theories of history. In a word, whatever views of history may be
inculcated on the Universities by novelists or epigrammatists, it is
certain that the best intellects and spirits of our day are labouring
to see more of that invariable order, and of that principle of growth
in the life of human societies and of the great society of mankind
which nearly all men, more or less, acknowledge, and partially and
unconsciously confirm.'
This passage expresses admirably, I think, the tendencies of modern
thought for good and evil.
For good. For surely it is good, and a thing to thank God for, that
men should be more and more expecting order, searching for order,
welcoming order. But for evil also. For young sciences, like young
men, have their time of wonder, hope, imagination, and of passion
too, and haste, and bigotry. Dazzled, and that pardonably, by the
beauty of the few laws they may have discovered, they are too apt to
erect them into gods, and to explain by them all matters in heaven
and earth; and apt, too, as I think this author does, to patch them
where they are weakest, by that most dangerous succedaneum of vague
and grand epithets, which very often contain, each of them, an
assumption far more important than the law to which they are tacked.
Such surely are the words which so often occur in this passage--
'Invariable, continual, immutable, inevitable, irresistible.' There
is an ambiguity in these words, which may lead--which I believe does
lead--to most unphilosophical conclusions. They are used very much
as synonyms; not merely in this passage, but in the mouths of men.
Are you aware that those who carelessly do so, blink the whole of the
world-old arguments between necessity and free-will? Whatever may be
the rights of that quarrel, they are certainly not to be assumed in a
passing epithet. But what else does the writer do, who tells us that
an inevitable sequence, an irresistible growth, exists in the moral
as well as in the physical world; and then says, as a seemingly
identical statement, that it is the crown of philosophy to see
immutable law, even in the complex action of human life?
The crown of philosophy? Doubtless it is so. But not a crown, I
should have thought, which has been reserved as the special glory of
these latter days. Very early, at least in the known history of
mankind, did Philosophy (under the humble names of Religion and
Common Sense) see most immutable, and even eternal, laws, in the
complex action of human life, even the laws of right and wrong; and
called them The Everlasting Judgments of God, to which a confused and
hard-worked man was to look; and take comfort, for all would be well
at last. By fair induction (as I believe) did man discover, more or
less clearly, those eternal laws: by repeated verifications of them
in every age, man has been rising, and will yet rise, to clearer
insight into their essence, their limits, their practical results.
And if it be these, the old laws of right and wrong, which this
author and his school call invariable and immutable, we shall, I
trust, most heartily agree with them; only wondering why a moral
government of the world seems to them so very recent a discovery.
But we shall not agree with them, I trust, when they represent these
invariable and immutable laws as resulting in any inevitable
sequence, or irresistible growth. We shall not deny a sequence--
Reason forbids that; or again, a growth--Experience forbids that:
but we shall be puzzled to see why a law, because it is immutable
itself, should produce inevitable results; and if they quote the
facts of material nature against us, we shall be ready to meet them
on that very ground, and ask: --You say that as the laws of matter
are inevitable, so probably are the laws of human life? Be it so:
but in what sense are the laws of matter inevitable? Potentially, or
actually? Even in the seemingly most uniform and universal law,
where do we find the inevitable or the irresistible? Is there not in
nature a perpetual competition of law against law, force against
force, producing the most endless and unexpected variety of results?
Cannot each law be interfered with at any moment by some other law,
so that the first law, though it may struggle for the mastery, shall
be for an indefinite time utterly defeated? The law of gravity is
immutable enough: but do all stones inevitably fall to the ground?
Certainly not, if I choose to catch one, and keep it in my hand. It
remains there by laws; and the law of gravity is there too, making it
feel heavy in my hand: but it has not fallen to the ground, and will
not, till I let it. So much for the inevitable action of the laws of
gravity, as of others. Potentially, it is immutable; but actually it
can be conquered by other laws.
I really beg your pardon for occupying you here with such truisms:
but I must put the students of this University in mind of them, as
long as too many modern thinkers shall choose to ignore them.
Even if then, as it seems to me, the history of mankind depended
merely on physical laws, analogous to those which govern the rest of
nature, it would be a hopeless task for us to discover an inevitable
sequence in History, even though we might suppose that such existed.
But as long as man has the mysterious power of breaking the laws of
his own being, such a sequence not only cannot be discovered, but it
cannot exist. For man can break the laws of his own being, whether
physical, intellectual, or moral. He breaks them every day, and has
always been breaking them.
The greater number of them he cannot obey till he knows them. And
too many of them he cannot know, alas, till he has broken them; and
paid the penalty of his ignorance. He does not, like the brute or
the vegetable, thrive by laws of which he is not conscious: but by
laws of which he becomes gradually conscious; and which he can
disobey after all. And therefore it seems to me very like a juggle
of words to draw analogies from the physical and irrational world,
and apply them to the moral and rational world; and most unwise to
bridge over the gulf between the two by such adjectives as
'irresistible' or 'inevitable,' such nouns as 'order, sequence, law'-
-which must bear an utterly different meaning, according as they are
applied to physical beings or to moral ones.
Indeed, so patent is the ambiguity, that I cannot fancy that it has
escaped the author and his school; and am driven, by mere respect for
their logical powers, to suppose that they mean no ambiguity at all;
that they do not conceive of irrational beings as differing from
rational beings, or the physical from the moral, or the body of man
from his spirit, in kind and property; and that the immutable laws
which they represent as governing human life and history have nothing
at all to do with those laws of right and wrong, which I intend to
set forth to you, as the 'everlasting judgments of God.'
In which case, I fear, they must go their way; while we go ours;
confessing that there is an order, and there is a law, for man; and
that if he disturb that order, or break that law in anywise, they
will prove themselves too strong for him, and reassert themselves,
and go forward, grinding him to powder if he stubbornly try to stop
their way. But we must assert too, that his disobedience to them,
even for a moment, has disturbed the natural course of events, and
broken that inevitable sequence, which we may find indeed, in our own
imaginations, as long as we sit with a book in our studies: but
which vanishes the moment that we step outside into practical contact
with life; and, instead of talking cheerfully of a necessary and
orderly progress, find ourselves more inclined to cry with the
cynical man of the world:
'All the windy ways of men,
Are but dust that rises up;
And is lightly laid again.'
The usual rejoinder to this argument is to fall back upon man's
weakness and ignorance, and to take refuge in the infinite unknown.
Man, it is said, may of course interfere a little with some of the
less important laws of his being: but who is he, to grapple with the
more vast and remote ones? Because he can prevent a pebble from
falling, is he to suppose that he can alter the destiny of nations,
and grapple forsooth with 'the eternities and the immensities,' and
so forth? The argument is very powerful: but addrest rather to the
imagination than the reason. It is, after all, another form of the
old omne ignotum pro magnifico; and we may answer, I think fairly--
About the eternities and immensities we know nothing, not having been
there as yet; but it is a mere assumption to suppose, without proof,
that the more remote and impalpable laws are more vast, in the sense
of being more powerful (the only sense which really bears upon the
argument), than the laws which are palpably at work around us all day
long; and if we are capable of interfering with almost every law of
human life which we know of already, it is more philosophical to
believe (till disproved by actual failure) that we can interfere with
those laws of our life which we may know hereafter. Whether it will
pay us to interfere with them, is a different question. It is not
prudent to interfere with the laws of health, and it may not be with
other laws, hereafter to be discovered. I am only pleading that man
can disobey the laws of his being; that such power has always been a
disturbing force in the progress of the human race, which modern
theories too hastily overlook; and that the science of history
(unless the existence of the human will be denied) must belong rather
to the moral sciences, than to that 'positive science' which seems to
me inclined to reduce all human phaenomena under physical laws,
hastily assumed, by the old fallacy of [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced], to apply where there is no proof whatsoever that they do
or even can apply.
As for the question of the existence of the human will--I am not
here, I hope, to argue that. I shall only beg leave to assume its
existence, for practical purposes. I may be told (though I trust not
in this University), that it is, like the undulatory theory of light,
an unphilosophical 'hypothesis.' Be that as it may, it is very
convenient (and may be for a few centuries to come) to retain the
said 'hypothesis,' as one retains the undulatory theory; and for the
simple reason, that with it one can explain the phaenomena tolerably;
and without it cannot explain them at all.
A dread (half-unconscious, it may be) of this last practical result,
seems to have crossed the mind of the author on whom I have been
commenting; for he confesses, honestly enough (and he writes
throughout like an honest man) that in human life 'no rational
thinker hopes to discover more than some few primary actions of law,
and some approximative theory of growth.' I have higher hopes of a
possible science of history; because I fall back on those old moral
laws, which I think he wishes to ignore: but I can conceive that he
will not; because he cannot, on his own definitions of law and
growth. They are (if I understand him aright) to be irresistible and
inevitable. I say that they are not so, even in the case of trees
and stones; much more in the world of man. Facts, when he goes on to
verify his theories, will leave him with a very few primary actions
of law, a very faint approximative theory; because his theories, in
plain English, will not work. At the first step, at every step, they
are stopped short by those disturbing forces, or at least disturbed
phaenomena, which have been as yet, and probably will be hereafter,
attributed (as the only explanation of them) to the existence, for
good and evil, of a human will.
Let us look in detail at a few of these disturbances of anything like
inevitable or irresistible movement. Shall we not, at the very first
glance, confess--I am afraid only too soon--that there always have
been fools therein; fools of whom no man could guess, or can yet,
what they were going to do next or why they were going to do it? And
how, pray, can we talk of the inevitable, in the face of that one
miserable fact of human folly, whether of ignorance or of passion,
folly still? There may be laws of folly, as there are laws of
disease; and whether there are or not, we may learn much wisdom from
folly; we may see what the true laws of humanity are, by seeing the
penalties which come from breaking them: but as for laws which work
of themselves, by an irresistible movement,--how can we discover such
in a past in which every law which we know has been outraged again
and again? Take one of the highest instances--the progress of the
human intellect--I do not mean just now the spread of conscious
science, but of that unconscious science which we call common sense.
What hope have we of laying down exact laws for its growth, in a
world wherein it has been ignored, insulted, crushed, a thousand
times, sometimes in whole nations and for whole generations, by the
stupidity, tyranny, greed, caprice of a single ruler; or if not so,
yet by the mere superstition, laziness, sensuality, anarchy of the
mob? How, again, are we to arrive at any exact laws of the increase
of population, in a race which has had, from the beginning, the
abnormal and truly monstrous habit of slaughtering each other, not
for food--for in a race of normal cannibals, the ratio of increase or
decrease might easily be calculated--but uselessly, from rage, hate,
fanaticism, or even mere wantonness? No man is less inclined than I
to undervalue vital statistics, and their already admirable results:
but how can they help us, and how can we help them, in looking at
such a past as that of three-fourths of the nations of the world?
Look--as a single instance among too many--at that most noble nation
of Germany, swept and stunned, by peasant wars, thirty years' wars,
French wars, and after each hurricane, blossoming up again into brave
industry and brave thought, to be in its turn cut off by a fresh
storm ere it could bear full fruit: doing nevertheless such work,
against such fearful disadvantages, as nation never did before; and
proving thereby what she might have done for humanity, had not she,
the mother of all European life, been devoured, generation after
generation, by her own unnatural children. Nevertheless, she is
their mother still; and her history, as I believe, the root-history
of Europe: but it is hard to read--the sibylline leaves are so
fantastically torn, the characters so blotted out by tears and blood.
And if such be the history of not one nation only, but of the
average, how, I ask, are we to make calculations about such a species
as man? Many modern men of science wish to draw the normal laws of
human life from the average of humanity: I question whether they can
do so; because I do not believe the average man to be the normal man,
exhibiting the normal laws: but a very abnormal man, diseased and
crippled, but even if their method were correct, it could work in
practice, only if the destinies of men were always decided by
majorities: and granting that the majority of men have common sense,
are the minority of fools to count for nothing? Are they powerless?
Have they had no influence on History? Have they even been always a
minority, and not at times a terrible majority, doing each that which
was right in the sight of his own eyes? You can surely answer that
question for yourselves. As far as my small knowledge of History
goes, I think it may be proved from facts, that any given people,
down to the lowest savages, has, at any period of its life, known far
more than it has done; known quite enough to have enabled it to have
got on comfortably, thriven, and developed; if it had only done, what
no man does, all that it knew it ought to do, and could do. St.
Paul's experience of himself is true of all mankind--'The good which
I would, I do not; and the evil which I would not, that I do.' The
discrepancy between the amount of knowledge and the amount of work,
is one of the most patent and most painful facts which strikes us in
the history of man; and one not certainly to be explained on any
theory of man's progress being the effect of inevitable laws, or one
which gives us much hope of ascertaining fixed laws for that
progress.
And bear in mind, that fools are not always merely imbecile and
obstructive; they are at times ferocious, dangerous, mad. There is
in human nature what Goethe used to call a demoniac element, defying
all law, and all induction; and we can, I fear, from that one cause,
as easily calculate the progress of the human race, as we can
calculate that of the vines upon the slopes of AEtna, with the lava
ready to boil up and overwhelm them at any and every moment. Let us
learn, in God's name, all we can, from the short intervals of average
peace and common sense: let us, or rather our grandchildren, get
precious lessons from them for the next period of sanity. But let us
not be surprised, much less disheartened, if after learning a very
little, some unexpected and truly demoniac factor, Anabaptist war,
French revolution, or other, should toss all our calculations to the
winds, and set us to begin afresh, sadder and wiser men. We may
learn, doubtless, even more of the real facts of human nature, the
real laws of human history, from these critical periods, when the
root-fibres of the human heart are laid bare, for good and evil, than
from any smooth and respectable periods of peace and plenty:
nevertheless their lessons are not statistical, but moral.
But if human folly has been a disturbing force for evil, surely human
reason has been a disturbing force for good. Man can not only
disobey the laws of his being, he can also choose between them, to an
extent which science widens every day, and so become, what he was
meant to be, an artificial being; artificial in his manufactures,
habits, society, polity--what not? All day long he has a free choice
between even physical laws, which mere things have not, and which
make the laws of mere things inapplicable to him. Take the simplest
case. If he falls into the water, he has his choice whether he will
obey the laws of gravity and sink, or by other laws perform the (to
him) artificial process of swimming, and get ashore. True, both
would happen by law: but he has his choice which law shall conquer,
sink or swim. We have yet to learn why whole nations, why all
mankind may not use the same prudential power as to which law they
shall obey,--which, without breaking it, they shall conquer and
repress, as long as seems good to them.
It is true, nature must be obeyed in order that she may he conquered:
but then she is to be CONQUERED. It has been too much the fashion of
late to travestie that great dictum of Bacon's into a very different
one, and say, Nature must be obeyed because she cannot be conquered;
thus proclaiming the impotence of science to discover anything save
her own impotence--a result as contrary to fact, as to Bacon's own
hopes of what science would do for the welfare of the human race.
For what is all human invention, but the transcending and conquering
one natural law by another? What is the practical answer which all
mankind has been making to nature and her pretensions, whenever it
has progressed one step since the foundation of the world: by which
all discoverers have discovered, all teachers taught: by which all
polities, kingdoms, civilizations, arts, manufactures, have
established themselves; all who have raised themselves above the mob
have faced the mob, and conquered the mob, crucified by them first
and worshipped by them afterwards: by which the first savage
conquered the natural law which put wild beasts in the forest, by
killing them; conquered the natural law which makes raw meat
wholesome, by cooking it; conquered the natural law which made weeds
grow at his hut door, by rooting them up, and planting corn instead;
and won his first spurs in the great battle of man against nature,
proving thereby that he was a man, and not an ape? What but this?--
'Nature is strong, but I am stronger. I know her worth, but I know
my own. I trust her and her laws, but my trusty servant she shall
be, and not my tyrant; and if she interfere with my ideal, even with
my personal comfort, then Nature and I will fight it out to the last
gasp, and Heaven defend the right!'
In forgetting this, in my humble opinion, lay the error of the early,
or laissez faire School of Political Economy. It was too much
inclined to say to men: 'You are the puppets of certain natural
laws. Your own freewill and choice, if they really exist, exist
merely as a dangerous disease. All you can do is to submit to the
laws, and drift whithersoever they may carry you, for good or evil.'
But not less certainly was the same blame to be attached to the
French Socialist School. It, though based on a revolt from the
Philosophie du neant, philosophie de la misere, as it used to term
the laissez faire School, yet retained the worst fallacy of its foe,
namely, that man was the creature of circumstances; and denied him
just as much as its antagonist the possession of freewill, or at
least the right to use freewill on any large scale.
The laissez faire School was certainly the more logical of the two.
With them, if man was the creature of circumstances, those
circumstances were at least defined for him by external laws which he
had not created: while the Socialists, with Fourier at their head
(as it has always seemed to me), fell into the extraordinary paradox
of supposing that though man was the creature of circumstances, he
was to become happy by creating the very circumstances which were
afterwards to create him. But both of them erred, surely, in
ignoring that self-arbitrating power of man, by which he can, for
good or for evil, rebel against and conquer circumstance.
I am not, surely, overstepping my province as Professor of History,
in alluding to this subject. Just notions of Political Economy are
absolutely necessary to just notions of History; and I should wish
those young gentlemen who may attend my Lectures, to go first, were
it possible, to my more learned brother, the Professor of Political
Economy, and get from him not merely exact habits of thought, but a
knowledge which I cannot give, and yet which they ought to possess.
For to take the very lowest ground, the first fact of history is,
Bouche va toujours; whatever men have or have not done, they have
always eaten, or tried to eat; and the laws which regulate the supply
of the first necessaries of life are, after all, the first which
should be learnt, and the last which should be ignored.
The more modern school, however, of Political Economy while giving
due weight to circumstance, has refused to acknowledge it as the
force which ought to determine all human life; and our greatest
living political economist has, in his Essay on Liberty, put in a
plea unequalled since the Areopagitica of Milton, for the self-
determining power of the individual, and for his right to use that
power.
But my business is not with rights, so much as with facts; and as a
fact, surely, one may say, that this inventive reason of man has
been, in all ages, interfering with any thing like an inevitable
sequence or orderly progress of humanity. Some of those writers,
indeed, who are most anxious to discover an exact order, are most
loud in their complaints that it has been interfered with by over-
legislation; and rejoice that mankind is returning to a healthier
frame of mind, and leaving nature alone to her own work in her own
way. I do not altogether agree with their complaints; but of that I
hope to speak in subsequent lectures. Meanwhile, I must ask, if (as
is said) most good legislation now-a-days consists in repealing old
laws which ought never to have been passed; if (as is said) the great
fault of our forefathers was that they were continually setting
things wrong, by intermeddling in matters political, economic,
religious, which should have been let alone, to develop themselves in
their own way, what becomes of the inevitable laws, and the
continuous progress, of the human mind?
Look again at the disturbing power, not merely of the general reason
of the many, but of the genius of the few. I am not sure, but that
the one fact, that genius is occasionally present in the world, is
not enough to prevent our ever discovering any regular sequence in
human progress, past or future.
Let me explain myself. In addition to the infinite variety of
individual characters continually born (in itself a cause of
perpetual disturbance), man alone of all species has the faculty of
producing, from time to time, individuals immeasurably superior to
the average in some point or other, whom we call men of genius. Like
Mr. Babbage's calculating machine, human nature gives millions of
orderly respectable common-place results, which any statistician can
classify, and enables hasty philosophers to say--It always has gone
on thus; it must go on thus always; when behold, after many millions
of orderly results, there turns up a seemingly disorderly, a
certainly unexpected, result, and the law seems broken (being really
superseded by some deeper law) for that once, and perhaps never again
for centuries. Even so it is with man, and the physiological laws
which determine the earthly appearance of men. Laws there are, doubt
it not; but they are beyond us: and let our induction be as wide as
it may, they will baffle it; and great nature, just as we fancy we
have found out her secret, will smile in our faces as she brings into
the world a man, the like of whom we have never seen, and cannot
explain, define, classify--in one word, a genius. Such do, as a
fact, become leaders of men into quite new and unexpected paths, and,
for good or evil, leave their stamp upon whole generations and races.
Notorious as this may be, it is just, I think, what most modern
theories of human progress ignore. They take the actions and the
tendencies of the average many, and from them construct their scheme:
a method not perhaps quite safe were they dealing with plants or
animals; but what if it be the very peculiarity of this fantastic and
altogether unique creature called man, not only that he develops,
from time to time, these exceptional individuals, but that they are
the most important individuals of all? that his course is decided for
him not by the average many, but by the extraordinary few; that one
Mahommed, one Luther, one Bacon, one Napoleon, shall change the
thoughts and habits of millions?--So that instead of saying that the
history of mankind is the history of the masses, it would be much
more true to say, that the history of mankind is the history of its
great men; and that a true philosophy of history ought to declare the
laws--call them physical, spiritual, biological, or what we choose--
by which great minds have been produced into the world, as necessary
results, each in his place and time.
That would be a science indeed; how far we are as yet from any such,
you know as well as I. As yet, the appearance of great minds is as
inexplicable to us as if they had dropped among us from another
planet. Who will tell us why they have arisen when they did, and why
they did what they did, and nothing else? I do not deny that such a
science is conceivable; because each mind, however great or strange,
may be the result of fixed and unerring laws of life: and it is
conceivable, too, that such a science may so perfectly explain the
past, as to be able to predict the future; and tell men when a fresh
genius is likely to arise and of what form his intellect will be.
Conceivable: but I fear only conceivable; if for no other reason, at
least for this one. We may grant safely that the mind of Luther was
the necessary result of a combination of natural laws. We may go
further, and grant, but by no means safely, that Luther, was the
creature of circumstances, that there was no self-moving originality
in him, but that his age made him what he was. To some modern minds
these concessions remove all difficulty and mystery: but not, I
trust, to our minds. For does not the very puzzle de quo agitur
remain equally real; namely, why the average of Augustine monks, the
average of German men, did not, by being exposed to the same average
circumstances as Luther, become what Luther was? But whether we
allow Luther to have been a person with an originally different
character from all others, or whether we hold him to have been the
mere puppet of outside influences, the first step towards discovering
how he became what he was, will be to find out what he was. It will
be more easy, and, I am sorry to say, more common to settle
beforehand our theory, and explain by it such parts of Luther as will
fit it; and call those which will not fit it hard names. History is
often so taught, and the method is popular and lucrative. But we
here shall be of opinion, I am sure, that we only can learn causes
through their effects; we can only learn the laws which produced
Luther, by learning Luther himself; by analyzing his whole character;
by gauging all his powers; and that--unless the less can comprehend
the greater--we cannot do till we are more than Luther himself. I
repeat it. None can comprehend a man, unless he be greater than that
man. He must be not merely equal to him, because none can see in
another elements of character which he has not already seen in
himself: he must be greater; because to comprehend him thoroughly,
he must be able to judge the man's failings as well as his
excellencies; to see not only why he did what he did, but why he did
not do more: in a word, he must be nearer than his object is to the
ideal man.
And if it be assumed that I am quibbling on the words 'comprehend'
and 'greater,' that the observer need be greater only potentially,
and not in act; that all the comprehension required of him, is to
have in himself the germs of other men's faculties, without having
developed those germs in life; I must still stand to my assertion.
For such a rejoinder ignores the most mysterious element of all
character, which we call strength: by virtue of which, of two
seemingly similar characters, while one does nothing, the other shall
do great things; while in one the germs of intellect and virtue
remain comparatively embryonic, passive, and weak, in the other these
same germs shall develop into manhood, action, success. And in what
that same strength consists, not even the dramatic imagination of a
Shakespeare could discover. What are those heart-rending sonnets of
his, but the confession that over and above all his powers he lacked
one thing, and knew not what it was, or where to find it--and that
was--to be strong?
And yet he who will give us a science of great men, must begin by
having a larger heart, a keener insight, a more varying human
experience, than Shakespeare's own; while those who offer us a
science of little men, and attempt to explain history and progress by
laws drawn from the average of mankind, are utterly at sea the moment
they come in contact with the very men whose actions make the
history, to whose thought the progress is due. And why? Because (so
at least I think) the new science of little men can be no science at
all: because the average man is not the normal man, and never yet
has been; because the great man is rather the normal man, as
approaching more nearly than his fellows to the true 'norma' and
standard of a complete human character; and therefore to pass him by
as a mere irregular sport of nature, an accidental giant with six
fingers and six toes, and to turn to the mob for your theory of
humanity, is (I think) about as wise as to ignore the Apollo and the
Theseus, and to determine the proportions of the human figure from a
crowd of dwarfs and cripples.
No, let us not weary ourselves with narrow theories, with hasty
inductions, which will, a century hence, furnish mere matter for a
smile. Let us confine ourselves, at least in the present infantile
state of the anthropologic sciences, to facts; to ascertaining
honestly and patiently the thing which has been done; trusting that
if we make ourselves masters of them, some rays of inductive light
will be vouchsafed to us from Him who truly comprehends mankind, and
knows what is in man, because He is the Son of Man; who has His own
true theory of human progress, His own sound method of educating the
human race, perfectly good, and perfectly wise, and at last,
perfectly victorious; which nevertheless, were it revealed to us to-
morrow, we could not understand; for if he who would comprehend
Luther must be more than Luther, what must he be, who would
comprehend God?
Look again, as a result of the disturbing force of genius, at the
effects of great inventions--how unexpected, complex, subtle, all but
miraculous--throwing out alike the path of human history, and the
calculations of the student. If physical discoveries produced only
physical or economic results--if the invention of printing had only
produced more books, and more knowledge--if the invention of
gunpowder had only caused more or less men to be killed--if the
invention of the spinning-jenny had only produced more cotton-stuffs,
more employment, and therefore more human beings,--then their effects
would have been, however complex, more or less subjects of exact
computation.
But so strangely interwoven is the physical and spiritual history of
man, that material inventions produce continually the most unexpected
spiritual results. Printing becomes a religious agent, causes not
merely more books, but a Protestant Reformation; then again, through
the Jesuit literature, helps to a Romanist counter-reformation; and
by the clashing of the two, is one of the great causes of the Thirty
Years' War, one of the most disastrous checks which European progress
ever suffered. Gunpowder, again, not content with killing men,
becomes unexpectedly a political agent; 'the villanous saltpetre,' as
Ariosto and Shakespeare's fop complain, 'does to death many a goodly
gentleman,' and enables the masses to cope, for the first time, with
knights in armour; thus forming a most important agent in the rise of
the middle classes; while the spinning-jenny, not content with
furnishing facts for the political economist, and employment for
millions, helps to extend slavery in the United States, and gives
rise to moral and political questions, which may have, ere they be
solved, the most painful consequences to one of the greatest nations
on earth.
So far removed is the sequence of human history from any thing which
we can call irresistible or inevitable. Did one dare to deal in
epithets, crooked, wayward, mysterious, incalculable, would be those
which would rather suggest themselves to a man looking steadily not
at a few facts here and there, and not again at some hasty bird's-eye
sketch, which he chooses to call a whole, but at the actual whole,
fact by fact, step by step, and alas! failure by failure, and crime
by crime.
Understand me, I beg. I do not wish (Heaven forbid!) to discourage
inductive thought; I do not wish to undervalue exact science. I only
ask that the moral world, which is just as much the domain of
inductive science as the physical one, be not ignored; that the
tremendous difficulties of analyzing its phenomena be fairly faced;
and the hope given up, at least for the present, of forming any exact
science of history; and I wish to warn you off from the too common
mistake of trying to explain the mysteries of the spiritual world by
a few roughly defined physical laws (for too much of our modern
thought does little more than that); and of ignoring as old
fashioned, or even superstitious, those great moral laws of history,
which are sanctioned by the experience of ages.
Foremost among them stands a law which I must insist on, boldly and
perpetually, if I wish (as I do wish) to follow in the footsteps of
Sir James Stephen: a law which man has been trying in all ages, as
now, to deny, or at least to ignore; though he might have seen it if
he had willed, working steadily in all times and nations. And that
is--that as the fruit of righteousness is wealth and peace, strength
and honour; the fruit of unrighteousness is poverty and anarchy,
weakness and shame. It is an ancient doctrine, and yet one ever
young. The Hebrew prophets preached it long ago, in words which are
fulfilling themselves around us every day, and which no new
discoveries of science will abrogate, because they express the great
root-law, which disobeyed, science itself cannot get a hearing.
For not upon mind, gentlemen, not upon mind, but upon morals, is
human welfare founded. The true subjective history of man is the
history not of his thought, but of his conscience; the true objective
history of man is not that of his inventions, but of his vices and
his virtues. So far from morals depending upon thought, thought, I
believe, depends on morals. In proportion as a nation is righteous,-
-in proportion as common justice is done between man and man, will
thought grow rapidly, securely, triumphantly; will its discoveries be
cheerfully accepted, and faithfully obeyed, to the welfare of the
whole commonweal. But where a nation is corrupt, that is, where the
majority of individuals in it are bad, and justice is not done
between man and man, there thought will wither, and science will be
either crushed by frivolity and sensuality, or abused to the ends of
tyranny, ambition, profligacy, till she herself perishes, amid the
general ruin of all good things; as she had done in Greece, in Rome,
in Spain, in China, and many other lands. Laws of economy, of
polity, of health, of all which makes human life endurable, may be
ignored and trampled under foot, and are too often, every day, for
the sake of present greed, of present passion; self-interest may
become, and will become, more and more blinded, just in proportion as
it is not enlightened by virtue; till a nation may arrive, though,
thank God, but seldom, at that state of frantic recklessness which
Salvian describes among his Roman countrymen in Gaul, when, while the
Franks were thundering at their gates, and starved and half-burnt
corpses lay about the unguarded streets, the remnant, like that in
doomed Jerusalem of old, were drinking, dicing, ravishing, robbing
the orphan and the widow, swindling the poor man out of his plot of
ground, and sending meanwhile to the tottering Caesar at Rome, to
ask, not for armies, but for Circensian games.
We cannot see how science could have bettered those poor Gauls. And
we can conceive, surely, a nation falling into the same madness, and
crying 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,' in the midst of
railroads, spinning-jennies, electric telegraphs, and crystal
palaces, with infinite blue-books and scientific treatises ready to
prove to them, what they knew perfectly well already, that they were
making a very unprofitable investment, both of money and of time.
For science indeed is great: but she is not the greatest. She is an
instrument, and not a power; beneficent or deadly, according as she
is wielded by the hand of virtue or of vice. But her lawful
mistress, the only one which can use her aright, the only one under
whom she can truly grow, and prosper, and prove her divine descent,
is Virtue, the likeness of Almighty God. This, indeed, the Hebrew
Prophets, who knew no science in one sense of the word, do not
expressly say: but it is a corollary from their doctrine, which we
may discover for ourselves, if we will look at the nations round us
now, if we will look at all the nations which have been. Even
Voltaire himself acknowledged that; and when he pointed to the
Chinese as the most prosperous nation upon earth, ascribed their
prosperity uniformly to their virtue. We now know that he was wrong
in fact: for we have discovered that Chinese civilization is one not
of peace and plenty, but of anarchy and wretchedness. But that fact
only goes to corroborate the belief, which (strange juxtaposition!)
was common to Voltaire and the old Hebrew Prophets at whom he
scoffed, namely, that virtue is wealth, and vice is ruin. For we
have found that these Chinese, the ruling classes of them at least,
are an especially unrighteous people; rotting upon the rotting
remnants of the wisdom and virtue of their forefathers, which now
live only on their lips in flowery maxims about justice and mercy and
truth, as a cloak for practical hypocrisy and villany; and we have
discovered also, as a patent fact, just what the Hebrew Prophets
would have foretold us--that the miseries and horrors which are now
destroying the Chinese Empire, are the direct and organic results of
the moral profligacy of its inhabitants.
I know no modern nation, moreover, which illustrates so forcibly as
China the great historic law which the Hebrew Prophets proclaim; and
that is this:- That as the prosperity of a nation is the correlative
of their morals, so are their morals the correlative of their
theology. As a people behaves, so it thrives; as it believes, so it
behaves. Such as his Gods are, such will the man be; down to that
lowest point which too many of the Chinese seem to have reached,
where, having no Gods, he himself becomes no man; but (as I hear you
see him at the Australian diggings) abhorred for his foul crimes even
by the scum of Europe.
I do not say that the theology always produces the morals, any more
than that the morals always produce the theology. Each is, I think,
alternately cause and effect. Men make the Gods in their own
likeness; then they copy the likeness they have set up. But
whichever be cause, and whichever effect, the law, I believe, stands
true, that on the two together depends the physical welfare of a
people. History gives us many examples, in which superstition, many
again in which profligacy, have been the patent cause of a nation's
deoradation. It does not, as far as I am aware, give us a single
case of a nation's thriving and developing when deeply infected with
either of those two vices.
These, the broad and simple laws of moral retribution, we may see in
history; and (I hope) something more than them; something of a
general method, something of an upward progress, though any thing but
an irresistible or inevitable one. For I have not argued that there
is no order, no progress--God forbid. Were there no order to be
found, what could the student with a man's reason in him do, but in
due time go mad?--Were there no progress, what could the student with
a man's heart within him do, but in due time break his heart, over
the sight of a chaos of folly and misery irredeemable?--I only argue
that the order and the progress of human history cannot be similar to
those which govern irrational beings, and cannot (without extreme
danger) be described by metaphors (for they are nothing stronger)
drawn from physical science. If there be an order, a progress, they
must be moral; fit for the guidance of moral beings; limited by the
obedience which those moral beings pay to what they know.
And such an order, such a progress as that, I have good hope that we
shall find in history.
We shall find, as I believe, in all the ages, God educating man;
protecting him till he can go alone, furnishing him with the primary
necessaries, teaching him, guiding him, inspiring him, as we should
do to our children; bearing with him, and forgiving him too, again
and again, as we should do: but teaching him withal (as we shall do
if we be wise) in great part by his own experience, making him test
for himself, even by failure and pain, the truth of the laws which
have been given him; discover for himself, as much as possible, fresh
laws, or fresh applications of laws; and exercising his will and
faculties, by trusting him to himself wherever he can be trusted
without his final destruction. This is my conception of history,
especially of Modern History--of history since the Revelation of our
Lord Jesus Christ. I express myself feebly enough, I know. And even
could I express what I mean perfectly, it would still be but a
partial analogy, not to be pushed into details. As I said just now,
were the true law of human progress revealed to us to-morrow, we
could not understand it.
For suppose that the theory were true, which Dr. Temple of Rugby has
lately put into such noble words: suppose that, as he says, 'The
power whereby the present ever gathers into itself the results of the
past, transforms the human race into a colossal man, whose life
reaches from the creation to the day of judgment. The successive
generations of men, are days in this man's life. The discoveries and
inventions which characterize the different epochs of the world, are
this man's works. The creeds and doctrines, the opinions and
principles of the successive ages, are his thoughts. The state of
society at different times, are his manners. He grows in knowledge,
in self-control, in visible size, just as we do.' Suppose all this;
and suppose too, that God is educating this his colossal child, as we
educate our own children; it will hardly follow from thence that his
education would be, as Dr. Temple says it is, precisely similar to
ours.
Analogous it may be, but not precisely similar; and for this reason:
That the collective man, in the theory, must be infinitely more
complex in his organization than the individuals of which he is
composed. While between the educator of the one and of the other,
there is simply the difference between a man and God. How much more
complex then must his education be! how all-inscrutable to human
minds much in it!--often as inscrutable as would our training of our
children seem to the bird brooding over her young ones in the nest.
The parental relations in all three cases may be--the Scriptures say
that they are--expansions of the same great law; the key to all
history may be contained in those great words--'How often would I
have gathered thy children as a hen gathereth her chickens under her
wings.' Yet even there the analogy stops short--'but thou wouldest
not' expresses a new element, which has no place in the training of
the nestling by the dam, though it has place in our training of our
children; even that self-will, that power of disobedience, which is
the dark side of man's prerogative as a rational and self-cultivating
being. Here that analogy fails, as we should have expected it to do;
and in a hundred other points it fails, or rather transcends so
utterly its original type, that mankind seems, at moments, the mere
puppet of those laws of natural selection, and competition of
species, of which we have heard so much of late; and, to give a
single instance, the seeming waste, of human thought, of human agony,
of human power, seems but another instance of that inscrutable
prodigality of nature, by which, of a thousand acorns dropping to the
ground, but one shall become the thing it can become, and grow into a
builder oak, the rest be craunched up by the nearest swine.
Yet these dark passages of human life may be only necessary elements
of the complex education of our race; and as much mercy under a
fearful shape, as ours when we put the child we love under the
surgeon's knife. At least we may believe so; believe that they have
a moral end, though that end be unseen by us; and without any rash or
narrow prying into final causes (a trick as fatal to historic
research as Bacon said it was to science), we may justify God by
faith, where we cannot justify Him by experience.
Surely this will be the philosophic method. If we seem to ourselves
to have discovered a law, we do not throw it away the moment we find
phaenomena which will not be explained by it. We use those
phaenomena to correct and to expand our law. And this belief that
History is 'God educating man,' is no mere hypothesis; it results
from the observation of thousands of minds, throughout thousands of
years. It has long seemed--I trust it will seem still--the best
explanation of the strange deeds of that strange being, man: and
where we find in history facts which seem to contradict it, we shall
not cast away rashly or angrily either it or them: but if we be
Bacon's true disciples, we shall use them patiently and reverently to
correct and expand our notions of the law itself, and rise thereby to
more deep and just conceptions of education, of man, and--it may be--
of God Himself.
In proportion as we look at history thus; searching for effective,
rather than final causes, and content to see God working everywhere,
without impertinently demanding of Him a reason for His deeds, we
shall study in a frame of mind equally removed from superstition on
the one hand, and necessitarianism on the other. We shall not be
afraid to confess natural agencies: but neither shall we be afraid
to confess those supernatural causes which underlie all existence,
save God's alone.
We shall talk of more than of an over-ruling Providence. That such
exists, will seem to us a patent fact. But it will seem to us
somewhat Manichaean to believe that the world is ill made, mankind a
failure, and that all God has to do with them, is to set them right
here and there, when they go intolerably wrong. We shall believe not
merely in an over-ruling Providence, but (if I may dare to coin a
word) in an under-ruling one, which has fixed for mankind eternal
laws of life, health, growth, both physical and spiritual; in an
around-ruling Providence, likewise, by which circumstances, that
which stands around a man, are perpetually arranged, it may be, are
fore-ordained, so that each law shall have at least an opportunity of
taking effect on the right person, in the right time and place; and
in an in-ruling Providence. too, from whose inspiration comes all
true thought, all right feeling; from whom, we must believe, man
alone of all living things known to us inherits that mysterious
faculty of perceiving the law beneath the phaenomena, by virtue of
which he is a MAN.
But we can hold all this, surely, and equally hold all which natural
science may teach us. Hold what natural science teaches? We shall
not dare not to hold it. It will be sacred in our eyes. All light
which science, political, economic, physiological, or other, can
throw upon the past, will be welcomed by us, as coming from the
Author of all light. To ignore it, even to receive it suspiciously
and grudgingly, we shall feel to be a sin against Him. We shall
dread no 'inroads of materialism;' because we shall be standing upon
that spiritual ground which underlies--ay, causes--the material. All
discoveries of science, whether political or economic, whether laws
of health or laws of climate, will be accepted trustfully and
cheerfully. And when we meet with such startling speculations as
those on the influence of climate, soil, scenery on national
character, which have lately excited so much controversy, we shall
welcome them at first sight, just because they give us hope of order
where we had seen only disorder, law where we fancied chance: we
shall verify them patiently; correct them if they need correction;
and if proven, believe that they have worked, and still work, [Greek
text which cannot be reproduced], as factors in the great method of
Him who has appointed to all nations their times, and the bounds of
their habitation, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him:
though He be not far from any one of them; for in Him we live, and
move, and have our being, and are the offspring of God Himself.
I thus end what it seemed to me proper to say in this, my Inaugural
Lecture; thanking you much for the patience with which you have heard
me: and if I have in it too often spoken of myself, and my own
opinions, I can only answer that it is a fault which has been forced
on me by my position, and which will not occur again. It seemed to
me that some sort of statement of my belief was necessary, if only
from respect to a University from which I have been long separated,
and to return to which is to me a high honour and a deep pleasure;
and I cannot but be aware (it is best to be honest) that there exists
a prejudice against me in the minds of better men than I am, on
account of certain early writings of mine. That prejudice, I trust,
with God's help, I shall be able to dissipate. At least whatever I
shall fail in doing, this University will find that I shall do one
thing; and that is, obey the Apostolic precept, 'Study to be quiet,
and to do your own business.'
Footnotes:
{p1} Grimm, Grammatik, ii. p. 516.
{p2} See Grimm, Grammatik, (2nd edit.) vol. i. p. 108; vol. ii. p.
581.
{p3} Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. ii. p. 232.
{p4} Forstemann mentions a Latin inscription of the third century
found near Wiesbaden with the Dative Toutiorigi.
{p5} German classics, by M. M. p. 12.
{p6} Anonym. Valesian. ad calcem Ann. Marcellin. p. 722. Gibbon,
cap. xxxix; now known, through Mommsen, as the Annals of Ravenna.
{p7} Grimm thinks that Charle-maigne and Charlemagne were originally
corruptions of Karlo-man, and were interpreted later as Carolus
magnus. Grimm, Grammatik, ii. 462; iii. 320.
{p8} Weber, Lehrbuch der Weltgeschichte, s 245: 'Bei Verona von
Theoderich (daher Dietrich von Bern) besiegt, barg sich Odoaker
hinter die Mauern von Ravenna.' It is much more objectionable when
Simrock in his translation of the Edda renders Thjodrekr by Dietrich,
though he retains Theodolf and similar names. But it shows at the
same time the wide popularity of that name.
{p9} Grimm, Heldensage, p. 344.
{p10} Gibbon, chap. xxxix. sub fin.
{p11} Otto von Freising, in the first half of the twelfth century
(Chronicon 5, 3), takes the opposite view, and thinks the fable
derived from history: 'Ob ea non multis post diebus, xxx imperii sui
anno, subitanea morte rapitur ac juxta beati Gregorii dialogum (4,
36) a Joanne et Symmacho in Aetnam praecipitatus, a quodam homine Dei
cernitur. Hinc puto fabulam illam traductam, qua vulgo dicitur:
Theodoricus vivus equo sedens ad inferos descendit.
{p12} Grimm, Deutsche Heldensage, p. 36. Chronicon Urspergense,
85a: Haec Jordanis quidam grammaticus, ex eorundem stirpe Gothorum
progenitus, de Getarum origine et Amalorum nobilitate non omnia, quae
de eis scribuntur et referuntur, ut ipse dicit, complexus exaravit,
sed brevius pro rerum notitia huic opusculo inseruimus. His
perlectis diligenterque perspectis perpendat, qui discernere noverit,
quomodo illud ratum teneatur, quod non solum vulgarifabulatione et
cantilenarum modulatione usitatur, verum etiam in quibusdam chronicis
annotatur; scilicet quod Hermenricus tempore Martiani principis super
omnes Gothos regnaverit, et Theodoricum Dietmari filium, patruelem
suum, ut dicunt, instimulante Odoacre, item, ut ajunt, patruele suo
de Verona pulsum, apud Attilam Hunorum regem exulare coegerit, cum
historiographus narret, Ermenricum regem Gothorum multis regibus
dominantem tempore Valentiniani et Valentis fratrum regnasse et a
duobus fratribus Saro et Ammio, quos conjicimus eos fuisse, qui
vulgariter Sarelo et Hamidiecus dicuntur, vulneratum in primordio
egressionis Hunorum per Maeotidem paludem, quibus rex fuit Valamber,
tam vulneris quam Hunorum irruptionis dolore defunctum fuisse,
Attilam vero postea ultra LXX annos sub Martiano et Valentiniano cum
Romanis et Wisigothis Aetioque duce Romanorum pugnasse et sub eisdem
principibus regno vitaque decessisse. . . . Hinc rerum diligens
inspector perpendat, quomodo Ermenricus Theodoricum Dietmari filium
apud Attilam exulare coegerit, cum juxta hunc historiographum
contemporalis ejus non fuit. Igitur aut hic falsa conscripsit, aut
vulgaris opinio fallitur et fallit, aut alius Ermenricus et alms
Theodoricus dandi sunt Attilae contemporanei, in quibus hujus modi
rerum convenientia rata possit haberi. Hic enim Ermenricus longe
ante Attilam legitur defunctus.
{p13} Chronicon, 5, 3: Quod autem rursum narrant, eum Hermanarico
Attilaeque contemporaneum fuisse, omnino stare non potest, dum
Attilam longe post Hermanaricum constat exercuisse tyrannidem
istumque post mortem Attilae octennem a patre obsidem Leoni Augusto
traditum.
{p14} Chronicon, 16, 481: Quod autem quidam dicunt, ipsum
Theodoricum fuisse Hermenrico Veronensi et Attilae contemporaneum,
non est verum. Constat enim Attilam longe post Hermenricum fuisse
Theodoricum etiam longe post mortem Attilae, quum esset puer
octennis, Leoni imperatori in obsidem datum fuisse.
{p19} The early romancers, and especially Achilles Tatius, give
pictures of Roman praedial slavery too painful to quote. Roman
domestic slavery is not to be described by the pen of an Englishman.
And I must express my sorrow, that in the face of such notorious
facts, some have of late tried to prove American slavery to be as bad
as, or even worse than, that of Rome. God forbid! Whatsoever may
have been the sins of the Southern gentleman, he is at least a
Teuton, and not a Roman; a whole moral heaven above the effeminate
wretch, who in the 4th and 5th centuries called himself a senator and
a clarissimus.
{p101} Dr. Sheppard, p. 297.
{p109} Had he actually taken the name of Theodoric, Theuderic,
Dietrich, which signifies much the same thing as 'King of nations'?
{p158} With west-countrymen, to 'scrattle' still means to scramble,
or shuffle about.
{162} English Language, vol. i. p. 200.
{p214} Cf. Montalembert. 'Moines d'Occident.'
{p279} Sismondi Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire Romain, p. 187.
End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Roman and the Teuton, by Charles Kingsley