Part 12

Leaving Saul, the missionaries proceeded to northern Dalaradia, and the residence of St. Patrick's old master, Milchu. But nothing would induce the old chief to receive one who had once been his slave, or to forsake the paganism of his forefathers. His journey thus ineffectual, St. Patrick returned to the district where Dichu resided, and made the neighborhood for sometime his headquarters. Thence proceeding southward, he determined to visit the central parts of the island, and especially the famous hill of Tara, where King Laoghaire was about to hold a great religious festival in the presence of all of his tributary chieftains, druids, and bards. In this stronghold of druidism he resolved to celebrate the approaching festival of Easter, and preach the word to the assembled chiefs. It was Easter eve, we are told, when he reached the neighborhood of Tara, and having erected a tent, he made preparations for spending the night with his companions, and kindled a fire for the purpose of preparing food. As the smoke curled upward in the evening air, it was observed by the druids in the king's tents and caused the greatest consternation. To kindle any fire during the solemn assembly of the chiefs, before the king had lighted the sacred flame in the palace of Tara, was a sin of the greatest enormity, and the druids did not scruple to warn the king that if the fire of the stranger was not extinguished that night, unto him, whose fire it was, would belong the sovereignty of Ireland forever.

Messengers were accordingly sent to discover the authors of the sacrilege, and to order them to appear before Laoghaire. The missionaries went, and their fearlessness when in the presence of the monarch and his nobles won for them a respectful hearing. On the following day St. Patrick again addressed the chiefs, doubtless in their own language, and proclaimed to them the doctrines of the faith. Laoghaire himself, indeed, did not profess to be a convert, but he gave permission to the man of God to preach the word, on condition that he did not disturb the peace of the kingdom. During the ensuing week, therefore, when the great public games were celebrated at Tailten, the missionary and his companions addressed themselves to the youngest brother of the king, and were so favorably received that he professed himself a believer, submitted to baptism, and is said to have given the site of a church called afterward "The Great Church of Patrick."

The impression thus made upon the chiefs was soon shared by their subjects, and though the pagan party made frequent attempts to put the missionaries to death, from which they narrowly escaped, they were heartily received in Westmeath, Connaught, Mayo, and Ulster, and before long found themselves strong enough to destroy the great idol Crom-cruach, on the plain of Magh Slecht, in the county of Cavan; and, in the district of the clan Amalgaidh, admitted to baptism the seven sons of the king and many of their people.

To the worshippers of the powers of nature, and especially the sun and other heavenly bodies, St. Patrick proclaimed that the great luminary which ruled the day had no self-originated existence, but was created by One whom he taught them to call God the Father. "Besides him," said he, "there is no other god, nor ever was, nor will be. He was in the beginning before all things, and from him all things are derived, visible and invisible." He told them next of "his only begotten Son Jesus Christ, who had become man, had conquered death and ascended into heaven, where he sat far above all principalities and powers, and whence he would hereafter come to judge both the quick and the dead, and reward every man according to his deeds." "Those," he declared, "who believed in him, would rise again in the glory of the true Sun, that is, in the glory of Jesus Christ, being by redemption sons of God and joint-heirs of the Christ, of whom, and by whom, and to whom, are all things; for the true Sun, Jesus Christ, will never wane nor set, nor will any perish who do his will, but they shall live forever, even as he liveth forever with God the Father Almighty, and the Holy Spirit, world without end."

Such, as it would seem from his "Confession," was the Gospel he proclaimed, and his words, confirmed and illustrated by his own intrepid zeal, ardent love, and sincere and devoted life, made a deep impression on the minds of the Celtic chiefs. With the religious enthusiasm deeply seated in the primitive Celtic character, which many years before won for St. Paul so warm a reception in Galatia, their hearts were touched and they welcomed the missionary, and believed the word which he preached.

As time went on, the labors of St. Patrick were lightened by the arrival of the bishops Secundinus, Auxilius, and Isserninus, whom he had sent either to France or Britain to receive consecration. Their coming enabled him to extend the sphere of his operations, and he undertook missionary tours in Meath, Leinster, Ossory, and Munster. These continued for several years, during which he was occupied in preaching the word, baptizing new converts, and erecting churches. Knowing well how much his own acquaintance with the native language had contributed to his success, he labored diligently to establish a native ministry wherever he went. Cautiously selecting from the higher classes those whose piety and intelligence seemed to fit them for the work of the ministry, he established seminaries and monastic schools, where they were trained and educated; and to these schools the young of both sexes flocked with extraordinary eagerness.

While he was laboring in the southeastern part of Munster, a petty prince of Cardiganshire, named Coroticus, though apparently professing Christianity, set out from Wales, and descending on the Irish coast with a band of armed followers, murdered several of the people, and carried off a large number with the intention of disposing of them as slaves. This outrage, perpetrated in one of the districts where St. Patrick was baptizing, roused his keenest indignation, and he wrote a letter, which he sent by one of his companions, calling upon Coroticus to restore the captives, many of whom had been baptized. But his request being treated with contempt and scorn, he composed another circular epistle, in which he inveighed in the strongest terms against the cruelty of the marauding tribe and its chief. He contrasted his conduct with that of the Christians of the Continent, who were in the habit of sending large sums of money to ransom captives, and concluded by threatening him and his followers with excommunication, unless he desisted in future from his piratical habits. What was the result of the epistle is not known, but it is to be feared that the attempt to recover the captives was not successful. Slavery and the trade in slaves was almost more difficult to root out than paganism, and the inhuman traffic was in full activity as late as the tenth century between England and Ireland, and the port of Bristol was one of its principal centres.

Meanwhile, after a somewhat lengthened sojourn in the district of Lowth and parts of Ulster, St. Patrick reached the district of Macha, containing the royal city of Emania, the residence of the kings of Ulster, the remains of which, under the name of the Navan, still exist about two miles west of Armagh. Here he was cordially received by Daire, a wealthy chief, who made over to him a pleasant piece of ground on an eminence, _Druim-sailch_, or "Hill of the Willows." The spot pleased St. Patrick, and here he determined to erect a church. The foundations were accordingly laid, and around it rose by degrees the city of Armagh, the ecclesiastical metropolis of Ireland; and here its founder spent the remainder of his life, only leaving it now and then to visit his favorite retreat at Saul, round which clustered so many associations of his earliest labors, and of his first convert Dichu.

Here, too, having called to his aid the bishops Secundinus, Isserninus, and Auxilius, who next to himself were best qualified by long experience for the work, he proceeded to hold synods, and to make regulations for the general government of the churches he had founded. Again and again he was solicited to revisit his friends and relatives in Scotland, but nothing could induce him to leave his post. In his "Confession," written when far advanced in years, he touchingly describes how often he had been requested to come among his kinsmen once more, but how a deep sense of the spiritual love between himself and his flock ever retained him in Ireland.

It was while he was staying at Saul that the apostle of Ireland was seized with his last illness. He had lived to a good old age, and the sunset of his life was calm and peaceful. Perceiving that his end drew nigh, and desirous, as we are told, that Armagh should be the resting-place of his remains, he set out thither, but was unable to continue the journey. Increasing weakness, and, as it seemed to him the voice of an angel, bade him return to the church of his first convert; and there he closed his eyes in death, probably in the year A.D. 466, leaving behind him the visible memorials of a noble work nobly done. He and his fellow-laborers had made for themselves, by the labors of their own hands, civilized dwellings amid the tangled forest and the dreary morass. At a time when clan-feuds and bloodshed were rife, and princes rose and fell, and all was stormy and changeful, they had covered the islands with monastic schools, where the Scriptures were studied, ancient books collected and read, and native missionaries trained for their own country, and for the remotest parts of the European continent.

JUSTINIAN THE GREAT

(483-565)

Flavius Anicius Justinianus, nephew on the mother's side of the Emperor Justin, was born in 482 or 483 A.D., in the village of Tauresium, in Illyria. His original name was Upranda. Although of obscure parentage, and indeed slave-born, he shared the success of his maternal uncle, Justin, being invited at an early age to Constantinople, where he received an early education. When his uncle assumed the purple, in 518, he appointed Justinian commander-in-chief of the army of Asia. His tastes, however, inclining him rather to civic pursuits, he declined this appointment, and remained attached to the court of Constantinople. In 521, he was named consul, and during the remaining years of the reign of his uncle he continued to exercise great influence. In 527 the Emperor Justin, by the advice of the senate, proclaimed him his partner in the empire. Justin survived this step but four months, and in the same year Justinian was proclaimed sole emperor, and crowned along with his wife, the famous Theodora, whom, despite her more than dubious antecedents as an actress, he had raised to the position as his wife. Justinian on his accession was in his forty-fifth year. His reign, which extends over thirty-eight years, is the most brilliant in the history of the late empire. Although himself without the taste or the capacity for military command, he had the good fortune or the skill to select the ablest generals of the last days of Roman military ascendency. Under the direction of his generals, and especially of the celebrated Narses and Belisarius, his reign may be said to have restored the Roman Empire, at least in outward appearance, to its ancient limits, and to have reunited the East and the West under a single rule. In his first war--that with Persia--he concluded a treaty by which the crisis that had so long threatened, was at least warded off; but the rejoicings which celebrated its termination had, owing to a domestic revolution, almost proved fatal to the authority of Justinian himself. A conflict of the so-called Blue and Green factions in the circus, in 532, was but an outburst of political discontent, which went so far as to elect a rival emperor, Hypatius. Justinian himself was struck with dismay, and had made preparations for flight; but the vigor and determination of Theodora arrested the revolt. Narses, with a relentless hand, repressed the tumults, 30,000 victims having, it is said, fallen in a single day. By the arms of Belisarius, the Vandal kingdom of Africa was re-annexed to the Empire; and the same general, conjointly with Narses, restored the imperial authority in Rome, in Northern Italy, and in a large portion of Spain. One of the most extraordinary, though in the end ineffective works of the reign of Justinian, was the vast line of fortification which he constructed, or renewed and strengthened, along the eastern and southeastern frontier of his empire. These works of defence, and the construction of many public buildings both in his capital and in other cities of the Empire, involved an enormous expenditure, and the fiscal administration of Justinian, in consequence, pressed heavily on the public resource.

It is, however, as a legislator that Justinian has gained his most enduring renown. His good fortune in obtaining the services of able generals was not greater than that which attended him in the field of law and legislation. Brilliant as were the triumphs of Narses and Belisarius, they were indeed short-lived in comparison with the work done by the celebrated Tribonian and his coadjutors in the way of reforming and codifying the law. Immediately on his accession Justinian set himself to collect and codify the principal imperial constitutions or statutes enacted prior to, and in force at, the date of his accession. In this respect he followed the example set by his predecessor, Theodosian. The code in which these constitutions were collected was published in 528-29, and it contained a general provision by which all previous imperial enactments were repealed. But Justinian's ambition in the matter of consolidating the laws went much further. Imperial constitutions made up but a comparatively small part of the body of the law. The bulk of it (what might be called the common law) was contained in the writings of the jurists, that is, of text-writers and commentators. Of these writers there were at this time many hundreds of volumes in existence, and, owing to want of agreement in the opinion of the various writers, the law was in a state of great uncertainty, not to say confusion.

To remedy this evil, Justinian resolved upon the publication of a single treatise in which the commentaries and other writings of the jurists might be digested and harmonized. The preparation of this great work was intrusted to Tribonian, with the assistance of Theophilus, a celebrated professor of law at Berytus (modern Beyrout), and two other professors, and it was completed in the almost incredibly short period of four years. It was published in fifty books, under the title Digesta or Pandectae. While the Digest was in course of preparation Justinian resolved on the composition of a third work--viz., a systematic and elementary treatise on the law which might serve as a text-book for the use of students, and as an introduction to the larger work. The preparation of this was also intrusted to Tribonian and his colleagues, and having been completed a few days before the Digest, was published in four books on the same day (December 31, 534), under the title of Institutiones. It is based upon the Institutes of Gaius, and is familiar to all modern lawyers under the name of "Justinian's Institutes." Meantime, while both the Digest and the Institutes were being prepared, the Code of 529 above mentioned was withdrawn from circulation and republished in 534 with some alterations, and especially with the addition of fifty new constitutions (known as the Quinquaginta Decisiones) which had in the interim been pronounced by Justinian. This new edition, in twelve books, is known as the Codex Repetitiae Proelectionis, and is the one which has come down to us, no copy of the earlier codex being extant. All these works (Code, Digest, Institutes) were written originally in Latin, and all of them were prepared with care and skill, and testify to the great ability of Tribonian and his co-editors. Upon the publication of the "Digest" Justinian declared by a constitution that all previous law-books and decisions were to be held as superseded and it was forbidden to refer to them in the practice of the courts. During the subsequent years of his reign Justinian pronounced from time to time several new constitutions or laws, some of them making very important changes in certain departments of the law. These (mostly in Greek) were collected and published under the title of "Novellae" (_i.e._, "The Novels" or "New Works"). There were, so far as can be ascertained, about one hundred and seventy of these Novels. The Institutes, Digest, Code, and Novels together make up what is known as the Corpus Juris Civilis.

The character of Justinian has been much canvassed, and opinions are not agreed about it. Procopius, in two separate works, has painted him in very different lights. Making allowance, however, for much exaggeration of his abilities by contemporary writers, it may be said that he contrasts favorably with most of the emperors, whether of the earlier or of the later Empire. If his personal virtues be open to doubt (and certainly vanity, avarice, and inconstancy were in no small degree characteristic of him), he, on the other hand, displayed undoubted ability as a ruler, and, in the main, just and upright intentions. He was easy of access, patient of hearing, courteous and affable in discourse, and perfect master of his temper. In the conspiracies against his authority and person he often showed both justice and clemency. He excelled in the private virtues of chastity and temperance; his meals were short and frugal; on solemn fasts he contented himself with water and vegetables, and he frequently passed two days and as many nights without tasting any food. He allowed himself little time for sleep, and was always up before the morning light. His restless application to business and to study, as well as the extent of his learning, have been attested even by his enemies. He was, or professed to be, a poet and philosopher, a lawyer and theologian, a musician and an architect; but the brightest ornament of his reign is the compilation of Roman law which has immortalized his name. He died on November 14, 565, at the age of eighty-three, and in the thirty-eighth year of his reign.

A few words must be said about the legislative reforms carried through by Justinian. He was not only a collector and a codifier of the laws; he also introduced in many directions the most fundamental changes into the substantive law itself. The following were the most important changes. (1) He ameliorated the condition of slaves--depriving their masters of the power of putting them to death. He declared that any one who put a slave to death by his own hand should be guilty of homicide. (2) He greatly revolutionized the law of intestate succession by giving to cognati (relatives on the mother's side) an equal share with agnati (relatives on the father's side) of the same degree. These two changes in the law were probably in a large measure induced by the circumstances of his birth. (3) He made considerable changes in the law of divorce, and as to the property of spouses. (4) He reformed civil procedure in the way of making it uniform, and introducing a system of small-debt courts.

ST. AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY[9]

By RT. REV. HENRY CODMAN POTTER, BISHOP OF NEW YORK

(DIED, 604)

[Footnote 9: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

A complete biography of St. Augustine of Canterbury it is impossible to write: almost all that is known of him is his work as a missionary to the English, and almost the only source of our knowledge of that missionary work is the "Ecclesiastical History" of Baeda. But the mission of St. Augustine was one of the great crises, not only of the history of the Christian Church, but of the history of human civilization. The difference between a number of Celtic churches, with bishops largely subordinate to the abbots of monasteries, included (as it seems) in none of the great Catholic patriarchates, cut off from all communication with the great centres of human thought and life--and a Church of England taking her place, at once independent and subordinate, in the swift development of human progress, both conservative and creative--this difference is quite incalculable. And the mission of St. Augustine made the difference.

The triumph of Christianity depended--apart from its divine authority--upon the thorough organization of the Christian communities; and that organization had for its centre the Episcopacy. But as separate congregations without a bishop could never have escaped disintegration, so the united congregations, with their presbyters and bishop, would have been powerless without some further organization, uniting the bishops, with well-defined regulations, under some recognized hierarchy of authority. Thus arose metropolitan sees, and the great patriarchates of the Catholic Church--Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople. This centralization was rendered necessary by the course of events; but it had otherwise no divine authority and might be modified just as validly as it was created. When the Roman Empire was submerged under the deluge of barbarian races, a yet closer centralization became necessary, at least in the West; and the ark in which floated over that terrible deluge not only the Christian religion, but the remains of ancient civilization, both Greek and Roman, was the patriarchate of Rome. The man who not only clearly perceived, but was absolutely compelled to assume, his awful responsibility in the West, the Saviour at once of the Church and the world, was the splendid pontiff, Gregory the Great; the great pontiff who sent St. Augustine and his companions to preach the gospel to the English conquerors of Britain. If we would clearly understand the work of St. Augustine we must free our minds from the illusion produced by familiar names. One of these is the name Britain. In the time of Gregory the Great the island called by that name was, of course, the same as that on which Julius Caesar had landed. The barbarians whom Caesar encountered had been subdued by his successors, and a Roman province had been formed. Roman civilization had been introduced and, one might almost say, had flourished. The Christian religion had found its way thither; there had been Christian congregations and bishops, and even a heresiarch. But Rome, in the struggle for her own existence, had been compelled to withdraw her legions from the province of Britain; and to leave the people not only to their internal dissensions, but to the attacks of the "Scots" and "Picts," from Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. Then followed the conquest of Britain by the English, as the Teutonic invaders began soon to be called. The Celtic people were largely driven out, including the Celtic Christians. The English were heathens, and the Celtic Christians seem to have made no effort whatever for their conversion. The English, again, were by no means consolidated into an English nation. It was to one division of these English heathens that Gregory the Great sent Augustine.