chapter 1, 3 and 7.

The Church at Rome "gave no illustrious teachers to ancient Christianity. ... All the greatest questions were debated elsewhere. ... By a sort of instinct of race, [it] occupied itself far more with points of government and organization than of speculation. Its central position, in the capital of the empire, and its glorious memories, guaranteed to it a growing authority."

_E. De Pressensé, The Early Years of Christianity: The Martyrs and Apologists, page 41._

CHRISTIANITY: Gaul.

"Of the history of the Gallican Churches before the middle of the second century we have no certain information. It seems fairly probable indeed that, when we read in the Apostolic age of a mission of Crescens to 'Galatia' or 'Gaul,' the western country is meant rather than the Asiatic settlement which bore the same name; and, if so, this points to some relations with St. Paul himself. But, even though this explanation should be accepted, the notice stands quite alone. Later tradition indeed supplements it with legendary matter, but it is impossible to say what substratum of fact, if any, underlies these comparatively recent stories. The connection between the southern parts of Gaul and the western districts of Asia Minor had been intimate from very remote times. Gaul was indebted for her earliest civilization to her Greek settlements like Marseilles, which had been colonized from Asia Minor some six centuries before the Christian era; and close relations appear to have been maintained even to the latest times. During the Roman period the people of Marseilles still spoke the Greek language familiarly along with the vernacular Celtic of the native population and the official Latin of the dominant power. When therefore Christianity had established her headquarters in Asia Minor, it was not unnatural that the Gospel should flow in the same channels which already conducted the civilization and the commerce of the Asiatic Greeks westward. At all events, whatever we may think of the antecedent probabilities, the fact itself can hardly be disputed. In the year A. D. 177, under Marcus Aurelius, a severe persecution broke out on the banks of the Rhone in the cities of Vienne and Lyons--a persecution which by its extent and character bears a noble testimony to the vitality of the Churches in these places. To this incident we owe the earliest extant historical notice of Christianity in Gaul."

_J. B. Lightfoot, Essays on the work entitled Supernatural Religion, pages 251-252._

"The Churches of proconsular Africa, of Spain, of Italy, and of Southern Gaul constitute, at this period, the Western Church, so different in its general type from the Eastern. With the exception of Irenaeus [bishop of Lyons] and Hippolytus [the first celebrated preacher of the West, of Italy and, for a period, Lyons] who represent the oriental element in Gaul and at Rome, the Western Fathers are broadly distinguished from those of the East. ... They affirm rather than demonstrate; ... they prefer practical to speculative questions. The system of episcopal authority is gradually developed with a larger amount of passion at Carthage, with greater prudence and patience in Italy."

_E. De Pressensé, The Early Years of Christianity: the Martyrs and Apologists._

CHRISTIANITY: Spain.

"Christians are generally mentioned as having existed in all parts of Spain at the close of the second century; before the middle of the third century there is a letter of the Roman bishop Anterus (in 237) to the bishops of the provinces of Bœtica and Toletana; ... and after the middle of the same century a letter of Cyprian's was addressed to ... people ... in the north ... as well as ... in the south of that country."

_J. E. T. Wiltsch, Handbook of the Geography and Statistics of the Church, pages 40-41._

{450}

CHRISTIANITY: Britain.

"All that we can safely assert is that there is some reason for believing that there were Christians in Britain before A. D. 200. Certainly there was a British Church with bishops of its own soon after A. D. 300, and possibly some time before that. Very little can be known about this Celtic Church; but the scanty evidence tends to establish three points, (1) It had its origin from, and remained largely dependent upon, the Gallic Church. (2) It was confined almost exclusively to Roman settlements. (3) Its numbers were small and its members were poor. ... That Britain may have derived its Christianity from Asia Minor cannot be denied; but the peculiar British custom respecting Easter must not be quoted in evidence of it. It seems to have been a mere blunder, and not a continuation of the old Quarta-deciman practice. Gaul is the more probable parent of the British Church. ... At the Council of Rimini in 359 Constantius offered to pay out of the treasury the travelling expenses of all the bishops who attended. Out of more than four hundred bishops, three from Britain were the only clergy who availed themselves of this offer. Neither at Rimini, any more than at Arles, do the British representatives make any show: they appear to be quite without influence."

_A. Plummer, The Church of the Early Fathers, chapter 8._

CHRISTIANITY: Goths.

"It has been observed that the first indisputable appearance of the Goths in European history must be dated in A. D. 238, when they laid waste the South-Danubian province of Moesia as far as the Black Sea. In the thirty years (238-269) that followed, there took place no fewer than ten such inroads. ... From these expeditions they returned with immense booty,--corn and cattle, silks and fine linen, silver and gold, and captives of all ranks and ages. It is to these captives, many of whom were Christians, and not a few clergy, that the introduction of Christianity among the Goths is primarily due. ... The period of the inroads, which so strangely formed a sowing-time for Christianity, was followed by a long period of tranquillity, during which the new faith took root and spread. ... It is to the faithful work and pure lives of [Christian] men ... who had fled from Roman civilisation for conscience sake, to the example of patience in misfortune and high Christian character displayed by the captives, and to the instruction of the presbyters sprinkled among them, that we must look, as the source of Christianity among the Goths. ... The fact (to which we shall have to refer later), that, of all the sea raids undertaken by the Goths between the years 238 and 269, the Visigoths took part in only two, while the Ostrogoths, who were settled in Southern Russia along the coast of the Euxine from the Crimea to the Dneister, were engaged probably in all of them, makes it very unlikely that the captives mentioned by Philostorgius were carried anywhere else than the eastern settlements. To the influence of these Asian Christians, exerted mainly, if not entirely upon the Ostrogoths, must be added the ever-increasing intercourse carried on by sea between the Crimea and both the southern shore of the Euxine and Constantinople. To these probabilities has now to be added the fact that the only traces of an organised Gothic Church existing before the year 341 are clearly to be referred to a community in this neighbourhood. Among the bishops who were present at the Council of Nicaea (A. D. 325), and who signed the symbol which was then approved, we find a certain Theophilus, before whose name stand the words, 'de Gothis,' and after it the word 'Bosphoritanus.' There can be little doubt that this was a bishop representing a Gothic Church on the Cimmerian Bosphorus; and if, following the Paris MSS., we read further down the list the name Domnus Bosphorensis or Bosphoranus, we may find here another bishop from this diocese, and regard Theophilus as chief or arch-bishop of the Crimean churches. The undoubted presence at this council of at least one bishop of the Goths, and the conclusion drawn therefrom in favour of the orthodoxy of the Gothic Church in general, led afterwards to the greatest confusion. Failing to distinguish between the Crimean and Danubian communities, the historians often found their information contradictory, and altered it in the readiest way to suit the condition of the Church which they had specially in view. ... The conversion of that section of the nation, which became the Gothic Church, was due to the apostolic labours of one of their own race,--the great missionary bishop Ulfilas [see GOTHS: A. D. 341-381]. But to him too was to be traced the heresy in which they stopped short on the way from heathenism to a complete Christian faith."

_C. A. A. Scott, Ulfilas, Apostle of the Goths, pages 19-30._

"The superstitions of the barbarians, who had found homes in the empire, had been exchanged for a more wholesome belief. But Christianity had done more than this. It had extended its influence to the distant East and South, to Abyssinia, and the tribes of the Syrian and Lybian deserts, to Armenia, Persia, and India."

_G. P. Fisher, History of the Christian Church, page 98._

"We have before us many significant examples of the facility with which the most intelligent of the Pagans accepted the outward rite of Christian baptism, and made a nominal profession of the Faith, while they retained and openly practiced, without rebuke, without remark, with the indulgence even of genuine believers, the rites and usages of the Paganism they pretended to have abjured. We find abundant records of the fact that personages high in office, such as consuls and other magistrates, while administering the laws by which the old idolatries were proscribed, actually performed Pagan rites and even erected public statues to Pagan divinities. Still more did men, high in the respect of their fellow-Christians, allow themselves to cherish sentiments utterly at variance with the definitions of the Church."

_C. Merivale, Four lectures on some Epochs of Early Church History, page 150._

"We look back to the early acts and policy of the Church towards the new nations, their kings and their people; the ways and works of her missionaries and lawgivers, Ulfilas among the Goths, Augustine in Kent, Remigius in France, Boniface in Germany, Anschar in the North, the Irish Columban in Burgundy and Switzerland, Benedict at Monte Cassino; or the reforming kings, the Arian Theodoric, the great German Charles, the great English Alfred. Measured by the light and the standards they have helped us to attain to, their methods no doubt surprise, disappoint--it may be, revolt us; and all that we dwell upon is the childishness, or the imperfect morality, of their attempts. {451} But if there is anything certain in history, it is that in these rough communications of the deepest truths, in these [for us] often questionable modes of ruling minds and souls, the seeds were sown of all that was to make the hope and the glory of the foremost nations. ... I have spoken of three other groups of virtues which are held in special regard and respect among us--those connected with manliness and hard work, with reverence for law and liberty, and with pure family life. The rudiments and tendencies out of which these have grown appear to have been early marked in the German races; but they were only rudiments, existing in company with much wilder and stronger elements, and liable, amid the changes and chances of barbarian existence, to be paralysed or trampled out. No mere barbarian virtues could by themselves have stood the trial of having won by conquest the wealth, the lands, the power of Rome. But their guardian was there. What Christianity did for these natural tendencies to good was to adopt them, to watch over them, to discipline, to consolidate them. The energy which warriors were accustomed to put forth in their efforts to conquer, the missionaries and ministers of Christianity exhibited in their enterprises of conversion and teaching. The crowd of unknown saints whose names fill the calendars, and live, some of them, only in the titles of our churches, mainly represent the age of heroic spiritual ventures, of which we see glimpses in the story of St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany; of St. Columban and St. Gall, wandering from Ireland to reclaim the barbarians of the Burgundian deserts and of the shores of the Swiss lakes. It was among men like these--men who were then termed emphatically 'men of religion'--that the new races saw the example of life ruled by a great and serious purpose, which yet was not one of ambition or the excitement of war; a life of deliberate and steady industry, of hard and uncomplaining labour; a life as full of activity in peace, of stout and brave work, as a warrior's was wont to be in the camp, on the march, in the battle. It was in these men and in the Christianity which they taught, and which inspired and governed them, that the fathers of our modern nations first saw exemplified the sense of human responsibility, first learned the nobleness of a ruled and disciplined life, first enlarged their thoughts of the uses of existence, first were taught the dignity and sacredness of honest toil. These great axioms of modern life passed silently from the special homes of religious employment to those of civil; from the cloisters and cells of men who, when they were not engaged in worship, were engaged in field-work or book-work,--clearing the forest, extending cultivation, multiplying manuscripts--to the guild of the craftsman, the shop of the trader, the study of the scholar. Religion generated and fed these ideas of what was manly and worthy in man."

_R. W. Church, The Gifts of Civilisation, pages 279-283._

CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 312-337. The Church and the Empire.

"Shortly after the beginning of the fourth century there occurred an event which, had it been predicted in the days of Nero or even of Decius, would have been deemed a wild fancy. It was nothing less than the conversion of the Roman Emperor to the Christian faith. It was an event of momentous importance in the history of the Christian religion. The Roman empire, from being the enemy and persecutor of the Church, thenceforward became its protector and patron. The Church entered into an alliance with the State, which was to prove fruitful of consequences, both good and evil, in the subsequent history of Europe. Christianity was now to reap the advantages and incur the dangers arising from the friendship of earthly rulers and from a close connection with the civil authority. Constantine was born in 274. He was the son of Constantius Chlorus. His mother, Helena, was of obscure birth. She became a Christian--whether before or after his conversion, is doubtful. ... After the death of Constantine's father, a revolt against Galerius augmented the number of emperors, so that, in 308, not less than six claimed to exercise rule. The contest of Constantine was at first in the West, against the tyrannical and dissolute Maxentius. It was just before his victory over this rival at the Milvian Bridge, near Rome, that he adopted the Christian faith. That there mingled in this decision, as in most of the steps of his career, political ambition, is highly probable. The strength of the Christian community made it politic for him to win its united support. But he sincerely believed in the God whom the Christians worshipped, and in the help which, through his providence, he could lend to his servants. ... Shortly before his victory over Maxentius there occurred what he asserted to be the vision of a flaming cross in the sky, seen by him at noonday, on which was the inscription, in Greek, 'By this conquer.' It was, perhaps, an optical illusion, the effect of a parhelion beheld in a moment when the imagination ... was strongly excited. He adopted the labarum, or the standard of the cross, which was afterwards carried in his armies. [See ROME: A. D. 323.] In later contests with Licinius, the ruler in the East, who was a defender of paganism, Constantine became more distinctly the champion of the Christian cause. The final defeat of Licinius, in 323, left him the master of the whole Roman world. An edict signed by Galerius, Constantine, and Licinius, in 311, had proclaimed freedom and toleration in matters of religion. The edict of Milan, in 312, emanating from the two latter, established unrestricted liberty on this subject. If we consider the time when it was issued, we shall be surprised to find that it alleges as a motive for the edict the sacred rights of conscience."

_G. P. Fisher, History of the Christian Church, pages 87-88._

"Towards the end of the year Constantine left Rome for Milan, where he met Licinius. This meeting resulted in the issue of the famous edict of Milan. Up to that hour Christianity had been an 'illicita religio,' and it was a crime to be a Christian. Even in Trajan's answer to Pliny this position is assumed, though it forms the basis of humane regulations. The edict of Milan is the charter of Christianity; it proclaims absolute freedom in the matter of religion. Both Christians and all others were to be freely permitted to follow whatsoever religion each might choose. Moreover, restitution was to be made to the Christian body of all churches and other buildings which had been alienated from them during the persecution. {452} This was in 313 A. D. ... But the causes of dissension remained behind. Once more (323) the question between paganism and Christianity was to be tried on the field of battle, and their armies confronted one another on the plains of Hadrianople. Again the skill of Constantine and the trained valour of his troops proved superior to the undisciplined levies of Licinius; while at sea Crispus, the eldest and ill-fated son of Constantine, destroyed the enemy's fleet in the crowded waters of the Hellespont, sowing thereby the seeds of his father's jealousy. Byzantium fell, but not without a vigorous resistance; and, after one more crushing defeat on the site of the modern Scutari, Licinius submitted himself to the mercy of Constantine. ... What we notice in the whole of these events is the enormous power which still belonged to paganism. The balance still wavered between paganism and Christianity. ... Constantine had now, by a marvellous succession of victories, placed himself in a position of supreme and undisputed power. At this juncture it is of interest to observe that ... the divided empire, which followed the reign of Constantine, served to sustain Catholicity at least in one half of the world. ... The foundation of Constantinople was the outward symbol of the new monarchy and of the triumph of Christianity. ... The choice of this incomparable position for the new capital of the world remains the lasting proof of Constantine's genius. ... The magnificence of its public buildings, its treasures of art, its vast endowments, the beauty of its situation, the rapid growth of its commerce, made it worthy to be 'as it were a daughter of Rome herself.' But the most important thought for us is the relation of Constantinople to the advance of Christianity. That the city which had sprung into supremacy from its birth and had become the capital of the conquered world, should have excluded from the circuit of its walls all public recognition of polytheism, and made the Cross its most conspicuous ornament, and the token of its greatness, gave a reality to the religious revolution. ... The imperial centre of the world had been visibly displaced."

_A. Carr, The Church and the Roman Empire, chapter 4._

With the first General Council of the Church, held at Nicæa, A. D. 325 (see NICÆA), "the decisions ... of which received the force of law from the confirmation of the Emperor, a tendency was entered upon which was decisive for the further development; decisive also by the fact that the Emperor held it to be his duty to compel subordination to the decisions of the council on penalty of banishment, and actually carried out this banishment in the case of Arius and several of his adherents. The Emperor summoned general synods, the fiscus provided the cost of travel and subsistence (also at other great synods), an imperial commissioner opened them by reading the imperial edict, and watched over the course of business. Only the bishops and their appointed representatives had votes. Dogmatic points fixed ... were to be the outcome of unanimous agreement, the rest of the ordinances (on the constitution, discipline and worship) of a majority of votes."

_W. Moeller, History of the Christian Church, page 337._

"The direct influence of the emperor, however, does not appear until the Emperor Marcian procured from the Council of Chalcedon the completion of the Patriarchal system. Assuming that Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch were Patriarchates by the recognition of their privileges at the Council of Nicæa (though the canon of that council does not really admit that inference), the Council of Chalcedon, by its ninth, seventeenth and twenty-eighth canons, enlarged and fixed the patriarchal jurisdiction and privileges of the Church of Constantinople, giving it authority over the Dioceses of Thrace, Asia and Pontus, with the power of ordaining and requiring canonical obedience from the metropolis of those Dioceses, and also the right to adjudicate appeals in causes ecclesiastical from the whole Eastern Church. The Bishop of Jerusalem also obtained in this council patriarchal authority over Palestine. The organization of the Church was thus conformed to that of the empire, the patriarchs corresponding to the Prætorian Prefects, the exarchs, to the governors of the Dioceses, and the metropolitans to the governors of the provinces--the Bishop of Rome being given by an edict of Valentinian III., of the year 445, supreme appellate jurisdiction in the West, and the Bishop of Constantinople, by these canons of Chalcedon, supreme appellate jurisdiction in the East. ... Dean Milman remarks that the Episcopate of St. John Chrysostom was the last attempt of a bishop of Constantinople to be independent of the political power, and that his fate involved the freedom of the Church of that city."

_J. H. Egar, Christendom: Ecclesiastical and Political, from Constantine to the Reformation, pages 25-27._

"The name of patriarch, probably borrowed from Judaism, was from this period the appellation of the highest dignitaries of the church, and by it were more immediately, but not exclusively, designated the bishops of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. One patriarch accordingly presided over several provinces, and was distinguished from the metropolitan in this, that the latter was subordinate to him, and had only the superintendence of one province or a small district. However the designation applied only to the highest rulers of the church in the east, and not to those in the west, for here the title of patriarch was not unfrequently given, even in later times, to the metropolitan. The first mention of this title occurs in the second letter of the Roman bishop, Anacletus at the beginning of the second century, and it is next spoken of by Socrates; and after the Council of Chalcedon, in 451, it came into general use. The bishop of Constantinople bore the special title of œcumenical bishop or patriarch; there were also other titles in use among the Nestorians and Jacobites. The Primates and Metropolitans or Archbishops arose contemporaneously. The title of Eparch is also said to have been given to primates about the middle of the fifth century. The metropolitan of Ephesus subscribed himself thus in the year 680, therefore in the succeeding period. There was no particular title of long continuance for the Roman bishop until the sixth century; but from the year 536 he was usually called Papa, and from the time of Gregory the Great he styled himself Servus Servorum Dei."

_J. E. T. Wiltsch, Handbook of the Geography and Statistics of the Church, pages 70, 71 and 72._

{453}

"Christianity may now be said to have ascended the imperial throne: with the single exception of Julian, from this period the monarchs of the Roman empire professed the religion of the Gospel. This important crisis in the history of Christianity almost forcibly arrests the attention to contemplate the change wrought in Christianity by its advancement into a dominant power in the state; and the change in the condition of mankind up to this period, attributable to the direct authority or indirect influence of the new religion. By ceasing to exist as a separate community, and by advancing its pretentions to influence the general government of mankind, Christianity to a certain extent, forfeited its independence. It could not but submit to these laws, framed, as it might seem, with its own concurrent voice. It was no longer a republic, governed exclusively--as far, at least, as its religious concerns--by its own internal polity. The interference of the civil power in some of its most private affairs, the promulgation of its canons, and even, in some cases, the election of its bishops by the state, was the price which it must inevitably pay for its association with the ruling power. ... During the reign of Constantine Christianity had made a rapid advance, no doubt, in the number of its proselytes as well as in its external position. It was not yet the established religion of the empire. It did not as yet stand forward as the new religion adapted to the new order of things, as a part of the great simultaneous change which gave to the Roman world a new capital, a new system of government, and, in some important instances, anew jurisprudence. ... The religion of the emperor would soon become that of the court, and, by somewhat slower degrees, that of the empire. At present, however, as we have seen, little open aggression took place upon paganism. The few temples which were closed were insulated cases, and condemned as offensive to public morality. In general the temples stood in all their former majesty, for as yet the ordinary process of decay from neglect or supineness could have produced little effect. The difference was, that the Christian churches began to assume a more stately and imposing form. In the new capital they surpassed in grandeur, and probably in decoration, the pagan temples, which belonged to old Byzantium. The immunities granted to the Christian clergy only placed them on the same level with the pagan priesthood. The pontifical offices were still held by the distinguished men of the state: the emperor himself was long the chief pontiff; but the religious office had become a kind of appendage to the temporal dignity. The Christian prelates were constantly admitted, in virtue of their office, to the imperial presence."

_H. H. Milman, History of Christianity, book 3, chapter 4._

"As early as Constantine's time the punishment of crucifixion was abolished; immoral practices, like infanticide, and the exhibition of gladiatorial shows, were discouraged, the latter of these being forbidden in Constantinople; and in order to improve the relation of the sexes, severe laws were passed against adultery, and restrictions were placed on the facility of divorce. Further, the bishops were empowered, in the name of religion, to intercede with governors, and even with the emperor, in behalf of the unfortunate and oppressed. And gradually they obtained the right of exercising a sort of moral superintendence over the discharge of their official duties by the judges, and others, who belonged to their communities. The supervision of the prisons, in particular, was entrusted to them; and, whereas in the first instance their power of interference was limited to exhortations addressed to the judges who superintended them, in Justinian's reign the bishops were commissioned by law to visit the prisons on two days of each week in order to inquire into, and, if necessary, report upon, the treatment of the prisoners. In all these and many other ways, the influence of the State in controlling and improving society was advanced by its alliance with the Church."

_H. F. Tozer, The Church and the Eastern Empire, pages 56-57._

"The Christians were still a separate people. ... It can scarcely be doubted that the stricter moral tone of Constantine's legislation more or less remotely emanated from Christianity. ... During the reign of Constantine Christianity continued to advance beyond the borders of the Roman empire, and in some degree to indemnify herself for the losses which she sustained in the kingdom of Persia. The Ethiopians appear to have attained some degree of civilization; a considerable part of the Arabian commerce was kept up with the other side of the Red Sea through the port of Adulis; and Greek letters appear, from inscriptions recently discovered, to have made considerable progress among this barbarous people. ... The theological opinions of Christianity naturally made more rapid progress than its moral influence. The former had only to overpower the resistance of a religion which had already lost its hold upon the mind, or a philosophy too speculative for ordinary understandings and too unsatisfactory for the more curious and inquiring; it had only to enter, as it were, into a vacant place in the mind of man. But the moral influence had to contest, not only with the natural dispositions of man, but with the barbarism and depraved manners of ages. While, then, the religion of the world underwent a total change, the Church rose on the ruins of the temple, and the pontifical establishment of paganism became gradually extinct or suffered violent suppression; the moral revolution was far more slow and far less complete. ... Everywhere there was exaggeration of one of the constituent elements of Christianity; that exaggeration which is the inevitable consequence of a strong impulse upon the human mind. Wherever men feel strongly, they act violently. The more speculative Christians, therefore, who were more inclined, in the deep and somewhat selfish solicitude for their own salvation, to isolate themselves from the infected class of mankind, pressed into the extreme of asceticism; the more practical, who were in earnest in the desire of disseminating the blessings of religion throughout society, scrupled little to press into their service whatever might advance their cause. With both extremes the dogmatical part of the religion predominated. ... In proportion to the admitted importance of the creed, men became more sternly and exclusively wedded to their opinions. ... While they swept in converts indiscriminately from the palace and the public street, while the emperor and the lowest of the populace were alike admitted on little more than the open profession of allegiance, they were satisfied if their allegiance in this respect was blind and complete. Hence a far larger admixture of human passions, and the common vulgar incentives of action, were infused into the expanding Christian body. {454} Men became Christians, orthodox Christians, with little sacrifice of that which Christianity aimed chiefly to extirpate. Yet, after all, this imperfect view of Christianity had probably some effect in concentrating the Christian community, and holding it together by a new and more indissoluble bond. The world divided into two parties. ... All, however, were enrolled under one or the other standard, and the party which triumphed eventually would rule the whole Christian world."

_H. H. Milman, History of Christianity,