book 3, chapter 4-5.

"Of this deterioration of morals we have abundant evidence. Read the Canons of the various Councils and you will learn that the Church found it necessary to prohibit the commission of the most heinous and abominable crimes not only by the laity, but even by the clergy. Read the homilies of such preachers as Chrysostom, Basil, and Gregory, and you may infer what the moral tone of a Christian congregation must have been to which such reproofs could be addressed. Read, above all, the treatise on Providence, or De Gubernatione Dei, written at the close of our period by Salvian, a presbyter of Marseilles. The barbarians had over-spread the West, and Christians had suffered so many hardships that they began to doubt whether there was any Divine government of human affairs. Salvian retorted that the fact of their suffering was the best evidence of the doctrine of Providence, for the miseries they endured were the effects of the Divine displeasure provoked by the debauchery of the Church. And then he proceeds to draw up an indictment and to lend proof which I prefer not to give in detail. After making every allowance for rhetorical exaggeration, enough remains to show that the morality of the Church had grievously declined, and that the declension was due to the inroads of Pagan vice. ... Under this head, had space permitted, some account would have been given of the growth of the Christian literature of this period, of the great writers and preachers, and of the opposing schools of interpretation which divided Christendom. In the Eastern Church we should have had to notice [at greater length the work of] Eusebius of Cæsarea, the father of Church History and the friend of Constantine; Ephrem the Syrian, the poet-preacher; the three Cappadocians, Basil of Cæsarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus, each great in his own way, the first as a preacher and administrator, the second as a thinker, the third as a poet and panegyrist; Chrysostom, the orator and exegete; Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Kyros, along with Chrysostom the most influential representatives of the School of Antioch. In the Western Church we should have had to speak of Ambrose, the eloquent preacher and voluminous writer; of Jerome, the biblical critic; and of Augustine, the philosopher and controversialist, whose thoughts live among us even at the present day."

_W. Stewart, The Church of the 4th and 5th Centuries (St. Giles' Lectures, 4th series)._

See ROME: A. D. 323, to 391-395.

"Hitherto Christian asceticism had been individualistic in its character. ... In the third century hermits began to form a class by themselves in the East and in Africa; in the fourth they began to be organized into communities. After the institution of monastic societies, this development of Christian asceticism spread far and wide from the deserts of the Thebaid and Lower Egypt; Basil, Jerome, Athanasius, Augustine, Ambrose, were foremost among its earliest advocates and propagators; Cassian, Columbanus, Benedict, and others, crowned the labours of their predecessors by a more elaborate organization."

_I. Gregory Smith, Christian Monasticism, pages 23-25._

CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 318-325. The Arian Controversy and the Council of Nicæa.

See ARIANISM: and NICÆA, THE FIRST COUNCIL OF.

CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 330-1054. The Eastern (Greek, or Orthodox) Church.

"'The Eastern Church,' says a well-known writer, 'was like the East, stationary and immutable; the Western, like the West, progressive and flexible. This distinction is the more remarkable, because at certain periods of their course, there can be no doubt that the civilization of the Eastern Church was far higher than that of the Western.'"

_G. F. Maclear, The Slavs, page 25._

It is the more remarkable because this long-continuing uniformity, while peculiarly adapted to a people and a church which should retain and transmit an inheritance of faith and culture, stands in singular contrast to the reputed character of the Greek-speaking peoples of the East. The word Greek, however, has, as an adjective, many meanings, and there is danger of wrong inference through inattention to these; some of its distinctive characters are therefore indicated in brackets in various places in the following matter. "The New Rome at the time of its foundation was Roman. ... But from the first it was destined to become Greek; for the Greeks, who now began to call themselves Romans--an appellation which they have ever since retained--held fast to their language, manners, and prejudices, while they availed themselves to the full of their rights as Roman citizens. The turning-point in this respect was the separation of the empires of the East and the West in the time of Arcadius and Honorius; and in Justinian's time we find all the highest offices in the hands of the Greeks, and Greek was the prevailing language. But the people whom we call by this name were not the Hellenes of Greece proper, but the Macedonian Greeks. This distinction arose with the establishment of Greek colonies with municipal government throughout Asia by Alexander the Great and his successors. The type of character which was developed in them and among those who were Hellenised by their influence, differed in many respects from that of the old Greeks. The resemblance between them was indeed maintained by similarity of education and social feelings, by the possession of a common language and literature, and by their exclusiveness, which caused them to look down on less favoured races; but while the inhabitants of Greece retained more of the independent spirit and of the moral character and patriotism of their forefathers, the Macedonian Greeks were more cosmopolitan, more subservient, and more ready to take the impress of those among whom they were thrown: and the astuteness and versatility which at all times had formed one element in the Hellenic character, in them became the leading characteristic. The influence of this type is traceable in the policy of the Eastern Empire, varying in intensity in different ages in proportion to the power exercised by the Greeks: until, during the later period of the history--in the time of the Comneni, and still more in that of the Palæologi--it is the predominant feature."

_H. F. Tozer, The Church and the Eastern Empire, pages 9-10._

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"What have been the effects of Christianity on what we call national character in Eastern Christendom? ... The Greeks of the Lower Empire are taken as the typical example of these races, and the Greeks of the Lower Empire have become a byword for everything that is false and base. The Byzantine was profoundly theological, we are told, and profoundly vile. ... Those who wish to be just to [it] ... will pass ... to the ... equitable and conscientious, but by no means, indulgent, judgments of Mr. Finlay, Mr. Freeman, and Dean Stanley. One fact alone is sufficient to engage our deep interest in this race. It was Greeks [Hellenist Jews] and people imbued with Greek ideas who first welcomed Christianity. It was in their language that it first spoke to the world, and its first home was in Greek households and in Greek cities. It was in Greek [Hellenistic] atmosphere that the Divine Stranger from the East, in many respects so widely different from all that Greeks were accustomed to, first grew up to strength and shape; first showed its power of assimilating and reconciling; first showed what it was to be in human society. Its earliest nurslings were Greeks; Greeks [Hellenist Jews] first took in the meaning and measure of its amazing and eventful announcements; Greek sympathies first awoke and vibrated to its appeals; Greek obedience, Greek courage, Greek suffering first illustrated its new lessons. Had it not first gained over Greek mind and Greek belief, it is hard to see how it would have made its further way. ... The Roman conquest of the world found the Greek race, and the Eastern nations which it had influenced, in a low and declining state--morally, socially, politically. The Roman Empire, when it fell, left them in the same discouraging condition, and suffering besides from the degradation and mischief wrought on all its subjects by its chronic and relentless fiscal oppression. ... These were the men in whose childish conceit, childish frivolity, childish self-assertion, St. Paul saw such dangers to the growth of Christian manliness and to the unity of the Christian body--the idly curious and gossiping men of Athens; the vain and shamelessly ostentatious Corinthians, men in intellect, but in moral seriousness babes; the Ephesians, 'like children carried away with every blast of vain teaching,' the victims of every impostor, and sport of every deceit; the Cretans, proverbially, 'ever liars, evil beasts, slow bellies;' the passionate, volatile, Greek-speaking, Celts of Asia, the 'foolish' Galatians. ... The Greek of the Roman times is portrayed in the special warnings of the Apostolic Epistles. After Apostolic times he is portrayed in the same way by the heathen satirist Lucian, and by the Christian preacher Chrysostom; and such, with all his bad tendencies, aggravated by almost uninterrupted misrule and oppression, the Empire, when it broke up, left him. The prospects of such a people, amid the coming storms, were dark. Everything, their gifts and versatility, as well as their faults, threatened national decay and disintegration. ... These races whom the Empire of the Cæsars left like scattered sheep to the mercy of the barbarians, lived through a succession of the most appalling storms, and kept themselves together, holding fast, resolute and unwavering, amid all their miseries and all their debasement, to the faith of their national brotherhood. ... This, it seems to me, Christianity did for a race which had apparently lived its time, and had no future before it--the Greek race in the days of the Cæsars. It created in them, in a new and characteristic degree, national endurance, national fellowship and sympathy, national hope. ... It gave them an Empire of their own, which, undervalued as it is by those familiar with the ultimate results of Western history, yet withstood the assaults before which, for the moment, Western civilisation sank, and which had the strength to last a life--a stirring and eventful life--of ten centuries. The Greek Empire, with all its evils and weaknesses, was yet in its time the only existing image in the world of a civilised state. ... The lives of great men profoundly and permanently influence national character; and the great men of later Greek memory are saints. They belong to the people more than emperors and warriors; for the Church is of the people. ... The mark which such men left on Greek society and Greek character has not been effaced to this day, even by the melancholy examples of many degenerate successors. ... Why, if Christianity affected Greek character so profoundly, did it not do more? Why, if it cured it of much of its instability and trifling, did it not also cure it of its falsehood and dissimulation? Why, if it impressed the Greek mind so deeply with the reality of the objects of faith, did it not also check the vain inquisitiveness and spirit of disputatiousness and sophistry, which filled Greek Church history with furious wranglings about the most hopeless problems? Why, if it could raise such admiration for unselfishness and heroic nobleness, has not this admiration borne more congenial fruit? Why, if heaven was felt to be so great and so near, was there in real life such coarse and mean worldliness? Why, indeed? ... Profoundly, permanently, as Christianity affected Greek character, there was much in that character which Christianity failed to reach, much that it failed to correct, much that was obstinately refractory to influences which, elsewhere, were so fruitful of goodness and greatness. The East, as well as the West, has still much to learn from that religion, which each too exclusively claims to understand, to appreciate, and to defend."

_R. W. Church, The Gifts of Civilisation, pages 188-216._

"The types of character that were developed in the Eastern Church, as might be expected, were not of the very highest. There was among them no St. Francis, no St. Louis. The uniformity which pervades everything Byzantine prevented the development of such salient characters as are found in the West. It is difficult, no doubt, to form a true estimate of the influence of religion on men's lives in Eastern countries, just as it is of their domestic relations, and even of the condition of the lower classes, because such matters are steadily ignored by the contemporary historians. But all the evidence tends to show that individual rather than heroic piety was fostered by the system which prevailed there. That at certain periods a high tone of spirituality prevailed among certain classes is sufficiently proved by the beautiful hymns of the Eastern Church, many of which, thanks to Dr. Neale's singular felicity in translation, are in use among ourselves. But the loftier development of their spirit took the form of asceticism, and the scene of this was rather the secluded monastery, or the pillar of the Stylite, than human society at large. But if the Eastern Church did not rise as high as her sister of the West, she never sank as low."

_H. F. Tozer, The Church and the Eastern Empire, pages 45-46._

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"The Greek Church, or, as it calls itself, the Holy Orthodox, Catholic, Apostolic, Oriental Church, has a venerable if not an eventful history. Unlike the Church of the West, it has not been moulded by great political movements, the rise and fall of kingdoms, and the convulsions which have passed over the face of modern society. Its course has been out of the sight of European civilisation, it has grown up among peoples who have been but slightly affected, if they have been affected at all, by the progressive movements of mankind. It has no middle ages. It has no renaissance. It has no Reformation. It has given birth to no great universities and schools of learning. It has no Protestantism. It remains very much as the fourth and fifth centuries left it. ... When the royal throne in the days of the first Christian Emperor was removed from Rome to Constantinople, there arose at once a cause of strife between the bishops of old and new Rome, as Byzantium or Constantinople was named. Each claimed pre-eminence, and each alternately received it from the governing powers, in Church and State. One Council decreed (A. D. 381) that the Bishop of the new Rome should be inferior only to that of the old; another declared (A. D. 451) the equality of both prelates. The Patriarch of Constantinople at the close of the sixth century claimed superiority over all Christian Churches,--a claim which might have developed, had circumstances favoured it, into an Eastern Papacy. The assumption was, however, but short-lived, and the Bishop of Rome, Boniface, obtained from the Emperor Phocas in 606 the much-coveted position. The Eastern Church submitted, but from this time looked with a jealous eye on her Western sister. She noted and magnified every point of divergence between them. Differences or apparent differences in doctrine and ritual were denounced as heresies. Excommunications fulminated between the Eastern and Western city, and ecclesiastical bitterness was intensified by political intrigue. ... In the ninth century the contest grew very fierce. The holder of the Eastern see, Photius, formulated and denounced the terrible doctrinal and other defections of the Western prelate and his followers. The list is very formidable. They, the followers of Rome, deemed it proper to fast on the seventh day of the week--that is on the Jewish Sabbath; in the first week of Lent they permitted the use of milk and cheese; they disapproved wholly of the marriage of priests; they thought none but bishops could anoint with the holy oil or confirm the baptized, and that they therefore anointed a second time those who had been anointed by presbyters; and fifthly, they had adulterated the Constantinopolitan Creed by adding to it the words Filioque, thus teaching that the Holy Spirit did not proceed only from the Father, but also from the Son. This last was deemed, and has always been deemed by the Greek Church the great heresy of the Roman Church. ... The Greek Church to-day in all its branches--in Turkey, Greece, and Russia--professes to hold firmly by the formulas and decisions of the seven Œcumenical or General Councils, regarding with special honour that of Nice. The Nicene and Athanasian Creeds are the symbols of its faith, the Filioque clause being omitted from the former, and the eighth article reading thus: 'And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, and with the Father and Son together is worshipped and glorified.' ... The Greek Church, unlike the Latin, denounces the use of images as objects of devotion, and holds in abhorrence every form of what it terms 'image worship.' Its position in this manner is very curious. It is true, no figures of our Lord, of the Virgin, or saints, such as one sees in churches, wayside chapels, and in the open fields in countries where the Roman Church is powerful, are to be seen in Russia, Greece, or any of those lands where the Eastern Church is supreme. On the other hand, pictures of the plainest kind everywhere take their place, and are regarded with the deepest veneration."

_J. C. Lees, The Greek Church, (in the Churches of Christendom). lecture 4._

See, also, FILIOQUE CONTROVERSY.

CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 337-476. The fall of Imperial Rome. The rise of Ecclesiastical Rome.

The political and religious history of the Empire from the death of Constantine is so fully narrated under Rome that mere mention here of a few events will suffice, viz.: the revival of Paganism under the Emperor Julian; the reascendency of Christianity; the formal establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Romans, by the suffrages of the senate; the final division of the Empire into East and West between the sons of Theodosius; the three sieges and the sacking of Rome by Alaric; the legal separation of the Eastern and Western Empires; the pillage of Rome by the Vandals and its final submission to the barbarians.

See ROME: A. D. 337-361, to 445-476.

For an account of the early bishops of Rome, see PAPACY.

"A heathen historian traces the origin of the calamities which he records to the abolition of sacrifice by Theodosius, and the sack of Rome to the laws against the ancient faith passed by his son. This objection of the heathens that the overthrow of idolatry and the ascendency of Christianity were the cause of the misfortunes of the empire was so wide spread, and had such force with those, both Pagans and Christians, who conceived history to be the outcome of magical or demonic powers, that Augustine devoted twelve years of his life to its refutation. His treatise, 'De Civitate Dei,' was begun in 413, and was not finished till 426, within four years of his death. Rome had once been taken; society, consumed by inward corruption, was shaken to its foundations by the violent onset of the Teutonic tribes; men's hearts were failing them for fear; the voice of calumny cried aloud, and laid these woes to the charge of the Christian faith. Augustine undertook to refute the calumny, and to restore the courage of his fellow-Christians. Taking a rapid survey of history, he asks what the gods had ever done for the well-being of the state or for public morality. He maintains that the greatness of Rome in the past was due to the virtues of her sons, and not to the protection of the gods. He shows that, long before the rise of Christianity, her ruin had begun with the introduction of foreign vices after the destruction of Carthage, and declares that much in the ancient worship, instead of preventing, had hastened that ruin. He rises above the troubles of the present, and amid the vanishing glories of the city of men he proclaims the stability of the city of God. At a time when the downfall of Rome was thought to presage approaching doom, Augustine regarded the disasters around him as the birth-throes of a new world, as a necessary moment in the onward movement of Christianity."

_W. Stewart, The Church of the 4th and 5th Centuries (St. Giles' Lectures, 4th series)._

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"There is as little ground for discovering a miraculous, as there is for disowning a providential element in the course of events. The institutions of Roman authority and law had been planted regularly over all the territory which the conquering hordes coveted and seized; alongside of every magistrate was now placed a minister of Christ, and by every Hall of Justice stood a House of Prayer. The Representative of Cæsar lost all his power and dignity when the armies of Cæsar were scattered in flight; the minister of Christ felt that behind him was an invisible force with which the hosts of the alien could not cope, and his behaviour impressed the barbarian with the conviction that there was reality here. That beneficent mission of Leo, A. D. 452, of which Gibbon says: 'The pressing eloquence of Leo, his majestic aspect and sacerdotal robes, excited the veneration of Attila for the spiritual father of the Christians'--would be but an instance of what many nameless priests from provincial towns did, 'not counting their lives dear to them.' The organisation of the Latin state vitalised by a new spiritual force vanquished the victors. It was the method and the discipline of this organisation, not the subtlety of its doctrine, nor the fervour of its officials, that beat in detail one chief with his motley following after another. Hence too it came about that the Christianity which was adopted as the religion of Europe was not modified to suit the tastes of the various tribes that embraced it, but was delivered to each as from a common fountain-head. ... It was a social triumph, proceeding from religious motives which we may regard with unstinted admiration and gratitude."

_J. Watt, The Latin Church (St. Giles' Lectures, 4th series.)_

"The temporal fall of the Imperial metropolis tended to throw a brighter light upon her ecclesiastical claims. The separation of the East and the West had already enhanced the religious dignity of the ancient capital. The great Eastern patriarchates of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem had up to that time all held themselves equal, if not superior to Rome. Constantinople had even assumed certain airs of supremacy over all. The General Councils which had defined the Faith at Nicæa and Constantinople had been composed almost wholly of Orientals. The great Doctors of the Church, the men who had defended or diffused the common Faith, had been mostly Greeks by origin and language. None had been Romans, and it was rarely, till the fourth century, that any of them had written in the Latin tongue. When Athanasius, exiled from Alexandria, came to Italy and Gaul, it was three years before he could learn enough of the language of the West to address its congregations in public. But this curious fact shows that the Western Christians were now no longer the little Greek colony of the first and second centuries. Christianity had become the national religion of the native races. The Romans might now feel that they were becoming again a people; that their glorious career was assuming, as it were, a new point of departure. ... For at this moment the popular instinct could not fail to perceive how strongly the conscience of the barbarians had been affected by the spiritual majesty of Christian Rome. The Northern hordes had beaten down all armed resistance. They had made a deep impression upon the strength of the Eastern Empire; they had, for a moment at least, actually overcome the Western; they had overrun many of the fairest provinces, and had effected a permanent lodgement in Gaul and Spain, and still more recently in Africa. Yet in all these countries, rude as they still were, they had submitted to accept the creed of the Gospel. There was no such thing as a barbarian Paganism established within the limits of the Empire anywhere, except perhaps in furthest Britain."

_C. Merivale, Four lectures on some Epochs of Early Church History, pages 130-136._

"When the surging tides of barbarian invasion swept over Europe, the Christian organization was almost the only institution of the past which survived the flood. It remained as a visible monument of what had been, and, by so remaining, was of itself an antithesis to the present. The chief town of the Roman province, whatever its status under barbarian rule, was still the bishop's see. The limits of the old 'province,' though the boundary of a new kingdom might bisect them, were still the limits of his diocese. The bishop's tribunal was the only tribunal in which the laws of the Empire could be pleaded in their integrity. The bishop's dress was the ancient robe of a Roman magistrate. The ancient Roman language which was used in the Church services was a standing protest against the growing degeneracy of the 'vulgar tongue.' ... As the forces of the Empire became less and less, the forces of the Church became more and more. The Churches preserved that which had been from the first the secret of Imperial strength. For underneath the Empire which changed and passed, beneath the shifting pageantry of Emperors who moved across the stage and were seen no more, was the abiding empire of law and administration,--which changed only as the deep sea changes beneath the windswept waves. That inner empire was continued in the Christian Churches. In the years of transition from the ancient to the modern world, when all civilized society seemed to be disintegrated, the confederation of the Christian Churches, by the very fact of its existence upon the old imperial lines, was not only the most powerful, but the only powerful organization in the civilized world. It was so vast, and so powerful, that it seemed to be, and there were few to question its being, the visible realization of that Kingdom of God which our Lord Himself had preached."

_E. Hatch; The Organization of the Christian Churches, pages 160-178._

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CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 347-412. The Syrian Churches.

"St. Chrysostom was born there A. D. 347; and it was in his time that Antioch, with its hundred thousand Christians, became the leading Church in Asia, especially in the Arian controversy [see ARIANISM], for Arianism was very prevalent there. But all this lies outside our period. The so-called 'School of Antioch' has its origin just before ... our period [311, Wiltsch]. Dorotheus, ... and the martyr Lucian may be regarded as its founders. In contrast to the allegorising mysticism of the School of Alexandria, it was distinguished by a more sober and critical interpretation of Scripture. It looked to grammar and history for its principles of exegesis. But we must not suppose that there was at Antioch an educational establishment like the Catechetical School at Alexandria, which, by a succession of great teachers, kept up a traditional mode of exegesis and instruction. It was rather an intellectual tendency which, beginning with Lucian and Dorotheus, developed in a definite direction in Antioch and other Syrian Churches. ... These notices of the Churches of Jerusalem, Cæsarea in Palestine, and Antioch must suffice as representative of the Syrian Churches. The number of these Churches was considerable even in the second century, and by the beginning of the fourth was very large indeed, as is seen by the number of bishops who attend local Councils."

_A. Plummer, The Church of the Early Fathers, chapter 3._

"It has often astonished me that no one has ever translated the letters of St. Jerome. The letters of St. Augustine have been translated, and are in many parts very entertaining reading, but they are nothing in point of living interest when compared with St. Jerome's. These letters illustrate life about the year 400 as nothing else can. They show us, for instance, what education then was, what clerical life consisted in; they tell us of modes and fashions, and they teach us how vigorous and constant was the communication at that same period between the most distant parts of the Roman empire. We are apt to think of the fifth century as a time when there was very little travel, and when most certainly the East and West--Ireland, England, Gaul and Palestine--were much more widely and completely separated than now, when steam has practically annihilated time and space. And yet such an idea is very mistaken. There was a most lively intercourse existing between these regions, a constant Church correspondence kept up between them, and the most intense and vivid interest maintained by the Gallic and Syrian churches in the minutest details of their respective histories. Mark now how this happened. St. Jerome at Bethlehem was the centre of this intercourse. His position in the Christian world in the beginning of the fifth century can only be compared to, but was not at all equalled by, that of John Calvin at the time of the Reformation. Men from the most distant parts consulted him. Bishops of highest renown for sanctity and learning, like St. Augustine, and Exuperius of Toulouse in southern France, deferred to his authority. The keen interest he took in the churches of Gaul, and the intimate knowledge he possessed of the most petty local details and religious gossip therein, can only be understood by one who has studied his very abusive treatise against Vigilantius or his correspondence with Exuperius. ... But how, it may be asked, was this correspondence carried on when there was no postal system? Here it was that the organization of monasticism supplied a want. Jerome's letters tell us the very name of his postman. He was a monk named Sysinnius. He was perpetually on the road between Marseilles and Bethlehem. Again and again does Jerome mention his coming and his going. His appearance must indeed have been the great excitement of life at Bethlehem. Travelling probably via Sardinia, Rome, Greece, and the islands of the Adriatic, he gathered up all kinds of clerical news on the way--a piece of conduct on his part which seems to have had its usual results. As a tale-bearer, he not only revealed secrets, but also separated chief friends, and this monk Sysinnius with his gossips seems to have been the original cause of the celebrated quarrel between Augustine and Jerome."

_G. T. Stokes, Ireland and the Celtic Church, pages 170-172._

CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 496-800. The Frankish Church to the Empire of Charlemagne.

"The baptism of Chlodovech [Clovis--see FRANKS: A. D. 481- 511] was followed by the wholesale conversion of the Franks. No compulsion was used to bring the heathen into the Church. As a heathen, Chlodovech had treated the Church with forbearance; he was equally tolerant to heathenism when he was a Christian. But his example worked, and thousands of noble Franks crowded to the water of regeneration. Gregory of Tours reckons the Franks as Christians after the baptism of their king, which took place at Christmas, A. D. 496. His conversion made no alteration in the policy and conduct of Chlodovech; he remained the same mixture of cunning and audacity, of cruelty and sensuality, that he was before. ... But, though his baptism was to him of no moral import, its consequences were wide spreading. When Gregory of Tours compares the conversion of Chlodovech with that of Constantine the Great, he was fully in the right. ... And the baptism of Chlodovech declared to the world that the new blood being poured into the veins of the old and expiring civilization, had been quickened by the same elements, and would unite with the old in the new development. ... That many of those who were baptized carried with them into their new Christianity their old heathen superstitions as well as their barbarism is certain; and the times were not those in which the growth of the great Christian graces was encouraged; the germs, however, of a new life were laid."

_S. Baring-Gould, The Church in Germany, chapter 3._

"The details of the history of the Merovingian period of Frankish history are extraordinarily complicated; happily, it is not at all necessary for our purpose to follow them. ... In the earlier years after the conquest, all ranks of the clergy were filled by Gallo-Romans. The Franks were the dominant race, and were Christian, but they were new converts from a rude heathenism, and it would take some generations to raise up a 'native ministry' among them. Not only the literature of the (Western) Church, but all its services, and, still more, the conversational intercourse of all civilized and Christian people, was in Latin. Besides, the Franks were warriors, a conquering caste, a separate nation; and to lay down the battle-axe and spear, and enter into the peaceful ranks of the Romano-Gallic Church, would have seemed to them like changing their nationality for that of the more highly cultured, perhaps, but, in their eyes, subject race. The Frank kings did not ignore the value of education. Clovis is said to have established a Palatine school, and encouraged his young men to qualify themselves for the positions which his conquests had opened out to them. {459} His grandsons, we have seen, prided themselves on their Latin culture. After a while, Franks aspired to the magnificent positions which the great sees of the Church offered to their ambition; and we find men with Teutonic names, and no doubt of Teutonic race, among the bishops. ... For a still longer period, few Franks entered into the lower ranks of the Church. Not only did the priesthood offer little temptation to them, but also the policy of the kings and nobles opposed the diminution of their military strength, by refusing leave to their Franks to enter into holy orders or into the monasteries. The cultured families of the cities would afford an ample supply of men for the clergy, and promising youths of a lower class seem already not infrequently to have been educated for the service of the Church. It was only in the later period, when some approach had been made to a fusion of the races, that we find Franks entering into the lower ranks of the Church, and simultaneously we find Gallo-Romans in the ranks of the armies. ... Monks wielded a powerful spiritual influence. But the name of not a single priest appears in the history of the times as exercising any influence or authority. ... Under the gradual secularization of the Church in the Merovingian period, the monasteries had the greatest share in keeping alive a remnant of vital religion among the people; and in the gradual decay of learning and art, the monastic institution was the ark in which the ancient civilization survived the deluge of barbarism, and emerged at length to spread itself over the modern world."

_E. L. Cutts, Charlemagne, chapters 5 and 7._

"Two Anglo-Saxon monks, St. Wilfrid, bishop of York, and St. Willibrord undertook the conversion of the savage fishermen of Friesland and Holland at the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth century; they were followed by another Englishman, the most renowned of all these missionaries, Winfrith, whose name was changed to Boniface, perhaps by the Pope, in recognition of his active and beneficent apostleship. When Gregory II. appointed him bishop of Germany (723), he went through Bavaria and established there the dioceses of Frisingen, Passau, and Ratisbon. When Pope Zacharias bestowed the rank of metropolitan upon the Church of Mainz in 748, he entrusted its direction to St. Boniface, who from that time was primate, as it were, of all Germany, under the authority of the Holy See. St. Boniface was assassinated by the Pagans of Friesland in 755."

_V. Duruy, History of the Middle Ages, book 3, chapter 8._

"Boniface, whose original name was Winfrid, was of a noble Devonshire family (A. D. 680), educated at the monastery of Nutcelle, in Hampshire, and at the age of thirty-five years had obtained a high reputation for learning and ability, when (in A. D. 716), seized with the prevalent missionary enthusiasm, he abandoned his prospects at home, and set out with two companions to labour among the Frisians. ... Winfrid was refused permission by the Duke to preach in his dominions, and he returned home to England. In the following spring he went to Rome, where he remained for some months, and then, with a general authorization from the pope to preach the gospel in Central Europe, he crossed the Alps, passed through Bavaria into Thuringia, where he began his work. While here the death of Radbod, A. D. 719, and the conquest of Frisia by Charles Martel, opened up new prospects for the evangelization of that country, and Boniface went thither and laboured for three years among the missionaries, under Willibrord of Utrecht. Then, following in the track of the victorious forces of Charles Martel, he plunged into the wilds of Hessia, converted two of its chiefs whose example was followed by multitudes of the Hessians and Saxons, and a monastery arose at Amöneburg as the head-quarters of the mission. The Bishop of Rome being informed of this success, summoned Boniface to Rome, A. D. 723, and consecrated him a regionary bishop, with a general jurisdiction over all whom he should win from paganism into the Christian fold, requiring from him at the same time the oath which was usually required of bishops within the patriarchate of Rome, of obedience to the see. ... Boniface was not only a zealous missionary, an earnest preacher, a learned scholar, but he was a statesman and an able administrator. He not only spread the Gospel among the heathen, but he organized the Church among the newly converted nations of Germany; he regulated the disorder which existed in the Frankish Church, and established the relations between Church and State on a settled basis. The mediæval analysts tell us that Boniface crowned Pepin king, and modern writers have usually reproduced the statement. 'Rettberg, and the able writer of the biography of Boniface in Herzog (Real Ecyk, s. v.), argue satisfactorily from Boniface's letters that he took no part in Pepin's coronation.' When Boniface withdrew from the active supervision of the Frankish Churches, it is probable that his place was to some extent supplied in the councils of the mayor and in the synods of the Church by Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, a man whose character and influence in the history of the Frank Church have hardly hitherto been appreciated."

_E. L. Cutts, Charlemagne, chapter 12._

"Both Karlmann and Pippin tried to reform certain abuses that had crept into the Church. Two councils, convoked by Karlmann, the one in Germany (742), the other in the following year at Lestines (near Charleroi, in Belgium), drew up decrees which abolished superstitious rites and certain Pagan ceremonies, still remaining in force; they also authorized grants of Church lands by the 'Prince' for military purposes on condition of a payment of an annual rent to the Church; they reformed the ecclesiastical life, forbade the priests to hunt or to ride through the woods with dogs, falcons, or sparrow-hawks; and, finally, made all priests subordinate to their diocesan bishops, to whom they were obliged to give account each year of their faith and their ministry--all of which were necessary provisions for the organization of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and for the regulation of church government. Similar measures were taken by the Council of Soissons, convoked by Pippin in 744. In 747, Karlmann renounced the world and retired to the celebrated Italian monastery of Monte Cassino. As he left he entrusted his children to the care of their uncle, Pippin, who robbed them of their inheritance and ruled alone over the whole Frankish Empire. ... Charlemagne enlarged and completed the work which had only been begun by Charles Martel and Pippin. ... The Middle Ages acknowledged two Masters, the Pope and the Emperor, and these two powers came, the one from Rome, and the other from Austrasian France. ... The mayors of Austrasia, Pippin of Heristal, and Charles Martel, rebuilt the Frankish monarchy and prepared the way for the empire of Charlemagne; ... the Roman pontiffs ... gathered around them all the churches of the West, and placed themselves at the head of the great Catholic society, over which one day Gregory VII. and Innocent III. should claim to have sole dominion."

_V. Duruy, History of the Middle Ages, pages 119-122, 108._

See MAYORS OF THE PALACE; FRANKS: A. D. 768-814; and PAPACY: A. D. 755-774, and 774.

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The coronation of Charlemagne at Rome by Pope Leo III. (see ROMAN EMPIRE, A. D. 800) gave the Western Church the place in the state it had held under the earlier Roman emperors. The character of so great a man, the very books he read and all that fed the vigorous ideal element in so powerful a spirit are worthy of interest; for this at least he sought to accomplish--to give order to a tumultuous and barbarian world, and to establish learning, and purify the church: "While at table, he liked to hear a recital or a reading, and it was histories and the great deeds of past times which were usually read to him. He took great pleasure, also, in the works of St. Augustine, and especially in that whose title is 'De Civitate Dei.' ... He practiced the Christian religion in all its purity and with great fervour, whose principles had been taught him from his infancy. ... He diligently attended ... church in the evening and morning, and even at night, to assist at the offices and at the holy sacrifice, as much as his health permitted him.' He watched with care that nothing should be done but with the greatest propriety, constantly ordering the guardians of the church not to allow anything to be brought there or left there inconsistent with or unworthy of the sanctity of the place. ... He was always ready to help the poor, and it was not only in his own country, or within his own dominions that he dispensed those gratuitous liberalities which the Greeks call 'alms,' but beyond the seas--in Syria, in Egypt, in Africa, at Jerusalem, at Alexandria, at Carthage, everywhere where he learned that Christians were living in poverty--he pitied their misery and loved to send them money. If he sought with so much care the friendship of foreign sovereigns, it was, above all, to procure for the Christians living under their rule help and relief. Of all the holy places, he had, above all, a great veneration for the Church of the Apostle St. Peter at Rome."

_Eginhard, Life of Charlemagne._

"The religious side of Charles' character is of the greatest interest in the study of his remarkable character as a whole and his religious policy led to the most important and durable results of his reign. He inherited an ecclesiastical policy from his father; the policy of regulating and strengthening the influence of the Church in his dominions as the chief agent of civilization, and a great means of binding the various elements of the empire into one; the policy of accepting the Bishop of Rome as the head of Western Christianity, with patriarchal authority over all its Churches."

_E. L. Cutts, Charlemagne, chapter 23._

The following is a noteworthy passage from Charlemagne's Capitulary of 787: "It is our wish that you may be what it behoves the soldiers of the church to be;--religious in heart, learned in discourse, pure in act, eloquent in speech; so that all who approach your house in order to invoke the Divine Master, or to behold the excellence of the religious life, may be edified in beholding you, and instructed in hearing you discourse or chant, and may return home rendering thanks to God most High. Fail not, as thou regardest our favour, to send a copy of this letter to all thy suffragans and to all the monasteries; and let no monk go beyond his monastery to administer justice or to enter the assemblies and the voting-places. Adieu."

_J. B. Mullinger, The Schools of Charles the Great._

CHRISTIANITY: 5th-7th Centuries. The Nestorian, Monophysite and Monothelite Controversies.

See NESTORIAN AND MONOPHYSITE, and MONOTHELITE.

CHRISTIANITY: 5th-9th Centuries. The Irish Church and its missions.

The story of the conversion of Ireland by St. Patrick, and of the missionary labors of the Church which he founded, is briefly told elsewhere.

See IRELAND: 5TH-8TH CENTURIES.

"The early Church worked her way, in the literal sense of the word, 'underground,' under camp and palace, under senate and forum. But turn where we will in these Celtic missions, we notice how different were the features that marked them now. In Dalaradia St. Patrick obtains the site of his earliest church from the chieftain of the country, Dichu. At Tara, he obtains from King Laoghaire a reluctant toleration of his ministry. In Connaught he addresses himself first to the chieftains of Tirawley, and in Munster baptizes Angus, the king, at Cashel, the seat of the kings. What he did in Ireland reproduces itself in the Celtic missions of Wales and Scotland, and we cannot but take note of the important influence of Welsh and Pictish chiefs. ... The people may not have adopted the actual profession of Christianity, which was all perhaps that in the first instance they adopted from any clear or intelligent appreciation of its superiority to their former religion. But to obtain from the people even an actual profession of Christianity was an important step to ultimate success. It secured toleration at least for Christian institutions. It enabled the missionaries to plant in every tribe their churches, schools, and monasteries, and to establish among the half pagan inhabitants of the country societies of holy men, whose devotion, usefulness, and piety soon produced an effect on the most barbarous and savage hearts.'"

_G. F. Maclear, Conversion of the West: The Celts,