Part 147

"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.

{460}

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, chapter 11._

"The Medieval Church of the West found in the seventh century an immense task before it to fulfil. … The missionaries who addressed themselves to the enormous task of the conversion of Germany may be conveniently divided into three groups—the British, the Frankish, and, entering somewhat later into an honourable rivalry with these, the Anglo-Saxon. A word or two upon each of these groups. The British—they include Irish and Scotch—could no longer find a field for the exercise of their ministry in England, now that there the Roman rule and discipline, to which they were so little disposed to submit, had everywhere won the day. Their own religious houses were full to overflowing. At home there was little for them to do, while yet that divine hunger and thirst for the winning of souls, which had so possessed the heart of St. Patrick, lived on in theirs. To these so minded, pagan Germany offered a welcome field of labour, and one in which there was ample room for all. {461} Then there were the Frankish missionaries, who enjoyed the support of the Frankish kings, which sometimes served them in good stead; while at other times this protection was very far from a recommendation in their eyes who were easily persuaded to see in these missionaries the emissaries of a foe. Add to these the Anglo-Saxons; these last, mindful of the source from which they had received their own Christianity, making it a point to attach their converts to Rome, even as they were themselves bound to her by the closest ties. The language which these spoke—a language which as yet can have diverged very little from the Low German of Frisia, must have given to them many facilities which the Frankish missionaries possessed in a far slighter degree, the British not at all; and this may help to account for a success on their parts far greater than attended the labours of the others. To them too it was mainly due that the battle of the Creeds, which had been fought and lost by the Celtic missionaries in England, and was presently renewed in Germany, had finally the same issues there as in England. … At the same time, there were differences in the intensity and obstinacy of resistance to the message of truth, which would be offered by different tribes. There was ground, which at an early day had been won for the Gospel, but which in the storms and confusion of the two preceding centuries had been lost again; the whole line, that is, of the Danube and the Rhine, regions fair and prosperous once, but in every sense wildernesses now. In these we may note a readier acceptance of the message than found place in lands which in earlier times that message had never reached; as though obscure reminiscences and traditions of the past, not wholly extinct, had helped to set forward the present work."

_R C. Trench, Lectures on Medieval Church History, lecture 5._