ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
An Introduction to the History of Western Europe. James Harvey Robinson
Читать онлайн.Название An Introduction to the History of Western Europe
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4057664639936
Автор произведения James Harvey Robinson
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
The loss was, however, temporary. The barbarians did not utterly destroy what they found, but utilized the ruins of the Roman Empire in their gradual construction of a new society. They received suggestions from the Roman methods of agriculture. When they reached a point where they needed them, they used the models offered by Roman roads and buildings. In short, the great heritage of skill and invention which had been slowly accumulated in Egypt, Phœnicia, and Greece, and which formed a part of the culture which the Romans diffused, did not wholly perish.
Loss caused by the coming of the barbarians regained during Middle Ages.
It required about a thousand years to educate the new race; but at last Europe, including districts never embraced in the Roman Empire, caught up once more with antiquity. When, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, first Italy, and then the rest of Europe, awoke again to the beauty and truth of the classical literature and began to emulate the ancient art, the process of educating the barbarians may be said to have been completed. Yet the Middle Ages had been by no means a sterile period. They had added their part to the heritage of the West. From the union of two great elements, the ancient civilization, which was completely revived at the opening of the sixteenth century, and the vigor and the political and social ideals of the Germans, a new thing was formed, namely, our modern civilization.
General Reading.—By far the most exhaustive work in English upon the German invasions is Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders—very bulky and costly (8 vols., $36.50). The author has, however, given some of the results of his work in his excellent Dynasty of Theodosius (Clarendon Press, $1.50), and his Theodoric the Goth (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.50). Sergeant, The Franks (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.50), gives more than is to be found on the subject in either Emerton or Oman.
CHAPTER IV
THE RISE OF THE PAPACY
The greatness of the Church.
17. While the Franks were slowly developing the strength which Charlemagne employed to found the most extensive realm that has existed in Europe since the Roman Empire, another government, whose power was far greater, whose organization was far more perfect, and whose vitality was infinitely superior to that of the Frankish empire, namely, the Christian Church, was steadily extending its sway and establishing the foundations of its later supremacy.
We have already seen how marvelously the Christian communities founded by the apostles and their fellow-missionaries multiplied until, by the middle of the third century, writers like Cyprian came to conceive of a "Catholic," or all-embracing, Church. We have seen how Constantine first made Christianity legal, and how his successors worked in the interest of the new religion; how carefully the Theodosian Code safeguarded the Church and the Christian clergy, and how harshly those were treated who ventured to hold another view of Christianity from that sanctioned by the government.[25]
We must now follow this most powerful and permanent of all the institutions of the later Roman Empire into the Middle Ages. We must stop a moment to consider the sources of its power, and then see how the Western, or Latin, portion of Christendom fell apart from the Eastern, or Greek, region and came to form a separate institution under the longest and mightiest line of rulers that the world has ever seen, the Roman bishops. We shall see how a peculiar class of Christians, the monks, developed; how they joined hands with the clergy; how the monks and the clergy met the barbarians, subdued and civilized them, and then ruled them for centuries.
Sources of the Church's power.
The tremendous power of the Church in the Middle Ages was due, we may be sure, to the way in which it adapted itself to the ideas and needs of the time; for no institution can flourish unless it meets the wants of those who live under it.
Contrast between pagan and Christian ideas.
One great source of the Church's strength lay in the general fear of death and judgment to come, which Christianity had brought with it. The Greeks and Romans of the classical period thought of the next life, when they thought of it at all, as a very uninteresting existence compared with that on this earth. One who committed some signal crime might suffer for it after death with pains similar to those of the hell in which the Christians believed. But the great part of humanity were supposed to lead in the next world a shadowy existence, neither sad nor glad. Religion, even to the devout pagan, was mainly an affair of this life; the gods were to be propitiated with a view to present happiness and success.
Since no satisfaction could be expected in the next life, it was naturally deemed wise to make the most of this one. The possibility of pleasure ends—so the poet Horace urges—when we join the shades below, as we all must do soon. Let us, therefore, take advantage of every harmless pleasure and improve our brief opportunity to enjoy the good things of earth. We should, however, be reasonable and temperate, avoiding all excess, for that endangers happiness. Above all, we should not worry uselessly about the future, which is in the hands of the gods and beyond our control. Such were the convictions of the majority of thoughtful pagans.
Other-worldliness of mediæval Christianity.
Christianity opposed this view of life with an entirely different one. It laid persistent emphasis upon man's existence after death, which it declared infinitely more important than his brief sojourn in the body. Under the influence of the Church this conception of life had gradually supplanted the pagan one in the Roman world, and it was taught to the barbarians. The other-worldliness became so intense that thousands gave up their ordinary occupations and pleasures altogether, and devoted their entire attention to preparation for the next life. They shut themselves in lonely cells; and, not satisfied with giving up most of their natural pleasures, they inflicted bodily suffering upon themselves by hunger, cold, and stripes. They trusted that in this way they might avoid some of the sins into which they were prone to fall, and that, by self-inflicted punishment in this world, they might perchance escape some of that reserved for them in the next. As most of the writers and teachers of the Middle Ages belonged to this class of what may be called professional Christians, i.e., the monks, it was natural that their kind of life should have been regarded, even by those who continued to live in the world, as the ideal one for the earnest Christian.
The Church the one agent of salvation.
The barbarians were taught that their fate in the next world depended largely upon the Church. Its ministers never wearied of presenting the momentous alternative which faced every man so soon as this fleeting earthly existence should be over—the alternative between eternal bliss and perpetual, unspeakable physical torment. Only those who had been duly baptized could hope to reach heaven; but baptism washed away only past sins and did not prevent constant relapse into new ones. These, unless their guilt was removed through the instrumentality of the Church, would surely drag the soul down to perdition.
Miracles a source of the Church's power.
The divine power of the Church was, furthermore, established in the eyes of the people by the miraculous works which her saints were constantly performing. They healed the sick and succored those in distress. They struck down with speedy and signal disaster those who opposed the Church or treated her holy rites with contempt. To the reader of to-day the frequency of the miracles recorded in mediæval writings seems astonishing. The chronicles and biographies are filled with accounts of them, and no one appears to have doubted their common occurrence.[26]
The Church and the Roman government.