The Dark Ages Collection - David Hume

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seen Paul holding the line of the Loire against the Visigoths. We are not told his official rank or functions; he is designated by the title of Count, but we may fairly assume that he had succeeded Aegidius as Master of Soldiers. His name and that of Syagrius are the only two recorded names of Roman functionaries who maintained Imperial authority in northern Gaul after the death of Aegidius. Syagrius was the son of Aegidius, and on him devolved the defence of Belgic Gaul in the last years of Childeric.131

      Childeric died in A.D. 481 and was succeeded by his son Clovis (Chlodwig), who entered upon new paths of policy. He saw clearly that the Imperial power in Gaul was now negligible. The few provinces that were still administered in the name of the Augustus at Constantinople were cut off from the rest of the Empire by the kingdoms of the Visigoths and the Burgundians. It was evidently the destiny of Gaul to be possessed entirely by German rulers, and Clovis determined that the Franks should have their share. He took the field against Syagrius soon after his accession and defeated him near Soissons (A.D. 486).132 The province of Belgica Secunda, with the important cities of Soissons and Reims, immediately passed under his sway.133 Of his subsequent advance westward to the Loire and the borders of peninsular Brittany we know nothing, probably because it was gradual and easy.

      The victory of Soissons completely changed the political situation and prospects of Gaul. Two years before, when Euric died, the destinies of the land seemed to depend on the Goths and the Burgundians, and if any one had prophesied that the whole land would ultimately be ruled by Gothic kings, few outside Burgundy would have questioned the probability of the prediction. Yet twenty years later the formidable power which Euric had created was to go down before the Franks; afterwards it would be the turn of the Burgundians. The failure of the Goths to fulfil their early promise was due above all to their Arian faith, which deprived them of the support of the Church. When Clovis embraced Christianity in its Catholic form, ten years after the battle of Soissons, he made the fortune of the Franks.

      The part which the Church was able to play throughout the critical age in which the country was passing from Roman to Teuton lords depended on the fact that the Gallic episcopate was recruited from the highly educated and propertied class. The most public-spirited members of the senatorial families found in the duties of a bishop an outlet for their energies. It was these bishops who mediated between the German kings and the Roman government, and after the Imperial power had disappeared, helped to guide and moderate the policy of the barbarian rulers towards the provincials, and to preserve in some measure Gallo-Roman traditions. The study of the society mirrored in the pages of Sidonius, himself a case in point, is an indispensable preparation for the study of the France created by Clovis, of which the early history is recorded by Gregory, the bishop of Tours.

      THE existence of the State Church made a profound difference in the political and social development of the Empire. The old State religion of Rome was often used as an instrument of policy, but perhaps its main political value was symbolic. It involved no theory of the universe, no body of dogma to divide the minds of men and engender disputes. The gods were not jealous, and it was compatible with the utmost variety of other cults and faiths. For the Christian Church, on the contrary, a right belief in theological dogmas was the breath of its life, and, as such questions are abstruse and metaphysical, it was impossible to define a uniform doctrine which all minds would accept. As the necessity of ecclesiastical unity was an axiom, the government had to deal with a new problem, and a very arduous and embarrassing one, such as had not confronted it in the days before Constantine. Doctrine had to be defined, and heretics suppressed. Again, the Church, which once had claimed freedom for itself, denied freedom to others when it was victorious, and would not suffer rival cults. Hence a systematic policy of religious intolerance, such as the Greek and Roman world had never known, was introduced. Another consequence of the Christianising of the State was the rise to power and importance of the institution of monasticism, which was not only influential economically and socially, but was also, as we shall see, a political force. The theological controversies, the religious persecution, and the growth of monasticism, in the fifth century, will be reviewed briefly in this chapter.

      § 1. The Controversies on the Incarnation

      The great theological controversy which rent Christendom in twain in the fourth century had been finally closed through the energy and determination of Theodosius the Great, and unity was for a short time restored to the Church. Theodosius had been baptized in Thessalonica in A.D. 380, and immediately afterwards he issued an edict, commanding his subjects to accept the orthodox faith of the Council of Nicaea.1 He described it as the doctrine professed by the bishop of Rome and the bishop of Alexandria. Then he proceeded to hand over to the orthodox all the Arian churches in Constantinople, and to prohibit heretics from holding public worship in the city. In the meantime he had come to see that the best prospect of terminating discussion in the East would be by a Council which was not controlled either from Alexandria or from Rome. The Council which met at his summons in A.D. 381 at Constantinople was entirely eastern, and Meletius, the bishop of Antioch, presided. Seventy years later it came to be called an Ecumenical Council; in the West it was not recognised as such till the end of the fifth century. This assembly of eastern bishops ratified the doctrine of the Council of Nicaea, and declared that the Son is of the same substance with the Father. Theodosius, after a vain attempt to win over the Arians by a Council which he summoned two years later, proceeded to measures of suppression,2 and Arianism gradually declined.

      But, while the Arian heresy in itself led to no permanent schism in the Church,3 new and closely related controversies soon agitated the eastern world and were destined to issue in lasting divisions. Once the divinity of Christ in the fullest sense was universally admitted, the question ensued how the union of his divine substance with his human nature is to be conceived. Was the Godhead mixed with humanity, or only conjoined? Did Mary bear the flesh only or the Logos along with the flesh? Did Christ’s human nature survive the Resurrection? In the fourth century, there was no definite doctrine, but the problem was disturbing the minds of some metaphysical theologians.

      Apollinaris of Laodicea argued that the union of a perfect God into a perfect man was out of the question. For the result of such a union would be a monster, not a uniform being. He concluded that Christ was not a perfect man, and that he adopted human nature, determining it in such a way that it did not involve free will, which would be inconsistent with his Godhead. His flesh was taken up into the nature of the Logos and was thus divine, and the Logos shared in the sufferings of the flesh. Further, Christ’s mind was not human; for, if he had had a human mind, he would have had a duplicate personality.

      It has been said that this theory of Apollinaris expressed the belief entertained at heart by all pious Greeks.4 But it was clear that it did not do justice to the humanity of Christ as depicted in the Gospels, and other theologians, who like Apollinaris himself belonged to the school of Antioch, sought to render intelligible the union of a perfect God with a perfect man. According to Theodore of Mopsuestia, the union of the two natures was a contact which became more intimate at each stage of human growth, and the indwelling of the Logos in the man was not substantial, but of the same order as the indwelling of God, by grace, in any human being. Each nature was itself a person, and the Logos did not become man. It was the man only who suffered. And Mary was not, in the strict sense, the mother of God.

      In the reign of Theodosius II this insoluble problem raised a bitter controversy, which agitated the eastern world. When Sisinnius, Patriarch of Constantinople, died at the end of A.D. 427, the bishops, the clergy, and the monks could not agree on the appointment of a successor, and the nomination was committed to the Emperor; who, seeing that no possible candidate among the ecclesiastics of Constantinople would be generally acceptable, chose Nestorius,5 a monk of a convent at Antioch, who had a high reputation as a preacher. The eloquence of Nestorius was matched by his intolerance, and no sooner was he seated on the Patriarchal throne6 than he began an energetic campaign against heresies. But his forcible language in condemning Apollinarian views, which he discovered to be rife among the local clergy, soon gave the Patriarch of Alexandria, who was the natural enemy of any Patriarch of Constantinople, a welcome opportunity of accusing him of heresy

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