FIRST DIVISION. History of the Development of the Church during the Græco-Roman and Græco-Byzantine Periods. (continued 5)

§ 38.2. The Antiquities of the Catacombs.―The custom widely spread in ancient times and originating in piety or superstition of placing in the tombs the utensils that had been used by the deceased during life was continued, as the contents of many burial niches show among the early Christians. Children’s toys were placed beside them in the grave, and the clothes, jewels, ornaments, amulets, etc., of grown up people. Quite a special interest attaches to the so-called Blood Vases, Phiolæ rubricatæ, which have been found in or near many of these niches, i.e. crystal, rarely earthenware, vessels with Christian symbols figured on a red ground. The Congregation of rites and relics in A.D. 1668, asserted that they were blood-vessels, in which the blood of the martyrs had been preserved and stood alongside of their bones; and the existence of such jars, as well as every pictorial representation of the palm branch (Rev. vii. 9), was supposed to afford an indubitable proof that the niches in question contained the bones of martyrs. But the Reformed theologian Basnage shows that this assumption is quite untenable, and he has explained the red ground from the dregs of the red sacramental wine which may have been placed in the burial niches as a protection against demoniacal intrusion. Even many good Roman Catholic archæologists, Mabillon, Papebroch, Tillemont, Muratori, etc., contest or express doubts as to the decree of the Congregation. At the instigation probably of the Belgian Jesuit Vict. de Buck, Pius IX. in A.D. 1863 confirmed and renewed the old decree, and among others, Xav. Kraus has appeared as its defender. But a great multitude of unquestionable facts contradict the official decree of the church; e.g. the total absence of any support to this view in tradition, the silence of such inscriptions as relate to the martyrs, above all the immense number of these jars, their being found frequently alongside the bones of children of seven years old, the remarkable frequency of them in the times of Constantine and his successors which were free from persecution, the absence of the red dregs in many jars, etc. Since dregs of wine, owing to their having the vegetable property of combinableness could scarcely be discernible down to the present day, it has recently been suggested that the red colour may have been produced by a mineral-chemical process as oxide of iron.

§ 38.3. Pictorial Art and the Catacombs.―Many of the earliest Christians may have inherited a certain dislike of the pictorial arts from Judaism, and may have been confirmed therein by their abhorrence of the frivolous and godless abuse of art in heathenism. But this aversion which in a Tertullian grew from a Montanistic rigorism into a fanatical hatred of art, is never met with as a constituent characteristic of Christianity. Much rather the great abundance of paintings on the walls of the Roman and Neapolitan catacombs, of which many, and these not the meanest, belong to the 2nd century, some indeed perhaps to the last decades of the 1st century, serves to show how general and lively was the artistic sense among the earliest Christians at least in the larger and wealthier communities. Yet from its circumstances the Christian church in its appreciation of art was almost necessarily limited on two sides; for, on the one hand, no paintings were tolerated in the churches, and on the other hand, even in private houses and catacombs they were restricted almost exclusively to symbolico-allegorical or typical representations. The 36th Canon of the Council of Elvira in A.D. 306 is a witness for the first statement when it says: Placuit picturas in ecclesia non esse debere, ne quod colitur et adoratur in parietibus depingatur. The plain words of the Canon forbid any other interpretation than this: From the churches, as places where public worship is regularly held, all pictorial representations must be banished, in order to make certain that in and under them there might not creep in those images, forbidden in the decalogue, of Him who is the object of worship and adoration. The Council thus assumed practically the same standpoint as the Reformed church in the 16th century did in opposition to the practice of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches. It cannot, however, be maintained that the Canon of this rigorous Council (§ 45, 2) found general acceptance and enforcement outside of Spain―Proof of the second limitation is as convincingly afforded by what we find in the catacombs. On the positive side, it has its roots in the fondness which prevailed during these times for the mystical and allegorical interpretation of scripture; and on the negative side, in the endeavour, partly in respect for the prohibition of images contained in the decalogue, partly, and perhaps mainly, in the interests of the so-called Disciplina arcani, fostered under pressure of persecution, to represent everything that pertained to the mysteries of the Christian faith as a matter which only Christians have a right fully to understand. From the prominence given to the point last referred to it may be explained how amid the revolution that took place under Constantine the age of Symbolism and Allegory in the history of Christian art also passed away, and henceforth painters applied themselves pre-eminently to realistic historical representations.

§ 38.4. The pictorial and artistic representations of the pre-Constantine age may be divided into the six following groups:―

Significant Symbols.―To these belong especially the cross,105 though, for fear of the reproaches of Jews and heathens (§ 23, 2), not yet in its own proper form but only in a form that indicated what was meant, namely in the form of the Greek Τ, very frequently in later times in the monogram of the name of Christ, i.e. in a variously constructed combination of its first two letters Χ and Ρ, while the Χ, as crux dissimulatæ, has very often on either side the letters α and ω.

Allegorical Figures.―In the 4th century a particularly favourite figure was that of the Fish, the name of which, ἰχθύς, formed a highly significant monogrammatic representation of the sentence, Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἱὸς Σωτήρ, and which pointed strikingly to the new birth from the water of baptism. Then there is the lamb or sheep, as symbol of the soul, which still in this life seeks after spiritual pastures; and the dove as symbol of the pious believing soul passing into eternal rest, often with an olive branch in its mouth (Gen. viii. 11), as symbol of the eternal peace won. Also we have the hart (Ps. xlii. 1), the eagle (Ps. ciii. 5), the chicken, symbol of Christian growth, the peacock, symbol of the resurrection on account of the annual renewal of its beautiful plumage, the dolphin, symbol of hastiness or eagerness in the appropriation of salvation, the horse, symbol of the race unto the goal of eternal life, the hare, as symbol of the Christian working out his salvation with fear and trembling, the ship, with reference to Noah’s ark as a figure of the church, the anchor (Heb. vi. 19), the lyre (Eph. v. 19), the palm branch (Rev. vii. 9), the garland (or crown of life, Rev. ii. 9), the lily (Matt. vi. 28), the balances, symbol of divine righteousness, fishes and bread, symbol of spiritual nourishment with reference to Christ’s miracle of feeding in the wilderness, etc.

Parabolic Figures.―These are illustrations borrowed from the parables of the Gospels. To these belong conspicuously the figure of the Good Shepherd, who bears on His shoulder the lost sheep that He had found (Luke xv. 5), the Vine Stock (John xv.), the Sower (Matt. xiii. 3), the Marriage Feast (Matt. xxii.), the Ten Virgins (Matt. xxv.), etc.

Historical Pictures of O. T. Types.―Among these we have Adam and Eve, the Rivers of Paradise (as types of the four evangelists), Abel and Cain, Noah in the Ark, the Sacrifice of Isaac, Scenes from Joseph’s History, Moses at the Burning Bush, the Passage of the Red Sea, the Falling of the Manna, the Water out of the Rock, History of Job, Samson with the Gates of Gaza (the gates of Hell), David’s Victory over Goliath, Elijah’s Ascension, Scenes from the History of Jonah and Tobit, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace, etc. Also typical material from heathen mythology had a place assigned them, such as the legends of Hercules, Theseus, and especially of Orpheus who by his music bewitched the raging elements and tamed the wild beasts, descended into the lower world and met his death through the infuriated women of his own race.

Figures from the Gospel History.―These, e.g. the Visit of the Wise Men from the East, and the Resurrection of Lazarus, are throughout this period still exceedingly rare. We do not find a single representation of the Passion of our Lord, nor any of the sufferings of Christian martyrs. Pictorial representations of the person of Christ, as a beardless youth with a friendly mild expression, are met with in the catacombs from the first half of the 2nd century, but without any claim to supply the likeness of a portrait, such as might be claimed for the figures of Christ in the temple of the Carpocratians (§ 27, 8) and in the Lararium of the Emperor Alexander Severus (§ 22, 4). Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, in accordance with the literal interpretation of Isa. liii. 2, 3, thought that Christ had an unattractive face; the post-Constantine fathers, on the contrary, resting upon Ps. xlv. 3 and John i. 14, thought of Him as beautiful and gracious.

Liturgical Figures.―These were connected only with the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

§ 39. Life, Manners, and Discipline.106

When the chaff had been so relentlessly severed from the wheat by the persecutions of that age, a moral earnestness and a power of denying the world and self must have been developed, sustained by the divine power of the gospel and furthered by a strict and rigorous application of church discipline to the Christian life, such as the world had never seen before. What most excited and deserved wonder in the sphere of heathendom, hitherto accustomed only to the reign of selfishness, was the brotherly love of the Christians, their systematic care of the poor and sick, the widespread hospitality, the sanctity of marriage, the delight in martyrdom, etc. Marriages with Jews, heathens and heretics were disapproved, frequently even the celebration of a second marriage after the death of the first wife was disallowed. Public amusements, dances, and theatres were avoided by Christians as Pompa diaboli. They thought of the Christian life, in accordance with Eph. vi. 10 ff., as Militia Christi. But even in the Post-Apostolic Age we come upon indications of a tendency to turn from the evangelical spirituality, freedom and simplicity of the Apostolic Age toward a pseudo-catholic externalism and legalism in the fundamental views taken of ethical problems, and at the same time and in the same way in the departments of the church constitution (§ 34), worship (§ 36) and exposition of doctrine (§ 30, 2). The teachers of the church do still indeed maintain the necessity of a disposition corresponding to the outward works, but by an over-estimation of these they already prepare the way for the doctrine of merit and the opus operatum, i.e. the meritoriousness of works in themselves. Even the Epistle of Barnabas and the Didache reckon almsgiving as an atonement for sins. Still more conspicuously is this tendency exhibited by Cyprian (De Opere et eleemosynis) and even in the Shepherd of Hermas (§ 30, 4) we find the beginnings of the later distinction, based upon 1 Cor. vii. 25, 26; Matt. xxv. 21, and Luke xviii. 10, between the divine commands, Mandata or Præcepta, which are binding upon all Christians, and the evangelical counsels, Consilia evangelica, the non-performance of which is no sin, but the doing of which secures a claim to merit and more full divine approval. Among the Alexandrian theologians, too, under the influence of the Greek philosophy a very similar idea was developed in the distinction between higher and lower morality, after the former of which the Christian sage (ὁ γνωστικός) is required to shine, while the ordinary Christian may rest satisfied with the latter. On such a basis a special order of Ascetics very early made its appearance in the churches. Those who went the length of renouncing the world and going out into the wilderness were called Anchorets. This order first assumed considerable dimensions in the 4th century (§ 44).

§ 39.1. Christian Morals and Manners.―The Christian spirit pervaded the domestic and civil life and here formed for itself a code of Christian morals. It expressed itself in the family devotions and family communions (§ 36, 3), in putting the sign of the cross upon all callings in life, in the Christian symbols (§ 38, 3) with which dwellings, garments, walls, lamps, cups, glasses, rings, etc. were adorned. As to private worship the Didache requires without fixing the hours that the head of the household shall have prayers three times a day (Dan. vi. 30), meaning probably, as with Origen, morning, noon, and night. Tertullian specifies the 3rd, 6th, and 9th hours as the hours of prayer, and distinctly demands a separate morning and evening prayer.―The concluding of marriage according to the then existing Roman law had to be formally carried through by the expressed agreement of the parties in the presence of witnesses, and this on the part of the church was regarded as valid. The Christian custom required that there should be a previous making of it known, Professio, to the bishop, and a subsequent going to the church of the newly married pair in order that, amid the church’s intercessions and the priestly benediction, a religious sanction might be given to their marriage covenant, by the oblation and common participation of the Lord’s Supper at the close of the public services. Tertullian’s Montanistic rigorism shows itself in regarding marriages where these are omitted, occultæ conjunctiones, as no better than mœchia and fornicatio. The crowning of the two betrothed ones and the veiling of the bride were still disallowed as heathenish practices; but the use of the wedding ring was sanctioned at an early date and had a Christian significance attached to it. The burning of dead bodies prevalent among the heathens reminded them of hell fire; the Christians therefore preferred the Jewish custom of burial and referred in support to 1 Cor. xv. 36. The day of the deaths of their deceased members were celebrated in the Christian families by prayer and oblations in testimony of their fellowship remaining unbroken by death and the grave.―Continuation § 61, 2, 3.

§ 39.2. The Penitential Discipline.―According to the Apostolic ordinance (§ 17, 8) notorious sinners were excluded from the fellowship of the church, Excommunicatio, and only after prolonged trial of their penitence, Exomologesis, were they received back again, Reconciliatio. In the time of Cyprian, about A.D. 250, there was already a well defined order of procedure in this matter of restoring the lapsed which continued in force until the 5th century. Penance, Pœnitentia, must extend through four stages, each of which according to circumstances might require one or more years. During the first stage, the πρόσκλαυσις, Fletio, the penitents, standing at the church doors in mourning dress, made supplication to the clergy and the congregation for restoration; in the second, the ἀκρόασις, Auditio, they were admitted again to the reading of the scriptures and the sermon, but still kept in a separate place; in the third, ὑπόπτωσις, Substratio, they were allowed to kneel at prayer; and finally, in the fourth, σύστασις, Consistentia, they took part again in the whole of the public services, with the exception of the communion which they were only allowed to look at standing. Then they received Absolution and Reconciliation (=pacem dare) in presence of the assembled and acquiescing congregation by the imposition of the hands of the bishop and the whole of the clergy, together with the brotherly kiss and the partaking of the communion. This procedure was directed against open and demonstrable sins of a serious nature against the two tables of the decalogue, against so called deadly sins, Peccata or crimina mortalia, 1 John v. 16. Excommunication was called forth, on the one side, against idolatry, blasphemy, apostasy from the faith and abjuration thereof; on the other, against murder, adultery and fornication, theft and lying, perfidy and false swearing. Whether reconciliation was permissible in the case of any mortal sin at all, and if so, what particular sins might thus be treated, were questions upon which teachers of the church were much divided during the 3rd century. But only the Montanists and Novatians (§§ 40, 41) denied the permissibility utterly and that in opposition to the prevailing practice of the church, which refused reconciliation absolutely only in cases of idolatry and murder, and sometimes also in the case of adultery. Even Cyprian at first held firmly by the principle that all mortal sins committed “against God” must be wholly excluded from the range of penitential discipline, but amid the horrors of the Decian persecution, which left behind it whole crowds of fallen ones, Lapsi (§ 22, 5), he was induced by the passionate entreaties of the church to make the concession that reconciliation should be granted to the Libellatici after a full penitential course, but to the Sacrificati only when in danger of death. All the teachers of the church, however, agree in holding that it can be granted only once in this life, and those who again fall away are cut off absolutely. But excessive strictness in the treatment of the penitents called forth the contrary extreme of undue laxity (§ 41, 2). The Confessors frequently used their right of demanding the restoration of the fallen by means of letters of recommendation, Libelli pacis, to such an extent as to seriously interfere with a wholesome discipline.107―Continuation § 61, 1.

§ 39.3. Asceticism.―The Ascetism (Continentia, ἐγκρατεία) of heathenism and Judaism, of Pythagoreanism and Essenism, resting on dualistic and pseudo-spiritualistic views, is confronted in Christianity with the proposition: Πάντα ὑμῶν ἐστιν (1 Cor. iii. 21; vi. 12). Christianity, however, also recognised the ethical value and relative wholesomeness of a moderate asceticism in proportion to individual temperament, needs and circumstances (Matt. ix. 12; 1 Cor. vii. 5-7), without demanding it or regarding it as something meritorious. This evangelical moderation we also find still in the 2nd century, e.g. in Ignatius. But very soon a gradual exaggeration becomes apparent and an ever-advancing over estimation of asceticism as a higher degree of morality with claims to be considered peculiarly meritorious. The negative requirements of asceticism are directed first of all to frequent and rigid fasts and to celibacy or abstinence from marital intercourse; its positive requirements, to the exercise of the spiritual life in prayer and meditation. The most of the Ascetics, too, in accordance with Luke xviii. 24, voluntarily divested themselves of their possessions. The number of them, men and women, increased, and even in the first half of the 2nd century, they formed a distinct order in the church, though they were not yet bound to observe this mode of life by any irrevocable vows. The idea that the clergy were in a special sense called to an ascetic life resulted in their being designated the κλῆρος Θεοῦ. Owing to the interpretation given to 1 Tim. iii. 2, second marriages were in the 2nd century prohibited among the clergy, and in the 3rd century it was regarded as improper for them after ordination to continue marital intercourse. But it was first at the Council of Elvira, in A.D. 306, that this opinion was elevated into a law, though it could not even then be rigorously enforced (§ 45, 2).―The immoral practice of ascetics or clerics having with them virgins devoted to God’s service as Sorores, ἀδελφαί on the ground of 1 Cor. ix. 5, with whom they were united in spiritual love, in order to show their superiority to the temptations of the flesh, seems to have been introduced as early as the 2nd century. In the middle of the 3rd century it was already widespread. Cyprian repeatedly inveighs against it. We learn from him that the so-called Sorores slept with the Ascetics in one bed and surrendered themselves to the tenderest caresses. For proof of the purity of their relations they referred to the examinations of midwives. Among bishops, Paul of Samosata in Antioch (§ 33, 8) seems to have been the first who favoured this evil custom by his own example. The popular wit of the Antiochenes [Antiocheans] invented for the more than doubtful relationship the name of the γυναίκες συνεισάκτοι, Subintroductæ, Agapetæ, Extreneæ. Bishops and Councils sent forth strict decrees against the practice.―The most remarkable among the celebrated ascetics of the age was Hieracas, who lived at Leontopolis in Egypt toward the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th century and died there when ninety years old. A pupil of Origen, he was distinguished for great learning, favoured the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, a spiritualistic dogmatics and strict asceticism. Besides this he was a physician, astronomer and writer of hymns, could repeat by heart almost all the Old and New Testaments, wrote commentaries in Greek and Coptic, and gathered round him a numerous society of men and women, who accepted his ascetical principles and heterodox views. Founding upon Matt. xix. 12; 1 Cor. vii. and Heb. xii. 14, he maintained that celibacy was the only perfectly sure way to blessedness and commended this doctrine as the essential advance from the Old Testament to the New Testament morality. He even denied salvation to Christian children dying in infancy because they had not yet fought against sensuality, referring to 2 Tim. ii. 5. Of a sensible paradise he would hear nothing, and just as little of a bodily resurrection; for the one he interprets allegorically and the other spiritually. Epiphanius, to whom we owe any precise information that we have about him, is the first to assign him and his followers a place in the list of heretics.

§ 39.4. Paul of Thebes.―The withdrawal of particular ascetics from ascetical motives into the wilderness, which was a favourite craze for a while, may have been suggested by Old and New Testament examples, e.g. 1 Kings xvii. 3; xix. 4; Luke i. 80; iv. 1; but it was more frequently the result of sore persecution. Of a regular professional institution of anchorets with life-long vows there does not yet appear any authentic trace. According to Jerome’s Vita Pauli monachi a certain Paul of Thebes in Egypt, about A.D. 250, during the Decian persecution, betook himself, when sixteen years old, to the wilderness, and there forgotten by all the world but daily fed by a raven with half a loaf (1 Kings xvii. 4), he lived for ninety-seven years in a cave in a rock, until St. Anthony (§ 44, 1), directed to him by divine revelation and led to him first by a centaur, half man, half horse, then by a fawn, and finally by a she-wolf, came upon him happily just when the raven had brought him as it never did before a whole loaf. He was just in time to be an eye-witness, not indeed of his death, but rather of his subsequent ascension into heaven, accompanied by angels, prophets and apostles, and to arrange for the burial of his mortal remains, for the reception of which two lions, uttering heart-breaking groans, dug a grave with their claws. These lions after earnestly seeking and obtaining a blessing from St. Anthony, returned back to their lair.―Contemporaries of the author, as indeed he himself tells, declared that the whole story was a tissue of lies. Church history, however, until quite recently, has invariably maintained that there must have been some historical foundation, though it might be very slight, for such a superstructure. But seeing that no single writer before Jerome seems to know even the name of Paul of Thebes and also that the Vita Antonii ascribed to Athanasius knows nothing at all of such a wonderful expedition of the saint, Weingarten (§ 44) has denied that there ever existed such a man as this Paul, and has pronounced the story of Jerome to be a monkish Robinson Crusoe, such as the popular taste then favoured, which the author put forth as true history ad majorem monachatus gloriam. We may simply apply to this book itself what Jerome at a later period confessed about his epistles of that same date ad Heliodorum:―sed in illo opere pio ætate tunc lusimus et celentibus adhuc Rhetorum studiis atque doctrinis quædam scholastico flore depinximus.

§ 39.5. Beginning of Veneration of Martyrs.―In very early times a martyr death was prized as a sin-atoning Lavacrum sanguinis, which might even abundantly compensate for the want of water baptism. The day of the martyr’s death which was regarded as the day of his birth into a higher life, γενέθλια, Natalitia martyrum, was celebrated at his grave by prayers, oblations and administration of the Lord’s Supper as a testimony to the continuance of that fellowship with them in the Lord that had been begun here below. Their bones were therefore gathered with the greatest care and solemnly buried; so e.g. Polycarp’s bones at Smyrna (§ 22, 2), as τιμιώτερα λίθων πολυτελῶν καὶ δωκιμώτερα ὑπὲρ χρυσίον, so that at the spot where they were laid the brethren might be able to celebrate his γενέθλιον ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶ χαρᾷ, εἴς τε τῶν προηθληκότων μνήμην καὶ τῶν μελλόντων τε καὶ ἑτοιμασίαν. Of miracles wrought by means of the relics, however, we as yet find no mention. The Graffiti on the walls of the catacombs seem to represent the beginning of the invocation of martyrs. In these the pious visitors seek for themselves and those belonging to them an interest in the martyr’s intercessions. Some of those scribblings may belong to the end of our period; at least the expression “Otia petite pro,” etc. in one of them seem to point to a time when they were still undergoing persecution. The greatest reverence, too, was shown to the Confessors all through their lives, and great influence was assigned them in regard to all church affairs, e.g. in the election of bishops, the restoration of the fallen, etc.―Continuation, § 57.

§ 39.6. Superstition.―Just as in later times every great Christian missionary enterprise has seen religious ideas transferred from the old heathenism into the young Christianity, and, consciously or unconsciously, secretly or openly, acquiesced in or contended against, securing for themselves a footing, so also the Church of the first centuries did not succeed in keeping itself free from such intrusions. A superstition forcing its entrance in this way can either be taken over nude crude in its genuinely pagan form and, in spite of its palpable inconsistency with the Christian faith, may nevertheless assert itself side by side with it, or it may divest itself of that old pagan form, and so unobserved and uncontested gain an entrance with its not altogether extinguished heathenish spirit into new Christian views and institutions and thus all the more dangerously make its way among them. It is especially the magico-theurgical element present in all heathen religions, which even at this early period stole into the Christian life and the services of the church and especially into the sacraments and things pertaining thereto (§ 58), while it assumed new forms in the veneration of martyrs and the worship of relics. One can scarcely indeed accept as a convincing proof of this the statement of the Emperor Hadrian in his correspondence regarding the religious condition of Alexandria as given by the historian Vopiscus: Illic qui Serāpem colunt Christiani sunt, et devoti sunt Serapi qui se Christi episcopos dicunt; nemo illic archisynagogus Judæorum, nemo Samarites, nemo Christianorum presbyter non mathematicus, non haruspex, non aliptes. This statement bears on its face too evidently the character of superficial observation, of vague hearsay and confused massing together of sundry reports. What he says of the worship of Serapis, may have had some support from the conduct of many Christians in the ascetic order, the designating of their presbyters aliptæ may have been suggested by the chrism in baptism and the anointing at the consecration of the clergy, perhaps also in the anointing of the sick (Matt. vi. 13; Jas. v. 14); so too the characterizing of them as mathematici may have arisen from their determining the date of Easter by means of astronomical observations (§ 37, 2; 56, 3), though it could not be specially wonderful if there actually were Christian scholars among the Alexandrian clergy skilled in astronomy, notwithstanding the frequent alliance of this science with astrology. But much more significant is the gross superstition which in many ways shows itself in so highly cultured a Christian as Julius Africanus in his Cestæ (§ 31, 8). In criticising it, however, we should bear in mind that this book was written in the age of Alexander Severus, in which, on the one hand, a wonderful mixture of religion and theurgical superstition had a wonderful fascination for men, while on the Christian side the whirlwind of persecution had not for a long time blown its purifying breeze. The catacombs, too, afford some evidences of a mode of respect for the departed that was borrowed from heathen practices, but these on the whole are wonderfully free from traces of superstition.

§ 40. The Montanist Reformation.108

Earnest and strict as the moral, religious and ascetical requirements of the church of the 2nd and 3rd centuries generally were in regard to the life and morals of its members, and rigidly as these principles were carried out in its penitential discipline, there yet appeared even at this early date, in consequence of various instances of the relaxation of such strictness, certain eager spirits who clamoured for a restoration or even an intensification of the earlier rules of discipline. Such a movement secured for itself a footing about the middle of the 2nd century in Montanism, a growth of Phrygian soil, which without traversing in any way the doctrine of the church, undertook a thorough reformation of the ecclesiastical constitution on the practical side. Montanism, in opposition to the eclecticism of heretical Gnosticism, showed the attitude of Christianity to heathenism to be exclusive; against the spiritualizing and allegorizing tendencies of the church Gnosticism it opposed the realism and literalism of the doctrines and facts of the scripture revelation; against what seemed the excessive secularization of the church it presented a model of church discipline such as the nearness of the Lord’s coming demanded; against hierarchical tendencies that were always being more and more emphasized it maintained the rights of the laity and the membership of the church; while in order to secure the establishment of all these reforms it proclaimed that a prophetically inspired spiritual church had succeeded to Apostolic Christianity.

§ 40.1. Montanism in Asia Minor.―According to Epiphanius as early as A.D. 156, according to Eusebius in A.D. 172, according to Jerome in A.D. 171, a certain Montanus appeared as a prophet and church reformer at Pepuza in Phrygia. He was formerly a heathen priest and was only shortly before known as a Christian. He had visions, preached while unconscious in ecstasy of the immediate coming again of Christ (Parousia), fulminated against the advancing secularisation of the church, and, as the supposed organ of the Paraclete promised by Christ (John xiv. 16) presented in their most vigorous form the church’s demands in respect of morals and discipline. A couple of excited women Prisca and Maximilla were affected by the same extravagant spirit by which he was animated, fell into a somnambulistic condition and prophesied as he had done. On the death of Maximilla about A.D. 180, Montanus and Prisca having died before this, the supposed prophetic gift among them seems to have been quenched. At least an anonymous writer quoted in Eusebius (according to Jerome it was Rhodon, § 27, 12), in his controversial treatise published thirteen years afterwards, states that the voices of the prophets were then silent. So indeed she herself had declared: Μεθ’ ἐμὲ προφῆτης οὐκέτι ἔσται, ἀλλὰ συντέλεια. The Montanist prophecies occasioned a mighty commotion in the whole church of Asia Minor. Many earnest Christians threw themselves eagerly into the movement. Even among the bishops they found here and there favour or else mild criticism, while others combated them passionately, some going so far as to regard the prophesying women as possessed ones and calling exorcism to their aid. By the end of the year 170 several synods, the first synods regularly convened, had been held against them, the final result of which was their exclusion from the catholic church. Montanus now organized his followers into an independent community. After his death, his most zealous follower, Alcibiades, undertook its direction. It was also not without literary defenders. Themison, Alcibiades’ successor, issued “in imitation of the Apostle” (John?) a Καθολικὴ ἐπιστολή, and the utterances of the prophets were collected and circulated as holy scripture. On the other hand during this same year 170 they were attacked by the eminent apologists Claudius Apollinaris and Miltiades (§ 36, 9) probably also by Melito. Their radical opponents were the so-called Alogi (§ 33, 2). Among their later antagonists, who assumed more and more a passionately embittered tone, the most important according to Eusebius were one Apollinaris, whom Tertullian combats in the VII. Bk. of his work, De ecstasi, and Serapion. At a Synod at Iconium about the middle of the 3rd century at which also Firmilian of Cæsarea (§ 35, 5) was present and voted, the baptism of the Montanists, although their trinitarian orthodoxy could not be questioned, was pronounced to be like heretical baptism null, because administered extra ecclesiam, and a second baptism declared necessary on admission to the Catholic church. And although at the Council of Nicæa in A.D. 325 and of Constantinople in A.D. 381, the validity of heretics’ baptism was admitted if given orderly in the name of the Holy Trinity, the baptism of the Montanists was excluded because it was thought that the Paraclete of Montanism could not be recognised as the Holy Spirit of the church.―Already in the time of Constantine the Great the Montanists were spreading out from Phrygia over all the neighbouring provinces, and were called from the place where they originated Κατάφρυγες and Pepuziani. The Emperor now forbade them holding any public assemblies for worship and ordered that all places for public service should be taken from them and given over to the Catholic church. Far stricter laws than even these were enforced against them by later emperors down to the 5th century, e.g. prohibition of all Montanist writings, deprivation of almost all civil rights, banishment of their clergy to the mines, etc. Thus they could only prolong a miserable existence in secret, and by the beginning of the sixth century every trace of them had disappeared.

§ 40.2. Montanism at Rome.―The movement called forth by Montanism in the East spread by and by also into the West. When the first news reached Gaul of the synodal proceedings in Asia Minor that had rent the church, the Confessors imprisoned at Lyons and Vienne during the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, of whom more than one belonged to a colony that had emigrated from Phrygia to Gaul, were displeased, and, along with their report of the persecution they had endured (§ 32, 8), addressed a letter to those of Asia Minor, not given by Eusebius, but reckoned pious and orthodox, exhorting to peace and the preservation of unity. At the same time (A.D. 177) they sent the Presbyter Irenæus to Rome in order to win from Bishop Eleutherus (A.D. 174-189), who was opposed to Montanism, a mild and pacific sentence. Owing, however, to the arrival of Praxeas, a Confessor of Asia Minor and a bitter opponent of Montanism, a formal condemnation was at last obtained (§ 33, 4). Tertullian relates that the Roman bishop, at the instigation of Praxeas, revoked the letters of peace which had been already prepared in opposition to his predecessors. It is matter of controversy whether by this unnamed bishop Eleutherus is meant, who then was first inclined to a peaceable decision by Irenæus and thereafter by the picture of Montanist extravagances given by Praxeas was led again to form another opinion; or that it was, what seems from the chronological references most probable, his successor Victor (A.D. 189-199), in which case Eleutherus is represented as having hardened himself against Montanism in spite of the entreaties of Irenæus, while Victor was the first who for a season had been brought to think otherwise.―Yet even after their condemnation a small body of Montanists continued to exist in Rome, whose mouthpiece during the time of bishop Zephyrinus (A.D. 199-217) was Proclus, whom the Roman Caius (§ 31, 7) opposed by word and writing.

§ 40.3. Montanism in Proconsular Africa.―When and how Montanism gained a footing in North Africa is unknown, but very probably it spread thither from Rome. The movement issuing therefrom first attracted attention when Tertullian, about A.D. 201 or 202, returned from Rome to Carthage, and with the whole energy of his character decided in its favour, and devoted his rich intellectual gifts to its advocacy. That the Montanist party in Africa at that time still continued in connection with the Catholic church is witnessed to by the Acts of the Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas (§ 32, 8), composed some time after this, which bear upon them almost all the characteristic marks of Montanism, while a vision communicated there shows that division was already threatened. The bishop and clergy together with the majority of the membership were decided opponents of the new ecstatic-visionary prophecy already under ecclesiastical ban in Asia Minor. They had not yet, however, come to an open breach with it, which was probably brought about in A.D. 206 when quiet had been again restored after the cessation of the persecution begun about A.D. 202 by Septimius Severus. Tertullian had stood at the head of the sundered party as leader of their sectarian services, and defended their prophesyings and rigorism in numerous apologetico-polemical writings with excessive bitterness and passion, applying them with consistent stringency to all the relations of life, especially on the ethical side. From the high esteem in which, notwithstanding his Montanist eccentricities, Tertullian’s writings continued to be held in Africa, e.g. by Cyprian (§ 31, 11), and generally throughout the West, the tendency defended by him was not regarded in the church there as in the East as thoroughly heretical, but only as a separatistic overstraining of views allowed by the church. This mild estimate could all the easier win favour, since to all appearance the extravagant visionary prophesying, which caused most offence, had been in these parts very soon extinguished.―Augustine reports that a small body of “Tertullianists” continued in Carthage down to his time († 430), and had by him been induced to return to the Catholic church; and besides this, he also tells us that Tertullian had subsequently separated himself from the “Cataphrygians,” i.e. from the communion of the Montanists of Asia Minor, whose excesses were only then perhaps made known to him.

§ 40.4. The Fundamental Principle of Montanism.―Montanism arose out of a theory of a divinely educative revelation proceeding by advancing stages, not finding its conclusion in Christ and the Apostles, but in the age of the Paraclete which began with Montanus and in him reached its highest development. The times of the law and the prophets in the Old Covenant is the childhood of the kingdom of God; in the gospel it appears in its youth; and by the Montanist shedding forth of the Spirit it reaches the maturity of manhood. Its absolute perfection will be attained in the millennium introduced by the approaching Parousia and the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem at Pepuza (Rev. xx. 21). The Montanist prophecy did not enrich or expand but only maintained and established against the heretics, the system of Christian doctrine already exclusively revealed in the times of Christ. Montanism regarded as its special task a reformation of Christian life and Church discipline highly necessary in view of the approaching Parousia. The defects that had been borne with during the earlier stages of revelation were to be repaired or removed by the Mandata of the Paraclete. The following are some of the chief of these prescriptions: Second marriage is adultery; Fasting must be practised with greater strictness; On dies stationum (§ 37, 3) nothing should be eaten until evening, and twice a year for a whole week only water and bread (ξηροφαγίαι); The excommunicated must remain their whole lifetime in status pœnitentiæ; Martyrdom should be courted, to withdraw in any way from persecution is apostasy and denial of the faith; Virgins should take part in the worship of God only when veiled; Women generally must put away all finery and ornaments; secular science and art, all worldly enjoyments, even those that seem innocent, are only snares of the devil, etc. An anti-hierarchical tendency early showed itself in Montanism from the circumstance that it arrogated to itself a new and high authority to which the hierarchical organs of the church refused to submit themselves. Yet even Montanism, after repudiating it, for its own self-preservation was obliged to give itself an official congregational organization, which, according to Jerome, had as its head a patriarch resident at Pepuza, and, according to Epiphanius, founding on Gal. iii. 28, gave even women admission into ecclesiastical offices. Its worship was distinguished only by the space given to the prophesyings of its prophets and prophetesses. Epiphanius notes this as a special characteristic of the sect, that often in their assemblies seven white-robed virgins with torches made their appearance prophesying; evidently, as the number seven itself shows, as representatives of the seven spirits of God (Rev. iv. 5, etc.), and not of the ten virgins who wait for the coming of the Lord. According to Philaster they allowed even unbaptized persons to attend all their services and were in the habit of baptizing even the dead, as is elsewhere told also of certain Gnostic sects. Epiphanius too speaks of a Montanist party which celebrated the Lord’s Supper with bread and cheese, Artotyrites, according to Augustine, because the first men had presented offerings of the fruits of the earth and sheep.

§ 40.5. The Attitude of Montanism toward the Church.―The derivation of Montanism from Ebionism, contended for by Schwegler, has nothing in its favour and much against it. To disprove this notion it is enough to refer to the Montanist fundamental idea of a higher stage of revelation above Moses and the prophets as well as above the Messiah and His Apostles. Neither can we agree with Neander in regarding the peculiar character of the Phrygian people, as exhibited in their extravagant and fanatical worship of Cybele, as affording a starting point for the Montanist movement, but at most as a predisposition which rendered the inhabitants of this province peculiarly susceptible in presence of such a movement. The origin of Montanism is rather to be sought purely among the specifically Catholic conditions and conflicts within the church of Asia which at that time was pre-eminently gifted and active. In regard to dogma Montanism occupied precisely the same ground as the Catholic church; even upon the trinitarian controversies of the age it took up no sectarian position but went with the stream of the general development. Not on the dogmatical but purely on the practical side, namely, on that of the Christian life and ecclesiastical constitution, discipline and morals, lay the problems which by the action of the Montanists were brought into conflict. But even upon this side Montanism, with all its eccentricities, did not assume the attitude of an isolated separatistic sect, but rather as a quickening and intensifying of views and principles which from of old had obtained the recognition and sanction of the church,―views which on the wider spread of Christianity had already begun to be in every respect toned down or even obliterated, and just in this way called forth that reaction of enthusiasm which we meet with in Montanism. From the Apostles’ time the expectation of the early return of the Lord had stood in the foreground of Christian faith, hope and yearning, and this expectation continued still to be heartily entertained. Nevertheless the fulfilment had now been so long delayed that men were beginning to put this coming into an indefinitely distant future (2 Pet. iii. 4). Hence it happened that even the leaders of the church, in building up its hierarchical constitution and adjusting it to the social circumstances and conditions of life by which they were surrounded, made their arrangements more and more deliberately in view of a longer continuance of the present state of things, and thus the primitive Christian hope of an early Parousia, though not expressly denied, seemed practically to have been set aside. Hence the Montanist revivalists proclaimed this hope as most certain, giving a guarantee for it by means of a new divine revelation. Similarly too the moral, ascetic and disciplinary rigorism of the Montanist prophecy is to be estimated as a vigorous reaction against the mild practice prevailing in the church with its tendency to make concessions to human weakness, in favour of the strict exercise of church discipline in view of the nearness of the Parousia. Montanism could also justify the reappearance of prophetic gifts among its founders by referring to the historical tradition which from the Apostolic Age (Acts xi. 27 f.; xxi. 9) presented to view a series of famous prophets and prophetesses, endowed with ecstatic visionary powers. The exclusion of Montanism from the Catholic Church could not, therefore, have been occasioned either by its proclaiming an early Parousia or by its rigorism, or finally, even by its prophetic claims, but purely by its doctrine of the Paraclete. Under the pretence of instituting a new and higher stage of revelation, it had really undertaken to correct the moral and religious doctrines of Christ and the Apostles as defective and incomplete, and had thereby proved itself to the representatives of the church to be undoubtedly a pseudo-prophecy. The spiritual pride with which the Montanists proclaimed themselves to be the privileged people of the Holy Spirit, Πνευματικοὶ, Spirituales and characterized the Catholics as, on the contrary, Ψυχικοὶ, Carnales, as also the assumption that chose their own obscure Pepuza for the site of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the manifold extravagances committed by their prophets and prophetesses in their ecstatic trances, must have greatly tended to create an aversion to every form of spiritualistic manifestation. The origin of Montanism, the contesting of it and its final expulsion, constitute indeed a highly significant crisis in the historical development of the church, conditioned not so much by a separatistic sectarian tendency, but rather by the struggle of two tendencies existing within the church, in which the tendency represented by Montanism and honestly endeavouring the salvation of the church, went under, while that which was victorious would have put an end to all enthusiasm. The expulsion of Montanism from the church contributed greatly to freeing the church from the reproach so often advanced against it of being a narrow sect, made its consenting to the terms, demands and conditions of everyday life in the world easier, gave a freer course and more powerful impulse to its development in constitution and worship dependent upon these, as well as in the further building up of its practical and scientific endeavours, and generally advanced greatly its expansion and transformation from a sectarian close association into a universal church opening itself up more and more to embrace all the interests of the culture of the age;―a transformation which indeed in many respects involved a secularizing of the church and imparted to its spiritual functions too much of an official and superficial character.

§ 41. Schismatic Divisions in the Church.

Even after the ecclesiastical sentence had gone forth against Montanism, the rigoristic penitential discipline in a form more or less severe still found its representatives within the Catholic church. As compared with the advocates of a milder procedure these were indeed generally in the minority, but this made them all the more zealously contend for their opinions and endeavour to secure for them universal recognition. Out of the contentions occasioned thereby, augmented by the rivalry of presbyter and episcopus, or episcopus and metropolitan, several ecclesiastical divisions originated which, in spite of the pressing need of the time for ecclesiastical unity, were long continued by ambitious churchmen in order to serve their own selfish ends.

§ 41.1. The Schism of Hippolytus at Rome about A.D. 220.―On what seems to have been the oldest attempt to form a sect at Rome over a purely doctrinal question, namely that of the Theodotians, about A.D. 210, see § 33, 3.―Much more serious was the schism of Hippolytus, which broke out ten years later. In A.D. 217, after an eventful and adventurous life, a freedman Callistus was raised to the bishopric of Rome, but not without strong opposition on the part of the rigorists, at whose head stood the celebrated presbyter Hippolytus. They charged the bishop with scoffing at all Christian earnestness, conniving at the loosening of all church discipline toward the fallen and sinners of all kinds, and denounced him especially as a supporter of the Noetian [Noëtian] heresy (§ 33, 5). They took great offence also at his previous life which his opponent Hippolytus (Elench., ix. 11 ff.) thus describes: When the slave of a Christian member of the imperial household, Callistus with the help of his lord established a bank; he failed, took to flight, was brought back, sprang into the sea, was taken out again and sent to the treadmill. At the intercession of Christian friends he was set free, but failing to satisfy his urgent creditors, he despairingly sought a martyr’s death, for this end wantonly disturbed the Jewish worship, and was on that account scourged and banished to the Sardinian mines. At the request of bishop Victor the imperial concubine Marcia (§ 22, 3) obtained the freedom of the exiled Christian confessors among whom Callistus, although his name had been intentionally omitted from the list presented by Victor, was included. After Victor’s death he wormed himself into the favour of his weak successor Zephyrinus, who placed him at the head of his clergy, in consequence of which he was able by intrigues and craft to secure for himself the succession to the bishopric.―An opportunity of reconciliation was first given, it would seem, under Pontianus, the second successor of Callistus, by banishing the two rival chiefs to Sardinia. Both parties then united in making a unanimous choice in A.D. 235.109

§ 41.2. The Schism of Felicissimus at Carthage in A.D. 250.―Several presbyters in Carthage were dissatisfied with the choice of Cyprian as bishop in A.D. 248 and sought to assert their independence. At their head stood Novatus. Taking the law into their own hands they chose Felicissimus, the next head of the party, as a deacon. When Cyprian during the Decian persecution withdrew for a time from Carthage, they charged him with dereliction of duty and faint-heartedness. Cyprian, however, soon returned, A.D. 251, and now they used his strictness toward the Lapsi as a means of creating a feeling against him. He expressed himself very decidedly as to the recklessness with which many confessors gave without examination Libelli pacis to the fallen, and called upon these to commit their case to a Synod that should be convened after the persecution. A church visitation completed the schism; the discontented presbyters without more ado received all the fallen and, notwithstanding that Cyprian himself on the return of persecution introduced a milder practice, they severed themselves from him under an opposition bishop Fortunatus. Only by the unwearied exercise of wisdom and firmness did Cyprian succeed in putting down the schism.110

§ 41.3. The Schism of the Presbyter Novatian at Rome in A.D. 251.―In this case the rigorist and presbyterial interests coincide. After the martyrdom of bishop Fabian under Decian in A.D. 250, the Roman bishopric remained vacant for more than a year. His successor Cornelius (A.D. 251-253) was an advocate of the milder practice. At the head of his rigorist opponents stood his unsuccessful rival, Novatian, a learned but ambitious presbyter (§ 31, 12). Meanwhile Novatus, excommunicated by Cyprian at Carthage, had also made his way to Rome. Notwithstanding his having previously maintained contrary principles in the matter of church discipline, he attached himself to the party of the purists and urged them into schism. They now chose Novatian as bishop. Both parties sought to obtain the recognition of the most celebrated churches. In doing so Cornelius described his opponent in the most violent and bitter manner as a mere intriguer, against whose reception into the number of presbyters as one who had received clinical baptism (§ 35, 3) and especially as an energoumenon under the care of the exorcists, he had already protested; further as having extorted a sham episcopal consecration from three simple Italian bishops, after he had attached them to himself by pretending to be a peacemaker, then locking them up and making them drunk, etc. Cyprian, as well as Dionysius of Alexandria, expressed himself against Novatian, and attacked the principles of his party, namely, that the church has no right to give assurance of forgiveness to the fallen or such as have broken their baptismal vows by grievous sin (although the possibility of finding forgiveness through the mercy of God was indeed admitted), and that the church as a communion of thoroughly pure members should never endure any impure ones in its bosom, nor receive back any excommunicated ones, even after a full ecclesiastical course of penitence. The Novatianists had therefore called themselves the Καθαροί. The moral earnestness of their fundamental principles secured for them even from bishops of contrary views an indulgent verdict, and Novatianist churches sprang up over almost all the Roman empire. The Œcumenical Council at Nicæa in A.D. 325 maintained an attitude toward them upon the whole friendly, and in the Arian controversy (§ 50) they stood faithfully side by side with their ecclesiastical opponents in the defence of Nicene orthodoxy, and with them suffered persecution from the Arians. Later on, however, the Catholic church without more ado treated them as heretics. Theodosius the Great sympathizing with them because of such unfair treatment, took them under his protection; but Honorius soon again withdrew these privileges from them. Remnants of the party continued nevertheless to exist down to the 6th century.111

§ 41.4. The Schism of Meletius in Egypt in A.D. 306.―Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis in the Thebaid, a representative of the rigorist party, during the Diocletian persecution claimed to confer ordinations and otherwise infringed upon the metropolitan rights of Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a supporter of the milder practice who for the time being lived in retirement. All warnings and admonitions were in vain. An Egyptian Synod under the presidency of Peter issued a decree of excommunication and deposition against him. Then arose the schism, A.D. 306, which won the whole of Egypt. The General Synod at Nicæa in A.D. 325 confirmed the Alexandrian bishop in his rights of supremacy (§ 46, 3) and offered to all the Meletian bishops an amnesty and confirmation in the succession on the death of the catholic anti-bishop of their respective dioceses. Many availed themselves of this concession, but others persisted in their schismatical course and finally attached themselves to the Arian party (§ 50, 2).

SECOND SECTION. The History of the Græco-Roman Church from the 4th-7th centuries. A.D. 323-692.

I. CHURCH AND STATE.

§ 42. The Overthrow of Paganism in the Roman Empire.112

After the overthrow of Licinius (§ 22, 7) Constantine identified himself unreservedly with Christianity, but accepted baptism only shortly before his death in A.D. 337. He was tolerant toward paganism, though encouraging its abandonment in all possible ways. His sons, however, began to put it down by violence. Julian’s short reign was a historical anomaly which only proved that paganism did not die a violent death, but rather gradually succumbed to a Marasmus senilis. Succeeding emperors reverted to the policy of persecution and extermination.―Neoplatonism, notwithstanding the patronage of Julian and the brilliant reputation of its leading representatives, could not reach the goal arrived at, but from the ethereal heights of philosophical speculation sank ever further and further into the misty region of fantastic superstition (§ 24, 2). The attempts at regeneration made by the Hypsistarians, Euphemites, Cœlicolæ, in which paganism strove after a revival by means of a barren Jewish monotheism or an effete Sabaism, proved miserable failures. The literary conflict between Christianity and paganism had almost completely altered its tone.

§ 42.1. The Romish Legend of the Baptism of Constantine.―That Constantine the Great only accepted baptism shortly before his death in Nicomedia, from Eusebius, bishop of that place, and a well-known leader of the Arian party (§ 50, 1, 2), is put beyond question by the evidence of his contemporary Eusebius of Cæsarea in his Vita Const., of Ambrose, of Jerome in his Chronicle, etc. About the end of the 5th century, however, a tradition, connecting itself with the fact that a Roman baptistery bore the name of Constantine, gained currency in Rome, to the effect that Constantine had been baptised at this baptistery more than twenty years before his death by Pope Sylvester (A.D. 314-335). According to this purely fabulous legend Constantine, who had up to that time been a bitter enemy and persecutor of the Christians, became affected with leprosy, for the cure of which he was recommended to bathe in a tub filled with the blood of an innocent child. Moved by the tears of the mother the emperor rejected this means of cure, and under the direction of a heavenly vision applied to the Pope, who by Christian baptism delivered him from his malady, whereupon all the members of the Roman senate still heathens, and all the people were straightway converted to Christ, etc. This legend is told in the so-called Decretum Gelasii (§ 47, 22), but is first vindicated as historically true in the Liber pontificalis (§ 90, 6), and next in A.D. 729, in Bede’s Chronicle (§ 90, 2). In the notorious Donatio Constantini (§ 87, 4) it is unhesitatingly accepted. Since then, at first with some exceptions but soon without exceptions, all chroniclers of the Middle Ages and likewise since the 9th century the Scriptores hist. Byzant., have adopted it. And although in the 15th century Æneas Sylvius and Nicolaus [Nicolas] of Cusa admitted that the legend was without foundation, yet in the 16th century in Baronius and Bellarmine, and in the 17th in Schelstraate, it found earnest defenders. The learned French Benedictines of the 17th century were the first to render it utterly incredible even in the Roman Catholic church.113

§ 42.2. Constantine the Great and his Sons.―Constantine’s profession of Christianity was not wholly the result of political craft, though his use of the name Pontifex Maximus and in this capacity the continued exercise of certain pagan practices, gave some colour to such an opinion. Outbursts of passion, impulsiveness exhibited in deeds of violence and cruelty, as in the order for the execution of his eldest son Crispus in A.D. 326 and his second wife Fausta, are met with even in his later years. Soon after receiving baptism he died without having ever attended a complete divine service. His toleration of paganism must be regarded purely as a piece of statecraft. He only prohibited impure rites and assigned to the Christians but a few of the temples that had actually been in use. Aversion to the paganism still prevalent among the principal families in Rome may partly have led him to transfer his residence to Byzantium, since called Constantinople, in A.D. 330. His three sons divided the Empire among them. Constantius (A.D. 337-361) retained the East, and became, after the death of Constantine II. in A.D. 340 and of Constans in A.D. 350, sole ruler. All the three sought to put down paganism by force. Constantius closed the heathen temples and forbade all sacrifices on pain of death. Multitudes of heathens went over to Christianity, few probably from conviction. Among the nobler pagans there was thus awakened a strong aversion to Christianity. Patriotism and manly spirit came to be identified with the maintenance of the old religion.114

§ 42.3. Julian the Apostate (A.D. 361-363).―The sons of Constantine the Great began their reign in A.D. 337 with the murder of their male relatives. The brothers Julian and Gallus, nephews of Constantine, alone were spared; but in A.D. 345 they were banished to a Cappadocian castle where Julian officiated for a while as reader in the village church. Having at last obtained leave to study in Nicomedia, then in Ephesus, and finally in Athens, the chief representatives of paganism fostered in him the conviction that he was specially raised up by the gods to restore again the old religion of his fathers. As early as A.D. 351 in Nicomedia he formally though still secretly returned to paganism, and at Athens in A.D. 355 he took part in the Eleusinian mysteries. Soon thereafter Constantius, harassed by foreign wars, assigned to him the command of the army against the Germans. By affability, personal courage and high military talent, he soon won to himself the enthusiastic attachment of the soldiers. Constantius thought to weaken the evident power of his cousin which seemed to threaten his authority, by recalling the best of the legions, but the legions refused obedience and proclaimed Julian emperor. Then the emperor refused to ratify the election and treated Julian himself as a rebel. The latter advanced at the head of his army by forced marches upon the capital, but ere he reached the city, he received the tidings of the opposing emperor’s death. Acknowledged now as emperor throughout the whole empire without any opposition, Julian proceeded with zeal, enthusiasm and vigour to accomplish his long-cherished wish, the restoring of the glory of the old national religion. He used no violent measures for the subversion and overthrow of Christianity, nor did he punish Christian obstinacy with death, except where it seemed to him the maintenance of his supremacy required it. But he demanded that temples which had been converted into churches should be restored to the heathen worship, those destroyed should be restored at the cost of the church exchequer and the money for the state that had been applied to ecclesiastical purposes had to be repaid. He scornfully referred the clergy thus robbed of their revenues to the blessedness of evangelical poverty. He also fomented as much as possible dissension in the church, favoured all sectaries and heretics, excluded Christians from all the higher, and afterwards from all the lower, civil and military offices, and loaded them on every occasion with reproach and shame, and by these means he actually induced many to apostatise. In order to discredit Christ’s prophecy in Matt. xxiv. 2, he resolved on the restoration of the Jewish temple at Jerusalem, but after having been begun it was destroyed by an earthquake. He excluded all Christian teachers from the public schools, and also forbade them in their own schools from explaining the classical writers who were objected to and contested by them only as godless; so that Christian boys and youths could obtain a higher classical education only in the pagan schools. By petty artifices he endeavoured to get Christian soldiers to take part, if only even seemingly, in the heathen sacrifices. Indeed at a later period in Antioch he was not ashamed to stoop to the mean artifice of Galerian (§ 22, 6) of sprinkling with sacrificial water the necessaries of life exposed in the public market, etc. On the other hand, he strove in every way to elevate and ennoble paganism. From Christianity he borrowed Benevolent Institutions, Church Discipline, Preaching, Public Service of Song, etc.; he gave many distinctions to the heathen priesthood, but required of them a strict discipline. He himself sacrificed and preached as Pontifex Maximus, and led a strictly ascetic, almost a cynically simple life. The ineffectiveness of his attempts and the daring, often even contemptuous, resistance of many Christian zealots embittered him more and more, so that there was now danger of bloody persecution when, after a reign of twenty months, he was killed from a javelin blow in a battle against the Persians in A.D. 363. Shortly before in answer to the scornful question of a heathen, “What is your Carpenter’s Son doing now?” it had been answered, “He is making a coffin for your emperor.” At a later period the story became current that Julian himself, when he received the deadly stroke, exclaimed, Tandem vicisti Galilæe! His military talents and military virtues had shed a glory around the throne of the Cæsars such as it had not known since the days of Marcus Aurelius, and yet his whole life’s struggle was and remained utterly fruitless and vain.115

§ 42.4. The Later Emperors.―After Julian’s death, Jovian, and then on his death in A.D. 364, Valentinian I. († 375), were chosen emperors by the army. The latter resigned to his brother Valens the empire of the East (A.D. 364-378). His son and successor Gratian (A.D. 375-383) at the wish of the army adopted his eldest half-brother of four years old, Valentinian II., as colleague in the empire of the West, and upon the death of Valens resigned the government of the West to the Spaniard Theodosius I., or the Great (A.D. 379-395), who, after the assassination of Valentinian II. in A.D. 392, became sole ruler. After his death his sons again divided the empire among them: Honorius († 423) took the West, Arcadius († 408) the East, and now the partitioned empire continued in this condition until the incursions of the barbarians had broken up the whole West Roman division (A.D. 476). Belisarius and Narses, the victorious generals of Justinian I., were the first to succeed, between A.D. 533-553, in conquering again North Africa and all Italy along with its islands. But in Italy the Byzantine empire from A.D. 569 was reduced in size from time to time by the Longobards, and in Africa from A.D. 665 by the Saracens, while even earlier, about A.D. 633, the Saracens had secured to themselves Syria, Palestine, and Egypt.―Julian’s immediate successors tolerated paganism for a time. It was, however, a very temporary respite. No sooner had Theodosius I. quieted in some measure political disorders, than he proceeded in A.D. 382 to accomplish the utter overthrow of paganism. The populace and the monks combined in destroying the temples. The rhetorician Libanius († 395) then addressed his celebrated discourse Περὶ τῶν ἱερῶν to the emperor; but the remaining temples were closed and the people were prohibited from visiting them. In Alexandria, under the powerful bishop Theophilus, there were bloody conflicts, in consequence of which the Christians destroyed the beautiful Serapeion in A.D. 391. In vain did the pagans look for the falling down of the heavens and the destruction of the earth; even the Nile would not once by causing blight and barrenness take vengeance on the impious. In the West, Gratian was the first of the emperors who declined the rank of pontifex maximus; he also deprived the heathen priests of their privileges, removed the foundations of the temple of Fiscus, and commanded that the altar of Victory should be taken away from the hall of the Senate in Rome. In vain did Symmachus, præfectus urbi, entreat for its restoration, if not “numinis” yet “nominis causa.” Valentinian II., urged on by Ambrose, sent back four times unheard the deputation that came about this matter. So soon as Theodosius I. became sole ruler the edicts were made more severe. On his entrance into Rome in A.D. 394 he addressed to the Roman Senate a severe lecture and called them to repentance. His sons, Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East, followed the example of their father. Under the successor of the latter, Theodosius II. (A.D. 408-450), monks with imperial authority for the suppression of heathenism traversed the provinces, and in A.D. 448, in common with Valentinian III. (A.D. 425-455), the western emperor, he issued an edict which strictly enjoined the burning of all pagan polemical writings against Christianity, especially those of Porphyry “the crack-brained,” wherever they might be found. This period is also marked by deeds of bloody violence. The most horrible of these was the murder of the noble pagan philosopher Hypatia, the learned daughter of Theon the mathematician, at Alexandria in A.D. 415. Officially paganism may be regarded as no longer existent. Branded long even before this as the religion of the peasants (such is the derivation of the word paganism), it was now almost wholly confined to remote rural districts. Its latest and solitary stronghold was the University of Athens raised to the summit of its fame under Proclus (§ 24, 2). Justinian I. (A.D. 527-565) decreed the suppression of this school in A.D. 529. Its teachers fled into Persia, and there laid the first foundations of the later literary period of Islam under the ruling family of the Abassidæ at Bagdad (§ 65, 2). This was the death hour of heathenism in the Roman empire. The Mainottæ in the mountains of the Peloponnesus still maintained their political independence and the heathen religion of their fathers down to the 9th century. In the Italian islands, too, of Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, there were still many heathens even in the time of Gregory the Great († 604).116

§ 42.5. Heathen Polemics and Apologetics.―Julian’s controversial treatise Κατὰ Γαλιλαίων λόγοι, in 3 bks. according to Cyril, in 7 bks. according to Jerome, is known only from the reply of Cyril of Alexandria (§ 47, 6) which follows it section by section, the rest of the answers to it having been entirely lost. Of Cyril’s book only the first ten λόγοι have come down to us in a complete state, and from these we are able almost wholly to restore the first book of Julian’s treatise. Only fragments of the second decade of Cyril’s work are extant, and not even so much of the third, so that of Julian’s third book we may be said to know nothing.117 Julian represented Christianity as a deteriorated Judaism, but Christolatry and the worship of martyrs as later falsifications of the doctrine of Christ.―The later advocates of heathenism, Libanius and Symmachus, were content with claiming toleration and religious freedom. But when from the 5th century, under the influence of the barbarians, signs of the speedy overthrow of the Roman empire multiplied, the heathen polemics assumed a bolder attitude, declaring that this was the punishment of heaven for the contempt of the old national religion, under which the empire had flourished. Such is the standpoint especially of the historians Eunapius and Zosimus. But history itself refuted them more successfully than the Christian apologists; for even these barbarous peoples passed over in due course to Christianity, and vied with the Roman emperors in their endeavours to extirpate heathenism. In the 5th century, the celebrated Neo-Platonist Proclus wrote “eighteen arguments (ἐπιχειρήματα) against the Christians” in vindication of the Platonic doctrine of the eternity of the world and in refutation of the Christian doctrine of creation. The Christian grammarian John Philoponus (§ 47, 11) answered them in an exhaustive and elaborate treatise, which again was replied to by the philosopher Simplicius, one of the best teachers in the pagan University of Athens.―The dialogue Philopatris, “the Patriot,” included among the works of Lucian of Samosata, but certainly not composed by him, is a feeble imitation of the famous scoffer, in which the writer declares that he can no longer fitly swear at the Olympic gods with their many unsavoury loves and objectionable doings, and with a satirical reference to Acts xvii. 23 recommends for this purpose “the unknown God at Athens,” whom he further scurrilously characterizes as ὑψιμέδων θεὸς, υἵος πατρὸς, πνεῦμα ἐκ πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον ἓν ἐκ τριῶν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς τρία (§ 50, 1, 7). Finally he tells of some closely shaven men (§ 45, 1) who were treated as liars, because, having in consequence of a ten days’ fast and singing had a vision foreboding ill to their fatherland, their prophecy was utterly discredited by the arrival of an account of the emperor’s successes in the war against the Persians. The impudence with which the orthodox Christianity and the Nicene orthodox formula are sneered at, as well as the allusions to the spread of monasticism and a victorious war against the Persians, fix the date of the dialogue in the reign of Julian, or rather, since the writer would scarcely have had Julian’s approval in his scoffing at the gods of Olympus, in the time of the Arian Valens (§ 50, 4). But since the overthrow of Egypt and Crete is spoken of in this treatise, Niebuhr has put its date down to the time of the Emperor Nicephoras Phocas (A.D. 963-969), understanding by Persians the Saracens and by Scythians the Bulgarians.

§ 42.6. The religion of the Hypsistarians in Cappadocia was, according to Gregory Nazianzen, whose father had belonged to the sect, a blending of Greek paganism with bald Jewish monotheism, together with the oriental worship of fire and the heavenly bodies, with express opposition to the Christian doctrine of the trinity. Of a similar nature were the vagaries of the Euphemites, “Praise singers,” in Asia, who were also called Messalians, “Petitioners,” or Euchites, and in Africa bore the name of Cœlicolæ.

§ 43. The Christian Empire and the Ecclesiastical Law.

As in earlier times the supreme direction of all religious matters belonged to the Roman Emperor as Pontifex Maximus, so now that Christianity had become the state religion he claimed for himself the same position in relation to the church. Even Constantine the Great regarded himself as ἐπίσκοπος τῶν ἔξω τῆς ἐκκλησίας, and all his successors exercised the Jus circa sacra as their unquestioned right. Only the Donatists (§ 63, 1) denied to the state all and any right over the church. There was no clear consciousness of the limits of this jurisdiction, but this at least in theory was firmly maintained, that in all ecclesiastical matters, in worship, discipline and doctrine, the emperors were not of themselves entitled to issue conclusive decisions. For this purpose they called Œcumenical Synods, the decrees of which had legal validity throughout the empire when ratified by the emperor. But the more the Byzantine empire degenerated and became a centre of intrigues, the more hurtful did contact with the court become, and more than once the most glaring heresy for a time prevailed by means of personal passion, unworthy tricks and open violence, until at last orthodoxy again secured the ascendency.―From the ordinances issued by the recognised ecclesiastical and civil authorities upon ecclesiastical rights, duties and conditions, as well as from the pseudo-epigraphic apostolic writings already being secretly introduced in this department, there sprang up during this period a rich and varied literature on canon law.

§ 43.1. The Jus circa sacra gave to the Emperors the right of legally determining all the relations between church and state, but assigned to them also the duty of caring for the preservation or restoration of peace and of unity in the church, guarding orthodoxy with a strong arm, looking after the interests of the church and the clergy, and maintaining the authority of ecclesiastical law. Even Constantine the Great excluded all heretics from the privileges which he accorded to the church, and regarded it as a duty forcibly to prevent their spread. The destruction or closing of their churches, prohibition of public meetings, banishment of their leaders, afterwards seizure of their possessions, were the punishments which the state invariably used for their destruction. The first death sentence on a heretic was issued and executed so early as A.D. 385 by the usurper Maximus (§ 54, 2), but this example was not imitated during this period. Constans II. in A.D. 654 gave the first example of scourging to the effusion of blood and barbarous mutilation upon a persistent opponent of his union system of doctrine (§ 52, 8). The fathers of the 4th century were decidedly opposed to all compulsion in matters of faith (comp. however § 63, 1). The right of determining by imperial edict what was to be believed and taught in the empire was first asserted by the usurper Basilicus in A.D. 476 (§ 52, 5). The later emperors followed this example; most decidedly Justinian I. (§ 52, 6) and the court theologians justified such assumptions from the emperor’s sacerdotal rank, which was the antitype of that of Melchizedec [Melchisedec]. The emperor exercised a direct influence upon the choice of bishops especially in the capital cities; at a later period the emperor quite arbitrarily appointed these and set them aside. The church’s power to afford protection secured for it generally a multitude of outward privileges and advantages. The state undertook the support of the church partly by rich gifts and endowments from state funds, partly by the making over of temples and their revenues to the church, and Constantine conferred upon the church the right of receiving bequests of all kinds. The churches and their officers were expressly exempted from all public burdens. The distinct judicial authority of the bishops recognised of old was formally legitimized by Constantine under the name of Audentia episcopalis. The clergy themselves were exempted from the jurisdiction of civil tribunals and were made subject to an ecclesiastical court. The right of asylum was taken from the heathen temples and conferred upon the Christian churches. With this was connected also the right of episcopal intercession or of interference with regard to decisions already come to by the civil courts which were thus in some measure subject to clerical control.

§ 43.2. The Institution of Œcumenical Synods.―The σύνοδοι οἰκουμενικαί, Concilia universalia s. generalia, owe their origin to Constantine the Great (§ 50, 1). The calling of councils was an unquestioned right of the crown. A prelate chosen by the emperor or the council presided; the presence of the imperial commissioner, who opened the Synod by reading the imperial edict, was a guarantee for the preservation of the rights of the state. The treasury bore the expense of board and travelling. The decisions generally were called ὅροι, Definitiones; if they were resolutions regarding matters of faith, δόγματα; if in the form of a confession, σύμβολα; if they bore upon the constitution, worship and discipline, κανόνες. On doctrinal questions there had to be unanimity; on constitutional questions a majority sufficed. Only the bishops had the right of voting, but they allowed themselves to be influenced by the views of the subordinate clergy. As a sort of substitute for the œcumenical councils which could not be suddenly or easily convened we have the σύνοδοι ἐνδημοῦσα at Constantinople, which were composed of all the bishops who might at the time be present in the district. At Alexandria, too, these endemic Synods were held. The Provincial Synods were convened twice a year under the presidency of the metropolitan; as courts of higher instances we have the Patriarchal or Diocesan Synods (comp. § 46, 1).118

§ 43.3. Canonical Ordinances.―As canonical decrees acknowledged throughout the whole of the Catholic national church or at least throughout the more important ecclesiastical districts the following may be named.

The Canons of the Œcumenical Councils.

The Decrees of several important Particular Synods.

The Epistolæ canonicæ of distinguished bishops, especially those of the Sedes apostolicæ, § 34, preeminently of Rome and Alexandria, pertaining to questions which have had a determining influence on church practice, which were at a later time called at Rome Epistt. decretales.

The canonical laws of the emperors, νόμοι (Codex Theodosianus in A.D. 440, Codex Justinianæus in A.D. 534, Novellæ Justiniani).

The first systematically arranged collection of the Greek church known to us was made by Johannes Scholasticus, then presbyter at Antioch, afterwards Patriarch at Constantinople († 578). A second collection, also ascribed to him, to which were added the canonical νόμοι of Justinian, received the name of the Nomocanon. In the West all earlier collections were put out of sight by the Codex canonum of the Roman abbot Dionysius the Little (§ 47, 23), to which were also added the extant Decretal Epistles about A.D. 520.

§ 43.4. Pseudepigraphic Church Ordinances.―Even so early as the 2nd and 3rd centuries there sprang up no inconsiderable number of writings upon church law, with directions about ethical, liturgical and constitutional matters for the instruction of the church members as well as the clergy, the moral precepts of which are of importance in church procedure as affording a standard for discipline. The oldest probably of these has lately been made again accessible to us in the Teaching of the XII. Apostles, the Didache (§ 30, 7). It designates its contents, even where these are taken not from the Old Testament or the “Gospel,” but from the so-called church practice, as apostolic, with the honest conviction that by means of oral apostolic tradition it may be traced back to the immediate appointment of the Lord, without, however, pseudepigraphically claiming to have been written by the Apostles. Many treatises of the immediately following period, no longer known to us or known only by fragments, occupied the same standpoint. But even so early as the end of the 3rd century pseudepigraphic apostolic fiction makes its appearance in the so-called Apostolic Didascalia, and some sixty years later, it reached its climax in the eight bks. of the so-called Constitutiones Apostolicæ, Διαταγαὶ τῶν ἀπ. διὰ Κλήμεντος. The first six bks. correspond to the previously named Didascalia expanded and variously altered.119 It assumes the form of a prolix epistolary discourse of the Apostle, communicated through Clement of Rome, about everything pertaining to the Christian life, the Catholic system of doctrine, liturgical practice and hierarchical constitution which may be necessary and useful for the laity as well as the clergy to know, with the exclusion, however, of everything which belonged to the department of what was then regarded as the Disciplina arcani (§ 36, 4). Of older writings, so far as known, those principally used are the seven Ignatian Epistles (§ 30, 5). It is post-Novatianist (§ 41, 3) and belongs to a time pre-Constantine but free from persecution (§ 22, 6), and may therefore be placed somewhere between A.D. 260 and A.D. 302. It was written probably in Syria.―While the first six bks. of the Apostolic Constitutions may be compared to the Syrian recension as a contemporary rendition of the Didascalia, the seventh book from an examination of the Didache seems a rendition of that little work, in which the assumption of apostolic authorship is made, and from which everything offensive to the forger and his age is cut out, the old text being otherwise literally reproduced, while into it is cleverly smuggled from his own resources whatever would contribute to the support of his own peculiar views as well as the prevailing practice of the church. The Eusebian symbol, which is given in the 41st chap., is an anti-Nicene, anti-Marcellianist, Arianizing formula, fixing the date of the forgery at the period of the Arian controversy, somewhere between A.D. 340 and A.D. 350 (§ 50, 2).―The eighth book is in great part an unmistakeable forgery compiled from older sources belonging to the 3rd century, some of which are still to be found, and forms a handbook for the discharge of clerical, especially episcopal, duties in the conducting of worship and other clerical functions, e.g. ordination, baptism, etc., together with the relative liturgical formularies, drawn up in a thoroughly legal-like style, in which the Apostles one by one give their contribution with the formula Διατάσσομαι. The composition is probably ante-Nicene, but the date of its incorporation with the other seven books is uncertain.―In most, though not in all, MSS. the Canones Apostolorum, sometimes 50, sometimes 85, in number, are appended to the eighth book as its last chapter. Their standpoint is that common to the canons of the early councils from which they are chiefly borrowed. In respect of contents they treat mainly of the moral behaviour and official functions of the clergy. The 85th contains a Scripture canon of the Old and New Testaments, including the two Epp. of the Roman Clement (§ 30, 3), as well as the Apost. Constitutions, but omitting the Apocalypse of John (comp. § 33, 9). The collection of the apostolic canon cannot have been made before the beginning of the 5th century, and most likely in Syria. Dionysius the Little admitted only the first 50 as Canones qui dicuntur Apostolorum, but Johannes Scholasticus quite unhesitatingly ascribes all the 85 to Clement of Rome. The Second Trullan Council in A.D. 692 (§ 63, 2) acknowledged the genuineness of the 85, but rejected the Apostolic Constitutions as a heretical forgery which had found no general acceptance in the West.―While hitherto it has been surmised that the 7th bk. of the Apost. Constit., as an independent and original work, should be assigned to another and a much later author than the first six bks., Harnack, founding upon his study of the Didache, has come to a clear understanding of their mutual relations. He shows that the original documents lying at the basis respectively of the Didache and the Didascalia are fundamentally distinct in respect of composition and character, but the two in the form in which they lie before us in the Apost. Constit. are undoubtedly the work of one and the same interpolator. We further obtain the equally convincing and surprising result that the author of this forgery is also identical with the author of the thirteen Pseudo-Ignatian Epistles (§ 30, 5), and had in the one case and in the other the same object in view. Finally, he characterizes him as a Syrian cleric well versed in Scripture, especially the Old Testament, but also a shrewd worldly politician, opposed to all strict asceticism, who sought by his forgeries to win apostolic sanction and justification not only for the constitutional and liturgical institutions of the church, as well as the milder practice of his age, but also for his own semi-Arian doctrinal views.

§ 43.5. The Apostolic Church Ordinances120 are, according to Harnack’s careful analysis, a compilation executed in a most scholarly fashion of extracts from four old writings: the Didache, the Ep. of Barnabas, from which the moral precepts are taken, a κατάστασις τοῦ κλήρου from the beginning of the 3rd century, and a κατάστασις τῆς ἐκκλησίας from the end of the 2nd century, with many clumsy alterations and excursuses after the style of the church tradition of its own period, the beginning of the 4th century. Its introduction consists of a formula of greeting modelled upon the Ep. of Barnabas from the twelve Apostles who are designated by name. The list, which begins with the name of John, wants one of the two Jameses and the late chosen Matthias, and the number of twelve is made up by the addition of the name of Nathanael and that of Cephas in addition to that of Peter. Then the Apostles tell that Christ had commanded them to divide among them by lot the Eparchies, Episcopates, Presbyterates, Diaconates, etc., of all lands, and to send forth οἱ λόγοι into the whole οἰκουμένη; then follow these λόγοι, first the moral rules, then the constitutional enactments, both being divided among the several Apostles (Ἰωάννης εἶπεν, Ματθαίος εἶπεν, etc.). The compilation had its origin in Egypt, not, however, at Alexandria, where Athanasius was still unacquainted with it, or at least did not think it worthy of being mentioned among the church manuals (§ 59, 1), while at a later period it was held in the highest esteem by the Copts, Ethiopians, Arabians, etc., and took the first rank among their books on ecclesiastical procedure.

II. MONASTICISM, CLERICALISM AND HIERARCHISM.

§ 44. Monasticism.121

Disgusted with worldly pursuits and following an impulse of the oriental character in favour of the contemplative life, many ascetics withdrew into deserts and solitudes, there as Anchorets (ἐρεμίται, μοναχοί, μονάζοντες), amid prayer and labour, privation and self-denial, wringing out of the wilderness their scanty support, they strove after holiness of life which they thought they could reach only by forsaking the accursed world. The place where this extravagant extreme of the old ascetism arose was the Thebaid in Upper Egypt (§ 39, 3). The first, and for a long time isolated, examples of such professional abandonment of the world may be traced back to the 3rd century; but they had wider spread first in the post-Constantine Age. The example of St. Anthony was specially influential in leading a number of like-minded men to betake themselves to isolated dwellings, λαῦραι, in his neighbourhood and to place themselves under his spiritual direction. In this we have already the transition from a solitary anchoret life to a communal cœnobite life (κοινὸς βίος), and this reached maturity when Anthony’s disciple Pachomius gathered the scattered residents in his district into one common dwelling, Claustrum, Cœnobium, Monasterium, Mandra=fold, and bound them under a common system of ascetic practice in prayer and labour, especially basket making and carpet weaving. This arrangement, without, however, any tendency to displace the anchoret life properly so-called, won great favour, and this went on for some decades until first of all in the East, then also in the West about A.D. 370, the land was covered over with monasteries. The monastic life under its twofold aspect was now esteemed as βὶος ἀγγελικός (Matt. xxii. 30), φιλοσοφία ὑψηλή, melior vita. Yet even here corruption soon spread. Not merely the feeling of spiritual need, but ambition, vanity, slothfulness and especially the desire to avoid military service and villainage, taxes and imposts, induced men to enter the monasteries. The Emperor Valens therefore issued an order in A.D. 365 that such men should be dragged out by force from their retreats. Spiritual vices too were not wanting―extravagance and fanaticism, spiritual pride, etc. All the more did the most distinguished bishops, e.g. Basil the Great, feel it their duty to take the monasteries under their special supervision and care. Under such direction, besides serving their own special purpose, they became extremely important and beneficial as places of refuge for the oppressed and persecuted, and as benevolent institutions for the sick and the poor. Sometimes also by the introduction of theological studies as seminaries to prepare candidates for the higher ecclesiastical offices. Other prelates, however, preferred to use their monks as a trusty horde for the accomplishment of their own ambitious party ends. The monks were always reckoned among laymen, but were distinguished from the Seculares as Religiosi or Conversi.

§ 44.1. The Biography of St. Anthony.―According to the Vita s. Antonii ascribed to Athanasius, Anthony was sprung from a wealthy Coptic family of the country town of Coma in Upper Egypt, and was born in A.D. 251. At the age of eighteen he lost his parents, and, being powerfully affected by hearing the story of the rich young ruler in the gospel read in church, he gave away all his goods to the poor and withdrew into the desert (A.D. 285). Amid terrible inward struggles, which took the form of daily conflicts with demons, who sprang upon him from the sides of his cave in the shape of all sort of beasts and strange creatures, he spent a long time in a horrible tomb, then twenty years in the crumbling ruins of a castle, and finally he chose as his constant abode a barren mountain, afterwards called Anthony’s Mount, where a well and some date palms afforded him the absolutely indispensable support. His clothing, a sheep’s skin and a hairy cloak, was on his body day and night, nor did he ever wash himself. The fame of his holiness attracted a multitude of like-minded ascetics who settled in his neighbourhood and put themselves under his spiritual direction. But also men of the world of all ranks made pilgrimages to him, seeking and finding comfort. Even Constantine and his sons testified in correspondence with him their veneration, and he answered “like a Christian Diogenes to the Christian Alexander.” Pointing to Christ as the only miracle worker, he healed by his prayers bodily maladies and by his conversations afflictions of the soul. Amid the distress of the persecution of Maximian in A.D. 311 he went to Alexandria, but found not the martyrdom which he courted. Again, in A.D. 351, during the bitter Arian controversy (§ 50), he appeared suddenly in the great capital, this time gazed at by Christians and pagans as a divine wonder, and converting crowds of the heathen. In his last days he resigned the further direction of the society of hermits gathered about him to his disciple Pachomius, himself withdrawing along with two companions into an unknown solitude, where he, bequeathing to the author his sheepskin, died in A.D. 356, in his 105th year, after exacting a promise that no one should know the place of his burial.―Until the appearance of this book, which was very soon translated into Latin by a certain Evagrius, no single writer, neither Lactantius, nor Eusebius, nor even Athanasius in any of his other undoubtedly genuine writings, mentions the name of this patriarchal monk afterwards so highly esteemed, and all later writers draw only from this one source. Weingarten has now not only proved that this Vita s. Ant. is not a biography in the proper sense, but a romance with a purpose which was intended “to represent the ideal of a monkish life dovetailed into the ecclesiastical system and raised notwithstanding all popular and vital elements into a spiritual atmosphere,” but has also disproved the Athanasian authorship of the book, without, however, seeking to deny the historical existence of St. Anthony and his importance in the establishment of monasticism, as this is already vouched for by the fact that even in the 4th century in the days of Rufinus pilgrimages were made to Mons Antonii.―The most important witness for the Athanasian authorship is Gregory Nazianzen, who begins his panegyric on Athanasius delivered in Constantinople only a few years after that father’s death, which occurred in A.D. 373, with the wish that he could describe brilliantly the life of the highly revered man, as he himself had portrayed the ideal of monasticism in the person of St. Anthony. But, on the other hand, Jerome in his Vita Pauli and Rufinus in his Hist. eremit. seem not yet to have known the author of the book, and the former, first in his De scriptoribus ecclst., written twenty years later, knows that Athanasius was the author. Internal reasons, too, seem with no small weight to tell against the authenticity of the book, the biographical contents of which are largely intermixed with fabulous and legendary elements.

§ 44.2. The Origin of Christian Monasticism.―From the fact that not only Lactantius, but also Eusebius, whose history reaches down to A.D. 324, have nothing to say of a monasticism already developed or then first in process of development, it may perhaps be concluded that although in a general way such an institution was already in existence, it had not yet become known beyond the bounds of the Thebaid where it originated. But from the fact that Eusebius, who died in A.D. 340, in his Vita Constantini reaching down to A.D. 337, never makes any mention of monasticism, we cannot with like probability infer a continuance of such ignorance down to the above-mentioned year, but must attribute it to the limited range of the book in question. In his commentary on Ps. lxviii. 7 and lxxxiv. 4 he distinctly speaks of a Christian monasticism. The fugitive Athanasius, too, so early as A.D. 356 betakes himself to the monks of the Thebaid, and stays for a year with them (§ 50, 2, 4), which presupposes a certain measure of organization and celebrity on the part of the community of that region. In his Hist. Arianorum ad monachos, written about A.D. 360, he declares that already monasticism had spread through all the τόποι or districts of Egypt. Of a monasticism outside of Egypt, however, even this writing still knows nothing. We shall not, therefore, greatly err if we assume that the latter years of Constantine’s reign are to be taken as the period of the essential origin of Egyptian monasticism; though from this it is not to be concluded that the first isolated beginnings of it, which had not yet won any special recognition, are not to be assigned to a very much earlier period. Even the Old and New Testaments, in the persons of Elijah, John the Baptist, and our Lord Himself, tell of temporary withdrawals, from religious and ascetical motives, into the wilderness. But even the life-long professional anchoretism and cœnobitism had their precursors in the Indian gymnosophists, in the East-Asiatic Buddhism and the Egyptian Serapis worship, and to a certain extent also in the Essenism of Palestine (§ 8, 4). From the place of its origin and the character of its development, however, Christian monasticism can have been influenced only by the Egyptian Serapis worship, and that in a very general sort of way. That this actually was the case, Weingarten especially has sought to prove from various analogies based upon the learned researches of French Academicians.