Volume 1 — From The Month. CIVILIZATION IN THE FIFTH CENTURY.

The name of Ozanam was already celebrated in the world of letters, and he had published some portions of his historical course, when he died, in the midst of his unfinished labors. His early death is a fresh proof of the truth of the old adage, Ars longa, vita brevis, and the interest of his short autobiography is intense. He tells us of himself: "In the midst of an age of scepticism God gave me the blessing of having a Christian father and a religious mother; and he gave me for my first instructress a sister full of intelligence, and devout, like the angels whom she has gone to join. But, in the course of time, the rumors of an infidel world reached even to me, and I knew all the horror of those doubts which weigh down the heart during the day, and which return at night upon the pillow moistened with tears. The uncertainty of my eternal destiny left me no repose. I clung with despair to the sacred dogmas, and I thought I felt them give way in my grasp. It was then that I was saved by the teaching of a priest well versed in philosophy. He arranged and cleared up my ideas. I believed from that time with a firm faith, and, penetrated with the sense of so rare a blessing, I vowed to God that I would devote my life to the service of that truth which had given me peace. Twenty years have passed away since that time. Providence has done everything to snatch me from business and to fix me in intellectual labors. The combination of circumstances has led me to study chiefly religion, law, and letters. I have visited the places which could afford me information. The historian Gibbon, as he wandered on the capitol, beheld issuing from the gates of the basilica of Ara Coeli a long procession of Franciscans, who marked with their sandals the pavement trodden by so many triumphs. It was then that, inspired by indignation, he formed the design of avenging antiquity thus outraged by Christian barbarism, and he conceived the plan of a History of the Fall of the Roman Empire. I too have seen the monks of Ara Coeli tread the ancient pavement of Jupiter Capitolinus, and I rejoiced at it, as the victory of love over strength; and I resolved to write the history of progress in those ages where philosophy finds only decadence; the history of civilization in barbarous times, the history of thought escaping the shipwreck of letters, forti tegente brachio" (Pref., pp. 2, 5.)

The professor relates himself, with all the vigor of his intellect, the great and glorious plan of history which was the object of his life, in a letter dated Jan. 25, 1848: "This will be the literary history of barbarous times, the history of letters, and consequently {776} of civilization, from the Latin decadence, and the first beginning of Christian genius, to the end of the thirteenth century. I shall make it the subject of my lectures during ten years, if it is necessary, and if God prolongs my life. The subject would be admirable, for it would consist in making known this long and laborious education which the Church bestowed on modern nations." He then marks the salient points of his picture—the intellectual state of the world at the commencement of Christianity—the monde barbare and its irruption into civilized society, and met by the labors of Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Ven. Bede, and St. Boniface, who carried the torch of learning from one country to another, and handed it down to Charlemagne. Then follow the crusades, and then the three glorious centuries of the middle ages, when St. Anselm, St. Bernard, Peter Lombard, Albert the Great, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure achieved for the world of intellect all that the Church and state acquired from Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III. and IV., Frederic II., St. Louis, and Alfonso X. He gives a résumé of the events which influenced modern history, and ends by saying, "My labors would be completed by la Divina Commedia, the greatest monument of a period, of which it may be called an abridgment, and of which it is the glory." "This is proposed to himself by a man who was near dying, a year and a half ago, and who is not yet wholly recovered. But I depend entirely on the goodness of God, in case he is pleased to restore my health and preserve to me the love for these noble studies with which he has inspired me." (Pref., pp. 3-6.)

Such was the object and occupation of his life from the age of eighteen, when he was an obscure student, to the time when he pronounced, as professor, the lectures which contained the labors of twenty years. Happily for himself, he had learnt early the result of labor. When he was twenty years of age, he wrote, "We exist on earth only to accomplish the will of God. This will is fulfilled day by day; and he who dies, leaving his task unfinished, is, in the sight of the divine maker, as far advanced as he who has had time to bring his to completion."

It was at Pisa, April 23, 1853, that M. Ozanam wrote a prayer so solemn, as well as so touching, that his friend, Father Ampère, seems to hesitate whether it ought to be laid before the public. His hesitation was conquered by the desire of making what is so excellent known, and he publishes the soliloquy of the dying man:

"I have said, 'In the midst of my days I shall go down to the gates of death,' etc. (Canticle Ezek.)

"This day is completed my fortieth year: more than half the ordinary span of life. I am, however, dangerously ill. Must I, then, quit all these possessions which thou thyself hast given me, my God? Wilt thou not, O Lord, accept a part of the sacrifice? Which of my ill-regulated affections shall I offer up to thee? Wilt not thou accept the holocaust of my literary self-love, my academical ambition, my prospects for study, in which, perhaps, there is mingled more pride than zeal for truth? If I sold the half of my books and gave the price of them to the poor, and if I restricted myself to fulfilling the duties of my office, and consecrated the rest of my life to visiting the poor and instructing apprentices and soldiers, Lord, would this be a sufficient satisfaction, and wouldst thou leave me the happiness of living to old age with my wife, and completing the education of my child? Perhaps, O my God, this is not thy will. Thou wilt not accept these selfish offerings. Thou rejectest my holocaust and my sacrifices. It is myself whom thou requirest. It is written in the commencement of the book that I must do thy will, and I have said, O Lord, I come."

It is with a solemn interest that we turn to the fragments of that work to which Ozanam devoted his life and {777} energies, and we find it to be the history of modern Europe. He himself lays down the three elements of history. "First, chronology, which preserves the general succession of events; then legend, which gives them life and color; and then philosophy, which fills them, as it were, with soul and intelligence."

In the childhood of the world, when the desire of knowledge was fresh and strong, all pagan histories began with the siege of Troy, and all Christian histories from Adam and Eve. Authors gained fame by chronicles of all past events, because it satisfied the natural curiosity of man to know the antecedents of his country or race. As time went on, history became the expression of popular feelings; and what took place generally may be inferred from what we know of our own country. The British monk, Geoffrey of Monmouth, wrote of Arthur, the champion of the faith and the model of chivalry; and the Venerable Bede wrote of the saints among his own Saxon countrymen; then came, with the evils of the reformation, a reverence for what was ancient, and Stow wrote of Catholic England with a fidelity which ranked him among the benefactors of his country. But then also egotism began. Each must think for himself, and appropriate the results of former labors; each must analyze, or generalize, or criticise; and perhaps it is true that the original writer is he who gives to the world his own view of things, and not the things themselves. If he is unselfish and loves truth for itself, he is a poet; if he subjects truth to his own views, he writes of history, but he does not write history; facts become subservient to theories, and he mentions only a few, as necessary illustrations of his own system. The reader yawns over the succession of kings and events, and chooses for his guide the infidel Hume, the philanthropic Mackintosh, or the Hanoverian Macaulay. The fashion of the present day is the idolization of nature. This has made art pre-Raphaelite, and poetry euphuistic. History, too, is perhaps becoming a laborious restoration of the past. With a taste for detail which is truly Gothic, the popular historian must reproduce his characters with their own features, costume, and entourage, and the long forgotten personages, as if restored to life by the genius of Sir Walter Scott, must walk about the stage in mediaeval garb. History has gone through nearly the same phases on the continent until the period of the reformation. Then in Catholic countries—as France, Spain, and Italy—arose a more reasoning but a grave and instructive school of history, which preserved past events as a deposit of the ages of faith; and latterly, since excitement is become necessary to all, and the speculations of German literature have taught almost all to think, the French and German historians have adopted the philosophy of history. The German school takes a naked problem and proves it by a series of abstractions. We read Schlegel and Guizot, and we find, instead of facts or dates or persons, a sort of allegorical personification of civilization, liberty, progress, etc. This is rather declamation than narration, and those among the learned who value antiquity have found the art of realizing not the externals but the spirit of the past. Thus when Ozanam, as the professor of foreign literature at Paris, writes of the middle ages, the persons whom he names are, for the moment, living, not petrified, as in the stereoscope, but thinking, speaking, and acting, as if the writer could open a bright glimpse into the eternal world, where St. Denys, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas still contemplate the author and giver of all they knew. And when he speaks of the succession of events, it seems as if we passed from the midst of a crowded procession, jostling along the dusty highway, to an eminence from which we see the points of its departure and arrival, the distinguished persons, the great objects, and the direction of the march, and that we {778} not only see but understand and sympathize with the spirit of the undertaking. The thought is from above, but it becomes our own. For he not only classifies and generalizes, but he christianizes his glimpses into history. His pictures are indeed only illustrative of his principles; but when he introduces a person or a fact, he speaks of them with such intimacy of knowledge that it creates a keen curiosity as well as a consciousness of ignorance in the reader. But the reader of Ozanam must be already a historian before he can appreciate the benefit of having his knowledge classified and animated by a living principle, as well as vivified and rendered distinct, as the objects in a dull landscape by a beam of sunshine.

The mission of Ozanam seems to be the destruction of those errors as to the value of the knowledge possessed in the middle ages, which have existed since the renaissance.

It was natural that when the calamities of Europe were so far past as to permit the development of the intellectual faculties, men should be elated by their new powers, and undervalue the painful labors of men interrupted by violence and crime. Maitland, by the evidence of his own reading, saw the injustice of this, and said wittily, that "by the dark ages were meant the ages about which we are in the dark." But he could see only the outward face of mediaeval knowledge, and missed its vivifying spirit—the faith of the Church. Ozanam had the gift of faith, and traces with a firm hand the progress of human intellect, often concealed and limited, but always advancing, and often breaking out in power and glory when some sainted pope or doctor of the Church explained the principles of religion and philosophy.

But it would be presumptuous to anticipate Ozanam himself, whose own words as well as his very life itself have given a résumé of his great object. It is at the conclusion of a lecture that he thus addresses the students:

"It is not my intention to follow out into its minor details the literary history of the fifth century. I only seek in it that light which will clear up the obscurity of the following ages. Travellers tell us of rivers which flow underneath rocks, and which reappear at a distance from the place where they were lost to the view. I trace up the stream of these traditions above the point where it seems to be lost, and I shall endeavor to descend with the stream into the abyss, in order to assure myself that I really behold the same waters at their outlet. Historians have opened a chasm between antiquity and barbarism. I have attempted to replace the connections which Providence has never suffered to fail in time any more than in space, etc. I should not brave the difficulties of such a study, gentlemen, if I were not supported, nay, urged onwards, by you. I call to witness these walls, that if ever, at rare intervals, I have been visited by inspiration, it was within their circuit; whether they have given back some of the glorious echoes with which they have formerly rung, or whether I have felt myself carried away by your ardent sympathies. Perhaps my design is rash; but you must share the responsibility. You will make up the deficiency of my strength. I shall grow old and gray-haired in the labor, if God permits; but the coldness of age shall not gain upon me so far as that I shall not be able to return, as this day, in order to renew the young vigor of my heart in the warmth of your youthful days."

It is in his lecture on pagan empires that Ozanam lays down the principle on which his views of mediaeval history are based: "Each epoch has a ruin and a conquest—a decadence and a renaissance." The greatest epoch of the world's history is that when all that was given to man at his creation was exchanged for a better nature at his redemption. This truth of destruction and regeneration is repeated over and over again through all created things—the seed must die before the {779} new grain can live. As each individual must be changed from the excellence of what he is still by nature to a heavenly model, so nations must be changed, and institutions perish and revive, and the great republic of letters, founded before the flood and perfected in Greece and Rome, must die and be regenerated in the Christian Church. The first decadence is that of pagan Rome.

It is impossible to represent by quotations the grand but terrible picture which Ozanam draws of paganism, in its glory, its worldly splendor, and its spiritual darkness. He does full justice to the excellence of every art and science which the heathens attained; but he shows that while the court of Augustus was the model of refinement and civilization, the altars were smoking with incense to devils, who were the personifications of every vice, and the rites of the temples were incantations and abominations. An audience of Christian students could not bear the too revolting details.

His object was the same as that of the great author of "Callista"—to destroy the prestige which still invests all that is classical. Rome was in truth a majestic empire, and even St. Jerome trembled at its fall: "Elle est captive la cité qui mit en captivité le monde."

St. Augustin was not a Roman, and was less overpowered by the terror of its fall. In the midst of the outcries which accused Christianity as the cause of the ruin which involved the world by the evident vengeance of heaven, the saint wrote his "City of God," and developed from the creation of the world to the times in which he lived the great Christian law of progress. A new empire—that of conscience—was to rule all nations. In this new empire strength and courage were of no avail, and women were as powerful as men in converting the world. Clotilde converted the heathen Franks, and Theodolind the Arian Lombards. The holy bishop St. Patrick converted in his lifetime the whole Irish nation; and the holy monk St. Benedict founded in the desert of Cassino the monastic armies of the Church; while St. Gregory, from his bed of sickness, headed the battle of civilization against barbarism. The victory was complete, and every converted country sent forth its missionaries to form Christian colonies.

Thus fell the power of Rome, but not her influence, for the great influence of paganism was the excellence of its literature. Though the Augustan writers were no more, yet Ammianus Marcellinus wrote history with the spirit of a soldier, and Vegetius wrote the precepts of the art of conquering. Symmachus was thought to rival Pliny in his letters; and, at the same time, Claudian, the last and not the least of Latin poets, succeeded Lucan in those historical epics so popular at Rome. He celebrated the war of Gildo and the victories of Stilicho over the Goths in verses equal to the "Pharsalia;" and his invectives against Eutropius and Rufinus, in defense of Stilicho his patron, are still considered masterpieces. He ignored not only Christianity but Christian writers, though St. Ambrose was at Milan and St. Augustin at Carthage, and wrote gravely of mythology in an age when few pagans believed its fables. He was an Egyptian by birth, and trained in the schools of Alexandria, and was patronized by the Christian emperor Honorius, who erected to him—as to the best of poets— a statue in Trajan's Forum. Yet Claudian had truly pagan morals; he praised the vices of his patron Stilicho, and when he was murdered he wrote a poem to his enemy; "he misused both panegyric and satire, the powers of a good understanding and a rich fancy and flowing versification, which place him, after an interval of three hundred years, among the poets of ancient Rome." But while Claudian celebrated the conflict of Rome with the barbarians, he perceived not the mighty war between Christianity and paganism; and while our Lord and his blessed Mother {780} triumphed over the idols and their temples, he wasted his poetry in their praise; and when he recited a poem in the presence of Honorius and the senate, he spoke to them as if they believed in mythology. Ozanam gives one remarkable proof of the hold over men's minds retained by paganism. When Honorius took possession of the palace of Augustus on Mount Palatine, he assembled the senate, and in the presence of all these great persons, many of whom were Christian, Claudian unrolled the parchment whereon his verses were written in letters of gold, and addressed Honorius as resembling Jupiter conquering the giants. And again, when he had the office of showing the splendors of Rome to Honorius, when he visited it for the first time (404), he spoke of the city as a pagan in the language of idolatry. And the poet Rutilius, though born in Gaul, idolized Rome. "Rome was the last divinity of the ancients. Mother of men and gods" (he calls her, as he wrote his "Itinerary to Gaul"), "the sun rises and sets in thy dominions; thou hast made one country of many nations—one city of the world. Thy year is an eternal spring; the winter dares not stay thy joy." So powerful was the influence of pagan Rome over a foreigner; and that influence may be yet better perceived in the Christian poet Sidonius Apollinaris, who, though brought up, like Ausonius, in the Gallic schools, and sound in faith, could not write hexameters without mythology. The only language of poetry was pagan; and when he wrote to St. Patient, bishop of Lyons (who fed his people in famine), he compared him to Triptolemus.

The first antagonist of the Church, in her task of regenerating society, was paganism; the second, barbarism. Charlemagne constructed, on the ruins of the Roman empire, an empire of enlightened Christianity; but another decadence followed. The Normans sacked monasteries, and burned the Holy Scriptures, together with Aristotle and Virgil. The Huns destroyed the very grass of the fields. The Lombards seemed to be sent for the destruction of all that was left of human kind. Ozanam says, "Providence loves to surprise." The monks who escaped the Norman pirates preached to them amidst the ashes of their monasteries, and the Normans became Christians. Then arose the basilicas of Palermo and Monreale in Sicily, and the churches of Italy, Normandy, and England. St. Adalbert converted the Huns, and they defended Christendom against the vices of Byzantium and the invasions of Mohammedans. On the ruins of the Roman empire arose the kingdoms of France, Germany, and Italy. Of this new empire, feudality and chivalry were the opposite elements. Feudality was the principle of division, chivalry that of fraternity; and these remodelled society.

The calamities attending this final disruption of the empire interrupted study, and learning was confined to the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, from whence missionaries carried not only religion but learning into the countries where they were almost extinguished by the Goths. Germany had three great monasteries—Nouvelle Corbie, Fulda, and St. Gall. At this last monastery was preserved the classic literature. Monks studied grammar and wrote AEneids. The royal Hedwige introduced the study of Greek at St. Gull; and Ozanam relates it in one of those graphic incidents which are worth volumes. A new period began with Gregory VII. When he said, "Lord, I have loved justice, and hated iniquity; wherefore I die in exile," a bishop replied, "You cannot die in exile, because God has given you the earth for your jurisdiction, and the nations for your inheritance." Then followed the crusades, that wonderful and providential means by which the civilization of the East was brought into the service of the Western Church. They destroyed feudalism; for all who fought gained glory, whether serf or noble. {781} Chivalric poetry arose. Germany had its Niebelungen, Spain its Cid. Then arose the arts around Giotto and the tomb of St. Francis. Christian architecture was not Roman. The small temples and large amphitheatres, etc., were replaced by large churches, public halls, schools and hospitals, a small town round a large cathedral. There were three capitals: Rome, the seat of the Papacy; Aix-la-Chapelle, the seat of empire; and Paris, of the schools.

How paganism perished is perhaps one of the most useful lectures in the course, as it bears upon the doubts which are still felt by some as to the use of pagan books in Christian education. Ozanam shows that the monks preserved by transcribing the works of Seneca and Cicero, and that St. Augustin brought Plato and Aristotle into Christian schools; that St. Augustin, St. Jerome, and St. Basil preserved the heathen poets till Christian poets had learnt their art; nay, how the Church protected the Gallic bards and German scalds, and taught them to sing the praises of God. St. Gregory preserved the Saxon temples, and even adapted their rites and festivals to be used in Christian worship, that what had been perverted to the service of devils might be restored to God.

The contrast—the abyss—between the middle ages and the renaissance has been exaggerated. There was literary paganism in the ages of faith. The troubadours sang of mythology, and the language of idolatry was purified by its application to the praises of the martyrs, as is shown in the poems of St. Paulinus. When the Church emerged from persecution, the Roman schools became Christian; and when the Lombards threatened to plunge Christendom in darkness, there were two lamps still burning in the night—episcopal and monastic teaching; and in these, by degrees, the pagan books and pagan literature were replaced by Christian works, in which, however, there were still abundant traces of their pagan masters.

It is in a fragment that Ozanam speaks of the way in which the valuable part of antiquity was preserved. "When winter begins, it seems as if vegetation would perish. The wind sweeps away the flowers and leaves; but the seeds remain. The providence of God watches over them. They are defended by a husk against the cold, and have wings which bear them to congenial places, where they spring again. So, when the ages of barbarism came, the winter of human nature, it seems as if poetry and all the vegetation of thought would perish; but it was preserved in the dry questions of the schools through three or four centuries; and when the time and place came, the man of genius was raised up, and in his hands they grew again. Such was St. Thomas of Aquin, the champion of dogmatism; and St. Bonaventure, of mysticism; and Christendom had its own philosophy." Perhaps we do not realize sufficiently the despair which was the lot of reflecting heathens. They sought the aid of philosophy to console them "for hopeless deterioration from a golden to an iron age; but philosophy could only teach that the world was perishing, and that the pride of man must preserve him from erring and perishing with its possessions. The heathens knew not the idea of progress; but the gospel teaches and commands human perfectibility, and says to each, Be ye perfect; and to all, Let the Church grow into the fulness of Christ." It was faith, hope, and charity which produced progress.

And, first, faith set free the human mind from the ignorance of God. Idolatry was not only that men gave to devils the worship which they owed to God; it was the love of what is mortal and perishable, instead of what is spiritual and eternal; it sunk mankind into materialism and sensuality. "Painters and sculptors represented only corporeal beauty: there was no expression in the figures of Phidias or Parrhasius." Ozanam shows how Christian art used what is material {782} only as symbolism, and expressed by form and color what is invisible and celestial; while poetry was rescued from degradation, and became what it really is, the noblest aspiration after truth of which man in his present state is capable. Philosophy was freed from the trammels of false systems, and speculated securely and deeply on the divine and human nature. "Origen formed in the Catechetical schools of Alexandria the science of theology," and in "the golden age of this new science St. Jerome taught exegesis, St. Augustin dogmatic, and St. Ambrose moral theology. St. Anselm was tormented by the desire of finding a short proof that God exists, and with him began metaphysics." These were the rich treasures which lay concealed in the scholastic teaching of the middle ages.

As theology and Christian philosophy had sprung from faith, so hope extended knowledge, because men labored with fresh vigor in improving science. "The course of ages offers no grander spectacle than that of man taking possession of nature by knowledge." In the seventh century the Byzantine monks pierced the steppes of Central Asia, and passed the wall of China; monks took the message of the Pope to the Khan before Marco Polo visited the East; and monks, in the eighth century, visited Iceland and even America. It was the calculations of the middle ages which emboldened Columbus to discover a new world and new creation; and when Magellan sailed round the globe, "man was master of his abode." He goes on: "When man had conquered the earth, he could not rest; Copernicus burst through the false heavens of Ptolemy; the telescope discovered the secrets of the stars, and calculation numbered their laws and orbits in the abyss of heaven. Woe be to those who are led away by such a sight from God! The stars told his glory to David, and so they did also to Kepler and to Newton."

It was by the third and greatest of the theological virtues, charity, that the moral as well as the intellectual nature of man was regenerated, though the change was wrought, perhaps, by slower degrees. Slavery of the most revolting kind—that slavery which ignores the soul and the reason, as well as the social rights of the slave, was replaced by liberty, oppression and injustice by laws which are still based upon the letter of the Roman laws; but administered with the equity of the Christian code. Cruelty and indifference to human life, as shown in the national passion for gladiatorial games, was replaced by gentleness and all good works; and the luxury of palaces, baths, etc., was replaced by gorgeous churches and hospitals. Education, which had been restricted to the few, was thrown open to all by free schools and by Christian preaching. Above all, the daughters of Eve, who were degraded below the condition of the very slaves, were raised to be helps-meet for Christians, either by the sacrament of marriage or by the holiness of virginity.

In speaking of the reconstruction of intellectual action in the civilization of Western Christendom, Ozanam has a grand and striking thought, that the first step to this was uniformity of language. The confusion of tongues which began at Babel was silenced throughout the world by the universal use of the Latin language, which was adopted by the Church; and that language, which was formed to express all the passions and vices, as well as the strength and intelligence of man, conveyed, by the words of St. Gelasius and St. Gregory, the most sublime devotion; by those of St. Jerome, the deep senses of the Holy Scriptures; and when the Christian intellect was free to develop itself, there arose that Christian eloquence in preaching the gospel which influenced, for the first time, all ranks and all dispositions of men.

The present edition of the author's works is conducted by friends who understood and valued his object, and {783} who were able to fill up, without blemishing, the unfinished parts of his lectures. Nothing can be done more faithfully, or in better taste; but there are many blanks too wide to be filled even by such skilful hands. Ozanam says himself, that the two poles of his work are the "Essays on the Germans before Christianity," and that on Dante. These form the third and fourth volumes. In the fifth volume is his "Essay on the Franciscan Poets;" and that on Dante closes the series. We have confined ourselves to the subject-matter of the first and second volumes, which contain the lectures on the civilization of the fifth century, and which suffice to show the lofty Christian philosophy with which Ozanam beholds the course of modern history. More than this it would be difficult to show. The lectures themselves are fragments; ideas snatched from the rapid flow of his eloquence, and that eloquence itself could feebly express the thoughts which visited his mind, and the impressions of glory which left no trace but sensation. There is no chronology, no succession. He fixes his eyes on the fifth century—he penetrates its mysteries, and the secret influences which it sends forth to after times. He speaks of what he sees; and we learn that the world of Christendom has had its decadence and renaissance, yet that progress continues. The crimes of the middle ages conceal that progress, and so do the troubles of the present time. O passi graviora, dabit Deus hic quoque finem.