Chapter XXVII (2)

The number, riches, and influence of these ecclesiastical establishments were enormous. At the end of the thirteenth century, there were six hundred monasteries and convents in England, two thousand three hundred and thirty-seven in France, and fifteen hundred in the remaining countries of Europe. Many of these supported communities of more than a thousand monks; that of the great Abbey of Bangor--the largest in Great Britain--numbered three thousand. Towns, villages, and immense tracts of arable soil, pasture, and forest were included in their possessions. Multitudes of tenants and vassals tilled these lands, the lion’s share of whose produce found its way into the storehouses and granaries of the prosperous Fathers. The religious duties of the latter did not hinder them from profiting by the advantages of domestic and foreign trade. They bought and sold almost every description of merchandise. The usurious rates of interest which they obtained from necessitous borrowers extorted the admiration of the shrewd and experienced Hebrew broker. They managed tanneries, dealt extensively in cloth and leather, and imported many luxuries from the Orient. The wool market of England was absolutely controlled by them. The popular clamor aroused by this monopoly, which dispossessed and ruined tenants by turning tillable land into pasture and depriving large numbers of industrious people of the means of livelihood, contributed, in no small degree, to the suppression of the English monasteries. An inexhaustible mine of wealth was made available by traffic in relics and the entertainment and fleecing of pilgrims. The methods of the Holy See in the sale of sacred objects of more than doubtful authenticity were improved upon by the cunning and audacity of monkish charlatans. Immense quantities of bones were imported from Italy and disposed of to the devout at fabulous prices. Most of these sacred treasures were taken from the catacombs, where was deposited a practically unlimited supply of Pagan and barbarian skeletons, whose original owners never dreamed of the adoration they were destined one day to receive on the banks of the Thames, the Seine, the Rhine, and the Danube. When a church was to be constructed, no difficulty was ever experienced in procuring the relics of the saint to which it was dedicated, and the mouldering remains of some priest of Jupiter or Venus were probably not infrequently laid, with every token of reverence, under the altar of a magnificent cathedral, whose idolatrous ceremonies would have presented many striking points of resemblance with heathen rites to the frequenters of the ancient temples. Other sacred mementos of equal virtue often presented a singular mixture of absurdity and blasphemy. The reproductions of the crown of thorns and the nails of the Crucifixion were infinite in number. The list included the coals that roasted St. Lawrence, the cloth used at the Lord’s Supper, a finger of the Holy Ghost, and some of the milk of the Mother of God. The tail of Balaam’s ass was for a century one of the most precious treasures of St. John Lateran at Rome. When the zeal of the pious flagged, the genius of the monks resorted to extraordinary means to stimulate this unprofitable apathy. The sympathies and fanaticism of the superstitious were appealed to by processional images which could weep and bleed. Letters were exhibited purporting to have been penned by the divine hands of the Almighty and the Saviour. The composition and style of these productions, it may be remarked, indicate an extraordinary degree of illiteracy in the exalted personages to whom their execution was profanely attributed. Many relics were supposed to possess marvellous healing virtues, an opinion diligently propagated by those whose interest it was to have it generally entertained. Pilgrims crowded in enormous numbers to these shrines, whose reputation promised speedy and certain relief from every physical infirmity. As few came empty handed, the contents of a single reliquary were often a more important source of revenue than all the royal demesnes of a kingdom. In the Middle Ages the Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury was by far the richest in Christendom. It had for three hundred years received the tribute of pilgrims from every land. Kings had placed crowns and priceless jewels upon its altar. The great tomb of the saint was entirely covered with plates of gold, but the precious metal was hardly visible on account of the profusion of gems with which it was incrusted. The value of the gold and silver obtained by its confiscation under Henry VIII. was nearly one million pounds sterling, and this estimate did not include the precious stones, of which no appraisement was made. Much of this wealth had been accumulated by the thrifty monks through the sale of water alleged to contain a portion of the blood of St. Thomas shed at the time of his martyrdom, whose supply, by the miraculous power of multiplication enjoyed by certain relics, was never exhausted, and which, aided by implicit faith and religious enthusiasm, may really have been instrumental in temporarily relieving diseases induced by disordered functions of the nervous system.

The power of the rulers of these populous communities was very extensive. In most instances the abbot enjoyed not a few of the highest privileges of the nobility. In addition to his spiritual functions, he exercised the duties of a civil and criminal magistrate, and in extreme cases could inflict the penalty of death. He was expected to act as sponsor to children of royal lineage. While bound to observe the rules of his order, his interpretation of those rules was final and his decision absolute. In England, if entitled to wear the mitre, he sat in the Upper House of Parliament by the side of the bishops. Usually he was a veritable epicurean, more fond of field sports than of his breviary, a jovial companion, a connoisseur of wines, an adorer of women. His table, his attire, and his habits exhibited all the fastidiousness of a sybarite. Numerous dishes, prepared by skilful cooks, tempted his pampered tastes. The wines of his cellar were the choicest and most expensive in the market. His garments were sometimes of party-colored and embroidered silk, sometimes of scarlet cloth lined with white satin. His boots, of the softest leather, fitted his burly limbs without a wrinkle. Jewels sparkled upon his snowy fingers. The retainers of his household were clad in gaudy liveries. He maintained jesters and buffoons. To the noble amusement of hawking he was so devoted, and his falcons were so excellent, that for these reasons he often incurred the envy of his aristocratic companions and the severe censure of his more rigid ecclesiastical superiors. Troops of strolling players always found a welcome and munificent largess for their exhibitions in the great hall of the abbey. In addition to the nuns, of whom he was the especial patron, high-born ladies were delighted to receive his amorous compliments and to partake of his dangerous but splendid hospitality.

The inmates of the religious houses entertained far closer relations with the great body of the population than did the secular clergy. The original simplicity of their lives, the apparent fervor of their devotion, acquired for them a peculiar sanctity which their subsequent irregularities could never entirely abrogate. Unlike the secular priesthood, whose traditions were of an aristocratic tendency, their necessities and their ministrations brought them in intimate contact with the lower orders of the people, who repaid their services with fulsome idolatry. Of the two divisions of the regular clergy, the friars, who only differed from the monks in that they subsisted on alms, enjoyed the greater consideration. Their blessing was earnestly solicited by the traveller on the highway. Ladies wore their rope girdles in Lent, partly by way of penance, partly as amulets of sovereign virtue against the machinations of evil spirits. The spurious relics which they hawked about were supposed to be endowed with more miraculous qualities than those retailed by the bishop in the cathedral. Their eloquence carried with its pathetic appeals and homely illustrations a conviction denied to the labored efforts of the most accomplished and popular preacher.

It was not within the power of human nature to long withstand the allurements which such opportunities for luxurious indulgence afforded. Within less than half a century from their foundation, the mendicant friars of St. Francis could boast of wealth equal to that of any of the monastic orders. Their common appellation Cordelier, derived from their hempen girdle, became a synonym of lubricity and drunkenness. Both monks and friars enticed wives from their husbands, and not infrequently reduced the latter to beggary. They administered narcotics and aphrodisiacs to nuns, and pointed to their contortions and incoherent ravings as the effects of divine inspiration. It was an ordinary occurrence for young girls to don male attire and take up their abode in a monastery; and a memorial of the time of Henry VII. of England is extant in which the royal protection is solicited by the farmers and gentry of Carnarvonshire against the dissolute practices of the regular clergy. The profanity of the monks during the celebration of the mass, and their offensive language in the confessional, sometimes resulted in temporary suspension from those sacerdotal functions. Gaming was a common amusement in which even abbesses had been known to indulge. Whenever an abbot died the treasury was plundered, and its contents distributed among the brethren fortunate enough to be present.

These excesses were encouraged by the insignificant penances imposed for their commission. Some escaped with a reprimand, especially when the prior was known to be equally guilty. Among the English clergy, mortal sin could be condoned for the trifling sum of six shillings and eight pence. Bearing a crucifix through the aisles of the church and a fine of three shillings and four pence entitled a delinquent to absolution for incest. Fornication was expiated by an offering of candles and the repetition of a few Paters and Aves. As in the case of the laity, a regular schedule existed, accurately defining the punishments to be inflicted for every degree of ecclesiastical misconduct.

The ordinary criminal courts of judicature, through the operation of privileges extorted from stupid and fanatical sovereigns by the astuteness of designing churchmen and the prejudices of a superstitious age, had no authority over a clerk until he had been condemned by a religious tribunal. The course of prosecution, in which the sympathies of the judges were enlisted on the side of the culprit, through the bond of a common profession, and often by reason of participation in similar offences, was always slow and sometimes interminable. By these delays, and the purposely complicated process of the spiritual courts, the civil statutes were practically nullified. The mutual antagonism of the lay and clerical professions indirectly encouraged the most revolting crimes. As the learning of Europe was monopolized by the clergy, every one who was able to read was deemed a “clerk,” and could demand the interference and protection of the ecclesiastical authorities in case of arrest. The tonsure was also regarded as prima-facie evidence of being in orders, and of equal efficacy in obtaining immunity, as many of the priesthood were ignorant of letters. By taking advantage of these privileges, so dangerous to the welfare of society, desperate malefactors continually escaped the consequences of their deeds; and the criminal, whose scanty learning or shaven crown suggested a connection with the all-powerful hierarchy, was demanded in vain by the official avengers of the outraged laws. The benefit of clergy was carried to such extremes in England that Parliament found it necessary on one occasion to proceed by bill of attainder against the Bishop of Rochester’s cook, who, wearing the tonsure and assisted by the influence of his master, had defied the criminal magistracy and tribunals of the realm. The rendition of a trifling service, the payment of a sum of money proportioned to the means of the applicant, and which was often the proceeds of the crime for which absolution was requested, relieved the highwayman and the murderer from all apprehension of the penalties of secular justice.

Thus had the monastic orders fatally degenerated from the simplicity and purity of their original institution. In common with the other branches of the ecclesiastical profession, they had become infected with every vice and steeped in every sin. They were especially noted for their propensity to the most disgraceful offences in the calendar of human infirmities,--to drunkenness, fornication, rape, and incest. Men who habitually defied the canons of morality by indulgence in such practices must necessarily have entertained but little respect for a system which, so far from restraining, was known to secretly encourage them. As a consequence, hypocrisy prevailed everywhere among the ministers of the Church, from the Holy Father, surrounded by the beauties of his seraglio, to the mendicant friar, who repaid the services of the obsequious peasant by the plunder of his goods and the corruption of his family. The morals of the ecclesiastic were, as a rule, far worse than those of the layman. In Southern France it was a custom, which precedent had almost invested with the force of law, for a priest, after the celebration of his first mass, to invite his clerical friends to a carousal at the nearest tavern. Bishops read the service in bed. The lower clergy divided the solemn office of the Eucharist into several parts, and, demanding a fee for each, quadrupled their emoluments. A French Council, in 1317, menaced with excommunication any magistrate who should, at sound of trumpet, expose priests in public, with their weapons about their necks,--an ordinary penalty for fighting and riotous conduct. The policy of the Church considered the most flagrant injustice, the most atrocious crime, as venial in comparison with neglect of the outward obedience of her rules and the observance of the formalities of her ritual, such as rare attendance at mass, blaspheming of relics, withholding of tithes, eating meat in Lent, labor on holidays. In the prosecution of the Templars, the articles of accusation did not regard the charge of incontinence as important in comparison with those of atheism and idolatry, although it was notorious that more than thirteen thousand concubines were maintained at the expense of the priories of that Order in Europe.

The violation of the vow of chastity was so common that only the most outrageous indecency could excite comment, and the spiritual authorities, whom the Church had appointed to exercise a censorship over public morals, hesitated to perform their duties lest their own delinquencies might thereby be exposed. It was considered not only meritorious, but convenient, to have a clergyman for a lover, on account of the facility of concealment and the certainty of immediate absolution. The presence of the mistresses of bishops, priests, and canons insulted the wives of honest nobles and burghers at coronations and tournaments. The vicinity of abbeys and convents swarmed with the natural children of ecclesiastics. These members of priestly households were liberally provided for from revenues ostensibly collected for pious uses and the propagation of religious truth. So degraded had some of the monks become that they utilized even the House of God for the basest purposes. Guyot de Provins, a writer of the thirteenth century and himself the member of a monastic fraternity, relates that he had seen Cistercians turn church-yards into pigsties and tether asses in chapels. In addition to immoderate indulgence in the strongest of wines, the successors of Pachomius and Antony held eating contests, in which the palm was awarded to the brother possessing the greatest abdominal capacity. Among these were the Glutton Masses of England, celebrated five times a year in honor of the Virgin, when the parish church was made the scene of the voracious exploits of the priest and the clerks, who contended for this enviable distinction with an ardor that often terminated in riot. Every effort to reform these depraved communities proved futile. The abbot who attempted to correct the vices of his flock was harassed until he was glad to relinquish his unpromising task or abandon his charge. If he boldly attempted to enforce his authority, he stood an excellent chance of being poisoned. The famous Abelard narrowly escaped this fate, and the pronounced and vindictive hostility manifested by the inmates of his abbey finally compelled him to insure his safety by flight. Even the determined character of Cardinal Ximenes was forced to succumb to the obstinacy of his Franciscan brethren, whose extortions and irregular lives had excited his horror and disgust. For seven years, William, Bishop of Paderborn, employed in vain the authority vested in his high office to free the monasteries of his diocese from the scandal produced by the vices of their occupants.

Much of the corruption of the regular clergy was to be attributed to the impostors and malefactors who found shelter and safety in their ranks. The assumption of the tonsure alone was sufficient to insure immunity to the most notorious outlaw. The slave, impatient under the lash of a cruel master or apprehensive of the consequences of inexcusable faults, acquired security and freedom in the shadow of the towers of the abbey. The identity of the criminal and the fugitive, the schemes of the hypocrite and the knave, were effectually disguised by the cowl of the friar. The humane and beneficent privilege of sanctuary was abused by the reception and shelter of every class of dangerous and disreputable offenders against the public peace. Association with persons of this abandoned character could not fail to be demoralizing, even to those of the fraternity who observed their vows, and must have still further corrupted the idle and the dissolute who had already embraced the alluring and luxurious routine of conventual life.

The incapacity, arrogance, and debauchery of the clergy at length grew intolerable, even to a bigoted and priest-ridden people. The translation of the Bible by Wyclif, the teachings of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, paved the way for the exercise of private judgment and the privilege of independent thought. All over Europe a reaction took place. It was least felt in Italy, where the masses had for ages been familiar with the impostures and crimes of the Papacy. It was most marked in England, where the grievances imposed on the laity by their religious instructors had become insufferable, and the wealth of the kingdom had been absorbed by the creatures of Rome. The heresies of France for a time threatened the existence of the hierarchy, and were only suppressed by a crusade and the diabolical energy of the Inquisition. Reverence for every form of belief had been shaken by the universal prevalence of sacerdotal iniquity. In Provence and Languedoc priests were insulted by the mob and lampooned by minstrels. Their services were rejected with contempt, their gestures were mocked, their vices satirized with pitiless severity. The English populace, exasperated beyond measure by their wrongs, occasionally proceeded to acts of violence. In some towns an ecclesiastic was hardly safe on the streets. No clerk dared to commit himself or his cause to the verdict of a jury. A handful of worshippers was lost in the nave of the cathedral, where thousands once had congregated. Women went unshriven rather than trust themselves in the confessional, whose precincts, from being the abode of religious advice and consolation, had grown dangerous to the preservation of feminine honor. In 1746 a remonstrance was made to the Primate of England against the participation of women in pilgrimages, as the cities of France, Lombardy, and the Rhine were filled with courtesans, who had abused these opportunities for the exhibition of religious zeal. The authority of the ecclesiastical tribunals was openly defied, their proceedings derided, their judges insulted, their subordinate officers maltreated. In London, towards the close of the fifteenth century, it was a serious matter to attempt to serve a process of the Consistorial Court. The power for evil of this once formidable engine of persecution, which had exercised an offensive censorship over every community, had become hopelessly impaired.

Of such a character were the religious instructors of the people of Western Christendom for five hundred years. The original austerity of the monastic orders had disappeared. In no instance had it actually survived the first century dating from the institution of any ecclesiastical fraternity. With it had departed by far the greater portion of its capacity for usefulness. The daily lives of the secular priesthood presented disgusting examples of human depravity. Among the laity, the rich, at least, were secure from damnation; for by a judicious and liberal offering and the deposit of a schedule of their sins under the altar-cloth of a compassionate saint, in a few hours the sheet was found to be blank and the generous penitent, by the immediate intercession of his patron, was absolved from the consequences of his transgressions without the delay or the exposure of confession. The foundation of a religious house was often derived from the fears or the repentance of a wealthy and superstitious sinner. An immense tract of unimproved land was conveyed to a colony of monks. In the most sequestered spot, far removed from the turmoil, the vanities, and the temptations of the world, an unpretending structure, composed of wattled boughs and thatched with straw or rushes, was constructed. The surrounding forest was stocked with game. A neighboring lake or streamlet furnished a supply of fish. In many fraternities, however, such food was forbidden, for the austerity of discipline sometimes permitted nothing but a meagre diet of herbs and pulse washed down with water. The obligations of their profession as well as the necessity of sustenance required that a portion of their time should be spent in the cultivation of the soil. A number of the brethren labored in the fields while the others attended to the domestic and sacred duties enjoined by their monastic vows. In some monkish abodes the voice of praise was never silent. Relays of choristers occupied the chapel without intermission day or night. The summons to devotion were frequent. To preserve decorum, spies were appointed to report irregularities of conduct within the monastery. No monk was permitted to leave its precincts without a companion, that each might restrain the other from the indulgence in sinful thoughts and carnal recreations. In the cloister the recluse was constantly reminded of the requirements and obligations of his profession by the fervent exhortations of his superior and the enforced observance of silence, meditation, and prayer. By self-infliction of grievous penances,--scourging, fasting, wearing of shirts of haircloth or mail, immersion in water of icy coldness,--worldly temptations and sensual desires were effectually suppressed, and mind and body were devoted to the ostensible and original objects of monachal life,--the service and the glorification of God.

In time their modest and contracted habitations became too small to accommodate the increasing numbers or to satisfy the ambitious zeal of the pious brethren. The wealth derived from the assiduous cultivation of their lands, the profits of their trade, the contributions of royal visitors, and the generosity of their founders enabled them to erect buildings whose imposing proportions and exquisite ornamentation are the delight and the despair of modern architects. The church dedicated to a certain saint was founded on the day preserved by tradition as the date of his birth. A vigil was maintained, and when the first rays of the sun reddened the horizon the work was commenced. As the point where that luminary appeared was taken for the east, on account of the constantly varying position of the sun in the heavens there are but few ecclesiastical edifices constructed during the Middle Ages whose walls correspond with the four cardinal points of the compass. In the ranks of the religious brotherhoods were to be found artisans of every description, whose professional efforts were prompted and encouraged by the inspiring spirit of religious devotion. Such were the dimensions of these magnificent structures that the chapels of many abbeys--such as St. Albans, Southwell, St. Ouen, Durham, Canterbury--are now cathedral churches of some of the richest dioceses of France and England. The architectural splendor of Westminster is familiar to every traveller. The buildings included in the great Cistercian Abbey of Tinterne, which were enclosed by a wall, were distributed over thirty-four acres. The symmetry and beauty of the Gothic temples of Normandy are unimpaired and unrivalled after the revolutions of more than seven centuries. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction of some sees extended over as many as seven thousand mansi, or cottages of serfs; those who only received the tribute of two thousand were so numerous as to be comparatively insignificant.

All the possessions of the clergy were exempt from taxation. Tithes, at first limited to a tenth of the products of the soil, were, by ecclesiastical artifice and Papal rapacity, extended and made to include the entire yield of every crop, the increase of every herb, the labor of every artisan. Without taking into account the territorial area in the hands of the See of Rome at the period of the Reformation, the monastic guilds and corporations had absorbed half of the livings of Great Britain. The revenues of some religious foundations in that country were not less than fifty thousand pounds sterling, reckoning voluntary donations alone. In the thirteenth century the English clergy bore to the laity the ratio of one to four hundred in number, while their lands amounted to thirty-three per cent. of the entire real property of the kingdom. In Spain during the same period the proportion of ecclesiastics was one to seven, and fifty per cent. of the landed possessions under Christian control belonged to them. The pressing necessities of grasping and irreverent princes, who did not scruple to appropriate under various pretexts the riches of the ecclesiastical order, alone prevented the eventual exclusion of the laity of Europe from all ownership of or jurisdiction over the soil.

No religious service could be more solemn, no spectacle more awe-inspiring, than the celebration of a Church festival in one of the grand old abbey chapels in mediæval times. The edifice itself was the ideal of architectural beauty. Through the elegant designs of painted windows, the light, in iridescent hues, shone in tempered radiance over the richly sculptured tombs of prelate and crusader and the checkered pavement brilliant with its graceful patterns of tile and marble mosaic. The walls of nave and transept were hung with tapestry, embroidered sometimes with representations of scriptural events, sometimes with the figures of departed abbots or the portraits of a line of famous kings. The altar, before whose holy presence constantly burned rows of waxen tapers, glittered with ornaments bestowed by the hand of opulent piety and massive reliquaries set with priceless gems. The resounding notes of the Gregorian chant filled the air; the officiating monks in splendid vestments, the pomp of crucifix and incense, added to the impressiveness of the ceremonial and imparted to the scene a striking representation of divine worship which could hardly be paralleled in Rome itself. Truly, in its palmy days the monastery was an important adjunct to Papal power and grandeur!

From the consideration of the manifold vices and flagrant corruption with which the life of monastic institutions was tainted, it becomes a pleasure to enumerate the benefits that these establishments conferred upon humanity. First in importance is the fact that they were the depositories of learning during the Dark Ages. The requirements of the sacred profession, whose dogmas they were designed to uphold and propagate, demanded the possession of some degree of knowledge. The standard of intelligence was far higher in the monastery than in the chapter house of the cathedral or in the episcopal palace. Many of the secular clergy could neither read nor write; their exposition of the sacraments was pronounced in an incoherent jargon, and a canon who understood grammar was an object of general wonder and respect. The lewd and profane character of the discourses from the pulpit was often such that it would not be tolerated for an instant by the fastidious delicacy of a modern audience. The enjoyment of abundant leisure, the praiseworthy impulse of accumulating information which might prove of advantage, both in disseminating the truths of the Gospel and in magnifying the importance of their order, actuated a certain number of the inmates of every cloister to the transcription of books, to the study of authors, to the illumination of missals. Some wrote poems in Latin. Others, like Hrotswitha, the German nun of Gandersheim, composed dramas in imitation of the classics. These literary efforts, while often coarse in sentiment, immoral in tendency, and crude in execution, seem prodigies of learning when we recall the dense atmosphere of ignorance in which they were produced. In the abbey were preserved contemporaneous records not only of all transactions in which that institution was concerned, but also many details of affairs of national interest, which furnished in after ages invaluable data to the historian. In many convents there existed schools where novices as well as the children of the peasantry could receive rudimentary instruction. Books, among which is mentioned the Fables of Æsop, were chained to tables in the halls for the benefit of those pupils. The great impulse given to intellectual progress by Wyclif’s incomplete translation of the Bible in the fourteenth century is indicated by the ludicrous complaint of an old monkish chronicler, who lamented that “Women are now grown more versed in the New Testament than learned clerks.” Coincident with that auspicious event, the monopoly of letters, so long enjoyed and perverted by the clergy, came to an end. In cases where the interests of religion were thought to be imperilled, the monks did not hesitate to obstruct the path of knowledge. Through their influence the study of physics and of law was forbidden in the twelfth century to the students of the University of Montpellier. In contradistinction to this spirit of offensive bigotry, it must not be forgotten that the first printing-presses used in Europe were placed in monasteries.

The seclusion of monasticism encouraged to a considerable extent the love of the arts. In beauty of design and completeness of finish the efforts of the Gothic architect have never been surpassed. Bookmaking was carried to an advanced state of perfection. From unwieldy volumes with wooden leaves, bound in leaden covers, manuscripts developed into the exquisite specimens of calligraphic and decorative elegance so prized by modern collectors. Some were written in gold and silver letters on purple vellum. The illuminations--whence was derived the first inspiration of modern painting--were often the work of years. The bindings were of carved ivory or of the precious metals, not infrequently enriched with jewels. Those volumes destined for the service of the altar sometimes enclosed a reliquary and became doubly precious, as well by reason of the sacred memento they contained as on account of their costly materials and the labor expended upon them. The art of the sculptor owes much to the diligence and skill displayed by the mediæval wood-carver, whose handiwork is visible in the stalls and altar-screens of Gothic cathedrals. The embroidered vestments wrought by nuns during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are marvels of ornamentation, patience, and dexterity. Constant practice in the choir led to a considerable advance in the knowledge of poetry and music. Nor were philosophical pursuits, despite their confessed antagonism to the Church, altogether neglected. The name and acquirements of Pope Sylvester II. were to his contemporaries as well as to posterity long suggestive of a compact with the Devil and the practice of magic. Modern science, in its indiscriminate censure of monasticism, should not forget that the great natural philosophers of the Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, belonged to the orders of mendicant friars, for the one was a Franciscan and the other a Dominican.

In the monastery was dispensed not only medical aid, so far as the rudeness and ignorance of the superstitious practitioner allowed, but also unstinted and gratuitous hospitality. The conventual establishment was at once the hospital and the hotel of mediæval society. In the thinly peopled districts usually selected by its founders, no public provision was made for the relief of the sufferings of the invalid or the necessities of the traveller, and both found within its walls a generous and cordial greeting. Its sanctuary covered the trembling victim of feudal oppression with the mantle of its comfort and protection. Its towers, secure in their sacred character, passed unscathed through the wreck of dynasties and the perils of revolutionary violence. The substantial walls of donjon and barbican went down under the assaults of Norman, Saxon, Dane, and Lombard, but the abbey, defenceless save in the immunity afforded by the holy calling of its inmates, remained unchanged amidst these scenes of universal disorder and ruin, the depository of ancient learning, the refuge of the remnant of those elegant social courtesies which had survived the fall of imperial greatness, the asylum of the persecuted, the home of the arts, the preserver of civilization in a martial and unenlightened age.

While Rome was the centre of ecclesiastical and temporal power, Constantinople was the undisputed seat of the refinement and culture of Christian Europe. The transfer of the government of the Empire to the confines of Asia had not, however, destroyed the prestige which the Eternal City had obtained by her glorious achievements in arts, in arms, in literature, in politics, during so many centuries. The new capital of the Cæsars could not properly be called a Roman city. Its population, after the first fifty years following its foundation, was more Greek than Latin, but its most distinctive features were always Asiatic. The ordinary idiom of its citizens was that of Ionia and Attica. The despotism of its court, the manners of its people, bore the pronounced stamp of the Orient. Its society was cosmopolitan, and the relations it maintained through the channels of trade with remote countries constantly filled its thoroughfares with picturesque and barbaric costumes. The brutality of the West, the vices of the East, the superstitions of Africa, the cruelty of Italy, found a congenial home on the shores of the Bosphorus. The successors of Constantine claimed and exercised prerogatives wholly inconsistent with the security of the community or the principles of equity. They interposed their authority to annul the sentences of judicial tribunals. They inflicted frightful tortures without the warrant of law or precedent. They imposed taxes which impoverished even the wealthiest of their subjects. They permitted their flatterers to extort ransoms, traffic in justice, and dispose of employments without even the decorous pretext of concealment. The mutual hatred existing between the bloodthirsty factions of the capital, the ancient enmity of the nobles, the jealousy of rival princes, which had more than once caused disastrous riots, the tumultuous fury of the rabble, induced the emperors to habitually distrust the fidelity of those statesmen whose birth and education best qualified them to direct the policy of a great empire. As a necessity, therefore, eunuchs were intrusted with the management of affairs of state and filled the responsible offices of the imperial household. Surrounded by a crowd of dependents and flatterers, these monsters were the fountain of all honor and the recipients of all homage; while the sovereign of the East, shorn of his actual power, was left to the society of monks and parasites. An excessive love of pomp and of magnificent attire was a marked trait of the Byzantine character. The imperial train often included more than twenty thousand servants, the majority of whom were eunuchs. The eunuch was the most conspicuous personage in the government, in the hierarchy, in commercial adventure, in social amusement, in political intrigue. He discharged the functions of a general often with credit, sometimes with consummate skill. His secretive habits and demeanor admirably fitted him for the tortuous paths and insidious methods of diplomatic intercourse. He was a power in the Byzantine hierarchy. Members of his caste were exalted to high positions in the ecclesiastical order. Some attained to the supreme dignity of Patriarch, an office for centuries of greater importance than that of Bishop of Rome. Others controlled the wealthiest sees of the Eastern Church. Monastic life seemed to possess a peculiar attraction for them, and many convents in Constantinople were peopled exclusively by the victims of man’s deliberate cruelty. Some of these institutions contained nearly a thousand inmates. The prominent part taken by this odious class in establishing the standard of modern orthodoxy, through its influence on the ladies of the imperial household in the early days of Christianity, is familiar to every reader of Church history. The insatiable avarice and rapacity of the eunuch impelled him to the accumulation of wealth through the legitimate channels of foreign commerce and domestic enterprise, as well as by the more questionable means of servility and corruption. His ships were known in every port of the Mediterranean. He was identified with the largest mercantile establishments of the capital. In every social assembly he was conspicuous, in every conspiracy his concealed but powerful hand was felt. His equipage was the gayest, his train the most imposing on the streets. In the circus he took precedence of haughty patricians, whom he far eclipsed in splendor of costume. Ever with an eye to his own aggrandizement, he whispered treason in the ears of the nobles and instigated the rabble to revolt. The sentiments of gratitude, of sympathy, of charity, were unknown to him. The frightful punishments inflicted by the court on political offenders were notoriously suggested by his malignant genius. With the loss of his procreative power seemed to have vanished every trace of honor, of justice, of humanity, of loyalty, of devotion. He was execrated by the Byzantine populace, whose feelings were expressed by the current saying, “If you have a eunuch, kill him; if you have none, buy one and kill him!”

The government of the Byzantine Empire exhibited a curious mixture of irresponsible power and abject dependence. The emperors displayed all the insignia and all the arrogance of despotism, while at the same time they were really the slaves of their parasites. The career of a sovereign was certain to be a short one if he manifested an inclination to independence and to the assertion of his legal prerogatives. In the court of Constantinople poisoning was reduced to a science, and eunuchs, astrologers, priests, and charlatans were ready instruments of ambition and revenge. The formalities attending the intercourse of members of the royal family and the aristocracy were so complicated as to require a long course of study to master them. They were reduced to a code, familiarity with whose rules was considered the greatest accomplishment of a courtier. While this frivolous ceremonial was being sedulously perfected, the constantly receding frontiers of the Empire were abandoned to the encroachments of the barbarians of the Baltic and the Caspian. The state revenues were squandered by ecclesiastics and insatiable favorites. Rapacious tax-collectors displayed the character and adopted the customs of licensed brigands. Their extortions became so excessive and the distress of the people was so great that three-fourths of the inhabitants of the monarchy were officially inscribed upon the public registers as mendicants.

From the eighth to the twelfth century Constantinople was, in all probability, the most opulent and populous city in the world. It had inherited the traditions of the ancient Roman capital, while it had in a great measure discarded the policy which had made those traditions famous. The most exquisite of the works of art that had escaped the fury of the barbarous hordes of Scythia and Gaul had been conveyed within its walls. Its streets were lined with magnificent mansions, colonnades, temples. Everywhere rose suggestive mementos of that great power whose name had been renowned and feared from the Highlands of Scotland to the banks of the Oxus. In forum and garden the mean and stolid visages of sainted monk and anchorite stood side by side with the noble busts and statues of the most illustrious heroes and citizens of classic Rome. The royal palaces were modelled, some after the beautiful villas which had once adorned the Campagna, others after plans suggested by the Saracen architects of Bagdad. The churches also bore evidence of the imitative character of Byzantine art, which borrowed its inspiration from Greece and the Orient. It is said that in 1403 there were three thousand of them in the city. Monolithic columns of different colored marble supported their domes,--sometimes as many as five in number,--roofed with tiles of gilded bronze. Their walls were incrusted with lapis-lazuli and jasper. The sculpture in relief was covered with gold. Elaborate patterns of arabesques in mosaics embellished the walls and formed the pavements. The fountains were of silver and their basins were filled with wine instead of water, for the benefit of the Byzantine mob, whose struggles often diverted the indolent leisure of the monarch and his luxurious court. A separate dwelling was used by the Emperor during each season of the year, and the appointments and furniture of each of them were adapted to the atmospheric vicissitudes of the climate of Constantinople. In all the decorations of these sumptuous edifices jewels were lavished in ostentatious and semi-barbaric profusion. The perverted ingenuity of the Byzantine inventor was expended in the construction of curious toys that might delight the simplicity of childhood, but which could hardly be expected to engage the attention of royalty, even in a degenerate age. One of the masterpieces of these skilful artisans was a tree of the precious metals with foliage occupied by golden birds, whose shrill notes filled the halls of the palace. Notwithstanding its vast expenditure of treasure, such were the resources of the Byzantine monarchy that even after its territory was contracted almost to the walls of the capital, it still embraced the wealthiest community in Christendom. The unrivalled commercial facilities enjoyed by Constantinople more than counterbalanced for centuries the disadvantages of political incapacity, national idleness, and official corruption. The losses resulting from ecclesiastical quarrels, the sanguinary revolutions of political factions, the ravages of Crusaders and the pestilence were speedily supplied from the cities of Greece and the colonies of Asia Minor. The heterogeneous elements of its population, thus recruited from so many sources, early caused it to assume the appearance and the character of the most cosmopolitan of cities; and as the capital was the type of the entire region subject to the sovereign, it has been remarked, not incorrectly, that the Byzantine Empire was a government without a nation.

So marked, however, was the religious and intellectual debasement of contemporaneous Europe that the weakness and crimes of the Greek emperors passed unnoticed amidst the recognized superiority of the civilization which their wanton extravagance polluted. The extent and magnitude of their commerce, the splendor of their embassies, the munificence with which they rewarded their allies, afforded the most exaggerated ideas of their importance and power. The pomp which invested their presence concealed the deplorable conditions under whose restraints they were compelled to direct the affairs of their empire. The political imbecility of the Greeks was, therefore, not visible to their neighbors. These observed only the gorgeous theatrical effects which sustained the prestige of a decaying monarchy, and the alliance of the princes of Constantinople was solicited alike by the khalifs of Bagdad, Cairo, and Cordova, by the emperors of the West, and by the kings of England. In the social polity of the Greeks the court was everything and the people nothing. The natural law of progress, by which man is encouraged to accumulate wealth by the knowledge that he can enjoy it unmolested, and is impelled to intellectual pursuits through the hope of political advancement,--a law practically annulled by the Cæsars of Rome,--was entirely abolished under the emperors of Byzantium. Little security could be expected from a government which attempted to extort from the wretched peasant, whose harvests had been swept away by the barbarian, the same tax demanded from the prosperous merchant, and made no allowance for the destitution for which its own incapacity and corruption were responsible.

The most pernicious ideas relative to the duties and privileges of citizenship had been imported from Italy. The people were divided into castes. The aristocracy considered all occupations carried on for profit as disgraceful to a patrician. It was a maxim with the populace, and one which it would have been dangerous to controvert, that the state owed it sustenance and amusement. In maintaining such a principle, the lower classes could have no motive for labor, and the rabble of Constantinople had not forgotten that the Roman citizen who so far disregarded his dignity as to become an artisan was ignominiously driven from his tribe. The only career open to the aspiring plebeian was through the Church. To obtain a commanding position in the hierarchy, the favor and assistance of a eunuch or of a princess of the royal family was indispensable. The duties of the priesthood required the possession of little intelligence and less education. The affairs of palace and cathedral were usually administered by emasculated monks, indebted for their places to the ostentatious devotion or convenient servility by which they demonstrated their usefulness in furthering the designs of ambitious patrons. While the general licentiousness which scandalized the papal court did not prevail to an equal extent among the clergy of Constantinople, the lives of many of the patriarchs were stained with vices equal in baseness and impiety to any that defiled the character of the worst of the pontiffs. Soldiers, eunuchs, parasites, and tools of intriguing statesmen were elevated in turn to the most eminent dignity of the Eastern Church. Some carried with them into the episcopal palace the manners and the license of the camp. Others, by enlisting the services of the monks and the populace, fomented sanguinary and disastrous revolutions. Others again, by the monstrous extravagance of their behavior and the irreverence which they displayed in the discharge of their sacred functions, aroused the indignation and incurred the censure of the devout. Of the latter, Theophylactus offers a conspicuous example. The sale of ecclesiastical preferments furnished him regularly with means for the gratification of his unholy passions. He was raised to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople at the age of twelve years. He introduced into the Greek ritual absurd ceremonies and licentious hymns which, strange to relate, survived him for almost two centuries. To this practice are traceable the riotous and obscene festivals of the Middle Ages, when religion was travestied and the rites of the Church profaned by license as gross as that which characterized the excesses of the decadent empire of the Cæsars. He deprecated the wrath of the Devil with heathen sacrifices. In his stable were two thousand horses, which were fed on almonds and figs steeped in wine, regaled with costly liquors, and sprinkled with the most exquisite perfumes. Not infrequently in the midst of the mass he left his congregation to visit the stall of some favorite charger. Could piety or virtue be expected from a people whose spiritual necessities were ministered to by such a prelate?

With moral degeneracy came also intellectual decrepitude. A scanty but inestimable remnant of the vast stores of learning which had instructed and delighted the Pagan world had been rescued from the hands of the ruthless barbarian and preserved on the shores of the Bosphorus. But the scarcity of writing materials and the ignorance and prejudice of the unlettered ecclesiastics into whose hands many of these treasures fell insured their destruction. Great numbers of the productions of classic authors were erased from the precious parchment to make room for the legendary miracles of fictitious saints. Others perished by mould and mildew in the dripping vaults of monasteries and churches. Near the Cathedral of St. Sophia there stood in the eighth century a great basilica of unique and elegant design called the Octagon. It was approached by eight magnificent porticos supported by pillars of white marble. The edifice itself displayed the taste and skill of the Grecian architect, whose type, while suggestive of the decline of an art once carried to a perfection without parallel, was, even in its decadence, superior to the masterpieces of all other nations. Erected by Constantine the Great for purposes of religious worship, Julian had consecrated it to literature, had deposited within its halls his extensive library, and had established there an academy in imitation of the famous Museum founded by the Ptolemies at Alexandria. Here a corps of teachers, maintained at the expense of the state, imparted instruction gratuitously on all branches of theology and the arts. The library was open to every student of whatever creed or nationality. A number of expert calligraphists and scholars were constantly employed in adding to the collection, or in reproducing manuscripts that had been damaged by abuse or neglect. The professors of this university--the only institution worthy of the name in the entire realm of the empire--were held in the highest reverence. Sometimes their opinions were taken on important questions of law and diplomacy. Often their mediation was solicited by the heads of contending factions. By the pre-eminence of their acquirements and the weight attaching to their decisions, they averted many a national catastrophe. The incumbents of the most exalted places in the Church were frequently taken from their ranks. During the season of its prosperity no institution of learning outside of the dominions of the khalifs wielded such a salutary influence or was regarded with such respect and homage by all classes of mankind as the Octagon of Constantinople. In the reign of Zeno, when it was consumed by fire, this famous edifice contained a library of a hundred and twenty thousand volumes. Among the treasures lost in the conflagration was a wonderful manuscript of the works of Homer, more than one hundred feet long, composed of serpent skins inscribed with characters of gold. Restored by the emperors to some degree of its former splendor, Leo the Isaurian, who, after repeated interviews, had failed to convert to his iconoclastic views the teachers of the University, determined to effectually silence those who had so signally refuted his arguments. Secretly, and during the night, an immense quantity of combustibles was distributed about the building, the torch was applied, detachments of troops prevented all attempts at rescue, and the assembled wisdom and learning of the Byzantine Empire perished in one indiscriminate ruin. From this inexcusable act of vandalism dates the disappearance of many of the greatest works of the poets, philosophers, and historians of antiquity. What the iconoclast had begun the crusader completed. The storming of the capital by the Latins dealt another destructive blow to literature. The martial fanaticism of the West saw nothing to admire and much to execrate in the immortal productions of Pagan genius. The ignorant monks who followed in the train of the Count of Flanders and the Marquis of Montferrat showed scant consideration to such of the classics as fell into their hands. The precious remains that survived this age of violence, superstition, and intellectual apathy rested uncared for and forgotten in the seclusion of private libraries and the sacred recesses of the cloister until they were resurrected by the insatiable demand for knowledge which distinguished the people of Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In every phase of social as well as of intellectual life, the national inferiority of the Byzantine was manifest. He could copy with a fair degree of skill, but he could not originate. He absorbed little and created almost nothing. The works of art in which he took most pride were rather indebted for their value to the nature of their materials than to the labor and ingenuity that had produced them. In the style of ornamentation,--especially as regards the pattern of textile fabrics and the settings of jewels,--the Syrian taste, which delighted in floral designs and the forms of grotesque animals, predominated. There was little in the work of the Byzantine sculptor to call to mind the simplicity and delicacy that pre-eminently distinguished the exquisite products of the Attic chisel. Yet its imitative tendency induced the genius of the Eastern Empire to borrow from all its neighbors, and especially from Greece, whose art had greatly retrograded even before the accession of Constantine. The adoption of Christianity as the religion of the state was most unfavorable to sculpture, which was associated by the ignorant with the representation and worship of the gods of antiquity. The term “Byzantine,” as applied to decoration, is most comprehensive, and, employed by writers at will, has become indefinite. When examples of this style possess marked characteristics, however, and can readily be identified, they show clearly the impress of foreign influence, resulting commercial activity, and intimate diplomatic relations of the Greek Empire with nations of the most discordant customs and religious traditions. The mural designs in mosaic peculiar to Constantinople were reproduced in temples dedicated to the ceremonial of widely different creeds, as the Mosque of Cordova, the Church of St. Mark at Venice, and the Cathedral of St. Isaac at St. Petersburg.