Vol. 4, Chapter VI (Cont’d) – The Ordeal

79. 

Grimm: Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, Göttingen 1828, p. 908 sqq. Hildenbrand: Die Purgatio canonica et vulgaris, München 1841. Unger: Der gerichtliche Zweikampf, Göttingen 1847. Philipps: Ueber die Ordalien, München 1847. Dahn: Studien zur Gesch. der Germ. Gottesurtheile, München 1867. Pfalz: Die german. Ordalien, Leipz. 1865. Henry C. Lea: Superstition and Force, Philad. 1866, p. 175-280. (I have especially used Lea, who gives ample authorities for his statements.) For synodical legislation on ordeals see Hefele, Vols. III. and IV.

Another heathen custom with which the church had to deal, is the so-called Judgment of God or Ordeal, that is, a trial of guilt or innocence by a direct appeal to God through nature. It prevailed in China, Japan, India, Egypt (to a less extent in Greece and Rome), and among the barbaric races throughout Europe.

The ordeal reverses the correct principle that a man must be held to be innocent until he is proved to be guilty, and throws the burden of proof upon the accused instead of the accuser. It is based on the superstitious and presumptuous belief that the divine Ruler of the universe will at any time work a miracle for the vindication of justice when man in his weakness cannot decide, and chooses to relieve himself of responsibility by calling heaven to his aid. In the Carlovingian Capitularies the following passage occurs: “Let doubtful cases be determined by the judgment of God. The judges may decide that which they clearly know, but that which they cannot know shall be reserved for the divine judgment. He whom God has reserved for his own judgment may not be condemned by human means.”

The customary ordeals in the middle ages were water-ordeals and fire-ordeals; the former were deemed plebeian, the latter (as well as the duel), patrician. The one called to mind the punishment of the deluge and of Pharaoh in the Red Sea; the other, the future punishment of hell. The water-ordeals were either by hot water, or by cold water; the fire-ordeals were either by hot iron, or by pure fire. The person accused or suspected of a crime was exposed to the danger of death or serious injury by one of these elements: if he escaped unhurt — if he plunged his arm to the elbow into boiling water, or walked barefoot upon heated plough-shares, or held a burning ball of iron in his hand, without injury, he was supposed to be declared innocent by a miraculous interposition of God, and discharged; otherwise he was punished.

To the ordeals belongs also the judicial duel or battle ordeal. It was based on the old superstition that God always gives victory to the innocent. It was usually allowed only to freemen. Aged and sick persons, women, children, and ecclesiastics could furnish substitutes, but not always. Medieval panegyrists trace the judicial duel back to Cain and Abel. It prevailed among the ancient Danes, Irish, Burgundians, Franks, and Lombards, but was unknown among the Anglo-Saxons before William the Conqueror, who introduced it into England. It was used also in international litigation. The custom died out in the sixteenth century.

The medieval church, with her strong belief in the miraculous, could not and did not generally oppose the ordeal, but she baptized it and made it a powerful means to enforce her authority over the ignorant and superstitious people she had to deal with. Several councils at Mainz in 880, at Tribur on the Rhine in 895, at Tours in 925, at Mainz in 1065, at Auch in 1068, at Grau in 1099, recognized and recommended it; the clergy, bishops, and archbishops, as Hincmar of Rheims, and Burckhardt of Worms, and even popes like Gregory VII. and Calixtus II. lent it their influence. St. Bernard approved of the cold-water process for the conviction of heretics, and St. Ivo of Chartres admitted that the incredulity of mankind sometimes required an appeal to the verdict of Heaven, though such appeals were not commanded by, the law of God. As late as 1215 the ferocious inquisitor Conrad of Marburg freely used the hot iron against eighty persons in Strassburg alone who were suspected of the Albigensian heresy. The clergy prepared the combatants by fasting and prayer, and special liturgical formula; they presided over the trial and pronounced the sentence. Sometimes fraud was practiced, and bribes offered and taken to divert the course of justice. Gregory of Tours mentions the case of a deacon who, in a conflict with an Arian priest, anointed his arm before he stretched it into the boiling caldron; the Arian discovered the trick, charged him with using magic arts, and declared the trial null and void; but a Catholic priest, Jacintus from Ravenna, stepped forward, and by catching the ring from the bubbling caldron, triumphantly vindicated the orthodox faith to the admiring multitude, declaring that the water felt cold at the bottom and agreeably warm at the top. When the Arian boldly repeated the experiment, his flesh was boiled off the bones up to the elbow.

The Church even invented and substituted new ordeals, which were less painful and cruel than the old heathen forms, but shockingly profane according to our notions. Profanity and superstition are closely allied. These new methods are the ordeal of the cross, and the ordeal of the eucharist. They were especially used by ecclesiastics.

The ordeal of the cross is simply a trial of physical strength. The plaintiff and the defendant, after appropriate religious ceremonies, stood with uplifted arm before a cross while divine service was performed, and victory depended on the length of endurance. Pepin first prescribed this trial, by a Capitulary of 752, in cases of application by a wife for divorce. Charlemagne prescribed it in cases of territorial disputes which might arise between his sons (806). But Louis-le-Débonnaire, soon after the death of Charlemagne, forbade its continuance at a Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 816, because this abuse of the cross tended to bring the Christian symbol into contempt. His son, the Emperor Lothair, renewed the prohibition. A trace of this ordeal is left in the proverbial allusion to an experimentum crucis.

A still worse profanation was the ordeal of consecrated bread in the eucharist with the awful adjuration: “May this body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be a judgment to thee this day.” It was enjoined by a Synod of Worms, in 868, upon bishops and priests who were accused of a capital crime, such as murder, adultery, theft, sorcery. It was employed by Cautinus, bishop of Auvergne, at the close of the sixth century, who administered the sacrament to a Count Eulalius, accused of patricide, and acquitted him after he had partaken of it without harm. King Lothair and his nobles took the sacrament in proof of his separation from Walrada, his mistress, but died soon afterwards at Piacenza of a sudden epidemic, and this was regarded by Pope Hadrian II. as a divine punishment. Rudolfus Glaber records the case of a monk who boldly received the consecrated host, but forthwith confessed his crime when the host slipped out of his navel, white and pure as before. Sibicho, bishop of Speier, underwent the trial to clear himself of the charge of adultery (1049). Even Pope Hildebrand made use of it in self-defense against Emperor Henry IV. at Canossa, in 1077. “Lest I should seem,” he said “to rely rather on human than divine testimony, and that I may remove from the minds of all, by immediate satisfaction, every scruple, behold this body of our Lord which I am about to take. Let it be to me this day a test of my innocence, and may the Omnipotent God this day by his judgment absolve me of the accusations if I am innocent, or let me perish by sudden death, if guilty.” Then the pope calmly took the wafer, and called upon the trembling emperor to do the same, but Henry evaded it on the ground of the absence of both his friends and his enemies, and promised instead to submit to a trial by the imperial diet.

The purgatorial oath, when administered by wonder-working relics, was also a kind of ordeal of ecclesiastical origin. A false oath on the black cross in the convent of Abington, made from the nails of the crucifixion, and derived from the Emperor Constantine, was fatal to the malefactor. In many cases these relics were the means of eliciting confessions which could not have been obtained by legal devices.

The genuine spirit of Christianity, however, urged towards an abolition rather than improvement of all these ordeals. Occasionally such voices of protest were raised, though for a long time without effect. Avitus, bishop of Vienne, in the beginning of the sixth century, remonstrated with Gundobald for giving prominence to the battle-ordeal in the Burgundian code. St. Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, before the middle of the ninth century (he died about 840) attacked the duel and the ordeal in two special treatises, which breathe the gospel spirit of humanity, fraternity and peace in advance of his age. He says that the ordeals are falsely called judgments of God; for God never prescribed them, never approved them, never willed them; but on the contrary, he commands us, in the law and the gospel, to love our neighbor as ourselves, and has appointed judges for the settlement of controversies among men. He warns against a presumptuous interpretation of providence whose counsels are secret and not to be revealed by water and fire. Several popes, Leo IV. (847-855), Nicolas I. (858-867), Stephen VI. (885-891), Sylvester II. (999-1003), Alexander II. (1061-1073), Alexander III. (1159-1181), Coelestin III. (1191-1198), Honorius III. (1222), and the fourth Lateran Council (1215), condemned more or less clearly the superstitious and frivolous provocation of miracles. It was by their influence, aided by secular legislation, that these God-tempting ordeals gradually disappeared during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but the underlying idea survived in the torture which for a long time took the place of the ordeal.

 

80. The Torture

Henry C. Lea: Superstition and Force (Philad. 1866), p. 281-391. Paul Lacroix: Manners, Customs, and Dress of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance Period (transl. from the French, N. York 1874), p. 407-434. Brace. Gesta Christi, ch. XV.

The torture rests on the same idea as the ordeal. It is an attempt to prove innocence or guilt by imposing a physical pain which no man can bear without special aid from God. When the ordeal had fulfilled its mission, the torture was substituted as a more convenient mode and better fitted for an age less superstitious and more sceptical, but quite as despotic and intolerant. It forms one of the darkest chapters in history. For centuries this atrocious system, opposed to the Mosaic legislation and utterly revolting to every Christian and humane feeling, was employed in civilized Christian countries, and sacrificed thousands of human beings, innocent as well as guilty, to torments worse than death.

The torture was unknown among the Hindoos and the Semitic nations, but recognized by the ancient Greeks and Romans, as a regular legal proceeding. It was originally confined to slaves who were deemed unfit to bear voluntary testimony, and to require force to tell the truth. Despotic emperors extended it to freemen, first in cases of crimen laesae majestatis. Pontius Pilate employed the scourge and the crown of thorns in the trial of our Saviour. Tiberius exhausted his ingenuity in inventing tortures for persons suspected of conspiracy, and took delight in their agony. The half-insane Caligula enjoyed the cruel spectacle at his dinner-table. Nero resorted to this cruelty to extort from the Christians the confession of the crime of incendiarism, as a pretext of his persecution, which he intensified by the diabolical invention of covering the innocent victims with pitch and burning them as torches in his gardens. The younger Pliny employed the torture against the Christians in Bithynia as imperial governor. Diocletian, in a formal edict, submitted all professors of the hated religion to this degrading test. The torture was gradually developed into a regular system and embodied in the Justinian Code. Certain rules were prescribed, and exemptions made in favor of the learned professions, especially the clergy, nobles, children below fourteen, women during pregnancy, etc. The system was thus sanctioned by the highest legal authorities. But opinions as to its efficiency differed. Augustus pronounced the torture the best form of proof. Cicero alternately praises and discredits it. Ulpian, with more wisdom, thought it unsafe, dangerous, and deceitful.

Among the Northern barbarians the torture was at first unknown except for slaves. The common law of England does not recognize it. Crimes were regarded only as injuries to individuals, not to society, and the chief resource for punishment was the private vengeance of the injured party. But if a slave, who was a mere piece of property, was suspected of a theft, his master would flog him till he confessed. All doubtful questions among freemen were decided by sacramental purgation and the various forms of ordeal. But in Southern Europe, where the Roman population gave laws to the conquering barbarians, the old practice continued, or revived with the study of the Roman law. In Southern France and in Spain the torture was an unbroken ancestral custom. Alfonso the Wise, in the thirteenth century, in his revision of Spanish jurisprudence, known as Las Siete Partidas, retained the torture, but declared the person of man to be the noblest thing on earth, and required a voluntary confession to make the forced confession valid. Consequently the prisoner after torture was brought before the judge and again interrogated; if be recanted, he was tortured a second, in grave cases, a third time; if he persisted in his confession, he was condemned. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the system of torture, was generally introduced in Europe, and took the place of the ordeal.

The church, true to her humanizing instincts, was at first hostile to the whole system of forcing evidence. A Synod of Auxerre (585 or 578) prohibited the clergy to witness a torture. Pope Gregory I. denounced as worthless a confession extorted by incarceration and hunger. Nicolas I. forbade the new converts in Bulgaria to extort confession by stripes and by pricking with a pointed iron, as contrary to all law, human and divine (866) Gratian lays down the general rule that “confessio cruciatibus extorquenda non est.”

But at a later period, in dealing with heretics, the Roman church unfortunately gave the sanction of her highest authority to the use of the torture, and thus betrayed her noblest instincts and holiest mission. The fourth Lateran Council (1215) inspired the horrible crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses, and the establishment of the infamous ecclesiastico-political courts of Inquisition. These courts found the torture the most effective means of punishing and exterminating heresy, and invented new forms of refined cruelty worse than those of the persecutors of heathen Rome. Pope Innocent IV., in his instruction for the guidance of the Inquisition in Tuscany and Lombardy, ordered the civil magistrates to extort from all heretics by torture a confession of their own guilt and a betrayal of all their accomplices (1252). This was an ominous precedent, which did more harm to the reputation of the papacy than the extermination of any number of heretics could possibly do it good. In Italy, owing to the restriction of the ecclesiastical power by the emperor, the inquisition could not fully display its murderous character. In Germany its introduction was resisted by the people and the bishops, and Conrad of Marburg, the appointed Inquisitor, was murdered (1233). But in Spain it had every assistance from the crown and the people, which to this day take delight in the bloody spectacles of bullfights. The Spanish Inquisition was established in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella by papal sanction (1478), reached its fearful height under the terrible General Inquisitor Torquemada (since 1483), and in its zeal to exterminate Moors, Jews, and heretics, committed such fearful excesses that even popes protested against the abuse of power, although with little effect. The Inquisition carried the system of torture to its utmost limits. After the Reformation it was still employed in trials of sorcery and witchcraft until the revolution of opinion in the eighteenth century swept it out of existence, together with cruel forms of punishment. This victory is due to the combined influence of justice, humanity, and tolerance.

 

Notes

I. “The whole system of the Inquisition,” says Lea (p. 331), “was such as to render the resort to torture inevitable. Its proceedings were secret; the prisoner was carefully kept in ignorance of the exact charges against him, and of the evidence upon which they were based. He was presumed to be guilty, and his judges bent all their energies to force him to confess. To accomplish this, no means were too base or too cruel. Pretended sympathizers were to be let into his dungeon, whose affected friendship might entrap him into an unwary admission; officials armed with fictitious evidence were directed to frighten him with assertions of the testimony obtained against him from supposititious witnesses; and no resources of fraud or guile were to be spared in overcoming the caution and resolution of the poor wretch whose mind had been carefully weakened by solitude, suffering, hunger, and terror. From this to the rack and estrapade the step was easily taken, and was not long delayed.” For details see the works on the Inquisition. Llorente (Hist. crit. de l’Inquisition d’Espagne IV. 252, quoted by Gieseler III. 409 note 11) states that from 1478 to the end of the administration of Torquemada in 1498, when he resigned, “8800 persons were burned alive, 6500 in effigy, and 90,004 punished with different kinds of penance. Under the second general-inquisitor, the Dominican, Diego Deza, from 1499 to 1506, 1664 persons were burned alive, 832 in effigy, 32,456 punished. Under the third general-inquisitor, the Cardinal and Archbishop of Toledo, Francis Ximenes de Cisneros, from 1507 to 1517, 2536 were burned alive, 1368 in effigy, 47,263 reconciled.” Llorente was a Spanish priest and general secretary of the Inquisition at Madrid (from 1789-1791), and had access to all the archives, but his figures, as he himself admits, are based upon probable calculations, and have in some instances been disproved. He states, e.g. that in the first year of Torquemada’s administration 2000 persons were burned, and refers to the Jesuit Mariana (History of Spain), but Mariana means that during the whole administration of Torquemada “duo millia crematos igne.” See Hefele, Cardinal Ximenes, p. 346. The sum total of persons condemned to death by the Spanish Inquisition during the 330 years of its existence, is stated to be 30,000. Hefele (Kirchenlexikon, v. 656) thinks this sum exaggerated, yet not surprising when compared with the number of witches that were burnt in Germany alone. The Spanish Inquisition pronounced its last sentence of death in the year 1781, was abolished under the French rule of Joseph Napoleon, Dec. 4, 1808, restored by Ferdinand VII. 1814, again abolished 1820, and (after another attempt to restore it) in 1834. Catholic writers, like Balmez (l.c. chs. xxxvi. and xxxvii.) and Hefele (Cardinal Ximenes, p. 257-389, and in Wetzer and Welte’s Kirchen-Lexicon, vol. V. 648-659), charge Llorente with inaccuracy in his figures, and defend the Catholic church against the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition, as this was a political rather than ecclesiastical institution, and had at least the good effect of preventing religious wars. But the Inquisition was instituted with the express sanction of Pope Sixtus IV. (Nov. 1, 1478), was controlled by the Dominican order and by Cardinals, and as to the benefit, the peace of the grave-yard is worse than war. Hefele adds, however (V. 657): “Nach all’ diesen Bemerkungen sind wir übrigens weit entfernt, der Spanichen Inquisition an sich das Wort reden zu wollen, vielmehr bestreiten wir der weltlichen Gewalt durchaus die Befugniss, das Gewissen zu knebeln, und sind von Herzensgrund aus jedem staatlichen Religionszwang abhold, mag er von einem Torquemada in der Dominikanerkutte, oder von einem Bureaucraten in der Staatsuniform ansgehen. Aber das wollten wir zeigen, dass die Inquisition das schändliche Ungeheuer nicht war, wozu es Parteileidenschaft und Unwissenheit häufig stempeln wollten.”

II. The torture was abolished in England after 1640, in Prussia 1740, in Tuscany 1786, in France 1789, in Russia 1801, in various German states partly earlier, partly later (between 1740 and 1831), in Japan 1873. Thomasius, Hommel, Voltaire, Howard, used their influence against it. Exceptional cases of judicial torture occurred in the nineteenth century in Naples, Palermo, Roumania (1868), and Zug (1869). See Lea, p. 389 sqq., and the chapter on Witchcraft in Lecky’s History of Rationalism (vol. I. 27-154). The extreme difficulty of proof in trials of witchcraft seemed to make a resort to the torture inevitable. English witchcraft reached its climax during the seventeenth century, and was defended by King James I., and even such wise men as Sir Matthew Hale, Sir Thomas Browne, and Richard Baxter. When it was on the decline in England it broke out afresh in Puritan New England, created a perfect panic, and led to the execution of twenty-seven persons. In Scotland it lingered still longer, and as late as 1727 a woman was burnt there for witchcraft. In the Canton Glarus a witch was executed in 1782, and another near Danzig in Prussia in 1836. Lecky concludes his chapter with an eloquent tribute to those poor women, who died alone, hated, and unpitied, with the prospect of exchanging their torments on earth with eternal torments in hell.

I add a noble passage on torture from Brace’s Gesta Christi, p. 274 sq. “Had the ‘Son of Man’ been in body upon the earth during the Middle Ages, hardly one wrong and injustice would have wounded his pure soul like the system of torture. To see human beings, with the consciousness of innocence, or professing and believing the purest truths, condemned without proof to the most harrowing agonies, every groan or admission under pain used against them, their confessions distorted, their nerves so racked that they pleaded their guilt in order to end their tortures, their last hours tormented by false ministers of justice or religion, who threaten eternal as well as temporal damnation, and all this going on for ages, until scarce any innocent felt themselves safe under this mockery of justice and religion — all this would have seemed to the Founder of Christianity as the worst travesty of his faith and the most cruel wound to humanity. It need not be repeated that his spirit in each century struggled with this tremendous evil, and inspired the great friends of humanity who labored against it. The main forces in medieval society, even those which tended towards its improvement, did not touch this abuse. Roman law supported it. Stoicism was indifferent to it; Greek literature did not affect it; feudalism and arbitrary power encouraged a practice which they could use for their own ends; and even the hierarchy and a State Church so far forgot the truths they professed as to employ torture to support the ‘Religion of Love.’ But against all these powers were the words of Jesus, bidding men ‘Love your enemies’ ‘Do good to them that despitefully use you!’ and the like commands. working everywhere on individual souls, heard from pulpits and in monasteries, read over by humble believers, and slowly making their way against barbaric passion and hierarchic cruelty. Gradually, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the books containing the message of Jesus circulated among all classes, and produced that state of mind and heart in which torture could not be used on a fellow-being, and in which such an abuse and enormity as the Inquisition was hurled to the earth.”

 

81. Christian Charity

See the Lit. in vol. II. § 88. Chastel: Études historiques sur l’influence de la charité (Paris 1853, English transl., Philad. 1857 — for the first three centuries). Häser: Geschichte der christl. Krankenpflege und Pflegerschaften (Berlin 1857). Ratzinger: Gesch. der christl. Armenpflege (Freib. 1869, a new ed. announced 1884). Morin: Histoire critique de la pauvreté (in the “Mémoirs de l’ Académie des inscript.” IV). Lecky: Hist. of Europ. Morals, ch. 4th (II. 62 sqq.). Uhlhorn: Christian Charity in the Ancient Church (Stuttgart, 1881; Engl. transl. Lond. and N. York 1883), Book III., and his Die Christliche Liebesthaetigkeit im Mittelalter. Stuttgart, 1884. (See also his art. in Brieger’s “Zeitschrift für K. G.” IV. 1). B. Riggenbach: Das Armenwesen der Reformation (Basel 1883). Also the articles Armenpflege in Herzog’s “Encycl.”2 vol. I. 648-663; in Wetzer and Welte’s “Kirchenlex.”2 vol. I. 1354-1375; Paupérisme in Lichtenberger X. 305-312; and Hospitals in Smith and Cheetham I. 785-789.

From the cruelties of superstition and bigotry we gladly turn to the queen of Christian graces, that “most excellent gift of charity,” which never ceased to be exercised wherever the story of Christ’s love for sinners was told and his golden rule repeated. It is a “bond of perfectness” that binds together all ages and sections of Christendom. It comforted the Roman empire in its hoary age and agonies of death; and it tamed the ferocity of the barbarian invaders. It is impossible to overestimate the moral effect of the teaching and example of Christ, and of St. Paul’s seraphic praise of charity upon the development of this cardinal virtue in all ages and countries. We bow with reverence before the truly apostolic succession of those missionaries, bishops, monks, nuns, kings, nobles, and plain men and women, rich or poor, known and unknown, who, from gratitude to Christ and pure love to their fellow-men, sacrificed home, health, wealth, life itself, to humanize and Christianize savages, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to entertain the stranger, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, to call on the prisoner, to comfort the dying. We admire and honor also those exceptional saints who, in literal fulfillment or misunderstanding of the Saviour’s advice to the rich youth, and in imitation of the first disciples at Jerusalem, sold all their possessions and gave them to the poor that they might become perfect. The admiration is indeed diminished, but not destroyed, if in many cases a large measure of refined selfishness was mixed with self-denial, and when the riches of heaven were the sole or chief inducement for choosing voluntary poverty on earth.

The supreme duty of Christian charity was inculcated by all faithful pastors and teachers of the gospel from the beginning. In the apostolic and ante-Nicene ages it was exercised by regular contributions on the Lord’s day, and especially at the communion and the agape connected with it. Every congregation was a charitable society, and took care of its widows and orphans, of strangers and prisoners, and sent help to distant congregations in need.

After Constantine, when the masses of the people flocked into the church, charity assumed an institutional form, and built hospitals and houses of refuge for the strangers, the poor, the sick, the aged, the orphans. They appear first in the East, but soon afterwards also in the West. Fabiola founded a hospital in Rome, Pammachius one in the Portus Romanus, Paulinus one in Nola. At the time of Gregory I. there were several hospitals in Rome; he mentions also hospitals in Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. These institutions were necessary in the greatly enlarged sphere of the church, and the increase of poverty, distress, and disaster which at last overwhelmed the Roman empire. They may in many cases have served purposes of ostentation, superseded or excused private charity, encouraged idleness, and thus increased rather than diminished pauperism. But these were abuses to which the best human institutions are subject.

Private charity continued to be exercised in proportion to the degree of vitality in the church. The great fathers and bishops of the fourth and fifth centuries set an illustrious example of plain living and high thinking, of self-denial and liberality, and were never weary in their sermons and writings in enjoining the duty of charity. St. Basil himself superintended his extensive hospital at Caesarea, and did not shrink from contact with lepers; St. Gregory Nazianzen exhorted the brethren to be “a god to the unfortunate by imitating the mercy of God,” for there is “nothing so divine as beneficence;” St. Chrysostom founded several hospitals in Constantinople, incessantly appealed to the rich in behalf of the poor, and directed the boundless charities of the noble widow Olympias. St. Ambrose, at once a proud Roman and an humble Christian, comforted the paupers in Milan, while he rebuked an emperor for his cruelty; Paulinus of Nola lived in a small house with his wife, Theresiâ and used his princely wealth for the building of a monastery, the relief of the needy, the ransoming of prisoners, and when his means were exhausted, he exchanged himself with the son of a widow to be carried away into Africa; the great Augustin declined to accept as a present a better coat than he might give in turn to a brother in need; St. Jerome founded a hospice in Bethlehem from the proceeds of his property, and induced Roman ladies of proud ancestry to sell their jewels, silk dresses, and palaces, for the poor, and to exchange a life of luxurious ease for a life of ascetic self-denial. Those examples shone like brilliant stars through the darkness of the middle ages.

But the same fathers, it must be added, handed to the middle ages also the disturbing doctrine of the meritorious nature and atoning efficacy of charity, as “covering a multitude of sins,” and its influence even upon the dead in purgatory. These errors greatly stimulated and largely vitiated that virtue, and do it to this day.

The Latin word caritas, which originally denotes dearness or costliness (from carus, dear), then esteem, affection, assumed in the church the more significant meaning of benevolence and beneficence, or love in active exercise, especially to the poor and suffering among our fellow-men. The sentiment and the deed must not be separated, and the gift of the hand derives its value from the love of the heart. Though the gifts are unequal, the benevolent love should be the same, and the widow’s mite is as much blessed by God as the princely donation of the rich. Ambrose compares benevolence in the intercourse of men with men to the sun in its relation to the earth. “Let the gifts of the wealthy,” says another father, “be more abundant, but let not the poor be behind him in love.” Very often, however, charity was contracted into mere almsgiving. Praying, fasting, and almsgiving were regarded (as also among the Jews and Mohammedans) as the chief works of piety; the last was put highest. For the sake of charity it is right to break the fast or to interrupt devotion.

Pope Gregory the Great best represents the medieval charity with its ascetic self-denial, its pious superstitions and utilitarian ingredients. He lived in that miserable transition period when the old Roman civilization was crumbling to pieces and the new civilization was not yet built up on its ruins. “We see nothing but sorrow,” he says, “we hear nothing but complaints. Ah, Rome! once the mistress of the world, where is the senate? where the people? The buildings are in ruins, the walls are falling. Everywhere the sword! Everywhere death! I am weary of life!” But charity remained as an angel of comfort. It could not prevent the general collapse, but it dried the tears and soothed the sorrows of individuals. Gregory was a father to the poor. He distributed every month cart-loads of corn, oil, wine, and meat among them. What the Roman emperors did from policy to keep down insurrection, this pope did from love to Christ and the poor. He felt personally guilty when a man died of starvation in Rome. He set careful and conscientious men over the Roman hospitals, and required them to submit regular accounts of the management of funds. He furnished the means for the founding of a Xenodochium in Jerusalem. He was the chief promoter of the custom of dividing the income of the church into four equal parts, one for the bishop, one for the rest of the clergy, one for the church buildings, one for the poor. At the same time he was a strong believer in the meritorious efficacy of almsgiving for the living and the dead. He popularized Augustin’s notion of purgatory, supported it by monkish fables, and introduced masses for the departed (without the so-called thirties, i.e. thirty days after death). He held that God remits the guilt and eternal punishment, but not the temporal punishment of sin, which must be atoned for in this life, or in purgatory. Thus be explained the passage about the fire (1Co_3:11) which consumes wood, hay, and stubble, i.e. light and trifling sins such as useless talk, immoderate laughter, mismanagement of property. Hence, the more alms the better, both for our own salvation and for the relief of our departed relatives and friends. Almsgiving is the wing of repentance, and paves the way to heaven. This idea ruled supreme during the middle ages.

Among the barbarians in the West charitable institutions were introduced by missionaries in connection with convents, which were expected to exercise hospitality to strangers and give help to the poor. The Irish missionaries cared for the bodies as well as for the souls of the heathen to whom they preached the gospel, and founded “Hospitalia Scotorum.” The Council of Orleans, 549, shows acquaintance with Xenodochia in the towns. There was a large one at Lyons. Chrodegang of Metz and Alcuin exhort the bishops to found institutions of charity, or at least to keep a guest-room for the care of the sick and the stranger. A Synod at Aix in 815 ordered that an infirmary should be built near the church and in every convent. The Capitularies of Charlemagne extend to charitable institutions the same privileges as to churches and monasteries, and order that “strangers, pilgrims, and paupers” be duly entertained according to the canons.

The hospitals were under the immediate supervision of the bishop or a superintendent appointed by him. They were usually dedicated to the Holy Spirit, who was represented in the form of a dove in some conspicuous place of the building. They received donations and legacies, and were made the trustees of landed estates. The church of the middle ages was the largest property-holder, but her very wealth and prosperity became a source of temptation and corruption, which in the course of time loudly called for a reformation.

After we have made all reasonable deduction for a large amount of selfish charity which looked to the donor rather than the recipient, and for an injudicious profusion of alms which encouraged pauperism instead of enabling the poor to help themselves by honest work, we still have left one of the noblest chapters in the history of morals to which no other religion can furnish a parallel. For the regular gratuitous distribution of grain to the poor heathen of Rome, who under Augustus rose to 200,000, and under the Antonines to 500,000, was made from the public treasury and dictated by selfish motives of state policy; it called forth no gratitude; it failed of its object, and proved, together with slavery and the gladiatorial shows for the amusement of the people, one of the chief demoralizing influences of the empire.

Finally, we must not forget that the history of true Christian charity remains to a large part unwritten. Its power is indeed felt everywhere and every day; but it loves to do its work silently without a thought of the merit of reward. It follows human misery into all its lonely griefs with personal sympathy as well as material aid, and finds its own happiness in promoting the happiness of others. There is luxury in doing good for its own sake. “When thou doest alms,” says the Lord, “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee.”

 

Notes

Uhlhorn closes his first work with this judgment of medieval charity (p. 396 sq. of the English translation): “No period has done so much for the poor as the middle ages. What wholesale distribution of alms, what an abundance of institutions of the most various kinds, what numbers of hospitals for all manner of sufferers, what a series of ministrant orders, male and female, knightly and civil, what self-sacrifice and devotedness! In the medieval period all that we have observed germinating in the ancient Church, first attains its maturity. The middle ages, however, also appropriated whatever tendencies existed toward a one-sided and unsound development. Church care of the poor entirely perished, and all charity became institutional; monks and nuns, or members of the ministrant orders, took the place of the deacons — the diaconate died out. Charity became one-sidedly institutional and one-sidedly ecclesiastical. The church was the mediatrix of every exercise of charity, she became in fact the sole recipient, the sole bestower; for the main object of every work of mercy, of every distribution of alms, of every endowment, of all self-sacrifice in the service of the needy, was the giver’s own salvation. The transformation was complete. Men gave and ministered no longer for the sake of helping and serving the poor in Christ, but to obtain for themselves and theirs, merit, release from purgatory, a high degree of eternal happiness. The consequence was, that poverty was not contended with, but fostered, and beggary brought to maturity; so that notwithstanding the abundant donations, the various foundations, the well-endowed institutions, distress was after all not mastered. Nor is it mastered yet. “The poor ye have always with you” (Joh_12:8). Riggenbach (l.c.) maintains that in the middle ages hospitals were mere provision-houses (Versorgungshäuser), and that the Reformation first asserted the principle that they should be also houses of moral reform (Rettungshäuser and Heilanstalten).

Lecky, who devotes a part of the fourth chapter of his impartial humanitarian History of European Morals to this subject, comes to the following conclusion (II. 79, 85): “Christianity for the first time made charity a rudimentary virtue, giving it a leading place in the moral type, and in the exhortations of its teachers. Besides its general influence in stimulating the affections, it effected a complete revolution in this sphere, by regarding the poor as the special representatives of the Christian Founder, and thus making the love of Christ, rather than the love of man, the principle of charity …. The greatest things are often those which are most imperfectly realized; and surely no achievements of the Christian Church are more truly great than those which it has effected in the sphere of charity. For the first time in the history of mankind, it has inspired many thousands of men and women, at the sacrifice of all worldly interests, and often under circumstances of extreme discomfort or danger, to devote their entire lives to the single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. It has covered the globe with countless institutions of mercy, absolutely unknown to the whole Pagan world. It has indissolubly united, in the minds of men, the idea of supreme goodness with that of active and constant benevolence. It has placed in every parish a religious minister who, whatever may be his other functions, has at least been officially charged with the superintendence of an organization of charity, and who finds in this office one of the most important as well as one of the most legitimate sources of his power.”



Vol.4, Chapter VII. Monasticism

See the Lit. on Monasticism in vol. II., and III.

82. Use of Convents in the Middle Ages

The monks were the spiritual nobility of the church, and represented a higher type of virtue in entire separation from the world and consecration to the kingdom of God. The patristic, ideal of piety passed over into the middle ages; it is not the scriptural nor the modern ideal, but one formed in striking contrast with preceding and surrounding heathen corruption. The monkish sanctity is a flight from the world rather than a victory over the world, an abstinence from marriage instead of a sanctification of marriage, chastity, outside rather than inside the order of nature, a complete suppression of the sensual passion in the place of its purification and control. But it had a powerful influence over the barbaric races, and was one of the chief converting and civilizing agencies. The Eastern monks lost themselves in idle contemplation and ascetic extravagances, which the Western climate made impossible; the Western monks were, upon the whole, more sober, practical, and useful. The Irish and Scotch convents became famous for their missionary zeal, and furnished founders of churches and patron saints of the people.

Convents were planted by the missionaries among all the barbarous nations of Europe, as fast as Christianity progressed. They received special privileges and endowments from princes, nobles, popes, and bishops. They offered a quiet retreat to men and women who were weary of the turmoil of life, or had suffered shipwreck of fortune or character, and cared for nothing but to save their souls. They exercised hospitality to strangers and travelers, and were a great blessing in times when traveling was difficult and dangerous. They were training schools of ascetic virtue, and the nurseries of saints. They saved the remnants of ancient civilization for future use. Every large convent had a library and a school. Scribes were employed in copying manuscripts of the ancient classics, of the Bible, and the writings of the fathers. To these quiet literary monks we are indebted for the preservation and transmission of nearly all the learning, sacred and secular, of ancient times. If they had done nothing else, they would be entitled to the lasting gratitude of the church and the world.

During the wild commotion and confusion of the ninth and tenth centuries, monastic discipline went into decay. Often the very riches of convents, which were the reward of industry and virtue, became a snare and a root of evil. Avaricious laymen (Abba-comites) seized the control and perpetuated it in their families. Even princesses received the titles and emoluments of abbesses.

 

83. St. Benedict. St. Nilus. St. Romuald

Yet even in this dark period there were a few shining lights.

St. Benedict of Aniane (750-821), of a distinguished family in the south of France, after serving at the court of Charlemagne, became disgusted with the world, entered a convent, founded a new one at Aniane after the strict rule of St. Benedict of Nursia, collected a library, exercised charity, especially during a famine, labored for the reform of monasticism, was entrusted by Louis the Pious with the superintendence of all the convents in Western France, and formed them into a “congregation,” by bringing them under one rule. He attended the Synod of Aix-la-Chapelle in 817. Soon after his death (Feb. 12, 821) the fruits of his labors were destroyed, and the disorder became worse than before.

St. Nilus the younger, of Greek descent, born at Rossano in Calabria (hence Nilus Rossanensis), enlightened the darkness of the tenth century. He devoted himself, after the death of his wife, about 940, to a solitary life, following the model of St. Anthony and St. Hilarion, and founded several convents in Southern Italy. He was often consulted by dignitaries, and answered, like St. Anthony, without respect of person. He boldly rebuked Pope Gregory V. and Emperor Otho III. for bad treatment of an archbishop. When the emperor afterwards offered him any favor he might ask, Nilus replied: “I ask nothing from you but that you would save your soul; for you must die like every other man, and render an account to God for all your good and evil deeds.” The emperor took the crown from his head, and begged the blessing of the aged monk. When a dissolute nobleman, who comforted himself with the example of Solomon, asked Nilus, whether that wise king was not saved, the monk replied: “We have nothing to do with Solomon’s fate; but to us it is said, ‘Every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’ We do not read of Solomon that he ever repented like Manasseh.” To questions of idle curiosity he returned no answer, or he answered the fool according to his folly. So when one wished to know what kind of an apple Adam and Eve ate, to their ruin, he said that it was a crab-apple. In his old age he was driven from Calabria by invaders, and founded a little convent, Crypta Ferrata, near the famous Tusculum of Cicero. There he died peacefully when about ninety-six years old, in 1005.

St. Romuald, the founder of the order of Camaldoli, was born early in the tenth century at Ravenna, of a rich and noble family, and entered the neighboring Benedictine convent of Classis, in his twentieth year, in order to atone, by a severe penance of forty days, for a murder which his father had committed against a relative in a dispute about property. He prayed and wept almost without ceasing. He spent three years in this convent, and afterwards led the life of a roaming hermit. He imposed upon himself all manner of self-mortification, to defeat the temptations of the devil. Among his devotions was the daily repetition of the Psalter from memory; a plain hermit, Marinus, near Venice, had taught him this mechanical performance and other ascetic exercises with the aid of blows. Wherever he went, he was followed by admiring disciples. He was believed to be endowed with the gift of prophecy and miracles, yet did not escape calumny. Emperor Otho III. paid him a visit in the year 1000 on an island near Ravenna. Romuald sent missionaries to heathen lands, and went himself to the border of Hungary with a number of pupils, but returned when he was admonished by a severe sickness that he was not destined for missionary life. He died in the convent Valle de Castro in 1027.

According to Damiani, who wrote his life fifteen years after his death, Romuald lived one hundred and twenty years, twenty in the world, three in a convent, ninety-seven as a hermit.

The most famous of Romuald’s monastic retreats is Campo Maldoli, or Camaldoli in the Appennines, near Arezzo in Tuscany, which he founded about 1009. It became, through the influence of Damiani, his eulogist and Hildebrand’s friend, the nucleus of a monastic order, which combined the cenobitic and eremitic life, and was distinguished by great severity. Pope Gregory XVI. belonged to this order.

 

84. The Convent of Cluny

Marrier and Duchesne: Bibliotheca Cluniacensis. Paris 1614 fol. Holsten.: Cod. Regul. Mon. II. 176. Lorain: Essay historique sur l’ abbaye de Cluny. Dijon 1839. Neander III. 417 sqq. 444 sq. Friedr. Hurter (Prot, minister in Schaffhausen, afterwards R. Cath.): Gesch. Papst Innocenz des Dritten (second ed. Hamb. 1844), vol. IV. pp. 22-55.

After the decay of monastic discipline during the ninth and tenth centuries, a reformation proceeded from the convent of Cluny in Burgundy, and affected the whole church.

It was founded by the pious Duke William of Aquitania in 910, to the honor of St. Peter and St. Paul, on the basis of the rule of St. Benedict.

Count Bruno (d. 927) was the first abbot, and introduced severe discipline. His successor Odo (927-941), first a soldier, then a clergyman of learning, wisdom, and saintly character, became a reformer of several Benedictine convents. Neander praises his enlightened views on Christian life, and his superior estimate of the moral, as compared with the miraculous, power of Christianity. Aymardus (Aymard, 941-948), who resigned when he became blind, Majolus (Maieul to 994), who declined the papal crown, Odilo, surnamed “the Good” (to 1048), and Hugo (to 1109), continued in the same spirit. The last two exerted great influence upon emperors and popes, and inspired the reformation of the papacy and the church. It was at Cluny that Hildebrand advised Bishop Bruno of Toul (Leo IX.), who had been elected pope by Henry III., to seek first a regular election by the clergy in Rome; and thus foreshadowed his own future conflict with the imperial power. Odilo introduced the Treuga Dei and the festival of All Souls. Hugo, Hildebrand’s friend, ruled sixty years, and raised the convent to the summit of its fame.

Cluny was the centre (archimonasterium) of the reformed Benedictine convents, and its head was the chief abbot (archiabbas). It gave to the church many eminent bishops and three popes (Gregory VII., Urban II., and Pascal II.). In the time of its highest prosperity it ruled over two thousand monastic establishments. The daily life was regulated in all its details; silence was imposed for the greater part of the day, during which the monks communicated only by signs; strict obedience ruled within; hospitality and benevolence were freely exercised to the poor and to strangers, who usually exceeded the number of the monks. During a severe famine Odilo exhausted the magazines of the convent, and even melted the sacred vessels, and sold the ornaments of the church and a crown which Henry II. had sent him from Germany. The convent stood directly under the pope’s jurisdiction, and was highly favored with donations and privileges. The church connected with it was the largest and richest in France (perhaps in all Europe), and admired for its twenty-five altars, its bells, and its costly works of art. It was founded by Hugo, and consecrated seventy years afterwards by Pope Innocent II. under the administration of Peter the Venerable (1131).

The example of Cluny gave rise to other monastic orders, as the Congregation of the Vallombrosa (Vallis umbrosa), eighteen miles from Florence, founded by St. John Gualbert in 1038, and the Congregation of Hirsau in Württemberg, in 1069.

But the very fame and prosperity of Cluny proved a temptation and cause of decline. An unworthy abbot, Pontius, wasted the funds, and was at last deposed and excommunicated by the pope as a robber of the church. Peter the Venerable, the friend of St. Bernard and kind patron of the unfortunate Abelard, raised Cluny by his wise and long administration (1122-1156) to new life and the height of prosperity. He increased the number of monks from 200 to 460, and connected 314 convents with the parent institution. In 1245 Pope Innocent IV., with twelve cardinals and all their clergy, two patriarchs, three archbishops, eleven bishops, the king of France, the emperor of Constantinople, and many dukes, counts and knights with their dependents were entertained in the buildings of Cluny. This was the end of its prosperity. Another decline followed, from which Cluny never entirely recovered. The last abbots were merely ornamental, and wasted two-thirds of the income at the court of France. The French Revolution of 1789 swept the institution out of existence, and reduced the once famous buildings to ruins; but restorations have since been made.

A similar reformation of monasticism and of the clergy was attempted and partially carried out in England by St. Dunstan (925-May 19, 988), first as abbot of Glastonbury, then as bishop of Winchester and London, and last as archbishop of Canterbury (961) and virtual ruler of the kingdom. A monk of the severest type and a churchman of iron will, he enforced the Benedictine rule, filled the leading sees and richer livings with Benedictines, made a crusade against clerical marriage (then the rule rather than the exception), hoping to correct the immorality of the priests by abstracting them from the world, and asserted the theocratic rule of the church over the civil power under Kings Edwy and Edgar; but his excesses called forth violent contentions between the monks and the seculars in England. He was a forerunner of Hildebrand and Thomas à Becket.



Vol. 4, Chapter VIII. Church Discipline

Comp. vol. II. § 57, and vol. III. § 68.

85. The Penitential Books

I. The Acts of Councils, the Capitularies of Charlemagne and his successors, and the Penitential Books, especially that of Theodore of Canterbury, and that of Rome. See Migne’s Patrol. Tom. 99, fol. 901-983.

II. Friedr. Kunstmann (R.C.): Die latein. Poenitentialbuecher der Angelsachsen. Mainz 1844. F. W. H. Wasserschleben: Bussordnungen der abendlaend. Kirche. Halle 1851. Steitz: Das röm. Buss-Sacrament. Frankf. 1854. Frank (R.C.): Die Bussdisciplin der Kirche. Mainz 1867. Probst (R.C.): Sacramente und Sacramentalien. Tübingen 1872. Haddan and Stubbs: Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, vol. III. Oxf. 1871. H. Jos. Schmitz (R.C.): Die Bussbücher und die Bussdisciplin der Kirche. Nach handschriftl. Quellen. Mainz 1883 (XVI. and 864 p.). Comp. the review of this book by Wasserschleben in the “Theol. Literaturzeitung,” 1883, fol. 614 sqq.

Bingham, Bk XIV. Smith and Cheetham, II. 608 sqq. (Penitential Books). Herzog,2 III. 20 sqq. (Bussbücher). Wetzer and Welte2 II. 209-222 (Beichtbücher); II. 1561-1590 (Bussdisciplin).

Comp. Lit. in § 87.

The discipline of the Catholic church is based on the power of the keys intrusted to the apostles and their successors, and includes the excommunication and restoration of delinquent members. It was originally a purely spiritual jurisdiction, but after the establishment of Christianity as the national religion, it began to affect also the civil and temporal condition of the subjects of punishment. It obtained a powerful hold upon the public mind from the universal belief of the middle ages that the visible church, centering in the Roman papacy, was by divine appointment the dispenser of eternal salvation, and that expulsion from her communion, unless followed by repentance and restoration, meant eternal damnation. No heresy or sect ever claimed this power.

Discipline was very obnoxious to the wild and independent spirit of the barbaric races. It was exercised by the bishop through synodical courts, which were held annually in the dominions of Charlemagne for the promotion of good morals. Charlemagne ordered the bishops to visit their parishes once a year, and to inquire into cases of incest, patricide, fratricide, adultery, and other vices contrary to the laws of God. Similar directions were given by Synods in Spain and England. The more extensive dioceses were divided into several archdeaconries. The archdeacons represented the bishops, and, owing to this close connection, they possessed a power and jurisdiction superior to that of the priests. Seven members of the congregation were entrusted with a supervision, and had to report to the inquisitorial court on the state of religion and morals. Offences both ecclesiastical and civil were punished at once with fines, fasting, pilgrimages, scourging, imprisonment. The civil authorities aided the bishops in the exercise of discipline. Public offences were visited with public penance; private offences were confessed to the priest, who immediately granted absolution on certain conditions.

The discipline of the Latin church in the middle ages is laid down in the so-called “Penitential Books.” They regulate the order of penitence, and prescribe specific punishments for certain sins, as drunkenness, fornication, avarice, perjury, homicide, heresy, idolatry. The material is mostly derived from the writings of the fathers, and from the synodical canons of Ancyra (314), Neocaesarea (314), Nicaea (325), Gangra (362), and of the North African, Frankish, and Spanish councils down to the seventh century. The common object of these Penitentials is to enforce practical duties and to extirpate the ferocious and licentious passions of heathenism. They present a very dark picture of the sins of the flesh. They kept alive the sense of a moral government of God, who punishes every violation of his law, but they lowered the sense of guilt by fostering the pernicious notion that sin may be expiated by mechanical exercises and by the payment of a sum of money.

There were many such books, British, Irish, Frankish, Spanish, and Roman. The best known are the Anglo-Saxon penitentials of the seventh and eighth centuries, especially that of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury (669-690). He was a Greek by birth, of Tarsus in Cilicia, and reduced the disciplinary rules of the East and West to a system. He was not the direct author of the book which bears his name, but it was drawn up under his direction, published during his life-time and by his authority, and contains his decisions in answer to various questions of a priest named Eoda and other persons on the subject of penance and the whole range of ecclesiastical discipline. The genuine text has recently been brought to light from early MSS. by the combined labors of German and English scholarship. The introduction and the book itself are written in barbarous Latin. Traces of the Greek training of Theodore may be seen in the references to St. Basil and to Greek practices. Next to Theodore’s collection there are Penitentials under the name of the venerable Bede (d. 735), and of Egbert, archbishop of York (d. 767).

The earliest Frankish penitential is the work of Columban, the Irish missionary (d. 615). He was a severe monastic disciplinarian and gave prominence to corporal punishment among the penalties for offences. The Cummean Penitential (Poenit. Cummeani) is of Scotch-Irish origin, and variously assigned to Columba of Iona (about 597), to Cumin, one of his disciples, or to Cummean, who died in Columban’s monastery at Bobbio (after 711). Haltigar, bishop of Cambray, in the ninth century (about 829) published a “Roman Penitential,” professedly derived from Roman archives, but in great part from Columban, and Frankish sources. An earlier work which bears the name “Poenitentiale Romanum,” from the first part of the eighth century, has a more general character, but its precise origin is uncertain. The term “Roman” was used to designate the quality of a class of Penitentials which enjoyed a more than local authority. Rabanus Maurus (d. 855) prepared a “Liber Poenitentitae” at the request of the archbishop Otgar of Mayence (841). Almost every diocese had its own book of the kind, but the spirit and the material were substantially the same.

 

Notes

As specimens of these Penitential Books, we give the first two chapters from the first book of the Poenitentiale Theodori (Archbishop of Canterbury), as printed in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Eccles. Doc. relating to Great Britain and Ireland, vol. IIIrd. p. 177 sqq. We insert a few better readings from other MSS. used by Wasserschleben.

I. De Crapula et Ebrietate.

1. Si quis Episco pus aut aliquis ordinatus in consuetudine vitium habuerit ebrietatis, aut desinat aut deponatur.

2. Si monachus pro ebrietate vomitum facit, XXX. dies peniteat.

3. Si presbiter aut diaconus pro ebrietate, XL. dies peniteat.

4. Si vero pro infirmitate aut quia longo tempore se abstinuerit, et in consuetudine non erit ei multum bibere vel manducare, aut pro gaudio in Natale Domini aut in Pascha aut pro alicujus Sanctorum commemoratione faciebat, et tunc plus non accipit quam decretum est a senioribus, nihil nocet. Si Episcopus juberit, non nocet illi, nisi ipse similiterfaciat.

5. Si laicus fidelis pro ebrietate vomitum facit, XV. dies peniteat.

6. Qui vero inebriatur contra Domini interdictum, si votum sanctitatis habuerit VII. dies in pane et aqua, lxx. sine pinguedine peniteat; laici sine cervisa [cervisia].

7. Qui per nequitiam inebriat alium, XL. dies peniteat.

8. Qui pro satietate vomitum facit, III. diebus [dies] peniteat.

9. Si cum sacrificio communionis, VII. dies peniteat; si infirmitatis causa, sine culpa.

II. De Fornicatione.

1. Si quis fornicaverit cum virgine, I. anno peniteat. Si cum marita, IIII. annos, II. integros, II alios in XL. mis. III. bus., et III dies in ebdomada peniteat.

2. Qui sepe cum masculo aut cum pecude fornicat, X. annos ut peniteret judicavit.

3. Rem aliud. Qui cum pecoribus coierit, XV. annos peniteat.

4. Qui coierit cum masculo post XX. annum, XV. annos peniteat.

5. Si masculus cum masculo fornicaverit, X. annos peniteat.

6. Sodomitae VII. annos peniteat [peniteant]; molles [et mollis] sicut adultera.

7. Item hoc; virile scelus semel faciens IIII annos peniteat; si in consuetudine fuerit, ut Basilius dicit, XV. Si sine, sustinens unum annum ut mulier. Si puer sit, primo II. bus annis; si iterat IIII.

8. Si in femoribus, annum I. vel. III. XL. mas.

9. Si se ipsum coinguinat, XL. dies [peniteat.]

10. Qui concupiscit fornicari [fornicare] sed non potest, XL. dies vel XX. peniteat. Si frequentaverit, si puer sit, XX. dies, vel vapuletur.

11. Pueri qui fornicantur inter se ipsos judicavit ut vapulentur.

12. Mulier cum muliere fornicando [si … fornicaverit], III. annos peniteat.

13. Si sola cum se ipsa coitum habet, sic peniteat.

14. Una penitentia est viduae et puellae. Majorem meruit quae virum habet, si fornicaverit.

15. Qui semen in os miserit, VII annos peniteat: hoc pessimum malum. Alias ab eo judicatum est ut ambo usque in finem vitae peniteant; vel XXII. annos, vel ut superius VII.

16. Si cum matre quis fornicaverit, XV. annos peniteat, et nunquam, mutat [mutet] nisi Dominicis diebus: et hoc tam profanum incertum [incestum] ab eo similiter alio modo dicitur ut cum peregrinatione perenni VII. annos peniteat.

17. Qui cum sorore fornicatur, XV. annos peniteat, eo modo quo superius de matre dicitur, sed et istud XV. alias in canone confirmavit; unde non absorde XV. anni ad matrem transeunt qui scribuntur.

18. Qui sepe fornicaverit, primus canon judicavit X. annos penitere; secundus canon VII.; sed pro infirmitate hominis, per consilium dixerunt III. annos penitere.

19. Si frater cum fratre naturali fornicaverit per commixtionem carnis, XV. annos ab omni carne abstineat.

20. Si mater cum filio suo parvulo fornicationem imitatur, III. annos se abstineat a carne, et diem unum jejunet in ebdomada, id est, usque ad vesperum.

21. Qui inludetur fornicaria cogitatione, peniteat usque dum cogitatio superetur.

22. Qui diligit feminam mente, veniam petat ab eo [a Deo] id est, de amore et amicitia si dixerit si non est susceptus ab ea, VII. dies peniteat.”

The remaining chapters of the first book treat De Avaritia Furtiva; De Occisione Hominum [De Homicidio]; De his qui per Heresim decipiuntur; De Perjurio; De multis et diversis Malis; De diverso Lapso servorum Dei; De his qui degraduntur vel ordinari non possunt; De Baptizatis his, qualiter peniteant; De his qui damnant Dominicam et indicta jejunia ecclesiae Dei; De communione Eucharistiae, vel Sacrificio; De Reconciliatione; De Penitentia Nubentium specialiter; De Cultura Idolorum. The last chapter shows how many heathen superstitions prevailed in connection with gross immorality, which the church endeavored to counteract by a mechanical legalism. The second book treats De Ecclesiae Ministerio; De tribus gratlibus; De Ordinatione; De Baptismo et Confirmatione; De Missa Defunctorum, etc.

 

86. Ecclesiastical Punishments. Excommunication, Anathema, Interdict

Friedrich Kober (R.C.): Der Kirchenbann nach den Grundsätzen des canonischen Rechts dargestellt. Tübingen 1857 (560 pages). By the same author: Die Suspension der Kirchendiener. Tüb. 1862.

Henry C. Lea: Excommunication, in his Studies in Church History (Philadelphia 1869), p. 223-475.

The severest penalties of the church were excommunication, anathema, and interdict. They were fearful weapons in the hands of the hierarchy during the middle ages, when the church was believed to control salvation, and when the civil power enforced her decrees by the strong arm of the law. The punishment ceases with repentance, which is followed by absolution. The sentence of absolution must proceed from the bishop who pronounced the sentence of excommunication; but in articulo mortis every priest can absolve on condition of obedience in case of recovery.

1. Excommunication was the exclusion from the sacraments, especially the communion. In the dominions of Charlemagne it was accompanied with civil disabilities, as exclusion from secular tribunals, and even with imprisonment and seizure of property. A bishop could excommunicate any one who refused canonical obedience. But a bishop could only be excommunicated by the pope, and the pope by no power on earth. The sentence was often accompanied with awful curses upon the bodies and souls of the offender. The popes, as they towered above ordinary bishops, surpassed them also in the art of cursing, and exercised it with shocking profanity. Thus Benedict VIII., who crowned Emperor Henry II. (a.d. 1014), excommunicated some reckless vassals of William II., Count of Provence, who sought to lay unhallowed hands upon the property of the monastery of St. Giles, and consigned them to Satan with terrible imprecations, although he probably thought he was only following St. Peter’s example in condemning Ananias and Sapphira, and Simon Magus.

“Hardened sinners” (says Lea) “might despise such imprecations, but their effect on believers was necessarily unutterable, when, amid the gorgeous and impressive ceremonial of worship, the bishop, surrounded by twelve priests bearing flaming candles, solemnly recited the awful words which consigned the evil-doer and all his generation to eternal torment with such fearful amplitude and reduplication of malediction, and as the sentence of perdition came to its climax, the attending priests simultaneously cast their candles to the ground and trod them out, as a symbol of the quenching of a human soul in the eternal night of hell. To this was added the expectation, amounting almost to a certainty, that Heaven would not wait for the natural course of events to confirm the judgment thus pronounced, but that the maledictions would be as effective in this world as in the next. Those whom spiritual terrors could not subdue thus were daunted by the fearful stories of the judgment overtaking the hardened sinner who dared to despise the dread anathema.”

2. The Anathema is generally used in the same sense as excommunication or separation from church communion and church privileges. But in a narrower sense, it means the “greater” excommunication, which excludes from all Christian intercourse and makes the offender an outlaw; while the “minor” excommunication excludes only from the sacrament. Such a distinction was made by Gratian and Innocent III. The anathema was pronounced with more solemn ceremonies. The Council of Nicaea, 335, anathematized the Arians, and the Council of Trent, 1563, closed with three anathemas on all heretics.

3. The Interdict extended over a whole town or diocese or district or country, and involved the innocent with the guilty. It was a suspension of religion in public exercise, including even the rites of marriage and burial; only baptism and extreme unction could be performed, and they only with closed doors. It cast the gloom of a funeral over a country, and made people tremble in expectation of the last judgment. This exceptional punishment began in a small way in the fifth century. St. Augustin justly reproved Auxilius, a brother bishop, who abused his power by excommunicating a whole family for the offence of the head, and Pope Leo the Great forbade to enforce the penalty on any who was not a partner in the crime. But the bishops and popes of the middle ages, from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, thought otherwise, and resorted repeatedly to this extreme remedy of enforcing obedience. They had some basis for it in the custom of the barbarians to hold the family or tribe responsible for crimes committed by individual members.

The first conspicuous examples of inflicting the Interdict occurred in France. Bishop Leudovald of Bayeux, after consulting with his brother bishops, closed in 586 all the churches of Rouen and deprived the people of the consolations of religion until the murderer of Pretextatus, Bishop of Rouen, who was slain at the altar by a hireling of the savage queen Fredegunda, should be discovered. Hincmar of Laon inflicted the interdict on his diocese (869), but Hincmar of Rheims disapproved of it and removed it. The synod of Limoges (Limoisin), in 1031, enforced the Peace of God by the interdict in these words which were read in the church: “We excommunicate all those noblemen (milites) in the bishopric of Limoges who disobey the exhortations of their bishop to hold the Peace. Let them and their helpers be accursed, and let their weapons and horses be accursed! Let their lot be with Cain, Dathan, and Abiram! And as now the lights are extinguished, so their joy in the presence of angels shall be destroyed, unless they repent and make satisfaction before dying.” The Synod ordered that public worship be closed, the altars laid bare, crosses and ornaments removed, marriages forbidden; only clergymen, beggars, strangers and children under two years could be buried, and only the dying receive the communion; no clergyman or layman should be shaved till the nobles submit. A signal in the church on the third hour of the day should call all to fall on their knees to pray. All should be dressed in mourning. The whole period of the interdict should be observed as a continued fast and humiliation.

The popes employed this fearful weapon against disobedient kings, and sacrificed the spiritual comforts of whole nations to their hierarchical ambition. Gregory VII. laid the province of Gnesen under the interdict, because King Bolislaw II. had murdered bishop Stanislaus of Cracow with his own hand. Alexander II. applied it to Scotland (1180), because the king refused a papal bishop and expelled him from the country. Innocent III. suspended it over France (1200), because king Philip Augustus had cast off his lawful wife and lived with a concubine. The same pope inflicted this punishment upon England (March 23, 1208), hoping to bring King John (Lackland) to terms. The English interdict lasted over six years during which all religious rites were forbidden except baptism, confession, and the viaticum.

Interdicts were only possible in the middle ages when the church had unlimited power. Their frequency and the impossibility of full execution diminished their power until they fell into contempt and were swept out of existence as the nations of Europe outgrew the discipline of priestcraft and awoke to a sense of manhood.

 

87. Penance and Indulgence

Nath. Marshall (Canon of Windsor and translator of Cyprian, d. 1729): The Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church for the first 400 years after Christ, together with its declension from the fifth century downward to its present state. London 1714. A new ed. in the “Lib. of Anglo-Cath. Theol.” Oxford 1844.

Eus. Amort: De Origine, Progressu, Valore ac Fructu Indulgentiarum. Aug. Vindel. 1735 fol.

Muratori: De Redemtione Peccatorum et de Indulgentiarum Origine, in Tom. V. of his Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi. Mediol. 1741.

Joh. B. Hirscher (R.C.): Die Lehre vom Ablass. Tübingen, 5th ed. 1844.

G. E. Steitz: Das römische Buss-Sacrament, nach seinem bibl. Grunde und seiner gesch. Entwicklung. Frankf a. M. 1854 (210 pages).

Val. Gröne (R.C.): Der Ablass, seine Geschichte und Bedeutung in der Heilsökonomie. Regensb. 1863.

Domin. Palmieri (R.C.): Tractat. de Poenit. Romae 1879.

George Mead: Art. Penitence, in Smith and Cheetham II. 1586-1608. Wildt, (R.C.): Ablass, in Wetzer and Welte2 I. 94-111; Beichte and Beichtsiegel, II. 221-261. Mejer in Herzog2 I. 90-92. For extracts from sources comp. Gieseler II. 105 sqq.; 193 sqq.; 515 sqq. (Am. ed.)

For the authoritative teaching of the Roman church on the Sacramentum Poenitentiae see Conc. Trident. Sess. XIV. held 1551.

The word repentance or penitence is an insufficient rendering for the corresponding Greek metanoia, which means a radical change of mind or conversion from a sinful to a godly life, and includes, negatively, a turning away from sin in godly sorrow (repentance in the narrower sense) and, positively, a turning to Christ by faith with a determination to follow him. The call to repent in this sense was the beginning of the preaching both of John the Baptist, and of Jesus Christ.

In the Latin church the idea of repentance was externalized and identified with certain outward acts of self-abasement or self-punishment for the expiation of sin. The public penance before the church went out of use during the seventh or eighth century, except for very gross offences, and was replaced by private penance and confession. The Lateran Council of 1215 under Pope Innocent III. made it obligatory upon every Catholic Christian to confess to his parish priest at least once a year.

Penance, including auricular confession and priestly absolution, was raised to the dignity of a sacrament for sins committed after baptism. The theory on which it rests was prepared by the fathers (Tertullian and Cyprian), completed by the schoolmen, and sanctioned by the Roman church. It is supposed that baptism secures perfect remission of past sins, but not of subsequent sins, and frees from eternal damnation, but not from temporal punishment, which culminates in death or in purgatory. Penance is described as a “laborious kind of baptism,” and is declared by the Council of Trent to be necessary to salvation for those who have fallen after baptism, as baptism is necessary for those who have not yet been regenerated.

The sacrament of penance and priestly, absolution includes three elements: contrition of the heart, confession by the mouth, satisfaction by good works. On these conditions the priest grants absolution, not simply by a declaratory but by a judicial act. The good works required are especially fasting and almsgiving. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Tours, Compostella, and other sacred places were likewise favorite satisfactions. Peter Damiani recommended voluntary self-flagellation as a means to propitiate God. These pious exercises covered in the popular mind the whole idea of penance. Piety was measured by the quantity of good works rather than by quality of character.

Another medieval institution must here be mentioned which is closely connected with penance. The church in the West, in her zeal to prevent violence and bloodshed, rightly favored the custom of the barbarians to substitute pecuniary compensation for punishment of an offence, but wrongly applied this custom to the sphere of religion. Thus money, might be substituted for fasting and other satisfactions, and was clothed with an atoning efficacy. This custom seems to have proceeded from the church of England, and soon spread over the continent. It degenerated into a regular traffic, and became a rich source for the increase of ecclesiastical and monastic property.

Here is the origin of the indulgences so called, that is the remission of venial sins by the payment of money and on condition of contrition and prayer. The practice was justified by the scholastic theory that the works of supererogation of the saints constitute a treasury of extra-merit and extra-reward which is under the control of the pope. Hence indulgence assumed the special meaning of papal dispensation or remission of sin from the treasury of the overflowing merits of saints, and this power was extended even to the benefit of the dead in purgatory.

Indulgences may be granted by bishops and archbishops in their dioceses, and by the pope to all Catholics. The former dealt with it in retail, the latter in wholesale. The first instances of papal indulgence occur in the ninth century under Paschalis I. and John VIII. who granted it to those who had fallen in war for the defence of the church. Gregory VI. in 1046 promised it to all who sent contributions for the repair of the churches in Rome. Urban II., at the council of Clermont (1095), offered to the crusaders “by the authority of the princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul,” plenary indulgence as a reward for a journey to the Holy Land. The same offer was repeated in every crusade against the Mohammedans and heretics. The popes found it a convenient means for promoting their power and filling their treasury. Thus the granting of indulgences became a periodical institution. Its abuses culminated in the profane and shameful traffic of Tetzel under Leo X. for the benefit of St. Peter’s church, but were overruled in the Providence of God for the Reformation and a return to the biblical idea of repentance.

 

Notes

The charge is frequently made against the papal court in the middle ages that it had a regulated scale of prices for indulgences, and this is based on the Tax Tables of the Roman Chancery published from time to time. Roman Catholic writers (as Lingard, Wiseman) say that the taxes are merely fees for the expedition of business and the payment of officials, but cannot deny the shameful avarice of some popes. The subject is fully discussed by Dr. T. L. Green (R.C.), Indulgences, Sacramental Absolutions, and the Tax-Tables of the Roman Chancery and Penitentiary, considered, in reply to the Charge of Venality, London (Longmans) 1872, and, on the Protestant side, by Dr. Richard Gibbings (Prof. of Ch. Hist. in the University of Dublin), The Taxes of the Apostolic Penitentiary; or, the Prices of Sins in the Church of Rome, Dublin 1872. Gibbings reprints the Taxae Sacrae Poenitentiariae Romanae from the Roman ed. of 1510 and the Parisian ed. of 1520, which cover 21 pages in Latin, but the greater part of the book (164 pages) is an historical introduction and polemical discussion.



Vol. 4, Chapter IX. Church and State

Comp. vol. III. ch. III. and the Lit. there quoted.

88. Legislation

Medieval Christianity is not a direct continuation of the ante-Nicene Christianity in hostile conflict with the heathen state, but of the post-Nicene Christianity in friendly union with a nominally Christian state. The missionaries aimed first at the conversion of the rulers of the barbarian races of Western and Northern Europe. Augustin, with his thirty monks, was provided by Pope Gregory with letters to princes, and approached first King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha in Kent. Boniface leaned on the pope and Charles Martel. The conversion of Clovis decided the religion of the Franks. The Christian rulers became at once the patrons of the church planted among their subjects, and took Constantine and Theodosius for their models. They submitted to the spiritual authority of the Catholic church, but aspired to its temporal government by the appointment of bishops, abbots, and the control over church-property. Hence the frequent collisions of the two powers, which culminated in the long conflict between the pope and the emperor.

The civil and ecclesiastical relations of the middle ages are so closely intertwined that it is impossible to study or understand the one without the other. In Spain, for instance, the synods of Toledo were both ecclesiastical councils and royal parliaments; after the affairs of the church were disposed of, the bishops and nobles met together for the enactment of civil laws, which were sanctioned by the king. The synods and diets held under Charlemagne had likewise a double character. In England the bishops were, and are still, members of the House of Lords, and often occupied seats in the cabinet down to the time of Cardinal Wolsey, who was Archbishop of York and Chancellor of England. The religious persecutions of the middle ages were the joint work of church and state.

This union has a bright and a dark side. It was a wholesome training-school for barbarous races, it humanized and ennobled the state; but it secularized the church and the clergy, and hindered the development of freedom by repressing all efforts to emancipate the mind from the yoke of despotic power. The church gained a victory over the world, but the world gained also a victory over the church. St. Jerome, who witnessed the first effects of the marriage of the church with the Roman empire, anticipated the experience of later ages, when he said: “The church by its connection with Christian princes gained in power and riches, but lost in virtues.” Dante, who lived in the golden age of the medieval hierarchy, and believed the fable of the donation of Constantine to Sylvester, traced the ills of the church to “that marriage-dower” which the first wealthy pope received from the first Christian emperor.

The connection of the ecclesiastical and civil powers is embodied in the legislation which regulates the conduct of man in his relations to his fellow-men, and secures social order and national welfare. It is an index of public morals as far as it presupposes and fixes existing customs; and where it is in advance of popular sentiment, it expresses a moral ideal in the mind of the lawgivers to be realized by the educational power of legal enactments.

During the middle ages there were three systems of jurisprudence: the Roman law, the Barbaric law, and the Canon law. The first two proceeded from civil, the third from ecclesiastical authority. The civil law embodies the records and edicts of emperors and kings, the enactments of diets and parliaments, the decisions of courts and judges. The ecclesiastical law embodies the canons of councils and decretals of popes. The former is heathen in origin, but improved and modified by Christianity; the latter is the direct production of the church, yet as influenced by the state of medieval society. Both rest on the union of church and state, and mutually support each other, but it was difficult to draw the precise line of difference, and to prevent occasional collisions of jurisdiction.

 

89. The Roman Law

See vol. III. §§ 13 and 18.

Fr. K. von Savigny (Prof. of jurisprudence in Berlin, d. 1861) Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter. Berlin 1815-’31 6 vols. Chapter 44 of Gibbon on Roman law. Ozanam: Hist. of the Civilization in the Fifth Century, ch. V. (vol. I. 136-158 in Glyn’s transl. Lond. 1868). Milman: Lat. Christ. Bk III. ch. 5 (vol. 1. 479 sqq. N. York ed.)

The Justinian code (527-534) transmitted to the middle ages the legislative wisdom and experience of republican and imperial Rome with the humanizing improvements of Stoic philosophy and the Christian religion, but at the same time with penal laws against every departure from the orthodox Catholic creed, which was recognized and protected as the only religion of the state. It maintained its authority in the Eastern empire. It was partly preserved, after the destruction of the Western empire among the Latin inhabitants of Italy, France, and Spain, in a compilation from the older Theodosian code (429-438), which contained the post-Constantinian laws, with fragments from earlier collections.

In the twelfth century the Roman law (after the discovery of a copy of the Pandects at Amalfi in 1135, which was afterwards transferred to Florence) began to be studied again with great enthusiasm. A famous school of civil law was established at Bologna. Similar schools arose in connection with the Universities at Paris, Naples, Padua, and other cities. The Roman civil law (Corpus juris civilis), in connection with the ecclesiastical or canon law (Corpus juris canonici), was gradually adopted all over the Continent of Europe, and the Universities granted degrees in both laws conjointly.

Thus Rome, substituting the law for the sword, ruled the world once more for centuries, and subdued the descendants of the very barbarians who had destroyed her empire. The conquered gave laws to the conquerors, mindful of the prophetic line of Virgil:

“Tu, regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.”

 

Notes

The anti-heretical part of the Roman law, on which persecution was based, is thus summed up by Dean Milman (Bk III. ch. 5): “A new class of crimes, if not introduced by Christianity, became multiplied, rigorously defined, mercilessly condemned. The ancient Roman theory, that the religion of the State must be the religion of the people, which Christianity had broken to pieces by its inflexible resistance, was restored in more than its former rigor. The code of Justinian confirmed the laws of Theodosius and his successors, which declared certain heresies, Manicheism and Donatism, crimes against the State, as affecting the common welfare. The crime was punishable by confiscation of all property, and incompetency to inherit or to bequeath. Death did not secure the hidden heretic from prosecution; as in high treason, he might be convicted in his grave. Not only was his testament invalid, but inheritance could not descend through him. All who harbored such heretics were liable to punishment; their slaves might desert them, and transfer themselves to an orthodox master. The list of proscribed heretics gradually grew wider. The Manicheans were driven still farther away from the sympathies of mankind; by one Greek constitution they were condemned to capital punishment. Near thirty names of less detested heretics are recited in a law of Theodosius the younger, to which were added, in the time of Justinian, Nestorians, Eutychians, Apollinarians. The books of all these sects were to be burned; yet the formidable number of these heretics made no doubt the general execution of the laws impossible. But the Justinian code, having defined as heretics all who do not believe the Catholic faith, declares such heretics, as well as Pagans, Jews, and Samaritans, incapable of holding civil or military offices, except in the lowest ranks of the latter; they could attain to no civic dignity which was held in honor, as that of the defensors, though such offices as were burdensome might be imposed even on Jews. The assemblies of all heretics were forbidden, their books were to be collected and burned, their rites, baptisms, and ordinations prohibited. Children of heretical parents might embrace orthodoxy; the males the parent could not disinherit, to the females he was bound to give an adequate dowry. The testimony of Manicheans, of Samaritans, and Pagans could not be received; apostates to any of these sects and religions lost all their former privileges, and were liable to all penalties.”

 

90. The Capitularies of Charlemagne

Steph. Baluzius (Baluze, Prof. of Canon law in Paris, d. 1718): Regum Francorum Capitularia, 1677; new ed. Paris, 1780, 2 vols. Pertz: Monumenta Germaniae historica, Tom. III (improved ed. of the Capitularia). K. Fr. Eichhorn: Deutsche Staats-und Rechtsgeschichte, Göttingen, 1808, 4 Parts; 5th ed. 1844. J. Grimm: Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, Göttingen 1828. Giesebrecht (I. 800) calls this an “unusually rich collection with profound glances into the legal life of the German people.” W. Dönniges: Das deutsche Staatsrecht und die deutsche Reichsverfassung, Berlin 1842. F. Walther: Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, second ed. Bonn 1857. J. Hillebrand: Lehrbuch der deutschen Staats-und Rechtsgeschichte, Leipzig 1856. O. Stobbe: Geschichte der deutschen Rechtsquellen, Braunschweig, 1860 (first Part). W. Giesebrecht: Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, third ed. Braunschweig 1863 sqq. Bd I. 106-144.

The first and greatest legislator of the Germanic nations is Charlemagne, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire (800-814). What Constantine the Great, Theodosius the Great, and Justinian did for the old Roman empire on the basis of heathen Rome and the ancient Graeco-Latin church, Charlemagne did for the new Roman Empire in the West on the basis of Germanic customs and the Latin church centred in the Roman papacy. He was greater, more beneficial and enduring in his influence as a legislator than as a soldier and conqueror. He proposed to himself the herculean task to organize, civilize and Christianize the crude barbarian customs of his vast empire, and he carried it out with astonishing wisdom. His laws are embodied in the Capitularia, i.e. laws divided into chapters. They are the first great law-book of the French and Germans. They contain his edicts and ordinances relating to ecclesiastical, political, and civil legislation, judicial decisions and moral precepts. The influence of the church and the Christian religion is here more direct and extensive than in the Roman Code, and imparts to it a theocratic element which approaches to the Mosaic legislation. The Roman Catholic church with her creed, her moral laws, her polity, was the strongest bond of union which held the Western barbarians together and controlled the views and aims of the emperor. He appears, indeed, as the supreme ruler clothed with sovereign authority. But he was surrounded by the clergy which was the most intelligent and influential factor in legislation both in the synod and in the imperial diet. The emperor and his nobles were under the power of the bishops, and the bishops were secular lords and politicians as well as ecclesiastics. The ecclesiastical affairs were controlled by the Apocrisiarius (a sort of minister of worship); the secular affairs, by the Comes palatii; both were aided in each province by a delegated bishop and count who were to work in harmony. On important questions the pope was consulted. The legislation proceeded from the imperial will, from ecclesiastical councils, and from the diet or imperial assembly. The last consisted of the dignitaries of church and state, the court officials, bishops, abbots, dukes, counts, etc., and convened every spring. The emperor was surrounded at his court by the most eminent statesmen, clergymen and scholars, from whom he was anxious to learn without sacrificing his right to rule. His court was a school of discipline and of that gentlemanly courtesy and refinement which became a distinguishing feature of chivalry, and Charlemagne shone in poetry as the first model cavalier.

The legislation of the Carolingian Capitularies is favorable to the clergy, to monasteries, to the cause of good morals and religion. The marriage tie is protected, even among slaves; the license of divorce restrained; divorced persons are forbidden to marry again during the life-time of the other party. The observance of Sunday is enjoined for the special benefit of the laboring classes. Ecclesiastical discipline is enforced by penal laws in cases of gross sins such as incest. Superstitious customs, as consulting soothsayers and the Scriptures for oracles, are discouraged, but the ordeal is enjoined. Wholesome moral lessons are introduced, sometimes in the language of the Scriptures: the people are warned against perjury, against feud, against shedding Christian blood, against the oppression of the poor (whose cause should be heard by the judges before the cause of the rich). They are exhorted to learn the Apostles’ Creed and to pray, to love one another and to live in peace, “because they have one Father in heaven.” Cupidity is called “a root of all evil.” Respect for the dead is encouraged. Hospitality is recommended for the reason that he who receives a little child in the name of Christ, receives him.

This legislation was much neglected under the weak successors of Charlemagne, but remains a noble monument of his intentions.

 

91. English Legislation

Wilkin: Leges Anglo-Saxonicae (1721). Thorpe: Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (London 1840). Matthew Hale: History of the Common Law (6th ed. by Runnington, 1820). Reeve: History of the English Law (new ed. by Finalson l869, 3 vols.). Blackstone: Commentaries on the Laws of England (London 1765, many ed. Engl. and Amer.). Burn: Ecclesiastical Law (9th ed. by Phillimore, 1842, 4 vols.). Phillimore: Ecclesiastical Law of the Church of England (Lond. 1873, 2 vols.). Wm. Strong (Justice of the Supreme Court of the U. S.): Two Lectures upon the Relations of Civil Law to Church Property (N. York 1875).

England never accepted the Roman civil law, and the canon law only in part. The island in its isolation was protected by the sea against foreign influence, and jealous of it. It built up its own system of jurisprudence on the basis of Anglo-Saxon habits and customs. The English civil law is divided into Common Law or lex non scripta (i.e. not written at first), and Statute Law or lex scripta. They are related to each other as oral tradition and the Bible are in theology. The Common Law embodies the ancient general and local customs of the English people, handed down by word of mouth from time immemorial, and afterwards recorded in the decisions of judges who are regarded as the living oracles of interpretation and application, and whose decisions must be adhered to in similar cases of litigation. It is Anglo-Saxon in its roots, and moulded by Norman lawyers, under the influence of Christian principles of justice and equity. Blackstone, the standard expounder of English law, says, “Christianity is a part of the Common Law of England.” Hence the laws against religious offences, as blasphemy, profane swearing, desecration of the Lord’s Day, apostasy from Christianity, and heresy.

The Christian character of English legislation is due in large measure to the piety of the Anglo-Saxon kings, especially Alfred the Great (849-901), and Edward III., the Confessor 1004-1066, canonized by Alexander III., 1166), who prepared digests of the laws of the realm. Their piety was, of course, ascetic and monastic, but enlightened for their age and animated by the spirit of justice and charity. The former is styled Legum Anglicanarum Conditor, the latter Legum Anglicanarum Restitutor.

Alfred’s Dome-Book or Liber justicialis was lost during the irruption of the Danes, but survived in the improved code of Edward the Confessor. Alfred was for England what Charlemagne was for France and Germany, a Christian ruler, legislator, and educator of his people. He is esteemed “the wisest, best, and greatest king that ever reigned in England.” Although he was a great sufferer from epilepsy or some similar bodily infirmity which seized him suddenly from time to time and made him despair of life, he performed, like St. Paul in spite of his thorn in the flesh, an incredible amount of work. The grateful memory of his people ascribed to him institutions and laws, rights and privileges which existed before his time, but in many respects he was far ahead of his age. When he ascended the throne, “hardly any one south of the Thames could understand the ritual of the church or translate a Latin letter.” He conceived the grand scheme of popular national education. For this end he rebuilt the churches and monasteries which had been ruined by the Danes, built new ones, imported books from Rome, invited scholars from the Continent to his court, translated with their aid Latin works (as Gregory’s Pastoral Care, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, and Boethius’s Consolations of Philosophy) into the Anglo-Saxon, collected the laws of the country, and remodelled the civil and ecclesiastical organization of his kingdom.

His code is introduced with the Ten Commandments and other laws taken from the Bible. It protects the stranger in memory of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt; it gives the Christian slave freedom in the seventh year, as the Mosaic law gave to the Jewish bondman; it protects the laboring man in his Sunday rest; it restrains blood thirsty passions of revenge by establishing bots or fines for offences; it enjoins the golden rule (in the negative form), not to do to any man what we would not have done to us.

“In all these words of human brotherhood, of piety, and the spirit of justice, of pity and humanity, uttered by the barbaric lawgivers of a wild race, there speaks a great Personality — the embodiment of the highest sympathy and most disinterested virtue of mankind. It cannot be said indeed that these religious influences, so apparently genuine, produced any powerful effect on society in Anglo-Saxon England, though they modified the laws. Still they began the history of the religious forces in England which, though obscured by much formalism and hypocrisy and weakened by selfishness, have yet worked out slowly the great moral and humane reforms in the history of that country, and have tended with other influences to make it one of the great leaders of modern progress.”

 

Notes

John Richard Green, in his posthumous work, The Conquest of England (N. York ed. 1884, p. 179 sq.), pays the following eloquent and just tribute to the character of King Aelfred (as he spells the name): “Aelfred stands in the forefront of his race, for he is the noblest as he is the most complete embodiment of all that is great, all that is lovable in the English temper, of its practical energy, its patient and enduring force, of the reserve and self-control that give steadiness and sobriety to a wide outlook and a restless daring, of its temperance and fairness, its frankness and openness, its sensitiveness to affection, its poetic tenderness, its deep and reverent religion. Religion, indeed, was the groundwork of Aelfred’s character. His temper was instinct with piety. Everywhere, throughout his writings that remain to us, the name of God, the thought of God, stir him to outbursts of ecstatic adoration. But of the narrowness, the want of proportion, the predominance of one quality over another, which commonly goes with an intensity of religious feeling or of moral purpose, he showed no trace. He felt none of that scorn of the world about him which drove the nobler souls of his day to monastery or hermitage. Vexed as he was by sickness and constant pain, not only did his temper take no touch of asceticism, but a rare geniality, a peculiar elasticity and mobility of nature, gave color and charm to his life …. Little by little men came to recognize in Aelfred a ruler of higher and nobler stamp than the world had seen. Never had it seen a king who lived only for the good of his people …. ‘I desire,’ said the king, ‘to leave to the men that come after me a remembrance of me in good works. His aim has been more than fulfilled …. While every other name of those earlier times has all but faded from the recollection of Englishmen, that of Aelfred remains familiar to every English child.’



Chapter X. Worship and Ceremonies

Chapter X. Worship and Ceremonies

Comp. vol. III. ch. VII., and Neander III. 123-140; 425-455 (Boston ed.).

 

92. The Mass

Comp. vol. III. § 96-101 and the liturgical Lit. there quoted; also the works on Christian and Ecclesiastical Antiquities, e.g. Siegel III. 361-411.

The public worship centered in the celebration of the mass as an actual, though unbloody, repetition of the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world. In this respect the Eastern and Western churches are fully agreed to this day. They surround this ordinance with all the solemnity of a mysterious symbolism. They differ only in minor details.

Pope Gregory I. improved the Latin liturgy, and gave it that shape which it substantially retains in the Roman church. He was filled with the idea that the eucharist embodies the reconciliation of heaven and earth, of eternity and time, and is fraught with spiritual benefit for the living and the pious dead in one unbroken communion. When the priest offers the unbloody sacrifice to God, the heavens are opened, the angel are present, and the visible and invisible worlds united.

Gregory introduced masses for the dead, in connection with the doctrine of purgatory which he developed and popularized. They were based upon the older custom of praying for the departed, and were intended to alleviate and abridge the penal sufferings of those who died in the Catholic faith, but in need of purification from remaining infirmities. Very few Catholics are supposed to be prepared for heaven; and hence such masses were often ordered beforehand by the dying, or provided by friends. They furnished a large income to priests. The Oriental church has no clearly defined doctrine of purgatory, but likewise holds that the departed are benefited by prayers of the living, “especially such as are offered in union with the oblation of the bloodless sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, and by works of mercy done in faith for their memory.”

The high estimate of the efficacy of the sacrament led also to the abuse of solitary masses, where the priest celebrates without attendants. This destroys the original character of the institution as a feast of communion with the Redeemer and the redeemed. Several synods in the age of Charlemagne protested against the practice. The Synod of Mainz in 813 decreed: “No presbyter, as it seems to us, can sing masses alone rightly, for how will he say sursum corda! or Dominus vobiscum! when there is no one with him?” A reformatory Synod of Paris, 829, prohibits these masses, and calls them a “reprehensible practice,” which has crept in “partly through neglect, partly through avarice.”

The mysterious character of the eucharist was changed into the miraculous and even the magical with the spread of the belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation. But the doctrine was contested in two controversies before it triumphed in the eleventh century.

The language of the mass was Greek in the Eastern, Latin in the Western church. The Latin was an unknown tongue to the barbarian races of Europe. It gradually went out of use among the descendants of the Romans, and gave place to the Romanic languages. But the papal church, sacrificing the interests of the people to the priesthood, and rational or spiritual worship to external unity, retained the Latin language in the celebration of the mass to this day, as the sacred language of the church. The Council of Trent went so far as to put even the uninspired Latin Vulgate practically on an equality with the inspired Hebrew and Greek Scriptures.

 

93. The Sermon

As the chief part of divine service was unintelligible to the people, it was all the more important to supplement it by preaching and catechetical instruction in the vernacular tongues. But this is the weak spot in the church of the middle ages.

Pope Gregory I. preached occasionally with great earnestness, but few popes followed his example. It was the duty of bishops to preach, but they often neglected it. The Council of Clovesho, near London, which met in 747 under Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury, for the reformation of abuses, decreed that the bishops should annually visit their parishes, instruct and exhort the abbots and monks, and that all presbyters should be able to explain the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the mass, and the office of baptism to the people in the vernacular. A Synod of Tours, held in the year 813, and a Synod of Mainz, held under Rabanus Maurus in 847, decreed that every bishop should have a collection of homilies and translate them clearly “in rusticam Romanam linguam aut Theotiscam, i.e. into French (Romance) or German,” “in order that all may understand them.”

The great majority of priests were too ignorant to prepare a sermon, and barely understood the Latin liturgical forms. A Synod of Aix, 802, prescribed that they should learn the Athanasian and Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer with exposition, the Sacramentarium or canon of the mass, the formula of exorcism, the commendatio animae, the Penitential, the Calendar and the Roman cantus; they should learn to understand the homilies for Sundays and holy days as models of preaching, and read the pastoral theology of Pope Gregory. This was the sum and substance of clerical learning. The study of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures was out of the question, and there was hardly a Western bishop or pope in the middle ages who was able to study the divine oracles in the original.

The best, therefore, that the priests and deacons, and even most of the bishops could do was to read the sermons of the fathers. Augustin had given this advice to those who were not skilled in composition. It became a recognized practice in France and England. Hence the collection of homilies, called Homiliaria, for the Gospels and Epistles of Sundays and holy days. They are mostly patristic compilations. Bede’s collection, called Homilice de Tempore, contains thirty-three homilies for the summer, fifteen for the winter, twenty-two for Lent, besides sermons on saints’ days. Charlemagne commissioned Paulus Diaconus or Paul Warnefrid (a monk of Monte Cassino and one of his chaplains, the historian of the Lombards, and writer of poems on saints) to prepare a Homiliarium (or Omiliarius) about a.d. 780, and recommended it for adoption in the churches of France. It follows the order of Sundays and festivals, is based on the text of the Vulgate, and continued in use more or less for several centuries. Other collections were made in later times, and even the Reformed church of England under Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth found it necessary to provide ignorant clergymen with two Books of Homilies adapted to the doctrines of the Reformation.

In this connection we must allude again to the poetic reproductions of the Bible history, namely, the divine epos of Caedmon, the Northumbrian monk (680), the Saxon Heliand” (Heiland, i.e. Saviour, about 880), and the “Christ” or Gospel Harmony of Otfrid (a pupil of Rabanus Maurus, about 870). These works were effective popular sermons on the history of redemption, and are at the same time the most valuable remains of the Anglo-Saxon and old high German dialects of the Teutonic language.

It was, however, not till the Reformation of the sixteenth century that the sermon and the didactic element were restored and fully recognized in their dignity and importance as regular and essential parts of public worship. I say, worship, for to expound the oracles of God, and devoutly to listen to such exposition is or ought to be worship both on the part of the preacher and on the part of the hearer, as well as praying and singing.

 

94. Church Poetry. Greek Hymns and Hymnists

See the Lit. in vol. III. § 113 and § 114, and add the following:

Cardinal Pitra: Hymnographie de l’église grecque. Rome 1867. By the same: Analecta Sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi parata, T. I. Par. 1876.

Wilhelm Christ et M. Paranikas: Anthologia Graeca carminum Christianorum. Lips. 1871. CXLIV and 268 pages. The Greek text with learned Prolegomena in Latin. Christ was aided by Paranikas, a member of the Greek church. Comp. Christ: Beiträge zur kirchlichen Literatur der Byzantiner. München 1870.

L. Jacobi (Prof. of Church Hist. in Halle): Zur Geschichte der griechischen Kirchenliedes (a review of Pitra’s Analecta), in Brieger’s “Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch., “vol. V. Heft 2, p. 177-250 (Gotha 1881).

For a small selection of Greek hymns in the original see the third volume of Daniel’s Thesaurus Hymnologicus (1855), and Baessler’s Auswahl altchristlicher Lieder (1858), p. 153-166.

For English versions see especially J. M. Neale: Hymns of the Eastern Church (Lond. 1862, third ed. 1866, 159 pages; new ed. 1876, in larger print 250 pages); also Schaff: Christ in Song (1869), which gives versions of 14 Greek (and 73 Latin) hymns. German translations in Bässler, l.c. p. 3-25.

[Syrian Hymnology. To the lit. mentioned vol. III. 580 add: Gust. Bickell: S. Ephraemi Syri Carmina Nisibena, additis prolegomenis et supplemento lexicorum syriacorum edidit, vertit, explicavit. Lips.] 1866. Carl Macke: Hymnen aus dem Zweiströmeland. Dichtungen des heil. Ephrem des Syrers aus dem syr. Urtext in’s Deutsche uebertragen, etc. Mainz 1882. 270 pages. Macke is a pupil of Bickell and a successor of Zingerle as translator of Syrian church poetry.]

The general church histories mostly neglect or ignore hymnology, which is the best reflection of Christian life and worship.

The classical period of Greek church poetry extends from about 650 to 820, and nearly coincides with the iconoclastic controversy. The enthusiasm for the worship of saints and images kindled a poetic inspiration, and the chief advocates of that worship were also the chief hymnists. Their memory is kept sacred in the Eastern church. Their works are incorporated in the ritual books, especially the Menaea, which contain in twelve volumes (one for each month) the daily devotions and correspond to the Latin Breviary. Many are still unpublished and preserved in convent libraries. They celebrate the holy Trinity and the Incarnation, the great festivals, and especially also the Virgin Mary, the saints and martyrs, and sacred icons.

The Greek church poetry is not metrical and rhymed, but written in rhythmical prose for chanting, like the Psalms, the hymns of the New Testament, the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum. The older hymnists were also melodists and composed the music. The stanzas are called troparia; the first troparion is named hirmos, because it strikes the tune and draws the others after it. Three or more stanzas form an ode; three little odes are a triodion; nine odes or three triodia form a canon. The odes usually end with a doxology (doxa) and a stanza in praise of Mary the Mother of God (theotokion). A hymn with a tune of its own is called an idiomelon.

This poetry fills, according to Neale, more than nine tenths or four fifths of the Greek service books. It has been heretofore very little known and appreciated in the West, but is now made accessible. It contains some precious gems of genuine Christian hymns, buried in a vast mass of monotonous, bombastic and tasteless laudations of unknown confessors and martyrs, and wonder-working images.

The Greek church poetry begins properly with the anonymous but universally accepted and truly immortal Gloria in Excelsis of the third century. The poems of Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390), and Synesius of Cyrene (d. about 414), who used the ordinary classical measures, are not adapted and were not intended for public worship.

The first hymnist of the Byzantine period, is Anatolius patriarch of Constantinople (d. about 458). He struck out the new path of harmonious prose, and may be compared to Venantius Fortunatus in the West.

We now proceed to the classical period of Greek church poetry.

In the front rank of Greek hymnists stands St. John of Damascus, surnamed Mansur (d. in extreme old age about 780). He is the greatest systematic theologian of the Eastern church and chief champion of image-worship against iconoclasm under the reigns of Leo the Isaurian (717-741), and Constantinus Copronymus (741-775). He spent a part of his life in the convent of Mar Sâba (or St. Sabas) in the desolate valley of the Kedron, between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. He was thought to have been especially inspired by the Virgin Mary, the patron of that Convent, to consecrate his muse to the praise of Christ. He wrote a great part of the Octoechus, which contains the Sunday services of the Eastern church. His canon for Easter Day is called “the golden Canon” or “the queen of Canons,” and is sung at midnight before Easter, beginning with the shout of joy, “Christ is risen,” and the response, “Christ is risen indeed.” His memory is celebrated December 4.

Next to him, and as melodist even above him in the estimation of the Byzantine writers, is St. Cosmas of Jerusalem, called the Melodist. He is, as Neale says, “the most learned of the Greek poets, and the Oriental Adam of St. Victor.” Cosmas and John of Damascus were foster-brothers, friends and fellow-monks at Mar Sâba, and corrected each other’s compositions. Cosmas was against his will consecrated bishop of Maiuma near Gaza in Southern Palestine, by John, patriarch of Jerusalem. He died about 760 and is commemorated on the 14th of October. The stichos prefixed to his life says:

“Where perfect sweetness dwells, is Cosmas gone;

But his sweet lays to cheer the church live on.”

The third rank is occupied by St. Theophanes, surnamed the Branded, one of the most fruitful poets. He attended the second Council of Nicaea (787). During the reign of Leo the Arminian (813) he suffered imprisonment, banishment and mutilation for his devotion to the Icons, and died about 820. His “Chronography” is one of the chief sources for the history of the image-controversy.

The following specimen from Adam’s lament of his fall is interesting:

“Adam sat right against the Eastern gate,

By many a storm of sad remembrance tost:

O me! so ruined by the serpent’s hate!

O me! so glorious once, and now so lost!

So mad that bitter lot to choose!

Beguil’d of all I had to lose!

Must I then, gladness of my eyes, — 

Must I then leave thee, Paradise,

And as an exile go?

And must I never cease to grieve

How once my God, at cool of eve,

Came down to walk below?

O Merciful! on Thee I call:

O Pitiful! forgive my fall!”

The other Byzantine hymnists who preceded or succeeded those three masters, are the following. Their chronology is mostly uncertain or disputed.

Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople in the reign of Heracleus (610-641), figures in the beginning of the Monotheletic controversy, and probably suggested the union formula to that emperor. He is supposed by Christ to be the author of a famous and favorite hymn Akathistos, in praise of Mary as the deliverer of Constantinople from the siege of the Persians (630), but it is usually ascribed to Georgius Pisida.

Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem (629), celebrated in Anacreontic metres the praises of Christ, the apostles, and martyrs, and wrote idiomela with music for the church service 

Maximus the Confessor (580-662), the leader and martyr of the orthodox dyotheletic doctrine in the Monotheletic controversy, one of the profoundest divines and mystics of the Eastern Church, wrote a few hymns.

Germanus (634-734), bishop of Cyzicus, then patriarch of Constantinople (715), was deposed, 730, for refusing to comply with the iconoclastic edicts of the Emperor Leo the Isaurian (717-741), and died in private life, aged about one hundred years. He is “regarded by the Greeks as one of their most glorious Confessors” (Neale). Among his few poetical compositions are stanzas on Symeon the Stylite, on the prophet Elijah, on the Decollation of John the Baptist, and a canon on the wonder-working Image in Edessa.

Andrew of Crete (660-732) was born at Damascus, became monk at Jerusalem, deacon at Constantinople, archbishop of Crete, took part in the Monotheletic Synod of 712, but afterwards returned to orthodoxy. In view of this change and his advocacy of the images, he was numbered among the saints. He is regarded as the inventor of the Canons. His “Great Canon” is sung right through on the Thursday of Mid-Lent week, which is called from that hymn. It is a confession of sin and an invocation of divine mercy. It contains no less than two hundred and fifty (Neale says, three hundred) stanzas.

John of Damascus reduced the unreasonable length of the canons.

Another Andrew, called Ἁνδρέας Πυρός or Πυρρός, is credited with eight idiomela in the Menaea, from which Christ has selected the praise of Peter and Paul as the best.

Stephen The Sabaite (725-794) was a nephew of John of Damascus, and spent fifty-nine years in the convent of Mar Sâba, which is pitched, like an eagle’s nest, on the wild rocks of the Kedron valley. He is commemorated on the 13th of July. He struck the key-note of Neale’s exquisite hymn of comfort, “Art thou weary,” which is found in some editions of the Octoechus. He is the inspirer rather than the author of that hymn, which is worthy of a place in every book of devotional poetry.

Romanus, deacon in Berytus, afterwards priest in Constantinople, is one of the most original and fruitful among the older poets. Petra ascribes to him twenty-five hymns. He assigned him to the reign of Anastasius I. (491-518), but Christ to the reign of Anastasius II. (713-719), and Jacobi with greater probability to the time of Constantinus Pogonatus (681-685).

Theodore of the Studium (a celebrated convent near Constantinople) is distinguished for his sufferings in the iconoclastic controversy, and died in exile, 826, on the eleventh of November. He wrote canons for Lent and odes for the festivals of saints. The spirited canon on Sunday of Orthodoxy in celebration of the final triumph of image-worship in 842, is ascribed to him, but must be of later date as he died before that victory.

Joseph of the Studium, a brother of Theodore, and monk of that convent, afterwards Archbishop of Thessalonica (hence also called Thessalonicensis), died in prison in consequence of tortures inflicted on him by order of the Emperor Theophilus (829-842). He is sometimes confounded (even by Neale) with Joseph Hymnographus; but they are distinguished by Nicephorus and commemorated on different days.

Theoctistus of the Studium (about 890) is the author of a “Suppliant Canon to Jesus,” the only thing known of him, but the sweetest Jesus-hymn of the Greek Church.

Joseph, called Hymnographus (880), is the most prolific, most bombastic, and most tedious of Greek hymn-writers. He was a Sicilian by birth, at last superintendent of sacred vessels in a church at Constantinople. He was a friend of Photius, and followed him into exile. He is credited with a very large number of canons in the Mencaea and the Octoechus.

Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople (784), was the chief mover in the restoration of Icons and the second Council of Nicaea (787). He died Feb. 25, 806. His hymns are unimportant.

Euthymius, usually known as Syngelus or Syncellus (died about 910), is the author of a penitential canon to the Virgin Mary, which is much esteemed in the East.

Elias, bishop of Jerusalem about 761, and Orestes, bishop of the same city, 996-1012, have been brought to light as poets by the researches of Pitra from the libraries of Grotta Ferrata, and other convents.

In addition to these may be mentioned Methodius (846) Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople (d. 891), Metrophanes of Smyrna (900), Leo VI., or the Philosopher, who troubled the Eastern Church by a fourth marriage (886-917), Symeon Metaphrastes (Secretary and Chancellor of the Imperial Court at Constantinople, about 900), Kasias, Nilus Xanthopulus, Joannes Geometra, and Mauropus (1060). With the last the Greek hymnody well nigh ceased. A considerable number of hymns cannot be traced to a known author.

We give in conclusion the best specimens of Greek hymnody as reproduced and adapted to modern use by Dr. Neale.

’Tis the Day of Resurrection.

(Ἁναστάσεως ἡμέρα.)

By St. John of Damascus.

’Tis the Day of Resurrection,

Earth, tell it out abroad!

The Passover of gladness,

The Passover of God!

From death to life eternal,

From earth unto the sky,

Our Christ hath brought us over,

With hymns of victory.

Our hearts be pure from evil,

That we may see aright

The Lord in rays eternal

Of resurrection light:

And, listening to His accents,

May hear, so calm and plain,

His own “All hail!” — and hearing,

May raise the victor strain.

Now let the heavens be!

Let earth her song begin!

Let the round world keep triumph,

And all that is therein:

In grateful exultation

Their notes let all things blend,

For Christ the Lord hath risen,

Our joy that hath no end.

Jesu, name all names above.

(Ἱησοῦ γλυκύτατε.)

By St. Theoctistus of the Studium.

Jesu, name all names above,

Jesu, best and dearest,

Jesu, Fount of perfect love,

Holiest, tenderest, nearest!

Jesu, source of grace completest,

Jesu truest, Jesu sweetest,

Jesu, Well of power divine,

Make me, keep me, seal me Thine!

Jesu, open me the gate

Which the sinner entered,

Who in his last dying state

Wholly on Thee ventured.

Thou whose wounds are ever pleading,

And Thy passion interceding,

From my misery let me rise

To a home in Paradise!

Thou didst call the prodigal;

Thou didst pardon Mary:

Thou whose words can never fall

Love can never vary,

Lord, amidst my lost condition

Give — for Thou canst give — contrition!

Thou canst pardon all mine ill

If Thou wilt: O say, “I will!”

Woe, that I have turned aside

After fleshly pleasure!

Woe, that I have never tried

For the heavenly treasure!

Treasure, safe in homes supernal;

Incorruptible, eternal!

Treasure no less price hath won

Than the Passion of the Son!

Jesu, crowned with thorns for me,

Scourged for my transgression!

Witnessing, through agony,

That Thy good confession;

Jesu, clad in purple raiment,

For my evils making payment;

Let not all thy woe and pain,

Let not Calvary be in vain!

When I reach Death’s bitter sea,

And its waves roll higher,

Help the more forsaking me,

As the storm draws nigher:

Jesu, leave me not to languish,

Helpless, hopeless, full of anguish!

Tell me, — “Verily, I say,

Thou shalt be with me to-day!”

Art thou weary?

(Κόπον τε καὶ κάματον.)

By St. Stephen the Sabaite.

Art thou weary, art thou languid,

Art thou sore distrest?

“Come to me” — saith One — “and coming

Be at rest!”

Hath He marks to lead me to Him,

If He be my Guide?

“In His feet and hands are wound-prints,

And His side.”

Is there diadem, as Monarch,

That His brow adorns?

“Yea, a crown in very surety,

But of thorns!”

If I find Him, if I follow,

What His guerdon here?

“Many a sorrow, many a labor,

Many a tear.”

If I still hold closely to Him,

What hath He at last?

Sorrow vanquished, labor ended,

Jordan past!”

If I ask Him to receive me,

Will He say me nay?

Not till earth, and not till heaven

Pass away!”

Finding, following, keeping, struggling

Is He sure to bless?

Angels, martyrs, prophets, virgins,

Answer, Yes!”

 

95. Latin Hymnody. Literature

See vol. III. The following list covers the whole medieval period of Latin hymnody.

 

I. Latin Collections

The Breviaries and Missals. The hymnological collections of Clichtovaeus (Paris 1515, Bas. 1517 and 1519.), Cassander (Col. 1556), Ellinger (Frankf. a. M. 1578), Georg Fabricius (Poetarum Veterum ecclesiasticorum Opera, Bas. 1564). See the full titles of Breviaries and these older collections in Daniel, vol. I. XIII-XXII. and vol. II. VIII-XIV.

Cardinal Jos. Maria Thomasius (Tomasi, 1649-1713, one of the chief expounders of the liturgy and ceremonies of the Roman church): Opera Omnia. Rom. 1741 sqq., 7 vols. The second volume, p. 351-403, contains the Hymnarium de anni circulo, etc., for which he compared the oldest Vatican and other Italian MSS. of hymns down to the eighth century. The same vol. includes the Breviarium Psalterii. The fourth (1749) contains the Responsorialia et antiphonaria Romanae ecclesia, and the sixth vol. (1751) a collection of Missals. Thomasius is still very valuable. Daniel calls his book “fons primarius.”

Aug. Jak. Rambach (Luth. Pastor in Hamburg, b. 1777, d. 1851): Anthologie christlicher Gesänge aus alien Jahrh. der christl. Kirche. Altona and Leipzig 1817-1833, 6 vols. The first vol. contains Latin hymns with German translations and notes. The other volumes contain only German hymns, especially since the Reformation. Rambach was a pioneer in hymnology.

Job. Kehrein (R.C.): Lat. Anthologie aus den christl. Dichtern des Mittelalters. Frankfurt a. m. 1840. See his larger work below.

[John Henry Newman, Anglican, joined the Rom. Ch. 1845]: Hymni Ecclesiae. Lond. (Macmillan) 1838; new ed. 1865 (401 pages). Contains only hymns from the Paris, Roman, and Anglican Breviaries. The preface to the first part is signed “J. H. N.” and dated Febr. 21, 1838, but no name appears on the title page. About the same time Card. N. made his translations of Breviary hymns, which are noticed below, sub. III.

H. A. Daniel (Lutheran, d. 1871): Thesaurus Hymnologicus. Lips. 1841-1856, 5 Tomi. The first, second, fourth and fifth vols. contain Lat. hymns, the fourth Greek and Syrian h. A rich standard collection, but in need of revision.

P. J. Mone (R. Cath. d. 1871): Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters. Freiburg i. B. 1853-’55, 3 vols. From MSS with notes. Contains in all 1215 hymns divided into three divisions of almost equal size; (1) Hymns to God and the angels (461 pages); (2) Hymns to the Virgin Mary, (457 pages); (3) Hymns to saints (579 pages).

D. Ozanam: Documents inédits pour servir a l’histoire littéraire de l’Italie. Paris 1850. Contains a collection of old Latin hymns, reprinted in Migne’s “Patrol. Lat.” vol. 151, fol. 813-824.

Joseph Stevenson: Latin Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church; with an Interlinear Anglo-Saxon Gloss, from a MS. of the eleventh century in Durham Library. 1851 (Surtees Soc.).

J. M. Neale (Warden of Sackville College, high Anglican, d. 1866): Sequentiae ex Missalibus Germanicis, Anglicis, Gallicis, aliisque medii aevi collectae. Lond. 1852. 284 pages. Contains 125 sequences.

Felix Clément: Carmina e Poetis Christianis excerpta. Parisiis (Gaume Fratres) 1854. 564 pages. The Latin texts of hymns from the 4th to the 14th century, with French notes.

R. Ch. Trench (Archbishop of Dublin): Sacred Latin Poetry, chiefly Lyrical. Lond. and Cambridge, 1849; 2d ed. 1864; 3rd ed. revised and improved, 1874. (342 pages). With an instructive Introduction and notes.

Ans. Schubiger: Die Sängerschule St. Gallens vom 8ten bis 12ten Jahrh. Einsiedeln 1858. Gives sixty texts with the old music and facsimiles.

P. Gall Morel (R.C.): Lat. Hymnen des Mittelalters, grösstentheils aus Handschriften schweizerischer Klöster. Einsiedeln (Benziger) 1868 (341 pages). Mostly Marienlieder and Heiligenlieder (p. 30-325). Supplementary to Daniel and Mone.

Phil. Wackernagel (Luth., d. 1877): Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit bis zum Anfang des XVII. Jahrh. Leipz. 1864-1877, 5 vols. (the last vol. ed. by his two sons). This is the largest monumental collection of older German hymns; but the first vol. contains Latin hymns and sequences from the fourth to the sixteenth century.

Karl Bartsch (Prof of Germ. and Romanic philology in Rostock): Die lateinischen Sequenzen des Mittelalters in musikalischer und rhythmischer Beziehung dargestellt. Rostock 1868.

Chs. Buchanan Pierson: Sequences from the Sarum Missal. London 1871.

Joseph Kehrein (R.C.): Lateinische Sequenzen des Mittelalters aus Handschriften und Drucken. Mainz 1873 (620 pages). The most complete collection of Sequences (over 800). He divides the sequences, like Mone the hymns, according to the subject (Lieder an Gott, Engellieder, Marienlieder, Heiligenlieder). Comp. also his earlier work noticed above.

Francis A. March: Latin Hymns, with English Notes. N. York, 1874.

W. McIlvaine: Lyra Sacra Hibernica. Belfast, 1879. (Contains hymns of St. Patrick, Columba, and Sedulius).

E. Dümmler: Poëtae Latini Aevi Carolini. Berol. 1880-’84, 2 vols. Contains also hymns, II. p. 244-258.

Special editions of Adam of St. Victor: L. Gautier: La aeuvres poétiques d’ Adam de S. Victor. Par. 1858 and 1859, 2 vols. Digby S. Wrangham (of St. John’s College, Oxford): The Liturgical Poetry of Adam of St. Victor. Lond. 1881, 3 vols. (The Latin text of Gautier with E. Version in the original metres and with short notes). On the Dies Irae see the monograph of Lisco (Berlin 1840). It has often been separately published, e.g. by Franklin Johnson, Cambridge, Mass. 1883. So also the Stabat Mater, and the hymn of Bernard of Cluny De Contemptu Mundi (which furnished the thoughts for Neale’s New Jerusalem hymns). The hymns of St. Bernard, Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, are in the complete editions of their works. For St. Bernard see Migne’s “Patrol. Lat.” vol. 184, fol. 1307-1330; for Abelard, vol. 178, fol. 1759-1824.

 

II. Historical and Critical

Polyc. Leyser: Historia Poëtarum et Poëmatum Medii Aevi. Halae 1721.

Friedr. Münter: Ueber die älteste christl. Poesie. Kopenhagen 1806.

Edélstand Du Méril: Poésies populaires Latines anterieures au douzième siècle. Paris 1843. Poésies populaire’s Latines du moyen âge. Paris 1847.

Trench: Introd. to his S. Lat. Poetry. See above.

Bähr: Die christl. Dichter und Geschichtschreiber Roms. Karlsruhe 1836 , 2nd ed., revised, 1872 (with bibliography).

Edward Emil Koch: Geschichte des Kirchenlieds und Kirchengesangs in der christlichen, insbesondere der deutschen evangel. Kirche. Stuttgart, third ed. rev. and enlarged 1866-1876, 7 vols. This very instructive and valuable work treats of Latin hymnology, but rather superficially, in vol. I. 40-153.

Ad. Ebert: Allgem. Gesch. der Lit. des Mittelalters im Abendlande, vol. I. (Leipz. 1874), the third book (p. 516 sqq.), and vol. II. (1880) which embraces the age of Charlemagne and his successors.

Joh. Kayser (R.C.): Beiträge zur Geschichte und Erklärung der ältesten Kirchenhymnen. Paderborn, 2d ed. 1881. 477 pages, comes down only to the sixth century and closes with Fortunatus. See also his article Der Text des Hymnus Stabat Mater dolorosa, in the Tübingen “Theol. Quartalschrift” for 1884, No. I. p. 85-103.

 

III. English Translations

John Chandler (Anglican, d. July 1, 1876): The Hymns of the Primitive Church, now first collected, translated and arranged. London 1837. Contains 108 Latin hymns with Chandler’s translations.

Richard Mant (Lord Bishop of Down and Connor, d. Nov. 2, 1848): Ancient Hymns from the Roman Breviary. 1837. New ed. Lond. and Oxf. 1871. (272 pages)

John Henry Newman: Verses on Various Occasions. London 1868 (reprinted in Boston, by Patrick Donahue). The Preface is dated Dec. 21, 1867, and signed J. H. N. The book contains the original poems of the Cardinal, and his translations of the Roman Breviary Hymns and two from the Parisian Breviary, which, as stated in a note on p. 186, were all made in 1836-38, i.e. eight years before he left the Church of England.

Isaac Williams (formerly of Trinity College, Oxford, d. 1865): Hymns translated from the Parisian Breviary. London 1839.

Edward Caswall (Anglican, joined the R.C. Church 1847, d. Jan. 2, 1878): Lyra Catholica. Containing all the Breviary and Missal Hymns together with some other hymns. Lond. 1849. (311 pages). Reprinted N. Y. 1851. Admirable translations. They are also included in his Hymns and Poems, original and translated. London 2d ed. 1873.

John David Chambers (Recorder of New Sarum): Lauda Syon. Ancient Latin Hymns in the English and other Churches, translated into corresponding metres. Lond. 1857 (116 pages.)

J. M. Neale: Medieval Hymns and Sequences. Lond. 1862; 3d ed. 1867. (224 pages). Neale is the greatest master of free reproduction of Latin as well as Greek hymns. He published also separately his translation of the new Jerusalem hymns: The Rhythm of Bernard de Morlaix, Monk of Cluny, on the Celestial Country. Lond. 1858, 7th ed. 1865, with the Latin text as far as translated (48 pages). Also Stabat Mater Speciosa, Full of Beauty stood the Mother (1866).

The Seven Great Hymns of the Medieval Church. N. York (A. D. F. Randolph & Co.) 1866; seventh ed. enlarged, 1883. 154 pages. This anonymous work (by Judge C. C. Nott, Washington) contains translations by various authors of Bernard’s Celestial Country, the Dies Irae, the Mater Dolorosa, the Mater Speciosa, the Veni Sancte Spiritus, the Veni Creator Spiritus, the Vexilla Regis, and the Alleluiatic Sequence of Godescalcus. The originals are also given.

Philip Schaff: Christ in Song. N. Y. 1868; Lond. 1869. Contains translations of seventy-three Latin hymns by various authors.

W. H. Odenheimer and Frederic M. Bird: Songs of the Spirit. N. York 1871. Contains translations of twenty-three Latin hymns on the Holy Spirit, with a much larger number of English hymns. Erastus C. Benedict (Judge in N. Y., d. 1878): The Hymn of Hildebert and other Medieval Hymns, with translations. N. York 1869.

Abraham Coles (M. D.): Latin Hymns, with Original Translations. N. York 1868. Contains 13 translations of the Dies Irae, which were also separately published in 1859.

Hamilton M. Macgill, D. D. (of the United Presb. Ch. of Scotland): Songs of the Christian Creed and Life selected from Eighteen Centuries. Lond. and Edinb. 1879. Contains translations of a number of Latin and a few Greek hymns with the originals, also translations of English hymns into Latin.

The Roman Breviary. Transl. out of Latin into English by John Marquess of Bute, K. T. Edinb. and Lond. 1879, 2 vols. The best translations of the hymns scattered through this book are by the ex-Anglicans Caswall and Cardinal Newman. The Marquess of Bute is himself a convert to Rome from the Church of England.

D. F. Morgan: Hymns and other Poetry of the Latin Church. Oxf. 1880. 100 versions arranged according to the Anglican Calendar.

Edward A. Washburn (Rector of Calvary Church, N. Y. d. Feb. 2, 1881): Voices from a Busy Life. N. York 1883. Contains, besides original poems, felicitous versions of 32 Latin hymns, several of which had appeared before in Schaff’s Christ in Song.

Samuel W. Duffield: The Latin Hymn Writers and their Hymns (in course of preparation and to be published, New York 1885. This work will cover the entire range of Latin hymnology, and include translations of the more celebrated hymns).

IV. German translations of Latin hymns:

(Mostly accompanied by the original text) are very numerous, e.g. by Rambach, 1817 sqq. (see above); C. Fortlage (Gesänge christl. Vorzeit, 1844); Karl Simrock (Lauda Sion, 1850); Ed. Kauffer (Jesus-Hymnen, Sammlung altkirchl. lat. Gesänge, etc. Leipz. 1854, 65 pages); H. Stadelmann (Altchristl. Hymnen und Lieder. Augsb. 1855); Bässler (1858); J. Fr. H. Schlosser (Die Kirche in ihren Liedern, Freiburg i. B. 1863, 2 vols); G. A. Königsfeld (Lat. Hymnen und Gesänge, Bonn 1847, new series, 1865, both with the original and notes).



Vol. 4, Chapter X (Cont’d) – Latin Hymns and Hymnists

96. 

The Latin church poetry of the middle ages is much better known than the Greek, and remains to this day a rich source of devotion in the Roman church and as far as poetic genius and religious fervor are appreciated. The best Latin hymns have passed into the Breviary and Missal (some with misimprovements), and have been often reproduced in modern languages. The number of truly classical hymns, however, which were inspired by pure love to Christ and can be used with profit by Christians of every name, is comparatively small. The poetry of the Latin church is as full of Mariolatry and hagiolatry as the poetry of the Greek church. It is astonishing what an amount of chivalrous and enthusiastic devotion the blessed Mother of our Lord absorbed in the middle ages. In Mone’s collection the hymns to the Virgin fill a whole volume of 457 pages, the hymns to saints another volume of 579 pages, while the first volume of only 461 pages is divided between hymns to God and to the angels. The poets intended to glorify Christ through his mother, but the mother overshadows the child, as in the pictures of the Madonna. She was made the mediatrix of all divine grace, and was almost substituted for Christ, who was thought to occupy a throne of majesty too high for sinful man to reach without the aid of his mother and her tender human sympathies. She is addressed with every epithet of praise, as Mater Dei, Dei Genitrix, Mater summi Domini, Mater misericordiae, Mater bonitatis, Mater dolorosa, Mater jucundosa, Mater speciosa, Maris Stella, Mundi domina, Mundi spes, Porta paradisi, Regina coeli, Radix gratiae, Virgo virginum, Virgo regia Dei. Even the Te Deum was adapted to her by the distinguished St. Bonaventura so as to read “Te Matrem laudamus, Te Virginem confitemur.”

The Latin, as the Greek, hymnists were nearly all monks; but an emperor (Charlemagne?) and a king (Robert of France) claim a place of honor among them.

The sacred poetry of the Latin church may be divided into three periods: 1, The patristic period from Hilary (d. 368) and Ambrose (d. 397) to Venantius Fortunatus (d. about 609) and Gregory I. (d. 604); 2, the early medieval period to Peter Damiani (d. 1072); 3, the classical period to the thirteenth century. The first period we have considered in a previous volume. Its most precious legacy to the church universal is the Te Deum laudamus. It is popularly ascribed to Ambrose of Milan (or Ambrose and Augustin jointly), but in its present completed form does not appear before the first half of the sixth century, although portions of it may be traced to earlier Greek origin; it is, like the Apostles’ Creed, and the Greek Gloria in Excelsis, a gradual growth of the church rather than the production of any individual. The third period embraces the greatest Latin hymnists, as Bernard of Morlaix (monk of Cluny about 1150), Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), Adam of St. Victor (d. 1192), Bonaventura (d. 1274), Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), Thomas a Celano (about 1250), Jacopone (d. 1306), and produced the last and the best Catholic hymns which can never die, as Hora Novisasima; Jesu dulcis memoria; Salve caput cruentatum; Stabat Mater; and Dies Irae. In this volume we are concerned with the second period.

Venantius Fortunatus, of Poitiers, and his cotemporary, Pope Gregory I., form the transition from the patristic poetry of Sedulius and Prudentius to the classic poetry of the middle ages.

Fortunatus (about 600) was the fashionable poet of his day. A native Italian, he emigrated to Gaul, travelled extensively, became intimate with St. Gregory of Tours, and the widowed queen Radegund when she lived in ascetic retirement, and died as bishop of Poitiers. He was the first master of the trochaic tetrameter, and author of three hundred poems, chief among which are the two famous passion hymns:

“Vexilla regis prodeunt,”

“The Royal Banners forward go;”

and

“Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis,”

“Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle.”

Both have a place in the Roman Breviary.

Gregory I. (d. 604), though far inferior to Fortunatus in poetic genius, occupies a prominent rank both in church poetry and church music. He followed Ambrose in the metrical form, the prayer-like tone, and the churchly spirit, and wrote for practical use. He composed about a dozen hymns, several of which have found a place in the Roman Breviary. The best is his Sunday hymn:

“Primo dierum omnium,”

“On this first day when heaven on earth,”

or, as it has been changed in the Breviary,

“Primo die quo Trinitas,”

“To-day the Blessed Three in One

Began the earth and skies;

To-day a Conqueror, God the Son,

Did from the grave arise;

We too will wake, and, in despite

Of sloth and languor, all unite,

As Psalmists bid, through the dim night

Waiting with wistful eyes.”

The Venerable Bede (d. 735) wrote a beautiful ascension hymn

“Hymnum canamus gloriae,”

“A hymn of glory let us sing;”

and a hymn for the Holy innocents,

“Hymnum canentes Martyrum,”

“The hymn of conquering martyrs raise.”

Rabanus Maurus, a native of Mainz (Mayence) on the Rhine, a pupil of Alcuin, monk and abbot in the convent of Fulda, archbishop of Mainz from 847 to 856, was the chief Poet of the Carolingian age, and the first German who wrote Latin hymns. Some of them have passed into the Breviary.

He is probably the author of the pentecostal Veni, Creator Spiritus. It outweighs all his other poems. It is one of the classical Latin hymns, and still used in the Catholic church on the most solemn occasions, as the opening of Synods, the creating of popes and the crowning of kings. It was invested with a superstitious charm. It is the only Breviary hymn which passed into the Anglican liturgy as part of the office for ordaining priests and consecrating bishops. The authorship has been variously ascribed to Charlemagne, to Gregory the Great, also to Alcuin, and even to Ambrose, without any good reason. It appears first in 898, is found in the MS. containing the Poems of Rabanus Maurus, and in all the old German Breviaries; it was early and repeatedly translated into German and agrees very well in thought and expression with his treatise on the Holy Spirit.

We give the original with two translations.

 

 

 

Veni, Creator Spiritus, Mentes tuorum visita. Imple superna gratia Quo tu creasti pectora. Creator, Spirit, Lord of Grace, O make our hearts Thy dwelling-place, And with Thy might celestial aid The souls of those whom Thou hast made.   

Qui Paracletus diceris, Donum Dei altissimi, Fons vivus, ignis, charitas, Et spiritalis unctio. Come from the throne of God above, O Paraclete, O Holy Dove, Come, Oil of gladness, cleansing Fire, And Living Spring of pure desire.   

Tu septiformis munere, Dextrae Dei tu digitus, Tu rite Promissum Patris, Sermone ditans guttura. O Finger of the Hand Divine, The sevenfold gifts of Grace are Thine, And touched by Thee the lips proclaim All praise to God’s most holy Name.   

Accende lumen sensibus, Infunde amorem cordibus; Infirma nostri corporis, Virtute firmans perpetim. Then to our souls Thy light impart, And give Thy Love to every heart Turn all our weakness into might, O Thou, the Source of Life and Light.   

Hostem repellas longius, Pacemque dones protinus. Ductore sic te praevio, Vitemus omne noxium. Protect us from the assailing foe, And Peace, the fruit of Love, bestow; Upheld by Thee, our Strength and Guide, No evil can our steps betide.   

Per te sciamus, da Patrem, Noscamus atque Filium, Te utriusque Spiritum, Credamus omni tempore. Spirit of Faith, on us bestow The Father and the Son to know; And, of the Twain, the Spirit, Thee; Eternal One, Eternal Three.   

[Sit laus Patri cum Filio, Sancto simul Paracleto, Nobisque mittat Filius Charisma Sancti Spiritus.] To God the Father let us sing; To God the Son, our risen King; And equally with These adore The Spirit, God for evermore.   

[Praesta hoc Pater piissime, Patrique compar unice, Cum Spiritu Paracleto, Regnans per omne saeculum.] See note above.  

 

O Holy Ghost, Creator, come!

Thy people’s minds pervade;

And fill, with Thy supernal grace,

The souls which Thou hast made.

Thou who art called the Paraclete,

The gift of God most high — 

Thou living fount, and fire and love,

Our spirit’s pure ally;

Thou sevenfold giver of all good;

Finger of God’s right hand;

Thou promise of the Father, rich

In words for every land;

Kindle our senses to a flame,

And fill our hearts with love,

And, through our bodies’ weakness, still

Pour valor from above!

Drive further off our enemy,

And straightway give us peace;

That with Thyself as such a guide,

We may from evil cease.

Through Thee may we the Father know,

And thus confess the Son;

For Thee, from both the Holy Ghost,

We praise while time shall run.

In this connection we mention the Veni, Sancte Spiritus, the other great pentecostal hymn of the middle ages. It is generally ascribed to King Robert of France (970-1031), the son and success or of Hugh Capet. He was distinguished for piety and charity, like his more famous successor, St. Louis IX., and better fitted for the cloister than the throne. He was disciplined by the pope (998) for marrying a distant cousin, and obeyed by effecting a divorce. He loved music and poetry, founded convents and churches, and supported three hundred paupers. His hymn reveals in terse and musical language an experimental knowledge of the gifts and operations of the Holy Spirit upon the heart. It is superior to the companion hymn, Veni, Creator Spiritus. Trench calls it “the loveliest” of all the Latin hymns, but we would give this praise rather to St. Bernard’s Jesu dulcis memoria (“Jesus, the very thought of Thee”). The hymn contains ten half-stanzas of three lines each with a refrain in ium. Each line has seven syllables, and ends with a double or triple rhyme; the third line rhymes with the third line of the following half-stanza. Neale has reproduced the double ending of each third line (as “brilliancy” — “radiancy”).

 

 

 

Veni, Sancte Spiritus, Et emittee coelitus Lucis tuae radium. Holy Spirit, God of light! Come, and on our inner sight Pour Thy bright and heavenly ray!   

Veni, Pater pauperum, Veni, dator munerum, Veni, lumen cordium. Father of the lowly! come; Here, Great Giver! be Thy home, Sunshine of our hearts, for aye!   

Consolator optime, Dulcis hospes animae, Dulce refrigerium: Inmost Comforter and best! Of our souls the dearest Guest, Sweetly all their thirst allay;   

In labore requies, In aestu temperies, In fletu solatium. In our toils be our retreat, Be our shadow in the heat, Come and wipe our tears away.   

O lux beatissima, Reple cordis intima, Tuorum fidelium. O Thou Light, all pure and blest! Fill with joy this weary breast, Turning darkness into day.   

Sine tuo numine Nihil est in homine Nihil est innoxium, For without Thee nought we find, Pure or strong in human kind, Nought that has not gone astray.   

Lava quod est sordidum, Riga quod est aridum, Sana quod est saucium. Wash us from the stains of sin, Gently soften all within, Wounded spirits heal and stay.   

Flecte quod est rigidum, Fove quod est languidum, Rege quod est devium. What is hard and stubborn bend, What is feeble soothe and tend, What is erring gently sway.   

Da tuis fidelibus, In te confitentibus, Sacrum septenarium; To Thy faithful servants give, Taught by Thee to trust and live, Sevenfold blessing from this day;   

Da virtutis meritum, Da salutis exitum, Da perenne gaudium. Make our title clear, we pray, When we drop this mortal clay; Then, — O give us joy for aye.  

 

The following is a felicitous version by an American divine.

Come, O Spirit! Fount of grace!

From thy heavenly dwelling-place

One bright morning beam impart:

Come, O Father of the poor;

Come, O Source of bounties sure;

Come, O Sunshine of the heart!

Comforter of man the best!

Making the sad soul thy guest;

Sweet refreshing in our fears,

In our labor a retreat,

Cooling shadow in the heat,

Solace in our falling tears.

O! thrice blessed light divine!

Come, the spirit’s inmost shrine

With Thy holy presence fill;

Of Thy brooding love bereft,

Naught to hopeless man is left;

Naught is his but evil still.

Wash away each earthly stain,

Flow o’er this parched waste again,

Heal the wounds of conscience sore,

Bind the stubborn will within,

Thaw the icy chains of sin,

Guide us, that we stray no more.

Give to Thy believers, give,

In Thy holy hope who live,

All Thy sevenfold dower of love;

Give the sure reward of faith,

Give the love that conquers death,

Give unfailing joy above.

Notker, surnamed the Older, or Balbulus (“the little Stammerer,” from a slight lisp in his speech), was born about 850 of a noble family in Switzerland, educated in the convent of St. Gall, founded by Irish missionaries, and lived there as an humble monk. He died about 912, and was canonized in 1512.

He is famous as the reputed author of the Sequences (Sequentiae), a class of hymns in rythmical prose, hence also called Proses (Prosae). They arose from the custom of prolonging the last syllable in singing the Allelu-ia of the Gradual, between the Epistle and the Gospel, while the deacon was ascending from the altar to the rood-loft (organ-loft), that he might thence sing the Gospel. This prolongation was called jubilatio or jubilus, or laudes, on account of its jubilant tone, and sometimes sequentia (Greek ἁκολουθία), because it followed the reading of the Epistle or the Alleluia. Mystical interpreters made this unmeaning prolongation of a mere sound the echo of the jubilant music of heaven. A further development was to set words to these notes in rythmical prose for chanting. The name sequence was then applied to the text and in a wider sense also to regular metrical and rhymed hymns. The book in which Sequences were collected was called Sequentiale.

Notker marks the transition from the unmeaning musical sequence to the literary or poetic sequence. Over thirty poems bear his name. His first attempt begins with the line

“Laudes Deo concinat orbis ubique totus.”

 

More widely circulated is his Sequence of the Holy Spirit:

“Sancti Spiritus adsit nobis gratia.”

“The grace of the Holy Spirit be present with us.”

The best of all his compositions, which is said to have been inspired by the sight of the builders of a bridge over an abyss in the Martinstobe, is a meditation on death (Antiphona de morte):

“Media vita in morte sumus:

Quem quaerimus adiutorem nisi te, Domine,

Qui pro peccatis nostris juste irasceris?

Sancte Deus, sancte fortis,

Sancte et misericors Salvator:

Amarae morti ne tradas nos.”

This solemn prayer is incorporated in many burial services. In the Book of Common Prayer it is thus enlarged:

“In the midst of life we be in death:

Of whom may we seek for succour, but of Thee,

O Lord, which for our sins justly art moved?

Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty,

O holy and most merciful Saviour,

Deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.

Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts.

Shut not up thy merciful eyes to our prayers:

But spare us, Lord most holy,

O God most mighty,

O holy and merciful Saviour,

Thou most worthy Judge eternal,

Suffer us not, at our last hour,

For any pains of death,

To fall from Thee.”

Peter Damiani (d. 1072), a friend of Hildebrand and promoter of his hierarchical reforms, wrote a solemn hymn on the day of death:

“Gravi me terrore pulsas vitae dies ultima,”

“With what heavy fear thou smitest.”

He is perhaps also the author of the better known descriptive poem on the Glory and Delights of Paradise, which is usually assigned to St. Augustin:

“Ad perennis vitae fontem mens sitivit arida,

Claustra carnis praesto frangi clausa quaerit anima:

Gliscit, ambit, eluctatur exsul frui patria.”

The subordinate hymn-writers of our period are the following:

Isidor of Seville (Isidoris Hispalensis, 560-636). A hymn on St. Agatha: “Festum insigne prodiit.”

Cyxilla of Spain. Hymnus de S. Thurso et sociis: Exulta nimium turba fidelium.”

Eugenius of Toledo. Oratio S. Eugenii Toletani Episcopi: “Rex Deus.”

Paulus Diaconus (720-800), of Monte Casino, chaplain of Charlemagne, historian of the Lombards, and author of a famous collection of homilies. On John the Baptist (“Ut queant laxis), and on the Miracles of St. Benedict (Fratres alacri pectore).

Odo of Cluny (d. 941). A hymn on St. Mary Magdalene day, “Lauda, Mater Ecclesiae,” translated by Neale: “Exalt, O mother Church, to-day, The clemency of Christ, thy Lord.” It found its way into the York Breviary.

Godescalcus (Gottschalk, d. about 950, not to be confounded with his predestinarian namesake, who lived in the ninth century), is next to Notker, the best writer of sequences or proses, as “Laus Tibi, Christe” (“Praise be to Thee, O Christ”), and Coeli enarrant (“The heavens declare the glory”), both translated by Neale.

Fulbert Of Chartres (died about 1029) wrote a paschal hymn adopted in several Breviaries: “Chorus novae Jerusalem” (“Ye choirs of New Jerusalem”), translated by Neale.

A few of the choicest hymns of our period, from the sixth to the twelfth century are anonymous. To these belong:

“Hymnum dicat turba fratrum.” A morning hymn mentioned by Bede as a fine specimen of the trochaic tetrameter.

“Sancti venite.” A communion hymn.

“Urbs beata Jerusalem.” It is from the eighth century, and one of those touching New Jerusalem hymns which take their inspiration from the last chapter of St. John’s Apocalypse, and express the Christian’s home-sickness after heaven. The following is the first stanza (with Neale’s translation):

 

 

 

“Urbs beata Jerusalem, Dicta pacis visio, Quae construitur in coelo Vivis ex lapidibus, Et angelis coronata Ut sponsata comite.” Blessed City, Heavenly Salem, Vision dear of Peace and Love, Who, of living stones upbuilded, Art the joy of Heav’n above, And, with angel cohorts circled, As a Bride to earth dost move!  

 

“Apparebit repentina.” An alphabetic and acrostic poem on the Day of Judgment, based on Mat_25:31-36; from the seventh century; first mentioned by Bede, then long lost sight of; the forerunner of the Dies Irae, more narrative than lyrical, less sublime and terrific, but equally solemn. The following are the first lines in Neale’s admirable translation:

“That great Day of wrath and terror,

That last Day of woe and doom,

Like a thief that comes at midnight,

On the sons of men shall come;

When the pride and pomp of ages

All shall utterly have passed,

And they stand in anguish, owning

That the end is here at last;

And the trumpet’s pealing clangor,

Through the earth’s four quarters spread,

Waxing loud and ever louder,

Shall convoke the quick and dead:

And the King of heavenly glory

Shall assume His throne on high,

And the cohorts of His angels

Shall be near Him in the sky:

And the sun shall turn to sackcloth,

And the moon be red as blood,

And the stars shall fall from heaven,

Whelm’d beneath destruction’s flood.

Flame and fire, and desolation

At the Judge’s feet shall go:

Earth and sea, and all abysses

Shall His mighty sentence know.”

“Ave, Maris Stella.” This is the favorite medieval Mary hymn, and perhaps the very best of the large number devoted to the worship of the “Queen of heaven,” which entered so deeply into the piety and devotion of the Catholic church both in the East and the West. It is therefore given here in full with the version of Edward Caswall.

 

 

 

“Ave, Maris Stella, Dei Mater alma Atque semper Virgo, Felix coeli porta. Hail, thou Star-of-Ocean, Portal of the sky, Ever-Virgin Mother Of the Lord Most High!   

Sumens illud Ave Gabrielis ore, Funda nos in pace, Mutans nomen Evae. Oh, by Gabriel’s Ave Uttered long ago Eva’s name reversing, ‘Stablish peace below!   

Solve vincla reis Profer lumen coecis, Mala nostra pelle, Bona cuncta posce. Break the captive’s fetters, Light on blindness pour, All our ills expelling, Every bliss implore.   

Monstra te esse matrem, Sumat per te precem, Qui pro nobis natus Tulit esse tuus. Show thyself a mother, Offer Him our sighs, Who, for us Incarnate, Did not thee despise.   

Virgo singularis, Inter omnes mitis, Nos culpis solutos Mites facet castos. Virgin of all virgins! To thy shelter take us —  Gentlest of the gentle! Chaste and gentle make us.   

Vitam praesta puram Iter para tutum, Ut videntes Iesum Semper collaetemur. Still as on we journey, Help our weak endeavor, Till with thee and Jesus, We rejoice for ever.   

Sit laus Deo Patri, Summo Christo decus, Spiritui Sancto Honor trinus et unus. Through the highest heaven To the Almighty Three, Father, Son, and Spirit, One same glory be.  

 

The Latin hymnody was only for priests and monks, and those few who understood the Latin language. The people listened to it as they do to the mass, and responded with the Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, which passed from the Greek church into the Western litanies. As the modern languages of Europe developed themselves out of the Latin, and out of the Teutonic, a popular poetry arose during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and afterwards received a powerful impulse from the Reformation. Since that time the Protestant churches, especially in Germany and England, have produced the richest hymnody, which speaks to the heart of the people in their own familiar tongue, and is, next to the Psalter, the chief feeder of public and private devotion. In this body of evangelical hymns the choicest Greek and Latin hymns in various translations, reproductions, and transformations occupy an honored place and serve as connecting links between past and modern times in the worship of the same God and Saviour.

 

97. The Seven Sacraments

Medieval Christianity was intensely sacramental, sacerdotal and hierarchical. The ideas of priest, sacrifice, and altar are closely connected. The sacraments were regarded as the channels of all grace and the chief food of the soul. They accompanied human life from the cradle to the grave. The child was saluted into this world by the sacrament of baptism; the old man was provided with the viaticum on his journey to the other world.

The chief sacraments were baptism and the eucharist. Baptism was regarded as the sacrament of the new birth which opens the door to the kingdom of heaven the eucharist as the sacrament of sanctification which maintains and nourishes the new life.

Beyond these two sacraments several other rites were dignified with that name, but there was no agreement as to the number before the scholastic period. The Latin sacramentum, like the Greek mystery (of which it is the translation in the Vulgate), was long used in a loose and indefinite way for sacred and mysterious doctrines and rites. Rabanus Maurus and Paschasius Radbertus count four sacraments, Dionysius Areopagita, six; Damiani, as many as twelve. By the authority chiefly of Peter the Lombard and Thomas Aquinas the sacred number seven was at last determined upon, and justified by various analogies with the number of virtues, and the number of sins, and the necessities of human life.

But seven sacraments existed as sacred rites long before the church was agreed on the number. We find them with only slight variations independently among the Greeks under the name of “mysteries” as well as among the Latins. They are, besides baptism and the eucharist (which is a sacrifice as well as a sacrament): confirmation, penance (confession and absolution), marriage, ordination, and extreme unction.

Confirmation was closely connected with baptism as a sort of supplement. It assumed a more independent character in the case of baptized infants and took place later. It may be performed in the Greek church by any priest, in the Latin only by the bishop.

Penance was deemed necessary for sins after baptism.

Ordination is the sacrament of the hierarchy and indispensable for the government of the church.

Marriage lies at the basis of the family and society in church and state, and was most closely and jealously guarded by the church against facility of divorce, against mixed marriages, and marriages between near relatives.

Extreme unction with prayer (first mentioned among the sacraments by a synod of Pavia in 850, and by Damiani) was the viaticum for the departure into the other world, and based on the direction of St. Jam_5:14, Jam_5:15 (Comp. Mar_6:13; Mar_16:18). At first it was applied in every sickness, by layman as well as priest, as a medical cure and as a substitute for amulets and forms of incantation; but the Latin church afterwards confined it to cases of extreme danger.

The efficacy of the sacrament was defined by the scholastic term ex opere operato, that is, the sacrament has its intended effect by virtue of its institution and inherent power, independently of the moral character of the priest and of the recipient, provided only that it be performed in the prescribed manner and with the proper intention and provided that the recipient throw no obstacle in the way.

Three of the Sacraments, namely baptism, confirmation, and ordination, have in addition the effect of conferring an indelible character. Once baptized always baptized, though the benefit may be forfeited for ever; once ordained always ordained, though a priest may be deposed and excommunicated.

 

98. The Organ and the Bell

To the external auxiliaries of worship were added the organ and the bell.

The Organ, in the sense of a particular instrument (which dates from the time of St. Augustin), is a development of the Syrinx or Pandean pipe, and in its earliest form consisted of a small box with a row of pipes in the top, which were inflated by the performer with the mouth through means of a tube at one end. It has in the course of time undergone considerable improvements. The use of organs in churches is ascribed to Pope Vitalian (657-672). Constantine Copronymos sent an organ with other presents to King Pepin of France in 767. Charlemagne received one as a present from the Caliph Haroun al Rashid, and had it put up in the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle. The art of organ-building was cultivated chiefly in Germany. Pope John VIII. (872-882) requested Bishop Anno of Freising to send him an organ and an organist.

The attitude of the churches towards the organ varies. It shared to some extent the fate of images, except that it never was an object of worship. The poetic legend which Raphael has immortalized by one of his master-pieces, ascribes its invention to St. Cecilia, the patron of sacred music. The Greek church disapproves the use of organs. The Latin church introduced it pretty generally, but not without the protest of eminent men, so that even in the Council of Trent a motion was made, though not carried, to prohibit the organ at least in the mass. The Lutheran church retained, the Calvinistic churches rejected it, especially in Switzerland and Scotland; but in recent times the opposition has largely ceased.

The Bell is said to have been invented by Paulinus of Nola (d. 431) in Campania; but he never mentions it in his description of churches. Various sonorous instruments were used since the time of Constantine the Great for announcing the commencement of public worship. Gregory of Tours mentions a “signum” for calling monks to prayer. The Irish used chiefly hand-bells from the time of St. Patrick, who himself distributed them freely. St. Columba is reported to have gone to church when the bell rang (pulsante campana) at midnight. Bede mentions the bell for prayer at funerals. St. Sturm of Fulda ordered in his dying hours all the bells of the convent to be rung (779). In the reign of Charlemagne the use of bells was common in the empire. He encouraged the art of bel-founding, and entertained bell-founders at his court. Tancho, a monk of St. Gall, cast a fine bell, weighing from four hundred to five hundred pounds, for the cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle. In the East, church bells are not mentioned before the end of the ninth century.

Bells, like other church-furniture, were consecrated for sacred use by liturgical forms of benediction. They were sometimes even baptized; but Charlemagne, in a capitulary of 789, forbids this abuse. The office of bell-ringers was so highly esteemed in that age that even abbots and bishops coveted it. Popular superstition ascribed to bells a magical effect in quieting storms and expelling pestilence. Special towers were built for them. The use of church bells is expressed in the old lines which are inscribed in many of them:

“Lauda Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum,

Defunctos ploro, pestem fugo, festaque honoro.”

 

99. The Worship of Saints

Comp. vol. III. §§ 81-87.

The Worship of Saints, handed down from the Nicene age, was a Christian substitute for heathen idolatry and hero-worship, and well suited to the taste and antecedents of the barbarian races, but was equally popular among the cultivated Greeks. The scholastics made a distinction between three grades of worship: 1) adoration (λατρεία), which belongs to God alone; 2) veneration (δουλεία), which is due to the saints as those whom God himself has honored, and who reign with him in heaven; 3) special veneration (ὑπερδουλεία), which is due to the Virgin Mary as the mother of the Saviour and the queen of all saints. But the people did not always mind this distinction, and the priests rather encouraged the excesses of saint-worship. Prayers were freely addressed to the saints, though not as the givers of the blessings desired, but as intercessors and advocates. Hence the form “Pray for us” (Ora pro nobis).

The number of saints and their festivals multiplied very rapidly. Each nation, country, province or city chose its patron saint, as Peter and Paul in Rome, St. Ambrose in Milan, St. Martin, St. Denys (Dionysius) and St. Germain in France, St. George in England, St. Patrick in Ireland, St. Boniface in Germany, and especially the Virgin Mary, who has innumerable localities and churches under her care and protection. The fact of saintship was at first decided by the voice of the people, which was obeyed as the voice of God. Great and good men and women who lived in the odor of sanctity and did eminent service to the cause of religion as missionaries or martyrs or bishops or monks or nuns, were gratefully remembered after their death; they became patron saints of the country or province of their labors and sufferings, and their worship spread gradually over the entire church. Their relics were held sacred; their tombs were visited by pilgrims. The metropolitans usually decided on the claims of saintship for their province down to a.d. 1153. But to check the increase and to prevent mistakes, the popes, since Alexander III. a.d. 1170, claimed the exclusive right of declaring the fact, and prescribing the worship of a saint throughout the whole (Latin) Catholic church. This was done by a solemn act called canonization. From this was afterwards distinguished the act of beatification, which simply declares that a departed Catholic Christian is blessed (beatus) in heaven, and which within certain limits permits (but does not prescribe) his veneration.

The first known example of a papal canonization is the canonization of Ulrich, bishop of Augsburg (d. 973), by John XV. who, at a Lateran synod composed of nineteen dignitaries, in 993, declared him a saint at the request of Luitolph (Leuthold), his successor in the see of Augsburg, after hearing his report in person on the life and miracles of Ulrich. His chief merit was the deliverance of Southern Germany from the invasion of the barbarous Magyars, and his devotion to the interests of his large diocese. He used to make tours of visitation on an ox-cart, surrounded by a crowd of beggars and cripples. He made two pilgrimages to Rome, the second in his eighty-first year, and died as an humble penitent on the bare floor. The bull puts the worship of the saints on the ground that it redounds to the glory of Christ who identifies himself with his saints, but it makes no clear distinction between the different degrees of worship. It threatens all who disregard this decree with the anathema of the apostolic see.

A mild interpretation of the papal prerogative of canonization reduces it to a mere declaration of a fact preceded by a careful examination of the merits of a case before the Congregation of Rites. But nothing short of a divine revelation can make such a fact known to mortal man. The examination is conducted by a regular process of law in which one acts as Advocatus Diaboli or accuser of the candidate for canonization, and another as Advocatus Dei. Success depends on the proof that the candidate must have possessed the highest sanctity and the power of working miracles either during his life, or through his dead bones, or through invocation of his aid. A proverb says that it requires a miracle to prove a miracle. Nevertheless it is done by papal decree on such evidence as is satisfactory to Roman Catholic believers.

The question, how the saints and the Virgin Mary can hear so many thousands of prayers addressed to them simultaneously in so many different places, without being clothed with the divine attributes of omniscience and omnipresence, did not disturb the faith of the people. The scholastic divines usually tried to solve it by the assumption that the saints read those prayers in the omniscient mind of God. Then why not address God directly?

In addition to the commemoration days of particular saints, two festivals were instituted for the commemoration of all the departed.

The Festival of All Saints was introduced in the West by Pope Boniface IV. on occasion of the dedication of the Pantheon in Rome, which was originally built by Agrippa in honor of the victory of Augustus at Actium, and dedicated to Jupiter Vindex; it survived the old heathen temples, and was presented to the pope by the Emperor Phocas, a.d. 607; whereupon it was cleansed, restored and dedicated to the service of God in the name of the ever-Virgin Mary and all martyrs. Baronius tells us that at the time of dedication on May 13 the bones of martyrs from the various cemeteries were in solemn procession transferred to the church in twenty-eight carriages. From Rome the festival spread during the ninth century over the West, and Gregory IV. induced Lewis the Pious in 835 to make it general in the Empire. The celebration was fixed on the first of November for the convenience of the people who after harvest had a time of leisure, and were disposed to give thanks to God for all his mercies.

The Festival of All Souls is a kind of supplement to that of All Saints, and is celebrated on the day following (Nov. 2). Its introduction is traced to Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, in the tenth century. It spread very soon without a special order, and appealed to the sympathies of that age for the sufferings of the souls in purgatory. The worshippers appear in mourning; the mass for the dead is celebrated with the “Dies irae, Dies illa,” and the oft-repeated “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.” In some places (e.g. in Munich) the custom prevails of covering the graves on that day with the last flowers of the season.

The festival of Michael the Archangel, the leader of the angelic host, was dedicated to the worship of angels, on the 29th of September. It rests on no doctrine and no fact, but on the sandy foundation of miraculous legends. We find it first in the East. Several churches in and near Constantinople were dedicated to St. Michael, and Justinian rebuilt two which had become dilapidated. In the West it is first mentioned by a Council of Mentz in 813, as the “dedicatio S. Michaelis,” among the festivals to be observed; and from that time it spread throughout the Church in spite of the apostolic warning against angelolatry (Col_2:18; Rev_19:10; Rev_22:8, Rev_22:9).



Vol. 4 Chapter X (Cont’d) – The Worship of Images. Literature. Different Theories

100.

Comp. Vol. II., chs. vi. and vii.; Vol. III. §§109-111.

(I.) John of Damascus (chief defender of image-worship, about 750): Λόγοι ἀπολογητικοὶ πρὸς τοὺς διαβάλλοντας τὰς ἁγίας εἰκόνας (ed. Le Quien I. 305). Nicephorus (Patriarch of Constantinople, d. 828): Breviarium Hist. (to a.d. 769), ed. Petavius, Paris, 1616. Theophanes (Confessor and almost martyr of image-worship, d. c. 820): Chronographia, cum notis Goari et Combefisii, Par., 1655, Ven. 1729, and in the Bonn ed. of the Byzant. historians, 1839, Tom. I. (reprinted in Migne’s “Patrol. Graeca,” Tom. 108). The later Byzantine historians, who notice the controversy, draw chiefly from Theophanes; so also Anastasius (Historia Eccles.) and Paulus Diaconus (Historia miscella and Hist. Longobardorum).

The letters of the popes, and the acts of synods, especially the Acta Concilii Nicaeni II. (a.d. 787) in Mansi, Tom. XIII., and Harduin, Tom. IV.

M. H. Goldast: Imperialia Decreta de Cultu Imaginum in utroque imperio promulgata. Frankf., 1608.

The sources are nearly all on the orthodox side. The seventh ecumenical council (787) ordered in the fifth session that all the books against images should be destroyed.

(II.) J. Dalleus (Calvinist): De Imaginibus. Lugd. Bat., 1642.

L. Maimbourg (Jesuit): Histoire de l’hérésie des iconoclastes. Paris, 1679 and 1683, 2 vols. (Hefele, III. 371, calls this work “nicht ganz zuverlässig,” not quite reliable).

Fr. Spanheim (Calvinist): Historia Imaginum restituta. Lugd. Bat. 1686 (in Opera, II. 707).

Chr. W. Fr. Walch (Lutheran): Ketzerhistorie. Leipz., 1762 sqq., vol. X. (1782) p. 65-828, and the whole of vol. XI. (ed. by Spittler, 1785). Very thorough, impartial, and tedious.

F. Ch. Schlosser: Geschichte der bilderstürmenden Kaiser des oströmischen Reichs. Frankf. a. M., 1812.

J. Marx (R.C.): Der Bilderstreit der Byzant. Kaiser. Trier, 1839.

Bishop Hefele: Conciliengesch. vol III. 366-490; 694-716 (revised ed., Freib. i. B. 1877).

R. Schenk: Kaiser Leo III. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Bilderstreites. Halle, 1880.

General Church Histories: 1) R. Cath.: Baronius, Pagi, Natalis Alexander, Alzog, Hergenröther (I. 121-143; 152-168). 2) Protest.: Basnage, Gibbon (ch. 49), Schroeckh (vol. XX.), Neander (III. 197-243; 532-553, Bost. ed.; fall and fair); Gieseler (II. 13-19, too short).

The literature on the image-controversy is much colored by the doctrinal stand-point of the writers. Gibbon treats it with cold philosophical indifference, and chiefly in its bearing on the political fortunes of the Byzantine empire.

With the worship of saints is closely, connected a subordinate worship of their images and relics. The latter is the legitimate application of the former. But while the medieval churches of the East and West — with the exception of a few protesting voices — were agreed on the worship of saints, there was a violent controversy about the images which kept the Eastern church in commotion for more than a century (a.d. 724-842), and hastened the decline of the Byzantine empire.

The abstract question of the use of images is connected with the general subject of the relation of art to worship. Christianity claims to be the perfect and universal religion; it pervades with its leavening power all the faculties of man and all departments of life. It is foreign to nothing which God has made. It is in harmony with all that is true, and beautiful, and good. It is friendly to philosophy, science, and art, and takes them into its service. Poetry, music, and architecture achieve their highest mission as handmaids of religion, and have derived the inspiration for their noblest works from the Bible. Why then should painting or sculpture or any other art which comes from God, be excluded from the use of the Church? Why should not Bible history as well as all other history admit of pictorial and sculptured representation for the instruction and enjoyment of children and adults who have a taste for beauty? Whatever proceeds from God must return to God and spread his glory.

But from the use of images for ornament, instruction and enjoyment there is a vast step to the worship of images, and experience proves that the former can exist without a trace of the latter. In the middle ages, however, owing to the prevailing saint-worship, the two were inseparable. The pictures were introduced into churches not as works of art, but as aids and objects of devotion. The image-controversy was therefore a, purely practical question of worship, and not a philosophical or artistic question. To a rude imagination an ugly and revolting picture served the devotional purpose even better than one of beauty and grace. It was only towards the close of the middle ages that the art of Christian painting began to produce works of high merit. Moreover the image-controversy was complicated with the second commandment of the decalogue which clearly and wisely forbids, if not all kinds of figurative representations of the Deity, at all events every idolatrous and superstitious use of pictures. It was also beset by the difficulty that we have no authentic pictures of Christ, the Madonna and the Apostles or any other biblical character.

We have traced in previous volumes the gradual introduction of sacred images from the Roman Catacombs to the close of the sixth century. The use of symbols and pictures was at first quite innocent and spread imperceptibly with the growth of the worship of saints. The East which inherited a love for art from the old Greeks, was chiefly devoted to images, the Western barbarians who could not appreciate works of art, cared more for relics.

We may distinguish three theories, of which two came into open conflict and disputed the ground till the year 842.

1. The theory of Image-Worship. It is the orthodox theory, denounced by the opponents as a species of idolatry, but strongly supported by the people, the monks, the poets, the women, the Empresses Irene and Theodora, sanctioned by the seventh ecumenical Council (787) and by the popes (Gregory II., Gregory III. and Hadrian I). It maintained the right and duty of using and worshipping images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints, but indignantly rejected the charge of idolatry, and made a distinction (often disregarded in practice) between a limited worship due to pictures, and adoration proper due to God alone. Images are a pictorial Bible, and speak to the eye even more eloquently than the word speaks to the ear. They are of special value to the common people who cannot read the Holy Scriptures. The honors of the living originals in heaven were gradually transferred to their wooden pictures on earth; the pictures were reverently kissed and surrounded by the pagan rites of genuflexion, luminaries, and incense; and prayers were thought to be more effective if said before them. Enthusiasm for pictures went hand in hand with the worship of saints, and was almost inseparable from it. It kindled a poetic inspiration which enriched the service books of the Greek church. The chief hymnists, John of Damascus, Cosmas of Jerusalem, Germanus, Theophanes, Theodore of the Studium, were all patrons of images, and some of them suffered deposition, imprisonment, and mutilation for their zeal; but the Iconoclasts did not furnish a single poet.

The chief argument against this theory was the second commandment. It was answered in various ways. The prohibition was understood to be merely temporary till the appearance of Christ, or to apply only to graven images, or to the making of images for idolatrous purposes.

On the other hand, the cherubim over the ark, and the brazen serpent in the wilderness were appealed to as examples of visible symbols in the Mosaic worship. The incarnation of the Son of God furnished the divine warrant for pictures of Christ. Since Christ revealed himself in human form it can be no sin to represent him in that form. The significant silence of the Gospels concerning his personal appearance was supplied by fictitious pictures ascribed to St. Luke, and St. Veronica, and that of Edessa. A superstitious fancy even invented stories of wonder-working pictures, and ascribed to them motion, speech, and action.

It should be added that the Eastern church confines images to colored representations on a plane surface, and mosaics, but excludes sculptures and statues from objects of worship. The Roman church makes no such restriction.

2. The Iconoclastic theory occupies the opposite extreme. Its advocates were called image-breakers. It was maintained by the energetic Greek emperors, Leo III. and his son Constantine, who saved the tottering empire against the invasion of the Saracens; it was popular in the army, and received the sanction of the Constantinopolitan Synod of 754. It appealed first and last to the second commandment in the decalogue in its strict sense as understood by the Jews and the primitive Christians. It was considerably strengthened by the successes of the Mohammedans who, like the Jews, charged the Christians with the great sin of idolatry, and conquered the cities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in spite of the sacred images which were relied on for protection and miraculous interposition. The iconoclastic Synod of 754 denounced image-worship as a relapse into heathen idolatry, which the devil had smuggled into the church in the place of the worship of God alone in spirit and in truth.

The iconoclastic party, however, was not consistent; for it adhered to saint-worship which is the root of image-worship, and instead of sweeping away all religious symbols, it retained the sign of the cross with all its superstitious uses, and justified this exception by the Scripture passages on the efficacy of the cross, though these refer to the sacrifice of the cross, and not to the sign.

The chief defect of iconoclasm and the cause of its failure was its negative character. It furnished no substitute for image-worship, and left nothing but empty walls which could not satisfy the religious wants of the Greek race. It was very different from the iconoclasm of the evangelical Reformation, which put in the place of images the richer intellectual and spiritual instruction from the Word of God.

3. The Moderate theory sought a via media between image-worship and image-hatred, by distinguishing between the sign and the thing, the use and the abuse. It allowed the representation of Christ and the saints as aids to devotion by calling to remembrance the persons and facts set forth to the eye. Pope Gregory I. presented to a hermit at his wish a picture of Christ, of Mary, and of St. Peter and St. Paul, with a letter in which he approves of the natural desire to have a visible reminder of an object of reverence and love, but at the same time warned him against superstitious use. “We do not,” he says, “kneel down before the picture as a divinity, but we adore Him whose birth or passion or sitting on the throne of majesty is brought to our remembrance by the picture.” The same pope commended Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, for his zeal against the adoration of pictures, but disapproved of his excess in that direction, and reminded him of the usefulness of such aids for the people who had just emerged from pagan barbarism and could not instruct themselves out of the Holy Scriptures. The Frankish church in the eighth and ninth centuries took a more decided stand against the abuse, without, however, going to the extent of the iconoclasts in the East.

In the course of time the Latin church went just as far if not further in practical image-worship as the Eastern church after the seventh ecumenical council. Gregory II. stoutly resisted the iconoclastic decrees of the Emperor Leo, and made capital out of the controversy for the independence of the papal throne. Gregory III. followed in the same steps, and Hadrian sanctioned the decree of the second council of Nicaea. Image-worship cannot be consistently opposed without surrendering the worship of saints.

The same theories and parties reappeared again in the age of the Reformation: the Roman as well as the Greek church adhered to image-worship with an occasional feeble protest against its abuses, and encouraged the development of fine arts, especially in Italy; the radical Reformers (Carlstadt, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox) renewed the iconoclastic theory and removed, in an orderly way, the pictures from the churches, as favoring a refined species of idolatry and hindering a spiritual worship; the Lutheran church (after the example set by Luther and his friend Lucas Kranach), retained the old pictures, or replaced them by new and better ones, but freed from former superstition. The modern progress of art, and the increased mechanical facilities for the multiplication of pictures have produced a change in Protestant countries. Sunday School books and other works for old and young abound in pictorial illustrations from Bible history for instruction; and the masterpieces of the great religious painters have become household ornaments, but will never be again objects of worship, which is due to God alone.

 

Notes

The Council of Trent, Sess. XXV. held Dec. 1563, sanctions, together with the worship of saints and relics, also the “legitimate use of images” in the following terms: “Moreover, that the images of Christ, of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the other saints, are to be had and retained particularly in temples, and that due honor and veneration are to be given them; not that any divinity, or virtue, is believed to be in them, on account of which they are to be worshiped; or that anything is to be asked of them; or that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old done by the Gentiles, who placed their hope in idols; but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those images represent; in such wise that by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head, and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ, and we venerate the saints, whose similitude they bear: as, by the decrees of Councils, and especially of the second Synod of Nicaea, has been defined against the opponents of images.” The Profession of the Tridentine Faith teaches the same in art. IX. (See Schaff, Creeds, II. p. 201, 209).

The modern standards of the Eastern Church reiterate the decision of the seventh Ecumenical Council. The Synod of Jerusalem, or the Confession of Dositheus, includes pictures of Christ, the mother of God, the saints and the holy angels who appeared to some of the patriarchs and prophets, also the symbolic representation of the Holy Spirit under the form of a dove, among the objects of worship (προσκυνοῦμεν καὶ τιμῶμεν καὶ ἁσπαζόμεθα). See Schaff, l.c. II. 436. The Longer Russian Catechism, in the exposition of the second commandment (Schaff, II. 527), thus speaks of this subject:

“What is an icon (εἱκών)?

“The word is Greek, and means an image or representation. In the Orthodox Church this name designates sacred representations of our Lord Jesus Christ, God incarnate, his immaculate Mother, and his saints.

“Is the use of holy icons agreeable to the second commandment?

It would then, and then only, be otherwise, if any one were to make gods of them; but it is not in the least contrary to this commandment to honor icons as sacred representations, and to use them for the religious remembrance of God’s works and of his saints; for when thus used icons are books, writen with the forms of persons and things instead of letters. (See Greg. Magn. lib. ix. Ep. 9, ad Seren. Epis.).

“What disposition of mind should we have when we reverence icons?

“While we look on them with our eyes, we should mentally look to God and to the saints, who are represented on them.”

 

101. The Iconoclastic War, and the Synod of 754

The history of the image-controversy embraces three periods: 1) The war upon images and the abolition of image-worship by the Council of Constantinople, a.d. 726-754. 2) The reaction in favor of image-worship, and its solemn sanction by the second Council of Nicaea, a.d. 754-787. 3) The renewed conflict of the two parties and the final triumph of image-worship, a.d. 842.

Image-worship had spread with the worship of saints, and become a general habit among the people in the Eastern church to such an extent that the Christian apologists had great difficulty to maintain their ground against the charge of idolatry constantly raised against them, not only by the Jews, but also by the followers of Islam, who could point to their rapid successes in support of their abhorrence of every species of idolatry. Churches and church-books, palaces and private houses, dresses and articles of furniture were adorned with religious pictures. They took among the artistic Greeks the place of the relics among the rude Western nations. Images were made to do service as sponsors in the name of the saints whom they represented. Fabulous stories of their wonder-working power were circulated and readily believed. Such excesses naturally called forth a reaction.

Leo III., called the Isaurian (716-741), a sober and energetic, but illiterate and despotic emperor, who by his military talents and successes had risen from the condition of a peasant in the mountains of Isauria to the throne of the Caesars, and delivered his subjects from the fear of the Arabs by the new invention of the “Greek fire,” felt himself called, as a second Josiah, to use his authority for the destruction of idolatry. The Byzantine emperors did not scruple to interfere with the internal affairs of the church, and to use their despotic power for the purpose. Leo was influenced by a certain bishop Constantinus of Nakolia in Phrygia, and by a desire to break the force of the Mohammedan charge against the Christians. In the sixth year of his reign he ordered the forcible baptism of Jews and Montanists (or Manichaeans); the former submitted hypocritically and mocked at the ceremony; the latter preferred to set fire to their meeting-houses and to perish in the flames. Then, in the tenth year (726), he began his war upon the images. At first he only prohibited their worship, and declared in the face of the rising opposition that he intended to protect the images against profanation by removing them beyond the reach of touch and kiss. But in a second edict (730), he commanded the removal or destruction of all the images. The pictured walls were to be whitewashed. He replaced the magnificent picture of Christ over the gate of the imperial palace by a plain cross. He removed the aged Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople, and put the iconoclastic Anastasius in his place.

These edicts roused the violent opposition of the clergy, the monks, and the people, who saw in it an attack upon religion itself. The servants who took down the picture from the palace gate were killed by the mob. John of Damascus and Germanus, already known to us as hymnists, were the chief opponents. The former was beyond the reach of Leo, and wrote three eloquent orations, one before, two after the forced resignation of Germanus, in defence of image-worship, and exhausted the argument. The islanders of the Archipelago under the control of monks rose in open rebellion, and set up a pretender to the throne; but they were defeated, and their leaders put to death. Leo enforced obedience within the limits of the Eastern empire, but had no power among the Christian subjects of the Saracens, nor in Rome and Ravenna, where his authority was openly set at defiance. Pope Gregory II. told him, in an insulting letter (about 729), that the children of the grammar-school would throw their tablets at his head if he avowed himself a destroyer of images, and the unwise would teach him what he refused to learn from the wise. Seventy years afterwards the West set up an empire of its own in close connection with the bishop of Rome.

Constantine V., surnamed Copronymos, during his long reign of thirty-four years (741-775), kept up his father’s policy with great ability, vigor and cruelty, against popular clamor, sedition and conspiracy. His character is very differently judged according to the doctrinal views of the writers. His enemies charge him with monstrous vices, heretical opinions, and the practice of magical arts; while the iconoclasts praise him highly for his virtues, and forty years after his death still prayed at his tomb. His administrative and military talents and successes against the Saracens, Bulgarians, and other enemies, as well as his despotism and cruelty (which he shares with other Byzantine emperors) are beyond dispute.

He called an iconoclastic council in Constantinople in 754, which was to be the seventh ecumenical, but was afterwards disowned as a pseudo-synod of heretics. It numbered three hundred and thirty subservient bishops under the presidency of Archbishop Theodosius of Ephesus (the son of a former emperor), and lasted six months (from Feb. 10th to Aug. 27th); but the patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, being under Moslem rule, could not attend, the see of Constantinople was vacant, and Pope Stephen III. disregarded the imperial summons. The council, appealing to the second commandment and other Scripture passages denouncing idolatry (Rom_1:23, Rom_1:25; Joh_4:24), and opinions of the Fathers (Epiphanius, Eusebius, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, etc.), condemned and forbade the public and private worship of sacred images on pain of deposition and excommunication, but (inconsistently) ordered at the same time that no one should deface or meddle with sacred vessels or vestments ornamented with figures, and formally declared its agreement with the six ecumenical councils, and the lawfulness of invoking the blessed Virgin and saints. It denounced all religious representations by painter or sculptor as presumptuous, pagan and idolatrous. Those who make pictures of the Saviour, who is God as well as man in one inseparable person, either limit the incomprehensible Godhead to the bounds of created flesh, or confound his two natures, like Eutyches, or separate them, like Nestorius, or deny his Godhead, like Arius; and those who worship such a picture are guilty of the same heresy and blasphemy. The eucharist alone is the proper image of Christ. A three-fold anathema was pronounced on the advocates of image-worship, even the great John of Damascus under the name of Mansur, who is called a traitor of Christ, an enemy of the empire, a teacher of impiety, and a perverter of the Scriptures. The acts of the Synod were destroyed except the decision (ὅρος) and a brief introduction, which are embodied and condemned in the acts of the second Nicene Council.

The emperor carried out the decree with great rigor as far as his power extended. The sacred images were ruthlessly destroyed and replaced by white-wash or pictures of trees, birds, and animals. The bishops and clergy submitted; but the monks who manufactured the pictures, denounced the emperor as a second Mohammed and heresiarch, and all the iconoclasts as heretics, atheists and blasphemers, and were subjected to imprisonment, flagellation, mutilation, and all sorts of indignities, even death. The principal martyrs of images during this reign (from 761-775) are Petrus Kalabites (i.e. the inhabitant of a hut, καλύβη), Johannes, Abbot of Monagria, and Stephanus, Abbot of Auxentius, opposite Constantinople (called “the new Stephanus,” to distinguish him from the proto-martyr). The emperor made even an attempt to abolish the convents.

 

102. The Restoration of Image-Worship by the Seventh Ecumenical Council, 787

Leo IV., called Chazarus (775-780), kept up the laws against images, though with more moderation. But his wife Irene of Athens, distinguished for beauty, talent, ambition and intrigue, was at heart devoted to image-worship, and after his death and during the minority of her son Constantine VI. Porphyrogenitus, labored with shrewdness and perseverance for its restoration (780-802). At first she proclaimed toleration to both parties, which she afterwards denied to the iconoclasts. She raised the persecuted monks to the highest dignities, and her secretary, Tarasius, to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople, with the consent of Pope Hadrian, who was willing to overlook the irregularity of the sudden election of a layman in prospect of his services to orthodoxy. She removed the iconoclastic imperial guard, and replaced it by one friendly to her views.

But the crowning measure was an ecumenical council, which alone could set aside the authority of the iconoclastic council of 754. Her first attempt to hold such a council at Constantinople in 786 completely failed. The second attempt, owing to more careful preparations, succeeded.

Irene convened the seventh ecumenical council in the year 787, at Nicaea, which was less liable to iconoclastic disturbances than Constantinople, yet within easy reach of the court, and famous as the seat of the first and weightiest ecumenical council. It was attended by about three hundred and fifty bishops, under the presidency of Tarasius, and held only eight sessions from September 24 to October 23, the last in the imperial palace of Constantinople. Pope Hadrian I. sent two priests, both called Peter, whose names stand first in the Acts. The three Eastern patriarchs, who were subject to the despotic rule of the Saracens, could not safely leave their homes; but two Eastern monks, John, and Thomas, who professed to be syncelli of two of these patriarchs and to have an accurate knowledge of the prevailing orthodoxy of Egypt and Syria, were allowed to sit and vote in the place of those dignitaries, although they had no authority from them, and were sent simply by a number of their fellow-monks.

The Nicene Council nullified the decrees of the iconoclastic Synod of Constantinople, and solemnly sanctioned a limited worship (proskynesis) of images.

Under images were understood the sign of the cross, and pictures of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, of angels and saints. They may be drawn in color or composed of Mosaic or formed of other suitable materials, and placed in churches, in houses, and in the street, or made on walls and tables, sacred vessels and vestments. Homage may be paid to them by kissing, bowing, strewing of incense, burning of lights, saying prayers before them; such honor to be intended for the living objects in heaven which the images represented. The Gospel book and the relics of martyrs were also mentioned among the objects of veneration.

The decree was fortified by a few Scripture passages about the Cherubim (Exo_25:17-22; Eze_41:1, Eze_41:15, Eze_41:19; Heb_9:1-5), and a large number of patristic testimonies, genuine and forged, and alleged miracles performed by images. A presbyter testified that he was cured from a severe sickness by a picture of Christ. Bishop after bishop, even those who had been members of the Synod of 754, renounced his iconoclastic opinions, and large numbers exclaimed together: “We all have sinned, we all have erred, we all beg forgiveness.” Some professed conscientious scruples, but were quieted when the Synod resolved that the violation of an oath which was contrary to the law of God, was no perjury. At the request of one of the Roman delegates, an image was brought into the assembly, and reverently kissed by all. At the conclusion, the assembled bishops exclaimed unanimously: “Thus we believe. This is the doctrine of the apostles. Anathema upon all who do not adhere to it, who do not salute the images, who call them idols, and who charge the Christians with idolatry. Long life to the emperors! Eternal memory to the new Constantine and the new Helena! God protect their reign! Anathema upon all heretics! Anathema especially upon Theodosius, the false bishop of Ephesus, as also upon Sisinnius and Basilius! The Holy Trinity has rejected their doctrines.” Then follows an anathema upon other distinguished iconoclasts, and all who do not confess that Christ’s humanity has a circumscribed form, who do not greet the images, who reject the ecclesiastical traditions, written or unwritten; while eternal memory is given to the chief champions of image-worship, Germanus of Constantinople, John of Damascus, and George of Cyprus, the heralds of truth.

The decrees of the Synod were publicly proclaimed in an eighth session at Constantinople in the presence of Irene and her son, and signed by them; whereupon the bishops, with the people and soldiers, shouted in the usual form: “Long live the Orthodox queen-regent.” The empress sent the bishops home with rich presents.

The second Council of Nicaea stands far below the first in moral dignity and doctrinal importance, and occupies the lowest grade among the seven ecumenical synods; but it determined the character of worship in the oriental church for all time to come, and herein lies its significance. Its decision is binding also upon the Roman church, which took part in it by two papal legates, and defended it by a letter of Pope Hadrian to Charlemagne in answer to the Libri Carolini. Protestant churches disregard the council because they condemn image-worship as a refined form of idolatry and as a fruitful source of superstition; and this theory is supported by the plain sense of the second commandment, the views of the primitive Christians, and, negatively, by the superstitions which have accompanied the history of image-worship down to the miracle-working Madonnas of the nineteenth century. At the same time it may be readily conceded that the decree of Nicaea has furnished aid and comfort to a low and crude order of piety which needs visible supports, and has stimulated the development of Christian art. Iconoclasm would have killed it. It is, however, a remarkable fact that the Catholic Raphael and Michael Angelo, and the Protestant Lucas Kranach and Albrecht Duerer, were contemporaries of the Reformers, and that the art of painting reached its highest perfection at the period when image-worship for a great part of Christendom was superseded by the spiritual worship of God alone.

A few months after the Nicene Council, Irene dissolved the betrothal of her son, the Emperor Constantine, to Rotrude, a daughter of Charlemagne, which she herself had brought about, and forced him to marry an Armenian lady whom he afterward cast off and sent to a convent. From this time dates her rupture with Constantine. In her ambition for despotic power, she rendered him odious by encouraging his bad habits, and at last incapable of the throne by causing his eyes to be plucked out, while he was asleep, with such violence that he died of it (797). It is a humiliating fact that Constantine the Great, the convener of the first Nicene Council, and Irene, the convener of the second and last, are alike stained with the blood of their own offspring, and yet honored as saints in the Eastern church, in whose estimate orthodoxy covers a multitude of sins. She enjoyed for five years the fruit of unnatural cruelty to her only child. As she passed through the streets of Constantinople, four patricians marched on foot before her golden chariot, holding the reins of four milk-white steeds. But these patricians conspired against their queen and raised the treasurer Nicephorus to the throne, who was crowned at St. Sophia by the venal patriarch. Irene was sent into exile on the Isle of Lesbos, and had to earn her bread by the labors of her distaff as she had done in the days of her youth as an Athenian virgin. She died of grief in 803. With her perished the Isaurian dynasty. Startling changes of fortune were not uncommon among princes and patriarchs of the Byzantine empire.

 

103. Iconoclastic Reaction, and Final Triumph of Image-Worship, a.d. 842

Walch, X. 592-828. Hefele, IV. 1-6; 38-47; 104-109.

During the five reigns which succeeded that of Irene, a period of thirty-eight years, the image-war was continued with varying fortunes. The soldiers were largely iconoclastic, the monks and the people in favor of image-worship. Among these Theodore of the Studium was distinguished by his fearless advocacy and cruel sufferings under Leo V., the Armenian (813-820), who was slain at the foot of the altar. Theophilus (829-842) was the last and the most cruel of the iconoclastic emperors. He persecuted the monks by imprisonment, corporal punishment, and mutilation.

But his widow, Theodora, a second Irene, without her vices, in the thirteenth year of her regency during the minority of Michael the Drunkard, achieved by prudent and decisive measures the final and permanent victory of image-worship. She secured absolution for her deceased husband by the fiction of a death-bed repentance, although she had promised him to make no change. The iconoclastic patriarch, John the Grammarian, was banished and condemned to two hundred lashes; the monk Methodius of opposite tendency (honored as a confessor and saint) was put in his place; the bishops trembled and changed or were deposed; the monks and the people were delighted. A Synod at Constantinople (the acts of it are lost) reënacted the decrees of the seven ecumenical Councils, restored the worship of images, pronounced the anathema upon all iconoclasts, and decided that the event should be hereafter commemorated on the first Sunday in Lent by a solemn procession and a renewal of the anathema on the iconoclastic heretics.

On the 19th of February, 842, the images were again introduced into the churches of Constantinople. It was the first celebration of the “Sunday of Orthodoxy,” which afterwards assumed a wider meaning, as a celebration of victory over all heresies. It is one of the most characteristic festivals of the Eastern church. The old ecumenical Councils are dramatically represented, and a threefold anathema is pronounced upon all sorts of heretics such as atheists, antitrinitarians, upon those who deny the virginity of Mary before or after the birth of Christ, the inspiration of the Scriptures, or the immortality of the soul, who reject the mysteries (sacraments), the traditions and councils, who deny that orthodox princes rule by divine appointment and receive at their unction the Holy Ghost, and upon all iconoclasts. After this anathema follows the grateful commemoration of the orthodox confessors and “all who have fought for the orthodox faith by their words, writings, teaching, sufferings, and godly example, as also of all the protectors and defenders of the Church of Christ.” In conclusion the bishops, archimandrites and priests kiss the sacred icons.

 

104. The Caroline Books and the Frankish Church on Image-Worship

I. Libri Carolini, first ed. by Elias Philyra (i.e., Jean du Tillet, or Tilius, who was suspected of Calvinism, but afterwards became bishop of Meaux), from a French (Paris) MS., Paris, 1549; then by Melchior Goldast in his collection of imperial decrees on the image-controversy, Francof., 1608 (67 sqq.), and in the first vol. of his Collection of Constitutiones imperiales, with the addition of the last ch. (lib. IV., c. 29), which was omitted by Tilius; best ed. by Ch. A. Heumann, Hanover, 1731, under the title: Augusta Concilii Nicaeni II. Censura, h. e., Caroli Magni de impio imaginum cultu libri IV., with prolegomena and notes. The ed. of Abbé Migne, in his “Patrol. Lat.,” Tom. 98, f. 990-1248 (in vol. II. of Opera Caroli M.), is a reprint of the ed. of Tilius, and inferior to Heumann’s ed. (“Es ist zu bedauern,” says Hefele, III. 696, “dass Migne, statt Besseres, entschieden Geringeres geboten hat, als man bisher schon besass”.)

II. Walch devotes the greater part of the eleventh vol. to the history of image-worship in the Frankish Church from Pepin to Louis the Pious. Neander, III. 233-243; Gieseler, II. 66-73; Hefele, III 694-716; Hergenröther, I. 553-557. Floss: De suspecta librorum Carolinorum fide. Bonn, 1860. Reifferscheid: Narratio de Vaticano librorum Carolinorum Codice. Breslau, 1873.

The church of Rome, under the lead of the popes, accepted and supported the seventh ecumenical council, and ultimately even went further than the Eastern church in allowing the worship of graven as well as painted images. But the church in the empire of Charlemagne, who was not on good terms with the Empress Irene, took a position between image-worship and iconoclasm.

The question of images was first discussed in France under Pepin in a synod at Gentilly near Paris, 767, but we do not know with what result. Pope Hadrian sent to Charlemagne a Latin version of the acts of the Nicene Council; but it was so incorrect and unintelligible that a few decades later the Roman librarian Anastasius charged the translator with ignorance of both Greek and Latin, and superseded it by a better one.

Charlemagne, with the aid of his chaplains, especially Alcuin, prepared and published, three years after the Nicene Council, an important work on image-worship under the title Quatuor Libri Carolini (790). He dissents both from the iconoclastic synod of 754 and the anti-iconoclastic synod of 787, but more from the latter, which he treats very disrespectfully. He decidedly rejects image-worship, but allows the use of images for ornament and devotion, and supports his view with Scripture passages and patristic quotations. The spirit and aim of the book is almost Protestant. The chief thoughts are these: God alone is the object of worship and adoration (colondus et adorandus). Saints are only to be revered (venerandi). Images can in no sense be worshipped. To bow or kneel before them, to salute or kiss them, to strew incense and to light candles before them, is idolatrous and superstitious. It is far better to search the Scriptures, which know nothing of such practices. The tales of miracles wrought by images are inventions of the imagination, or deceptions of the evil spirit. On the other hand, the iconoclasts, in their honest zeal against idolatry, went too far in rejecting the images altogether. The legitimate and proper use of images is to adorn the churches and to perpetuate and popularize the memory of the persons and events which they represent. Yet even this is not necessary; for a Christian should be able without sensual means to rise to the contemplation of the virtues of the saints and to ascend to the fountain of eternal light. Man is made in the image of God, and hence capable of receiving Christ into his soul. God should ever be present and adored in our hearts. O unfortunate memory, which can realize the presence of Christ only by means of a picture drawn in sensuous colors. The Council of Nicaea committed a great wrong in condemning those who do not worship images.

The author of the Caroline books, however, falls into the same inconsistency as the Eastern iconoclasts, by making an exception in favor of the sign of the cross and the relics of saints. The cross is called a banner which puts the enemy to flight, and the honoring of the relics is declared to be a great means of promoting piety, since the saints reign with Christ in heaven, and their bones will be raised to glory; while images are made by men’s hands and return to dust.

A Synod in Frankfort, a.d. 794, the most important held during the reign of Charlemagne, and representing the churches of France and Germany, in the presence of two papal legates (Theophylactus and Stephanus), endorsed the doctrine of the Libri Carolini, unanimously condemned the worship of images in any form, and rejected the seventh ecumenical council. According to an old tradition, the English church agreed with this decision.

Charlemagne sent a copy of his book, or more probably an extract from it (85 Capitula or Capitulare de Imaginibus) through Angilbert, his son-in-law, to his friend Pope Hadrian, who in a long answer tried to defend the Eastern orthodoxy of Nicaea with due respect for his Western protector, but failed to satisfy the Frankish church, and died soon afterwards (Dec. 25, 795).

A Synod of Paris, held under the reign of Charlemagne’s son and successor, Louis the Pious, in the year 825, renewed the protest of the Frankfort Synod against image-worship and the authority of the second council of Nicaea, in reply to an embassy of the Emperor Michael Balbus, and added a slight rebuke to the pope.

 

Notes

The Caroline Books, if not written by Charlemagne, are at all events issued in his name; for the author repeatedly calls Pepin his father, and speaks of having undertaken the work with the consent of the priests in his dominion (conniventia sacerdotum in regno a Deo nobis concesso). The book is first mentioned by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims in the ninth century as directed against the pseudo-Synodus Graecorum (the second Nicene Council), and he quotes a passage from a copy which he saw in the royal palace. The second mention and quotation was made by the papal librarian Augustin Steuchus (d. 1550) from a very old copy in the Bibliotheca Palatina. As soon as it appeared in print, Flavius and other Protestant polemics used it against Rome. Baronius, Bellarmin, and other Romanists denied the genuineness, and ascribed the book to certain heretics in the age of Charlemagne, who sent it to Rome to be condemned; some declared it even a fabrication of the radical reformer Carlstadt! But Sirmond and Natalis Alexander convincingly proved the genuineness. More recently Dr. Floss (R.C.) of Bonn, revived the doubts (1860), but they are permanently removed since Professor Reifferscheid (1866) discovered a new MS. from the tenth century in the Vatican library which differs from the one of Steuchus, and was probably made in the Cistercian Convent at Marienfeld in Westphalia. “Therefore,” writes Bishop Hefele in 1877 (III. 698), “the genuineness of the Libri Carolini is hereafter no longer to be questioned (nicht mehr zu beanstanden).”

 

105. Evangelical Reformers. Agobardus of Lyons, and Claudius of Turin

I. Agobardus: Contra eorum superstitionem qui picturis et imaginibus SS. adorationis obsequium deferendum putant. Opera ed. Baluzius Par. 1666, 2 vols., and Migne, “Patrol. Lat.” vol. 104, fol. 29-351. Histoire litter. de la France, IV. 567 sqq. C. B. Hundeshagen: De Agobardi vita et scriptis. Pars I. Giessae 1831; and his article in Herzog2 I. 212 sq. Bähr: Gesch. der röm. Lit. in Karoliny. Zeitalter, p. 383-393. Bluegel: De Agobardi archiep. Lugd. vita et scriptis. Hal. 1865. Simson: Jachbücher des fränkischen Reichs unter Ludwig dem Frommen. Leipz. 1874 and ‘76. C. Deedes in Smith and Wace, I. 63-64. Lichtenberger, I. 119.

II. Claudius: Opera in Migne’s “Patrol. Lat.” vol. 104, fol. 609-927. Commentaries on Kings, Gal., Ephes., etc., Eulogium Augustini, and Apologeticum. Some of his works are still unpublished. Rudelbach: Claudii Tur. Ep. ineditorum operum specimina, praemissa de ejus doctrina scriptisque dissert. Havniae 1824. C. Schmidt: Claudius v. Turin in Illgen’s “Zeitschrift f. die Hist. Theol.” 1843. II. 39; and his art. in Herzog2, III. 243-245.

III. Neander, III. 428-439 (very full and discriminating on Claudius); Gieseler, II. 69-73 (with judicious extracts); Reuter: Geschichte der Aufklärung im Mittelalter, vol. I. (Berlin 1875), 16-20 and 24-41.

The opposition to image-worship and other superstitious practices continued in the Frankish church during the ninth century.

Two eminent bishops took the lead in the advocacy of a more spiritual and evangelical type of religion. In this they differed from the rationalistic and destructive iconoclasts of the East. They were influenced by the writings of Paul and Augustin, those inspirers of all evangelical movements in church history; with this difference, however, that Paul stands high above parties and schools, and that Augustin, with all his anti-Pelagian principles, was a strong advocate of the Catholic theory of the church and church-order.

Agobard (in Lyonese dialect Agobaud or Aguebaud), a native of Spain, but of Gallic parents, and archbishop of Lyons (816-841), figures prominently in the political and ecclesiastical history of France during the reign of Louis the Pious. He is known to us already as an opponent of the ordeal, the judicial duel and other heathen customs. His character presents singular contrasts. He was a rigid ecclesiastic and sacerdotalist, and thoroughly orthodox in dogma (except that he denied the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures); but, on the other hand, a sworn enemy of all superstition, and advocate of liberal views in matters of worship. He took part in the rebellion of Lothaire against his father Louis in 833, which deprived him of his bishopric and left a serious stain on his character, but he was afterwards reconciled to Louis and recovered the bishopric. He opposed Adoptionism as a milder form of the Nestorian heresy. He attacked the Jews, who flocked to Lyons in large numbers, and charges them with insolent conduct towards the Christians. In this he shared the intolerance of his age. But, on the other hand, he wrote a book against image-worship. He goes back to the root of the difficulty, the worship of saints. He can find no authority for such worship. The saints themselves decline it. It is a cunning device of Satan to smuggle heathen idolatry into the church under pretext of showing honor to saints. He thus draws men away from a spiritual to a sensual worship. God alone should be adored; to him alone must we present the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart. Angels and holy men who are crowned with victory, and help us by their intercessions, may be loved and honored, but not worshiped. “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man” (Jer_17:5). We may look with pleasure on their pictures, but it is better to be satisfied with the simple symbol of the cross (as if this were not liable to the same abuse). Agobart approves the canon of Elvira, which forbade images altogether. He says in conclusion: “Since no man is essentially God, save Jesus our Saviour, so we, as the Scripture commands, shall bow our knees to his name alone, lest by giving this honor to another we may be estranged from God, and left to follow the doctrines and traditions of men according to the inclinations of our hearts.”

Agobard was not disturbed in his position, and even honored as a saint in Lyons after his death, though his saintship is disputed. His works were lost, until Papirius Masson discovered a MS. copy and rescued it from a bookbinder’s hands in Lyons (1605).

Claudius, bishop of Turin (814-839), was a native of Spain, but spent three years as chaplain at the court of Louis the Pious and was sent by him to the diocese of Turin. He wrote practical commentaries on nearly all the books of the Bible, at the request of the emperor, for the education of the clergy. They were mostly extracted from the writings of Augustin, Jerome, and other Latin fathers. Only fragments remain. He was a great admirer of Augustin, but destitute of his wisdom and moderation.

He found the Italian churches full of pictures and picture-worshipers. He was told that the people did not mean to worship the images, but the saints. He replied that the heathen on the same ground defend the worship of their idols, and may become Christians by merely changing the name. He traced image-worship and saint-worship to a Pelagian tendency, and met it with the Augustinian view of the sovereignty of divine grace. Paul, he says, overthrows human merits, in which the monks now most glory, and exalts the grace of God. We are saved by grace, not by works. We must worship the Creator, not the creature. “Whoever seeks from any creature in heaven or on earth the salvation which he should seek from God alone, is an idolater.” The departed saints themselves do not wish to be worshipped by us, and cannot help us. While we live, we may aid each other by prayers, but not after death. He attacked also the superstitious use of the sign of the cross, going beyond Charlemagne and Agobard. He met the defence by carrying it to absurd conclusions. If we worship the cross, he says, because Christ suffered on it, we might also worship every virgin because he was born of a virgin, every manger because he was laid in a manger, every ship because he taught from a ship, yea, every ass because he rode on an ass into Jerusalem. We should bear the cross, not adore it. He banished the pictures, crosses and crucifixes from the churches, as the only way to kill superstition. He also strongly opposed the pilgrimages. He had no appreciation of religious symbolism, and went in his Puritanic zeal to a fanatical extreme.

Claudius was not disturbed in his seat; but, as he says himself, he found no sympathy with the people, and became “an object of scorn to his neighbors,” who pointed at him as “a frightful spectre.” He was censured by Pope Paschalis I. (817-824), and opposed by his old friend, the Abbot Theodemir of the diocese of Nismes, to whom he had dedicated his lost commentary on Leviticus (823), by Dungal (of Scotland or Ireland, about 827), and by Bishop Jonas of Orleans (840), who unjustly charged him with the Adoptionist and even the Arian heresy. Some writers have endeavored, without proof, to trace a connection between him and the Waldenses in Piedmont, who are of much later date.

Jonas of Orleans, Hincmar of Rheims, and Wallafrid Strabo still maintained substantially the moderate attitude of the Caroline books between the extremes of iconoclasm and image-worship. But the all-powerful influence of the popes, the sensuous tendency and credulity of the age, the ignorance of the clergy, and the grosser ignorance of the people combined to secure the ultimate triumph of image-worship even in France. The rising sun of the Carolingian age was obscured by the darkness of the tenth century.



Vol. 4, Chapter XI. Doctrinal Controversies

106. General Survey

Our period is far behind the preceding patristic and the succeeding scholastic in doctrinal importance, but it mediates between them by carrying the ideas of the fathers over to the acute analysis of the schoolmen, and marks a progress in the development of the Catholic system. It was agitated by seven theological controversies of considerable interest.

1. The controversy about the single or double Procession of the Holy Spirit. This belongs to the doctrine of the Trinity and was not settled, but divides to this day the Greek and Latin churches.

2. The Monotheletic controversy is a continuation of the Eutychian and Monophysitic controversies of the preceding period. It ended with the condemnation of Monotheletism and an addition to the Chalcedonian Christology, namely, the doctrine that Christ has two wills as well as two natures.

3. The Adoptionist controversy is a continuation of the Nestorian. Adoptionism was condemned as inconsistent with the personal union of the two natures in Christ.

4 and 5. Two Eucharistic controversies resulted in the general prevalence of the doctrine of transubstantiation.

6. The Predestinarian controversy between Gottschalk and Hincmar tended to weaken the influence of the Augustinian system, and to promote semi-Pelagian views and practices.

7. The Image-controversy belongs to the history of worship rather than theology, and has been discussed in the preceding chapter.

The first, second, and seventh controversies affected the East and the West; the Adoptionist, the two Eucharistic, and the Predestinarian controversies were exclusively carried on in the West, and ignored in the East.

 

107. The Controversy on the Procession of the Holy Spirit

See the Lit. in § 67. The arguments for both sides of the question were fully discussed in the Union Synod of Ferrara-Florence, 1438-’39; see Hefele: Conciliengesch. VII. P. II. p. 683 sqq.; 706 sqq.; 712 sqq.

The Filioque-controversy relates to the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit, and is a continuation of the trinitarian controversies of the Nicene age. It marks the chief and almost the only important dogmatic difference between the Greek and Latin churches. It belongs to metaphysical theology, and has far less practical value than the regenerating and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men. But it figures very largely in history, and has occasioned, deepened, and perpetuated the greatest schism in Christendom. The single word Filioque keeps the oldest, largest, and most nearly related churches divided since the ninth century, and still forbids a reunion. The Eastern church regards the doctrine of the single procession as the corner-stone of orthodoxy, and the doctrine of the double procession as the mother of all heresies. She has held most tenaciously to her view since the fourth century, and is not likely ever to give it up. Nor can the Roman church change her doctrine of the double procession without sacrificing the principle of infallibility.

The Protestant Confessions agree with the Latin dogma, while on the much more vital question of the papacy they agree with the Eastern church, though from a different point of view. The church of England has introduced the double procession of the Spirit even into her litany. It should be remembered, however, that this dogma was not a controverted question in the time of the Reformation, and was received from the medieval church without investigation. Protestantism is at perfect liberty to go back to the original form of the Nicene Creed if it should be found to be more in accordance with the Scripture. But the main thing for Christians of all creeds is to produce “the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.”

Let us first glance at the external history of the controversy.

1. The New Testament. The exegetical starting-point and foundation of the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit is the word of our Lord in the farewell address to his disciples: When the Paraclete (the Advocate) is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth (or, goeth forth) from the Father, he shall bear witness of me.”

On this passage the Nicene fathers based their doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit, as his personal property or characteristic individuality while the unbegotten Fatherhood belongs to the person of the Father, and the eternal generation to the person of the Son.

Our Lord says neither that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, nor that he proceeds from the Father and the Son. But in several other passages of the same farewell addresses he speaks of the Spirit as being sent by the Father and the Son, and promises this as a future event which was to take place after his departure, and which actually did take place on the day of Pentecost and ever since.

On these passages is based the doctrine of the mission of the Spirit. This is regarded as a temporal or historical act, and must be distinguished from the eternal procession in the Trinity itself. In other words, the procession belongs to the Trinity of essence, and is an intertrinitarian process (like the eternal generation of the Son), but the mission belongs to the Trinity of revelation in the historical execution of the scheme of redemption. In this exegesis the orthodox divines of the Greek and Latin churches are agreed. They differ on the source of the procession, but not on the mission.

Modern exegetes, who adhere closely to the grammatical sense, and are not governed by dogmatic systems, incline mostly to the view that no metaphysical distinction is intended in those passages, and that the procession of the Spirit from the Father, and the mission of the Spirit by the Father and the Son, refer alike to the same historic event and soteriological operation, namely, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and his continued work in the church and in the heart of believers. The Spirit “proceeds” when he “is sent” on his divine mission to glorify the Son and to apply the redemption to men. The Saviour speaks of the office and work of the Spirit rather than of his being and essence. Nevertheless there is a difference which must not be overlooked. In the procession, the Spirit is active: in the mission, he is passive; the procession is spoken of in the present tense (ἑκπορεύεται) as a present act, the mission in the future tense (πέμψω) as a future act, so that the former seems to belong to the eternal Trinity of essence, the latter to the historical or economical Trinity of revelation. Now God indeed reveals himself as he actually is, and we may therefore reason back from the divine office of the Spirit to his divine nature, and from his temporal mission to his eternal relation. Yet it may be questioned whether such inference justifies the doctrine of a double procession in the absence of any express Scripture warrant.

2. The Nicene Creed, in its original form of 325, closes abruptly with the article: “And [we believe] into the Holy Spirit.” In the enlarged form (which is usually traced to the Council of Constantinople, 381, and incorporated in its acts since 451, but is found earlier in Epiphanius, 373, and Cyril of Jerusalem, 362, we have the addition: “the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father,” etc. This form was generally adopted in the Eastern churches since the Council of Chalcedon, 451 (at which both forms were recited and confirmed), and prevails there to this day unaltered. It is simply the Scripture phrase without any addition, either of the Greek “alone,” or of the Latin “and from the Son.” The Greek church understood the clause in an exclusive sense, the Latin church, since Augustin and Leo I., in an incomplete sense.

The Latin church had no right to alter an ecumenical creed without the knowledge and consent of the Greek church which had made it; for in the ecumenical Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople the Western church was scarcely represented, at Nicaea only by one bishop (Hosius of Spain), in the second not at all; and in the Council of Chalcedon the delegates of Pope Leo I. fully agreed to the enlarged Greek form of the Nicene symbol, yet without the Filioque, which was then not thought of, although the doctrine of the double procession was already current in the West. A departure from this common symbolical standard of the most weighty ecumenical councils by a new addition, without consent of the other party, opened the door to endless disputes.

 

The Enlargement of the Nicene Creed

The third national Synod of Toledo in Spain, a.d. 589, held after the conversion of King Reccared to the Catholic faith, in its zeal for the deity of Christ against the Arian heresy which lingered longest in that country, and without intending the least disrespect to the Eastern church, first inserted the clause Filioque in the Latin version of the Nicene Creed. Other Spanish synods of Toledo did the same.

From Spain the clause passed into the Frankish church. It was discussed at the Synod of Gentilly near Paris in 767, but we do not know with what result. The Latin view was advocated by Paulinus of Aquileja (796), by Alcuin (before 804), and by Theodulf of Orleans. It was expressed in the so-called Athanasian Creed, which made its appearance in France shortly before or during the age of Charlemagne. The clause was sung in his chapel. He brought the matter before the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 809, which decided in favor of the double procession. He also sent messengers to Pope Leo III., with the request to sanction the insertion of the clause in the Nicene Creed. The pope decided in favor of the doctrine of the double procession, but protested against the alteration of the creed, and caused the Nicene Creed, in its original Greek text and the Latin version, to be engraved on two tablets and suspended in the Basilica of St. Peter, as a perpetual testimony against the innovation. His predecessor, Hadrian I., had a few years before (between 792 and 795) defended the Greek formula of John of Damascus and patriarch Tarasius, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. But the violent assault of Photius upon the Latin doctrine, as heretical, drove the Latin church into the defensive. Hence, since the ninth century, the Filioque was gradually introduced into the Nicene Creed all over the West, and the popes themselves, notwithstanding their infallibility, approved what their predecessors had condemned.

The coincidence of the triumph of the Filioque in the West with the founding of the new Roman Empire is significant; for this empire emancipated the pope from the Byzantine rule.

The Greek church, however, took little or no notice of this innovation till about one hundred and fifty years later, when Photius, the learned patriarch of Constantinople, brought it out in its full bearing and force in his controversy with Nicolas I., the pope of old Rome. He regarded the single procession as the principal part of the doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit on which the personality and deity of the Spirit depended, and denounced the denial of it as heresy and blasphemy. After this time no progress was made for the settlement of the difference, although much was written on both sides. The chief defenders of the Greek view, after the controversy with Photius, were Theophylactus, Euthymius Zigabenus, Nicolaus of Methone, Nicetus Choniates, Eustratius, and in modern times, the Russian divines, Prokovitch, Zoernicav, Mouravieff, and Philaret. The chief defenders of the Latin doctrine are Aeneas, bishop of Paris, Ratramnus (or Bertram), a monk of Corbie, in the name of the French clergy in the ninth century, Anselm of Canterbury (1098), Peter Chrysolanus, archbishop of Milan (1112), Anselm of Havelberg (1120), and Thomas Aquinas (1274), and in more recent times, Leo Alacci, Michael Le Quien, and Cardinal Hergenröther.

 

108. The Arguments for and against the Filioque

We proceed to the statement of the controverted doctrines and the chief arguments.

I. The Greek and Latin churches agree in holding — 

(1) The personality and deity of the third Person of the holy Trinity.

(2) The eternal procession (ἑκπόρευσις, processio) of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity.

(3) The temporal mission (πέμψις, missio) of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, beginning with the day of Pentecost, and continued ever since in the church.

II. They differ on the source of the eternal procession of the Spirit, whether it be the Father alone, or the Father and the Son. The Greeks make the Son and the Spirit equally dependent on the Father, as the one and only source of the Godhead; the Latins teach an absolute co-ordination of the three Persons of the Trinity as to essence, but after all admit a certain kind of subordination as to dignity and office, namely, a subordination of the Son to the Father, and of the Spirit to both. The Greeks approach the Latins by the admission that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son (this was the doctrine of Cyril of Alexandria and John of Damascus); the Latins approach the Greeks by the admission that the Spirit proceeds chiefly (principaliter) from the Father (Augustin). But little or nothing is gained by this compromise. The real question is, whether the Father is the only source of the Deity, and whether the Son and the Spirit are co-ordinate or subordinate in their dependence on the Father.

1. The Greek doctrine in its present shape. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (ἐκ μόνου τοῦ πατρός), as the beginning (ἀρχή), cause or root (αἰτία, ῥίζη, causa, radix), and fountain (πηγή) of the Godhead, and not from the Son.

John of Damascus, who gave the doctrine of the Greek fathers its scholastic shape, about a.d. 750, one hundred years before the controversy between Photius and Nicolas, maintained that the procession is from the Father alone, but through the Son, as mediator. The same formula, Ex Patre per Filium, was used by Tarasius, patriarch of Constantinople, who presided over the seventh ecumenical Council (787), approved by Pope Hadrian I., and was made the basis for the compromise at the Council of Ferrara (1439), and at the Old Catholic Conference at Bonn (1875). But Photius and the later Eastern controversialists dropped or rejected the per Filium, as being nearly equivalent to ex Filio or Filioque, or understood it as being applicable only to the mission of the Spirit, and emphasized the exclusiveness of the procession from the Father.

The arguments for the Greek doctrine are as follows:

(a) The words of Christ, Joh_15:26, understood in an exclusive sense. As this is the only passage of the Bible in which the procession of the Spirit is expressly taught, it is regarded by the Greeks as conclusive.

(b) The supremacy or monarchia of the Father. He is the source and root of the Godhead. The Son and the Spirit are subordinated to him, not indeed in essence or substance (οὐσία), which is one and the same, but in dignity and office. This is the Nicene subordinatianism. It is illustrated by the comparison of the Father with the root, the Son with the stem, the Spirit with the fruit, and such analogies as the sun, the ray, and the beam; the fire, the flame, and the light.

(c) The analogy of the eternal generation of the Son, which is likewise from the Father alone, without the agency of the Spirit.

(d) The authority of the Nicene Creed, and the Greek fathers, especially Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrus, and John of Damascus. The Antiochean school is clearly on the Greek side; but the Alexandrian school leaned to the formula through the Son (διά τοῦ υἱοῦ, per Filium). The Greeks claim all the Greek fathers, and regard Augustin as the inventor of the Latin dogma of the double procession.

The Latin doctrine is charged with innovation, and with dividing the unity of the Godhead, or establishing two sources of the Deity. But the Latins replied that the procession was from one and the same source common to both the Father and the Son.

2. The Latin theory of the double procession is defended by the following arguments:

(a) The passages where Christ says that he will send the Spirit from the Father (Joh_15:26; Joh_16:7); and that the Father will send the Spirit in Christ’s name (Joh_14:26); and where he breathes the Spirit on his disciples (Joh_20:22). The Greeks refer all these passages to the temporal mission of the Spirit, and understand the insufflation to be simply a symbolical act or sacramental sign of the pentecostal effusion which Christ had promised. The Latins reply that the procession and the mission are parallel processes, the one ad intra, the other ad extra.

(b) The equality of essence (ὁμοουσία) of the Father and Son to the exclusion of every kind of subordinationism (since Augustin) requires the double procession. The Spirit of the Father is also the Spirit of the Son, and is termed the Spirit of Christ. But, as already remarked, Augustin admitted that the Spirit proceeds chiefly from the Father, and this after all is a kind of subordination of dignity. The Father has his being (οὐσία) from himself, the Son and the Spirit have it from the Father by way of derivation, the one by generation, the other by procession.

(c) The temporal mission of the Spirit is a reflection of his eternal procession. The Trinity of revelation is the basis of all our speculations on the Trinity of essence. We know the latter only from the former.

(d) The Nicene Creed and the Nicene fathers did not understand the procession from the Father in an exclusive sense, but rather in opposition to the Pneumatomachi who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Some Greek fathers, as Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria, and John of Damascus, teach the Latin doctrine. This is not the case exactly. The procession of the Spirit “through the Son,” is not equivalent to the procession “from the Son,” but implies a subordination.

(e) The Latin fathers are in favor of Filioque, especially Ambrose, Augustin, Jerome, Leo I., Gregory I.

(f) The insertion of the Filioque is as justifiable as the other and larger additions to the Apostles’ Creed and to the original Nicene Creed of 325, and was silently accepted, or at least not objected to by the Greek church until the rivalry of the Patriarch of Constantinople made it a polemical weapon against the Pope of Rome. To this the Greeks reply that the other additions are consistent and were made by common consent, but the Filioque was added without the knowledge and against the teaching of the East by churches (in Spain and France) which had nothing to do with the original production.

This controversy of the middle ages was raised from the tomb by the Old Catholic Conference held in Bonn, 1875, under the lead of the learned historian, Dr. Döllinger of Munich, and attended by a number of German Old Catholic, Greek and Russian, and high Anglican divines. An attempt was made to settle the dispute on the basis of the teaching of the fathers before the division of the Eastern and Western churches, especially the doctrine of John of Damascus, that is, the single procession of the Spirit from the Father mediated through the Son. The Filioque was surrendered as an unauthorized and unjustifiable interpolation.

But the Bonn Conference has not been sanctioned by any ecclesiastical authority, and forms only an interesting modern episode in the history of this controversy, and in the history of the Old Catholic communion.

 

109. The Monotheletic Controversy

Literature.

(I.) Sources: Documents and acts of the first Lateran Synod (649), and the sixth ecumenical Council or Concilium Trullanum I., held in Constantinople (680), in Mansi, X. 863 sqq. and XI. 187 sqq.

Anastasius (Vatican librarian, about 870): Collectanea de iis quae spectant ad controv. et histor. monothelit. haeret., first ed. by Sirmond, Par. 1620, in his Opera, III., also in Bibl. Max. PP. Lugd. XII. 833; and in Gallandi, XIII.; also scattered through vols. X. and XI. of Mansi. See Migne’s ed. of Anastas. in “Patrol. Lat.” vols. 127-129.

Maximus Confessor: Opera, ed. Combefis, Par. 1675, Tom. II. 1-158, and his disputation with Pyrrhus, ib. 159 sqq. Also in Migne’s reprint, “Patrol. Gr.” vol. 91.

Theophanes: Chronographia, ed. Bonn. (1839), p. 274 sqq.; ed. Migne, in vol. 108 of his “Patrol. Graeca” (1861).

(II.) Franc. Combefisius (Combefis, a learned French Dominican, d. 1679): Historia haeresis Monothelitarum ac vindiciae actorum Sexti Synodi, in his Novum Auctuarium Patrum, II. 3 sqq. Par. 1648, fol. 1-198.

Petavius: Dogm. Theol. Tom. V. l. IX. c. 6-10.

Jos. Sim. Assemani, in the fourth vol. of his Bibliotheca Juris Orientalis. Romae 1784.

CH. W. F. Walch: Ketzerhistorie, vol. IX. 1-666 (Leipzig 1780). Very dry, but very learned.

Gibbon (Ch. 47, N. Y. ed. IV. 682-686, superficial). Schröckh, vol. XX. 386 sqq. Neander, III. 175-197 (Boston ed.), or III. 353-398 (Germ. ed.). Gieseler, I. 537-544 (Am. ed.).

The respective sections in Baur: Gesch. der Lehre v. d. Dreieinigkeii und Menschwerdung (Tüb. 1841-’43, 3 vols.), vol. II. 96-128; Dorner: Entwicklungsgesch. der Lehre v. d. Person Christi (second ed. 1853), II. 193-305; Nitzsch: Dogmengesch. I. 325 sqq.; and Hefele: Conciliengeschichte (revised ed. 1877) III. 121-313. Also W. Möller. in Herzog2 X. 792-805.

The literature on the case of Honorius see in the next section.

 

110. The Doctrine of Two Wills in Christ

The Monotheletic or one-will controversy is a continuation of the Christological contests of the post-Nicene age, and closely connected with the Monophysitic controversy.

This question had not been decided by the ancient fathers and councils, and passages from their writings were quoted by both parties. But in the inevitable logic of theological development it had to be agitated sooner or later, and brought to a conciliar termination.

The controversy had a metaphysical and a practical aspect.

The metaphysical and psychological aspect was the relation of will to nature and to person. Monotheletism regards the will as an attribute of person, Dyotheletism as an attribute of nature. It is possible to conceive of an abstract nature without a will; it is difficult to conceive of a rational human nature without impulse and will; it is impossible to conceive of a human person without a will. Reason and will go together, and constitute the essence of personality. Two wills cannot coexist in an ordinary human being. But as the personality of Christ is complex or divine-human, it may be conceived of as including two consciousnesses and two wills. The Chalcedonian Christology at all events consistently requires two wills as the necessary complement of two rational natures; in other words, Dyotheletism is inseparable from Dyophysitism, while Monotheletism is equally inseparable from Monophysitism, although it acknowledged the Dyophysitism of Chalcedon. The orthodox doctrine saved the integrity and completeness of Christ’s humanity by asserting his human will.

The practical aspect of the controversy is connected with the nature of the Redeemer and of redemption, and was most prominent with the leaders. The advocates of Monotheletism were chiefly concerned to guard the unity of Christ’s person and work. They reasoned that, as Christ is but one person, he can only have one will; that two wills would necessarily conflict, as in man the will of the flesh rebels against the Spirit; and that the sinlessness of Christ is best secured by denying to him a purely human will, which is the root of sin. They made the pre-existing divine will of the Logos the efficient cause of the incarnation and redemption, and regarded the human nature of Christ merely as the instrument through which he works and suffers, as the rational soul works through the organ of the body. Some of them held also that in the perfect state the human will of the believer will be entirely absorbed in the divine will, which amounts almost to a pantheistic absorption of the human personality in the divine.

The advocates of Dyotheletism on the other hand contended that the incarnation must be complete in order to have a complete redemption; that a complete incarnation implies the assumption of the human will into union with the pre-existing divine will of the Logos; that the human will is the originating cause of sin and guilt, and must therefore be redeemed, purified, and sanctified; that Christ, without a human will, could not have been a full man, could not have been tempted, nor have chosen between good and evil, nor performed any moral and responsible act.

The Scripture passages quoted by Agatho and other advocates of the two-will doctrine, are Mat_26:39 (“Not as I will, but as Thou wilt”); Luk_22:42 (“Not my will, but thine be done”); Joh_6:38 (“I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me”). For the human will were quoted Luk_2:51 (“he was subject” to his parents); Phi_2:8 (“obedient unto death”), also Joh_1:43; Joh_17:24; Joh_19:28; Mat_27:34; for the divine will, Luk_13:34; Joh_5:21.

These Scripture passages, which must in the end decide the controversy, clearly teach the human will of Jesus, but the other will from which it is distinguished, is the will of his heavenly Father, to which he was obedient unto death. The orthodox dogma implies the identity of the divine will of Christ with the will of God the Father, and assumes that there is but one will in the divine tripersonality. It teaches two natures and one person in Christ, but three persons and one nature in God. Here we meet the metaphysical and psychological difficulty of conceiving of a personality without a distinct will. But the term personality is applied to the Deity in a unique and not easily definable sense. The three Divine persons are not conceived as three individuals.

The weight of argument and the logical consistency on the basis of the Chalcedonian Dyophysitism, which was acknowledged by both parties, decided in favor of the two-will doctrine. The Catholic church East and West condemned Monotheletism as a heresy akin to Monophysitism. The sixth ecumenical Council in 680 gave the final decision by adopting the following addition to the Chalcedonian Christology:

“And we likewise preach two natural wills in him [Jesus Christ], and two natural operations undivided, inconvertible, inseparable, unmixed, according to the doctrine of the holy fathers; and the two natural wills [are] not contrary (as the impious heretics assert), far from it! but his human will follows the divine will, and is not resisting or reluctant, but rather subject to his divine and omnipotent will. For it was proper that the will of the flesh should be moved, but be subjected to the divine will, according to the wise Athanasius. For as his flesh is called and is the flesh of the God Logos, so is also the natural will of his flesh the proper will of the Logos, as he says himself: ‘I came from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me’ (Joh_6:38).… Therefore we confess two natural wills and operations, harmoniously united for the salvation of the human race.”

The theological contest was carried on chiefly in the Eastern church which had the necessary learning and speculative talent; but the final decision was brought about by the weight of Roman authority, and Pope Agatho exerted by his dogmatic epistle the same controlling influence over the sixth ecumenical Council, as Pope Leo I. had exercised over the fourth. In this as well as the older theological controversies the Roman popes — with the significant exception of Honorius — stood firmly on the side of orthodoxy, while the patriarchal sees of the East were alternately occupied by heretics as well as orthodox.

The Dyotheletic decision completes the Christology of the Greek and Roman churches, and passed from them into the Protestant churches; but while the former have made no further progress in this dogma, the latter allows a revision and reconstruction, and opened new avenues of thought in the contemplation of the central fact and truth of the divine-human personality of Christ.

 

111. History of Monotheletism and Dyotheletism

The triumph of Dyotheletism was the outcome of a bitter conflict of nearly fifty years (633 to 680). The first act reaches to the issue of the Ekthesis (638), the second to the issue of the Type (648), the third and last to the sixth ecumenical Council (680). The theological leaders of Monophysitism were Theodore, bishop of Pharan in Arabia (known to us only from a few fragments of his writings), Sergius and his successors Pyrrhus and Paul in the patriarchal see of Constantinople, and Cyrus, patriarch of Alexandria; the political leaders were the Emperors Heraclius and Constans II.

The champions of the Dyotheletic doctrine were Sophronius of Palestine, Maximus of Constantinople, and the popes Martin and Agatho of Rome; the political supporter, the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus (668-685).

1. The strife began in a political motive, but soon assumed a theological and religious aspect. The safety of the Byzantine empire was seriously threatened, first by the Persians, and then by the Arabs, and the danger was increased by the division among Christians. The Emperor Heraclius (610-640) after his return from the Persian campaign desired to conciliate the Monophysites, who were more numerous than the orthodox in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt. He hoped, by a union of the parties, to protect these countries more effectually against the Mohammedan invaders. The Monophysites took offence at the catholic inference of two energies (ἐνέργειαι) in the person of Christ. The emperor consulted Sergius, the patriarch of Constantinople (since 610), who was of Syrian (perhaps Jacobite) descent. They agreed upon the compromise-formula of “one divine-human energy” (μία θεανδρικὴ ἐνέργεια). Sergius secured the consent of Pope Honorius (625-638), who was afterwards condemned for heresy. Cyrus, the orthodox patriarch of Alexandria, published the formula (633), and converted thousands of Monophysites.

But Sophronius, a learned and venerable monk in Palestine, who happened to be in Alexandria at that time, protested against the compromise-formula as a cunning device of the Monophysites. When he became patriarch of Jerusalem (in 633 or 634), he openly confessed, in a synodical letter to the patriarchs, the doctrine of Dyotheletism as a necessary part of the Chalcedonian Christology. It is one of the most important documents in this controversy.

A few years afterwards, the Saracens besieged and conquered Jerusalem (637); Sophronius died and was succeeded by a Monotheletic bishop.

In the year 638 the Emperor issued, as an answer to the manifesto of Sophronius, an edict drawn up by Sergius, under the title Exposition of the Faith (ἔκθεσις τῆς πίστεως), which commanded silence on the subject in dispute, but pretty clearly decided in favor of Monotheletism. It first professes the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and incarnation in the Chalcedonian sense, and then forbids the use of the terms “one” or “two energies” (μία or δύο ἐνέργειαι) since both are heretically interpreted, and asserts one will (θέλημα) in Christ.

2. Two synods of Constantinople (638 and 639) adopted the Ekthesis. But in the remote provinces it met with powerful resistance. Maximus Confessor became the champion of Dyotheletism in the Orient and North Africa, and Pope Martinus I. in the West. They thoroughly understood the controversy, and had the courage of martyrs for their conviction.

Maximus was born about 580 of a distinguished family in Constantinople, and was for some time private secretary of the Emperor Heraclius, but left this post of honor and influence in 630, and entered a convent in Chrysopolis (now Scutari). He was a profound thinker and able debater. When the Monotheletic heresy spread, he concluded to proceed to Rome, and passing through Africa be held there, in the presence of the imperial governor and many bishops, a remarkable disputation with Pyrrhus, who had succeeded Sergius in the see of Constantinople, but was deposed and expelled for political reasons. This disputation took place in July, 645, but we do not know in what city of Africa. It sounded all the depths of the controversy and ended with the temporary conversion of Pyrrhus to Dyotheletism.

About the same time, several North-African synods declared in favor of the Dyotheletic doctrine.

In the year 648 the Emperor Constans II. (642-668) tried in vain to restore peace by means of a new edict called Typos or Type, which commanded silence on the subject under dispute without giving the preference to either view. It set aside the Ekthesis and declared in favor of neutrality. The aim of both edicts was to arrest the controversy and to prevent a christological development beyond the fourth and fifth ecumenical councils. But the Type was more consistent in forbidding all controversy not only about one energy (μία ἐνέργεια), but also about one will (ἕν θέλημα). Transgressors of the Type were threatened with deposition; if clergymen, with excommunication; if monks, with the loss of dignity and place, of military or civil officers.

3. An irrepressible conflict cannot be silenced by imperial decrees. Pope Martin I., formerly Apocrisiarios of the papal see at Constantinople, and distinguished for virtue, knowledge and personal beauty, soon after his election (July 5th, 649), assembled the first Lateran Council (Oct., 649), so called from being held in the Lateran basilica in Rome. It was attended by one hundred and five bishops, anathematized the one-will doctrine and the two imperial edicts, and solemnly sanctioned the two-will doctrine. It anticipated substantially the decision of the sixth ecumenical council, and comes next to it in authority on this article of faith.

The acts of this Roman council, together with an encyclical of the pope warning against the Ekthesis and the Type, were sent to all parts of the Christian world. At the same time, the pope sent a Greek translation of the acts to the Emperor Constans II., and politely informed him that the Synod had confirmed the true doctrine, and condemned the heresy. Theodore of Pharan, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paulus had violated the full humanity of Christ, and deceived the emperors by the Ekthesis and the Type.

But the emperor, through his representative, Theodore Calliopa, the exarch of Ravenna, deposed the pope as a rebel and heretic, and removed him from Rome (June, 653). He imprisoned him with common criminals in Constantinople, exposed him to cold, hunger, and all sorts of injuries, and at last sent him by ship to a cavern in Cherson on the Black Sea (March, 655). Martin bore this cruel treatment with dignity, and died Sept. 16, 655, in exile, a martyr to his faith in the doctrine of two wills.

Maximus was likewise transported to Constantinople (653), and treated with even greater cruelty. He was (with two of his disciples) confined in prison for several years, scourged, deprived of his tongue and right hand, and thus mutilated sent, in his old age, to Lazica in Colchis on the Pontus Euxinus, where he died of these injuries, Aug. 13, 662. His two companions likewise died in exile.

The persecution of these martyrs prepared the way for the triumph of their doctrine. In the meantime province after province was conquered by the Saracens.

 

112. The Sixth Ecumenical Council. a.d. 680

Constans II. was murdered in a bath at Syracuse (668). His son, Constantine IV. Pogonatus (Barbatus, 668-685), changed the policy of his father, and wished to restore harmony between the East and the West. He stood on good or neutral terms with Pope Vitalian (6 57-672), who maintained a prudent silence on the disputed question, and with his successors, Adeodatus (672-676), Donus or Domnus (676-678), and Agatho (678-681).

After sufficient preparations, he called, in concert with Agatho, a General Council. It convened in the imperial palace at Constantinople, and held eighteen sessions from Nov. 7, 680, to Sept. 16, 681. It is called the Sixth Ecumenical, and also the First Trullan Synod, from the name of the hall or chapel in the palace. The highest number of members in attendance was one hundred and seventy-four, including three papal legates (two priests and one deacon). The emperor presided in person, surrounded by civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries. The acts are preserved in the Greek original and in two old Latin versions.

After a full discussion of the subject on both sides, the council, in the eighteenth and last session, defined and sanctioned the two-will doctrine, almost in the very language of the letter of Pope Agatho to the emperor. Macarius, the patriarch of Alexandria, who adhered to Monotheletism, was deposed.

The epistle of Agatho is a worthy sequel of Leo’s Epistle to the Chalcedonian Council, and equally clear and precise in stating the orthodox view. It is also remarkable for the confidence with which it claims infallibility for the Roman church, in spite of the monotheletic heresy of Pope Honorius (who is prudently ignored). Agatho quotes the words of Christ to Peter, Luk_22:31, Luk_22:32, in favor of papal infallibility, anticipating, as it were, the Vatican decision of 1870.

But while the council fully endorsed the dyotheletic view of Agatho, and clothed it with ecumenical authority, it had no idea of endorsing his claim to papal infallibility; on the contrary, it expressly condemned Pope Honorius I. as a Monotheletic heretic, together with Sergius, Cyrus, Pyrrhus, Paulus, Petrus, and Theodore of Pharan.

Immediately after the close of the council, the emperor published the decision, with an edict enforcing it and anathematizing all heretics from Simon Magus down to Theodore of Pharan, Sergius, Pope Honorius, who in all was their follower and associate, and confirmed the heresy. The edict forbids any one hereafter to teach the doctrine of one will and one energy under penalty of deposition, confiscation, and exile.

Pope Agatho died Jan. 10, 682; but his successor, Leo II., who was consecrated Aug. 17 of the same year, confirmed the sixth council, and anathematized all heretics, including his predecessor, Honorius, who, instead of adorning the apostolic see, dared to prostitute its immaculate faith by profane treason, and all who died in the same error.

 

113. The Heresy of Honorius

J. von Döllinger (Old Cath.): Papstfabeln des Mittelalters. München, 1863. The same translated by A. Plummer: Fables respecting the Popes in the Middle Ages; Am ed. enlarged by Henry B. Smith, N. York, 1872. (The case of Honorius is discussed on pp. 223-248 Am. ed.; see German ed. p. 131 sqq.).

Schneemann (Jesuit): Studien über die Honoriusfrage. Freiburg i. B, 1864.

Paul Bottala (S. J.): Pope Honorius before the Tribunal of Reason and History. London, 1868.

P. Le Page Renouf: The Condemnation of Pope Honorius. Lond., 1868. The Case of Honorius reconsidered. Lond. 1870.

Maret (R.C.): Du Concil et de la paix relig. Par. 1869.

A. Gratry (R.C.): Four Letters to the Bishop of Orleans (Dupanloup) and the Archbishop of Malines (Dechamps), 1870. Several editions in French, German, English. He wrote against papal infallibility, but recanted on his death-bed.

A. de Margerie: Lettre au R. P. Gratry sur le Pape Honorius et le Bréviaire Romain. Nancy, 1870.

Jos. von Hefele (Bishop of Rottenburg and Member of the Vatican Council): Causa Honorii Papae. Neap., 1870. Honorius und das sechste allgemeine Concil. Tübingen, 1870. (The same translated by Henry B. Smith in the “Presbyt. Quarterly and Princeton Review, “N. York, April, 1872, p. 273 sqq.). Conciliengeschichte, Bd. III. (revised ed., 1877), pp. 145 sqq., 167 sqq., 290 sqq.

Job. Pennachi (Prof. of Church Hist. in the University of Rome): De Honorii I. Romani Pontificis causa in Concilio VI. ad Patres Concilii Vaticani. Romae, 1870. 287 pp. Hefele calls this the most important vindication of Honorius from the infallibilist standpoint. It was distributed among all the members of the Vatican Council; while books in opposition to papal infallibility by Bishop Hefele, Archbishop Kenrick, and others, had to be printed outside of Rome.

A. Ruckgaber: Die Irrlehre des Honorius und das Vatic. Concil. Stuttgart, 1871.

Comp. the literature in Hergenröther; Kirchengesch., III. 137 sqq.

The connection of Pope Honorius I. (Oct. 27, 625, to Oct. 12, 638) with the Monotheletic heresy has a special interest in its bearing upon the dogma of papal infallibility, which stands or falls with a single official error, according to the principle: Si falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. It was fully discussed by Catholic scholars on both sides before and during the Vatican Council of 1870, which proclaimed that dogma, but could not alter the facts of history. The following points are established by the best documentary evidence:

1. Honorius taught and favored in several official letters (to Sergius, Cyrus, and Sophronius), therefore ex cathedra, the one-will heresy. He fully agreed with Sergius, the Monotheletic patriarch of Constantinople. In answer to his first letter (634), he says: “Therefore we confess one will (θέλημα, voluntas) of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He viewed the will as an attribute of person, not of nature, and reasoned: One willer, therefore only one will. In a second letter to Sergius, he rejects both the orthodox phrase: “two energies,” and the heterodox phrase: “one energy” (ἐνέργεια, operatio), and affirms that the Bible clearly teaches two natures, but that it is quite vain to ascribe to the Mediator between God and man one or two energies; for Christ by virtue of his one theandric will showed many modes of operation and activity. The first letter was decidedly heretical, the second was certainly not orthodox, and both occasioned and favored the imperial Ekthesis (638) and Type (648), in their vain attempt to reconcile the Monophysites by suppressing the Dyotheletic doctrine.

The only thing which may and must be said in his excuse is that the question was then new and not yet properly understood. He was, so to say, an innocent heretic before the church had pronounced a decision. As soon as it appeared that the orthodox dogma of two natures required the doctrine of two wills, and that Christ could not be a full man without a human will, the popes changed the position, and Honorius would probably have done the same had he lived a few years longer.

Various attempts have been made by papal historians and controversialists to save the orthodoxy of Honorius in order to save the dogma of papal infallibility. Some pronounce his letters to be a later Greek forgery. Others admit their genuineness, but distort them into an orthodox sense by a nonnatural exegesis. Still others maintain, at the expense of his knowledge and logic, that Honorius was orthodox at heart, but heretical, or at least very unguarded in his expressions. But we have no means to judge of his real sentiment except his own language, which is unmistakably Monotheletic. And this is the verdict not only of Protestants, but also of Gallican and other liberal Catholic historians.

2. Honorius was condemned by the sixth ecumenical Council as “the former pope of Old Rome,” who with the help of the old serpent had scattered deadly error. This anathema was repeated by the seventh ecumenical Council, 787, and by the eighth, 869. The Greeks, who were used to heretical patriarchs of New Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, felt no surprise, and perhaps some secret satisfaction at the heresy of a pope of Old Rome.

Here again ultramontane historians have resorted to the impossible denial either of the genuineness of the act of condemnation in the sixth ecumenical Council, or of the true meaning of that act. The only consistent way for papal infallibilists is to deny the infallibility of the ecumenical Council as regards the dogmatic fact. In this case it would involve at the same time a charge of gross injustice to Honorius.

3. But this last theory is refuted by the popes themselves, who condemned Honorius as a heretic, and thus bore testimony for papal fallibility. His first success or, Severinus, had a brief pontificate of only three months. His second successor, John IV., apologized for him by putting a forced construction on his language. Agatho prudently ignored him. But his successor, Leo II., who translated the acts of the sixth Council from Greek into Latin, saw that he could not save the honor of Honorius without contradicting the verdict of the council in which the papal delegates had taken part; and therefore he expressly condemned him in the strongest language, both in a letter to the Greek emperor and in a letter to the bishops of Spain, as a traitor to the Roman church for trying to subvert her immaculate fate. Not only so, but the condemnation of the unfortunate Honorius was inserted in the confession of faith which every newly-elected pope had to sign down to the eleventh century, and which is embodied in the Liber Diurnus, i.e. the official book of formulas of the Roman church for the use of the papal curia. In the editions of the Roman Breviary down to the sixteenth century his name appears, yet without title and without explanation, along with the rest who had been condemned by the sixth Council. But the precise facts were gradually forgotten, and the medieval chroniclers and lists of popes ignore them. After the middle of the sixteenth century the case of Honorius again attracted attention, and was urged as an irrefutable argument against the ultramontane theory. At first the letter of Leo II. was boldly, rejected as a forgery as well as those of Honorius; but this was made impossible when the Liber Diurnus came to light.

The verdict of history, after the most thorough investigation from all sides and by all parties remains unshaken. The whole church, East and West, as represented by the official acts of ecumenical Councils and Popes, for several hundred years believed that a Roman bishop may err ex cathedra in a question of faith, and that one of them at least had so erred in fact. The Vatican Council of 1870 decreed papal infallibility in the face of this fact, thus overruling history by dogmatic authority. The Protestant historian can in conscience only follow the opposite principle: If dogma contradicts facts, all the worse for the dogma.

 

Notes

Bishop Hefele, one of the most learned and impartial Roman Catholic historians, thus states, after a lengthy discussion, his present view on the case of Honorius (Conciliengesch., vol. III. 175, revised ed. 1877), which differs considerably from the one he had published before the Vatican decree of papal infallibility (in the first ed. of his Conciliengesch., vol. III. 1858, p. 145 sqq., and in his pamphlet on Honorius, 1870). It should be remembered that Bishop Hefele, like all his anti-infallibilist colleagues, submitted to the decree of the Vatican Council for the sake of unity and peace.

“Die beiden Briefe des Papstes Honorius, wie wir sie jetzt haben, sind unverfälscht und zeigen, dass Honorius von den beiden monotheletischen Terminis ἒν θέλημα und μία ἐνέργεια den erstern (im ersten Brief) selbst gebrauchte, den anderen dagegen, ebenso auch den orthodoxen Ausdruck δύο ἐνέργειαι nicht angewendet wissen wollte. Hat er auch Letzteres (die, Missbilligung des Ausdruckes δύο ἐνέργ.) im zweiten Brief wiederholt, so hat er doch in demselben selbst zwei natürliche Energien in Christus anerkannt und in beiden Briefen sich so ausgedrückt, dass man annehmen muss, er habe nicht den menschlichen Willen überhaupt, sondern nur den Verdorbenen menschlichen Willen in Chistus geläugnet, aber obgleich orthodoz denkend, die monotheletische Tendenz des Sergius nicht gehörig durchschaut und sich missverständlich ausgedrückt, so dass seine Briefe, besonders der erste, den Monotheletismus zu bestätigen schienen und damit der Häresie Factisch Vorschub leisteten. In dieser Weise erledigt sich uns die Frage nach der Orthodoxie des Papstes Honorius, und wir halten sonach den Mittelweg zwischen denen, welche ihn auf die gleiche Stufe mit Sergius von Constantinopel und Cyrus von Alexandrien stellen und den Monotheleten beizählen wollten, und denen, welche durchaus keine Makel an ihn duldend in das Schicksal der nimium probantes verfallen sind, so dass sie lieber die Aechtheit der Acten des sechsten allgemeinen Concils und mehrerer anderer Urkunden läugnen, oder auch dem sechsten Concil einen error in facto dogmatico zuschreiben wollten.” Comp. his remarks on p. 152; “Diesen Hauptgedanken muss ich auch jetzt noch festhalten, dass Honorius im Herzen richtig dachte, sich aber unglücklich ausdrückte, wenn ich auch in Folge wiederholter neuer Beschäftigung mit diesem Gegenstand und unter Berücksichtigung dessen, was Andere in neuer Zeit zur Vertheidigung des Honorius geschrieben haben, manches Einzelne meiner früheren Aufstellungen nunmehr modificire oder völlig aufgebe, und insbesondere über den ersten Brief des Honorius jetzt milder urtheile als früher.”

Cardinal Hergenröther (Kirchengeschichte, vol. I. 358, second ed. Freiburg i. B. 1879) admits the ignorance rather than the heresy of the pope. “Honorius,” he says, “zeigt wohl Unbekanntschaft mit dem Kern der Frage, aber keinerlei häretische oder irrige Auffassung. Er unterscheidet die zwei unvermischt qebliebenen Naturen sehr genau und verstösst gegen kein einziges Dogma der Kirche.”



Vol. 4, Chapter XI – The Contending Theories on Predestination, and the Victory of Semi-Augustinianism

122. 

During the imprisonment of Gottschalk a lively controversy, was carried on concerning the point in dispute, which is very creditable to the learning of that age, but after all did not lead to a clear and satisfactory settlement. The main question was whether divine predestination or foreordination which all admitted as a necessary element of the Divine perfection, was absolute or relative; in other words, whether it embraced all men and all acts, good and bad, or only those who are saved, and such acts as God approves and rewards. This question necessarily involved also the problem of the freedom of the human will, and the extent of the plan of redemption. The absolute predestinarians denied, the relative predestinarians affirmed, the freedom of will and the universal import of Christ’s atoning death.

The doctrine of absolute predestination was defended, in substantial agreement with Gottschalk, though with more moderation and caution, by Prudentius, Bishop of Troyes, Ratramnus, monk of Corbie, Servatus Lupus, Abbot of Ferrières, and Remigius, Archbishop of Lyons, and confirmed by the Synod of Valence, 855, and also at Langres in 859.

The doctrine of free will and a conditional predestination was advocated, in opposition to Gottschalk, by Archbishop Rabanus Maurus of Mainz, Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, and Bishop Pardulus of Laon, and confirmed at a synod of Chiersy, 853, and in part again at Savonnières, near Toul, in 859.

A third theory was set forth by John Scotus Erigena, intended against Gottschalk, but was in fact still more against the orthodox view, and disowned by both parties.

I. The doctrine of an Absolute and Two-Fold Predestination.

Gottschalk professed to follow simply the great Augustin. This is true; but he gave undue disproportion to the tenet of predestination, and made it a fundamental theological principle, inseparable from the immutability of God; while with Augustin it was only a logical inference from his anthropological premises. He began where Augustin ended. To employ a later (Calvinistic) terminology, he was a supralapsarian rather than an infralapsarian. He held a two-fold predestination of the elect to salvation, and of the reprobate to perdition; not in the sense of two separate predestinations, but one predestination with two sides (gemina, i.e. bipartita), a positive side (election) and a negative side (reprobation). He could not conceive of the one without the other; but he did not teach a predestination of the sinner to sin, which would make God the author of sin. In this respect he was misrepresented by Rabanus Maurus. In his shorter Confession from his prison, he says: “I believe and confess that God foreknew and foreordained the holy angels and elect men to unmerited eternal life, but that he equally (pariter) foreordained the devil with his host and with all reprobate men, on account of their foreseen future evil deeds, by a just judgment, to merited eternal death.” He appeals to passages of the Scriptures, to Augustin, Fulgentius, and Isidor, who taught the very same thing except the pariter. In the larger Confession, which is in the form of a prayer, he substitutes for equally the milder term almost or nearly (propemodum), and denies that God predestinated the reprobates to sin. “Those, O God,” he says, “of whom thou didst foreknow that they would persist by their own misery in their damnable sins, thou didst, as a righteous judge, predestinate to perdition.” He spoke of two redemptions, one common to the elect and the reprobate, another proper and special for the elect only. In similar manner the Calvinists, in their controversy, with the Arminians, maintained that Christ died efficiently only for the elect, although sufficiently for all men.

His predestinarian friends brought out the difference in God’s relation to the good and the evil more clearly. Thus Ratramnus says that God was the author (auctor) as well as the ruler (ordinator) of good thoughts and deeds, but only the ruler, not the author, of the bad. He foreordained the punishment of sin, not sin itself (poenam, not peccatum). He directs the course of sin, and overrules it for good. He used the evil counsel of Judas as a means to bring about the crucifixion and through it the redemption. Lupus says that God foreknew and permitted Adam’s fall, and foreordained its consequences, but not the fall itself. Magister Florus also speaks of a praedestinatio gemina, yet with the emphatic distinction, that God predestinated the elect both to good works and to salvation, but the reprobate only to punishment, not to sin. He was at first ill-informed of the teaching of Gottschalk, as if he had denied the meritum damnationis. Remigius censured the “temerity” and “untimely loquacity” of Gottschalk, but defended him against the inhuman treatment, and approved of all his propositions except the unqualified denial of freedom to do good after the fall, unless he meant by it that no one could use his freedom without the grace of God. He subjected the four chapters of Hincmar to a severe criticism. On the question whether God will have all men to be saved without or with restriction, and whether Christ died for all men or only for the elect, he himself held the particularistic view, but was willing to allow freedom of opinion, since the church had not decided that question, and the Bible admitted of different interpretations.

The Synod of Valence, which met at the request of the Emperor Lothaire in 855, endorsed, in opposition to Hincmar and the four chapters of the Synod of Chiersy, the main positions of the Augustinian system as understood by Remigius, who presided. It affirms a two-fold predestination (“praedestinationem electorum ad vitam et praedestinationem impiorum ad mortem”), but with such qualifications and distinctions as seemed to be necessary to save the holiness of God and the moral responsibility of man. The Synod of Langres in the province of Lyons, convened by Charles the Bald in 859, repeated the doctrinal canons of Valence, but omitted the censure of the four chapters of Chiersy, which Charles the Bald had subscribed, and thus prepared the way for a compromise.

We may briefly state the system of the Augustinian school in the following propositions:

(1) All men are sinners, and justly condemned in consequence of Adam’s fall.

(2) Man in the natural state has no freedom of choice, but is a slave of sin. (This, however, was qualified by Remigius and the Synod of Valence in the direction of Semi-Pelagianism.)

(3) God out of free grace elected from eternity and unalterably a part of mankind to holiness and salvation, and is the author of all their good deeds; while he leaves the rest in his inscrutable counsel to their merited damnation.

(4) God has unalterably predestinated the impenitent and persistent sinner to everlasting punishment, but not to sin, which is the guilt of man and condemned by God.

(5) Christ died only for the elect.

Gottschalk is also charged by his opponents with slighting the church and the sacraments, and confining the effect of baptism and the eucharist to the elect. This would be consistent with his theory. He is said to have agreed with his friend Ratramnus in rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation. Augustin certainly did not teach transubstantiation, but he checked the logical tendency of Predestinarianism by the Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and of the visible historical church as the mediatrix of salvation.

II. The doctrine of a Conditional and Single Predestination.

Rabanus and Hincmar, who agreed in theology as well as in unchristian conduct towards Gottschalk, claimed to be Augustinians, but were at heart Semi-Pelagians, and struck a middle course, retaining the Augustinian premises, but avoiding the logical consequences. Foreknowledge (praescientia) is a necessary attribute of the omniscient mind of God, and differs from foreordination or predestination (praedestinatio), which is an attribute of his omnipotent will. The former may exist without the latter, but not the latter without the former. Foreknowledge is absolute, and embraces all things and all men, good and bad; foreordination is conditioned by foreknowledge, and refers only to what is good. God foreknew sin from eternity, but did not predestinate it; and so he foreknew the sinners, but did not predestinate them to sin or death; they are simply praesciti, not praedestinati. There is therefore no double predestination, but only one predestination which coincides with election to eternal life. The fall of Adam with its consequences falls under the idea of divine permission. God sincerely intends to save all men without distinction, and Christ shed his blood for all; if any are lost, they have to blame themselves.

Hincmar secured the confirmation of his views by the Synod of Chiersy, held in presence of the Emperor, Charles the Bald, 853, It adopted four propositions:

(1) God Almighty made man free from sin, endowed him with reason and the liberty of choice, and placed him in Paradise. Man, by the abuse of this liberty, sinned, and the whole race became a mass of perdition. Out of this massa perditionis God elected those whom he by grace predestinated unto life eternal; others he left by a just judgment in the mass of perdition, foreknowing that they would perish, but not foreordaining them to perdition, though he foreordained eternal punishment for them. This is Augustinian, but weakened in the last clause.

(2) We lost the freedom of will through the fall of the first man, and regained it again through Christ. This chapter, however, is so vaguely worded that it may be understood in a Semi-Pelagian as well as in an Augustinian sense.

(3) God Almighty would have all men without exception to be saved, although not all are actually saved. Salvation is a free gift of grace; perdition is the desert of those who persist in sin.

(4) Jesus Christ died for all men past, present and future, though not all are redeemed by the mystery of his passion, owing to their unbelief.

The last two propositions are not Augustinian, but catholic, and are the connecting link between the catholic orthodoxy and the Semi-Pelagian heresy.

Hincmar defended these propositions against the objections of Remigius and the Synod of Valence, in two books on Predestination and Free Will (between 856 and 863). The first is lost, the second is preserved. It is very prolix and repetitious, and marks no real progress. He made several historical blunders, and quoted freely from the pseudo-Augustinian Hypomnesticon, which he thought presented Augustin’s later and better views.

The two parties came to a sort of agreement at the National Synod of France held at Toucy, near Toul, in October, 860, in presence of the Emperor, Charles the Bald, King Lothaire II., and Charles of Provence, and the bishops of fourteen ecclesiastical provinces. Hincmar was the leading man, and composed the synodical letter. He still maintained his four propositions, but cleared himself of the suspicion of Semi-Pelagianism. The first part of the synodical letter, addressed to all the faithful, gives a summary of Christian doctrine, and asserts that nothing can happen in heaven and earth without the will or permission of God; that he would have all men to be saved and none lost; that he did not deprive man after the fall of free will, but heals and supports it by grace; that Christ died on the cross for all men; that in the end all the predestinated who are now scattered in the massa perditionis, will be gathered into the fulness of the eternal church in heaven.

Here ended the controversy. It was a defeat of predestinarianism in its rigorous form and a substantial victory of Semi-Augustinianism, which is almost identical with Semi-Pelagianism except that it gives greater prominence to divine grace.

Practically, even this difference disappeared. The medieval church needed the doctrine of free will and of universal call, as a basis for maintaining the moral responsibility, the guilt and merit of man, and as a support to the sacerdotal and sacramental mediation of salvation; while the strict predestinarian system, which unalterably determines the eternal fate of every soul by a pre-temporal or ante-mundane decree, seemed in its logical consequences to neutralize the appeal to the conscience of the sinner, to cut off the powerful inducement of merit and reward, to limit the efficacy of the sacraments to the elect, and to weaken the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

But while churchly and sacerdotal Semi-Augustinianism or covert Semi-Pelagianism triumphed in France, where Hincmar had the last word in the controversy, it was not ecumenically sanctioned. Pope Nicolas, who was dissatisfied with Hincmar on hierarchical grounds, had some sympathy with Gottschalk, and is reported to have approved the Augustinian canons of the Synods of Valence and Langres in regard to a “two-fold predestination” and the limitation of the atonement.

Thus the door was left open within the Catholic church itself for a revival of strict Augustinianism, and this took place on a grand scale in the sixteenth century.

 

Notes

The Gottschalk controversy was first made the subject of historical investigation and critical discussion in the seventeenth century, but was disturbed by the doctrinal antagonism between Jansenists (Jansen, Mauguin) and Jesuits (Sirmond, Cellot). The Calvinistic historians (Ussher, Hottinger) sided with Gottschalk and the Jansenists. The controversy has been more calmly and impartially considered by the Protestant historians of the nineteenth century, but with a slight difference as to the limits and the result of the controversy; some representing it merely as a conflict between a stricter and a milder type of Augustinianism (Neander, Kurtz), others as a conflict between Augustinianism and a revived and triumphant Semi-Pelagianism (Baur, Weizsäcker). The former view is more correct. Semi-Pelagianism was condemned by the Synod of Orange (Arausio), 529; again by the Synod of Valence in the same year, and by Pope Boniface II., 530, and has ever since figured in the Roman catalogue of heresies. The Catholic Church cannot sanction what she has once condemned.

Both parties in the contest of the ninth century (leaving the isolated Scotus Erigena out of view) appealed to Augustin as the highest patristic authority in the Latin church. Both agreed in the Augustinian anthropology and soteriology, i.e. in the doctrine of a universal fall in Adam, and a partial redemption through Christ; both maintained that some men are saved by free grace, that others are lost by their own guilt; and both confined the possibility of salvation to the present life and to the limits of the visible church (which leads logically to the horrible and incredible conclusion that the overwhelming majority of the human race, including all unbaptized infants, are eternally lost). But the Augustinian party went back to absolute predestination, as the ultima ratio of God’s difference of dealing with the saved and the lost, or the elect and the reprobate; while the Semi-Augustinian party sought the difference rather in the merits or demerits of men, and maintained along-side with a conditional predestination the universal benevolence of God and the universal offer of saving grace (which, however, is merely assumed, and not at all apparent in this present life). The Augustinian scheme is more theological and logical, the Semi-Augustinian more churchly and practical. Absolute predestinarianism starts from the almighty power of God, but is checked by the moral sense and kept within the limits of infralapsarianism, which exempts the holy God from any agency in the fall of the race, and fastens the guilt of sin upon man. Relative predestinarianism emphasizes the responsibility and salvability of all men, but recognizes also their perfect dependence upon divine grace for actual salvation. The solution of the problem must be found in the central idea of the holy love of God, which is the key-note of all his attributes and works.

The practical difference between the catholic Semi-Augustinianism and the heterodox Semi-Pelagianism is, as already remarked, very small. They are twin-sisters; they virtually ignore predestination, and lay the main stress on the efficacy of the sacramental system of the historical church, as the necessary agency for regeneration and salvation.

The Lutheran system, as developed in the Formula of Concord, is the evangelical counterpart of the Catholic Semi-Augustinianism. It retains also its sacramental feature (baptismal regeneration and the eucharistic presence), but cuts the root of human merit by the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Calvinism is a revival of Augustinianism, but without its sacramental and sacerdotal checks.

Arminianism, as developed in the Reformed church of Holland and among the Wesleyan Methodists, and held extensively in the Church of England, is an evangelical counterpart of Semi-Pelagianism, and differs from Lutheranism by teaching a conditional election and freedom of the will sufficient to accept as well as to reject the universal offer of saving grace.

 

123. The Doctrine of Scotus Erigena

A complete ed. of the works of Scotus Erigena by H. J. Floss, 1853, in Migne’s “P. L.,” Tom. 122. The book De Praedestinatione in col. 355-440. Comp. the monographs on S. E. by Hjort (1823), Staudenmaier (1834), Taillandier (1843), Christlieb (1860, and his art. in Herzog2 XIII. 788 sqq.), Hermens (1861), Huber (1861); the respective sections in Schroeckh, Neander, Baur (on the Trinity), Dorner (on Christology); and in the Histories of Philosophy by Ritter, Erdmann, and Ueberweg. Also Reuter: Gesch. der relig. Aufklaerung im Mittelalter (1875), I. 51-64 (a discussion of Erigena’s views on the relation of authority and reason).

At the request of Hincmar, who was very anxious to secure learned aid, but mistook his man, John Scotus Erigena wrote a book on Predestination (in 850), and dedicated it to Hincmar and his friend Pardulus, Bishop of Laon. This most remarkable of Scotch-Irishmen was a profound scholar and philosopher, but so far ahead of his age as to be a wonder and an enigma. He shone and disappeared like a brilliant meteor. We do not know whether he was murdered by his pupils in Malmsbury (if he ever was called to England), or died a natural death in France (which is more likely). He escaped the usual fate of heretics by the transcendental character of his speculations and by the protection of Charles the Bald, with whom he was on such familiar terms that he could answer his saucy question at the dinner-table: “What is the difference between a Scot and a sot?” with the quick-witted reply: “The table, your Majesty.” His system of thought was an anachronism, and too remote from the spirit of his times to be properly understood and appreciated. He was a Christian Neo-Platonist, a forerunner of Scholasticism and Mysticism and in some respects of Spinoza, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. With him church authority resolves itself into reason, theology into philosophy, and true philosophy is identical with true religion. Philosophy is, so to say, religion unveiled and raised from the cloudy region of popular belief to the clear ether of pure thought.

From this alpine region of speculation he viewed the problem of predestination and free will. He paid due attention to the Scriptures and the fathers. He often quotes St. Augustin, and calls him, notwithstanding his dissent, “the most acute inquirer and asserter of truth.” But where church authority contradicts reason, its language must be understood figuratively, and, if necessary, in the opposite sense. He charges Gottschalk with the heresy of denying both divine grace and human freedom, since he derived alike the crimes which lead to damnation, and the virtues which lead to eternal life, from a necessary and compulsory predestination. Strictly speaking, there is in God neither before nor after, neither past nor future; and hence neither fore-knowledge nor fore-ordination, except in an anthropopathic sense. He rejects a double predestination, because it would carry a contradiction into God. There is only one predestination, the predestination of the righteous, and this is identical with foreknowledge. For in God knowledge and will are inseparable, and constitute his very being. The distinction arises from the limitation of the human mind and from ignorance of Greek; for προοράω means both praevideo and praedestino. There is no such thing as predestination to sin and punishment; for sin is nothing real at all, but simply a negation, an abuse of free will; and punishment is simply the inner displeasure of the sinner at the failure of his bad aims. If several fathers call sinners praedestinati, they mean the reverse, as Christ called Judas amice instead of inimice, and as lucus is called a non lucendo. Sin lies outside of God, and does not exist for him at all; he does not even foreknow it, much less foreordain it; for knowing and being are identical with him. But God has ordered that sin punishes itself; he has established immutable laws, which the sinner cannot escape. Free will is the very essence of man, and was not lost by the fall; only the power and energy of will are impaired. But Erigena vindicates to man freedom in the same sense in which he vindicates it to God, and identifies it with moral necessity. His pantheistic principles lead him logically to universal restoration.

This appears more clearly from his remarkable work, De Divisione Naturae, where he develops his system. The leading idea is the initial and final harmony of God and the universe, as unfolding itself under four aspects: 1) Natura creatrix non creata, i.e. God as the creative and uncreated beginning of all that exists; 2) Natura creatrix creata, i.e. the ideal world or the divine prototypes of all things; 3) Natura creata non creans, i.e. the created, but uncreative world of time and sense, as the reflex and actualization of the ideal world; 4) Natura nec creata nec creans, i.e. God as the end of all creation, which, after the defeat of all opposition, must return to him in an ἀποκατάστασις τῶν πάντων. “The first and the last form,” he says, “are one, and can be understood only of God, who is the beginning and the end of all things.”

The tendency of this speculative and mystical pantheism of Erigena was checked by the practical influence of the Christian theism which entered into his education and personal experience, so that we may say with a historian who is always just and charitable: “We are unwilling to doubt, that he poured out many a devout and earnest prayer to a redeeming God for his inward illumination, and that he diligently sought for it in the sacred Scripture, though his conceptual apprehension of the divine Being seems to exclude such a relation of man to God, as prayer presupposes.”

Hincmar had reason to disown such a dangerous champion, and complained of the Scotch “porridge.” John Scotus was violently assailed by Archbishop Wenilo of Sens, who denounced nineteen propositions of his book (which consists of nineteen chapters) as heretical, and by Bishop Prudentius, who increased the number to seventy-seven. He was charged with Pelagianism and Origenism, and censured for substituting philosophy for theology, and sophistical subtleties for sound arguments from Scripture and tradition. Remigius thought him insane. Florus Magister likewise wrote against him, and rejected as blasphemous the doctrine that sin and evil were nonentities, and therefore could not be the subjects of divine foreknowledge and foreordination. The Synod of Valence (855) rejected his nineteen syllogisms as absurdities, and his whole book as a “commentum diaboli potius quam argumentum fidei.” His most important work, which gives his whole system, was also condemned by a provincial Synod of Sens, and afterwards by Pope Honorius III. in 1225, who characterized it as a book “teeming with the vermin of heretical depravity,” and ordered all copies to be burned. But, fortunately, a few copies survived for the study of later ages.

 

124. The Eucharistic Controversies. Literature

The general Lit. on the history of the doctrine of the Eucharist, see in vol. I., § 55, and II. § 69.

Add the following Roman Catholic works on the general Subject: Card. Jo. de Lugo (d. 1660): Tractatus de venerabili Eucharistiae Sacramento, in Migne’s “Cursus Theol. Completus,” XXIII. Card. Wiseman: Lectures on the Real Presence. Lond., 1836 and l842. Oswald: Die dogmat. Lehre von den heil. Sacramenten der katholischen Kirche. Münster, 3rd ed., 1870, vol. I. 375-427.

On the Protestant side: T. K. Meier: Versuch einer Gesch. der Transsubstantiationslehre. Heilbronn, 1832. Ebrard: Das Dogma v. heil. Abendmahl und seine Gesch. Frankf. a. M., 1845 and ‘46, 2 vols. Steitz: Arts. on Radbert, Ratramnus, and Transubstantiation in Herzog. Schaff: Transubstantiation in “Rel. Encycl.” III. 2385.

Special Lit. on the eucharistic controversies in the ninth and eleventh centuries.

 

I. Controversy Between Ratramnus and Paschasius Radbertus

(1) Paschasius Radbertus: Liber de Corpore et Sanguine Domini, dedicated to Marinus, abbot of New Corbie, 831, second ed., 844, presented to Charles the Bald; first genuine ed. by Nic. Mameranus, Colon. 1550; best ed. by Martene and Durand in “Veter. Script. et Monum. amplissima Collectio,” IX. 367. — Comm. in Matth. (Mat_26:26); Epistola ad Fridegardum, and treatise De Partu Virginis. See S. Pasch. Radb.: Opera omnia in Tom. 120 of Migne’s “Patrol. Lat.,” Par. 1852.

Haimo: Tract. de Corp. et Sang. Dom. (a fragment of a Com. on 1 Cor.), in D’Achery, “Spicil.” I. 42, and in Migne, “P. L.,” Tom. 118, col. 815-817. Hincmar: Ep. ad Carol. Calv. de cavendis vitiis et virtutibus exercendis, c. 9. In Migne, T. 125, col. 915 sqq.

(2) Ratramnus: De Corpore et Sanguine Domini liber ad Carolum Calvum Reg. Colon., 1532 (under the name of Bertram), often publ. by Reformed divines in the original and in translations (from 1532 to 1717 at Zürich, Geneva, London, Oxford, Amsterdam), and by Jac. Boileau, Par., 1712, with a vindication of the catholic orthodoxy of Ratramnus. See Ratramni Opera in Migne,” P. L.,” Tom. 121, col. 10-346.

Rabanus Maurus: Poenitentiale, cap. 33. Migne, “P. L.” Tom. 110, col. 492, 493. Walafrid Strabo: De Rebus Eccls., c. 16, 17. See extracts in Gieseler, II. 80-82.

(3) Discussions of historians: Natalis Alexander, H. Eccl. IX. and X., Dissert. X. and XIII. Neander, IV. 458-475, Germ. ed., or III. 495-501, Engl. transl., Bost. ed. Gieseler, II. 79-84, N. Y. ed. Baur: Vorlesungen über Dogmengesch. II. 161-175.

 

II. Controversy Between Berengar and Lanfranc

(1) LANFRANCUS: De Eucharistiae Sacramento contra Berengarium lib., Basil,. 1528, often publ., also in “Bibl. PP. Lugd.,” XVIII. 763, and in Migne,” Patrol. Lat.,” Tom. 150 (1854), col. 407-442.

(2) Berengarius: De Sacra Coena adv. Lanfrancum liber posterior, first publ. by A. F. & F. Th. Vischer. Berol., 1834 (from the MS. in Wolfenbüttel, now in Göttingen. Comp. Lessing: Berengarius Turon. oder Ankuendigung eines wichtigen Werkes desselben. Braunschweig, 1770). H. Sudendorf: Berengarius Turonensis oder eine Sammlung ihn betreffender Briefe. Hamburg and Gotha, 1850. Contains twenty-two new documents, and a full list of the older sources.

(3) Neander: III. 502-530 (E. Tr. Bost. ed.; or IV. 476-534 Germ. ed.). Gieseler: II. 163-173 (E. Tr. N. York ed.). Baur: II. 175-198. Hardwick: Middle Age, 169-173 (third ed. by Stubbs). Milman: III. 258 sqq. Robertson: II. 609 sqq. (small ed., IV. 351-367). Jacobi: Berengar, in Herzog2 II. 305-311. Reuter: Gesch. der relig. Aufklärung im Mittelalter (1875), I. 91 sqq. Hefele: IV. 740 sqq. (ed. 1879).

 

125. The Two Theories of the Lord’s Supper

The doctrine of the Lord’s Supper became the subject of two controversies in the Western church, especially in France. The first took place in the middle of the ninth century between Paschasius Radbertus and Ratramnus, the other in the middle of the eleventh century between Berengar and Lanfranc. In the second, Pope Hildebrand was implicated, as mediator between Berengar and the orthodox party.

In both cases the conflict was between a materialistic and a spiritualistic conception of the sacrament and its effect. The one was based on a literal, the other on a figurative interpretation of the words of institution, and of the mysterious discourse in the sixth chapter of St. John. The contending parties agreed in the belief that Christ is present in the eucharist as the bread of life to believers; but they differed widely in their conception of the mode of that presence: the one held that Christ was literally and corporeally present and communicated to all communicants through the mouth; the other, that he was spiritually present and spiritually communicated to believers through faith. The transubstantiationists (if we may coin this term) believed that the eucharistic body of Christ was identical with his historical body, and was miraculously created by the priestly consecration of the elements in every sacrifice of the mass; their opponents denied this identity, and regarded the eucharistic body as a symbolical exhibition of his real body once sacrificed on the cross and now glorified in heaven, yet present to the believer with its life-giving virtue and saving power.

We find both these views among the ancient fathers. The realistic and mystical view fell in more easily with the excessive supernaturalism and superstitious piety of the middle age, and triumphed at last both in the Greek and Latin churches; for there is no material difference between them on this dogma. The spiritual theory was backed by the all-powerful authority of St. Augustin in the West, and ably advocated by Ratramnus and Berengar, but had to give way to the prevailing belief in transubstantiation until, in the sixteenth century, the controversy was revived by the Reformers, and resulted in the establishment of three theories: 1) the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, re-asserted by the Council of Trent; 2) the Lutheran theory of the real presence in the elements, retaining their substance; and 3) the Reformed (Calvinistic) theory of a spiritual real or dynamic presence for believers. In the Roman church (and herein the Greek church fully agrees with her), the doctrine of transubstantiation is closely connected with the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass, which forms the centre of worship.

It is humiliating to reflect that the commemorative feast of Christ’s dying love, which should be the closest bond of union between believers, innocently gave rise to the most violent controversies. But the same was the case with the still more important doctrine of Christ’s Person. Fortunately, the spiritual benefit of the sacrament does not depend upon any particular human theory of the mode of Christ’s presence, who is ever ready to bless all who love him.

 

126. The Theory of Paschasius Radbertus

Paschasius Radbertus (from 800 to about 865), a learned, devout and superstitious monk, and afterwards abbot of Corbie or Corvey in France is the first who clearly taught the doctrine of transubstantiation as then believed by many, and afterwards adopted by the Roman Catholic church. He wrote a book “on the Body and Blood of the Lord,” composed for his disciple Placidus of New Corbie in the year 831, and afterwards reedited it in a more popular form, and dedicated it to the Emperor Charles the Bald, as a Christmas gift (844). He did not employ the term transubstantiation, which came not into use till two centuries later; but he taught the thing, namely, that “the substance of bread and wine is effectually changed (efficaciter interius commutatur) into the flesh and blood of Christ,” so that after the priestly consecration there is “nothing else in the eucharist but the flesh and blood of Christ,” although “the figure of bread and wine remain” to the senses of sight, touch, and taste. The change is brought about by a miracle of the Holy Spirit, who created the body of Christ in the womb of the Virgin without cohabitation, and who by the same almighty power creates from day to day, wherever the mass is celebrated, the same body and blood out of the substance of bread and wine. He emphasizes the identity of the eucharistic body with the body which was born of the Virgin, suffered on the cross, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven; yet on the other hand he represents the sacramental eating and drinking as a spiritual process by faith. He therefore combines the sensuous and spiritual conceptions. He assumes that the soul of the believer communes with Christ, and that his body receives an imperishable principle of life which culminates at last in the resurrection. He thus understood, like several of the ancient fathers, the words of our Saviour: “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (Joh_6:54).

He supports his doctrine by the words of institution in their literal sense, and by the sixth chapter of John. He appealed also to marvellous stories of the visible appearances of the body and blood of Christ for the removal of doubts or the satisfaction of the pious desire of saints. The bread on the altar, he reports, was often seen in the shape of a lamb or a little child, and when the priest stretched out his hand to break the bread, an angel descended from heaven with a knife, slaughtered the lamb or the child, and let his blood run into a cup!

Such stories were readily believed by the people, and helped to strengthen the doctrine of transubstantiation; as the stories of the appearances of departed souls from purgatory confirmed the belief in purgatory.

The book of Radbert created a great sensation in the West, which was not yet prepared to accept the doctrine of transubstantiation without a vigorous struggle. Radbert himself admits that some of his contemporaries believed only in a spiritual communion of the soul with Christ, and substituted the mere virtue of his body and blood for the real body and blood, i.e., as he thinks, the figure for the verity, the shadow for the substance.

His opponents appealed chiefly to St. Augustin, who made a distinction between the historical and the eucharistic body of Christ, and between a false material and a true spiritual fruition of his body and blood. In a letter to the monk Frudegard, who quoted several passages of Augustin, Radbert tried to explain them in his sense. For no divine of the Latin church dared openly to contradict the authority of the great African teacher.

 

127. The Theory of Ratramnus

The chief opponent of transubstantiation was Ratramnus, a contemporary monk at Corbie, and a man of considerable literary reputation. He was the first to give the symbolical theory a scientific expression. At the request of King Charles the Bald he wrote a eucharistic tract against Radbert, his superior, but did not name him. He answered two questions, whether the consecrated elements are called body and blood of Christ after a sacramental manner (in mysterio), or in the literal sense; and whether the eucharistic body is identical with the historical body which died and rose again. He denied this identity which Radbert had strongly asserted; and herein lies the gist of the difference. He concluded that the elements remain in reality as well as for the sensual perception what they were before the consecration, and that they are the body and blood of Christ only in a spiritual sense to the faith of believers. He calls the consecrated bread and wine figures and pledges of the body and blood of Christ. They are visible tokens of the Lord’s death, that, remembering his passion, we may become partakers of its effect. He appealed to the discourse in the sixth chapter of John, as well as Radbert; but, like Augustin, his chief authority, he found the key to the whole chapter in Joh_6:63, which points from the letter to the spirit and from the carnal to the spiritual understanding. The souls of believers are nourished in the communion by the Word of God (the Logos), which dwells in the natural body of Christ, and which dwells after an invisible manner in the sacrament. Unbelievers cannot receive Christ, as they lack the spiritual organ. He refers to the analogy of baptism, which is justly called a fount of life. Viewed by the senses, it is simply a fluid element; but by the consecration of the priest the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit is added to it, so that what properly is corruptible water becomes figuratively or in mystery a healing virtue.

It is consistent with this view that Ratramnus regarded the sacrifice of the mass not as an actual (though unbloody) repetition, but only as a commemorative celebration of Christ’s sacrifice whereby Christians are assured of their redemption. When we shall behold Christ face to face, we shall no longer need such instruments of remembrance.

John Scotus Erigena is also reported to have written a book against Radbert at the request of Charles the Bald. Hincmar of Rheims mentions among his errors this, that in the sacrament of the altar the true body and blood of Christ were not present, but only a memorial of them. The report may have arisen from a confusion, since the tract of Ratramnus was at a later period ascribed to Scotus Erigena. But he expresses his view incidentally in other writings from which it appears that he agreed with Ratramnus and regarded the eucharist only as a typical representation of a spiritual communion with Christ. In his book De Divisione Naturae, he teaches a mystic ubiquity of Christ’s glorified humanity or its elevation above the limitations of space. Neander infers from this that he held the eucharistic bread and wine to be simply symbols of the deified, omnipresent humanity of Christ which communicates itself, in a real manner, to believing soul. At all events the hypothesis of ubiquity excludes a miraculous change of the elements, and gives the real presence a christo-pantheistic aspect. The Lutheran divines used this hypothesis in a modified form (multipresence, or multivolipresence, dependent on the will of Christ) as a dogmatic support for their doctrine of the real presence.

Among the divines of the Carolingian age who held the Augustinian view and rejected that of Radbert, as an error, were Rabanus Maurus, Walafrid Strabo, Christian Druthmar, and Florus Magister. They recognized only a dynamic and spiritual, not a visible and corporeal presence, of the body of Christ, in the sacrament.

On the other hand, the theory of Radbert was accepted by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, Bishop Haimo of Halberstadt, and other leading ecclesiastics. It became more and more popular during the dark post-Carolingian period. Bishop Ratherius of Verona (about 950), who, however, repelled all curious questions about the mode of the change, and even the learned and liberal-minded Gerbert (afterwards Pope Sylvester II., from 999 to 1003), defended the miraculous transformation of the eucharistic elements by the priestly consecration. It is characteristic of the grossly sensuous character of the theology of the tenth century that the chief point of dispute was the revolting and indecent question whether the consecrated elements pass from the communicant in the ordinary way of nature. The opponents of transubstantiation affirmed this, the advocates indignantly denied it, and fastened upon the former the new heretical name of “Stercorianists.” Gerbert called stercorianism a diabolical blasphemy, and invented the theory that the eucharistic body and blood of Christ do not pass in noxios et superfluos humores, but are preserved in the flesh for the final resurrection.

Radbertus was canonized, and his memory, is celebrated since 1073, on the 26th of April in the diocese of Soissons. The book of Ratramnus, under the supposed authorship of Scotus Erigena, was twice condemned in the Berengar controversy (1050 and 1059), and put in the Tridentine Index of prohibited books .

 

Notes

In connection with this subject is the subordinate controversy on the delicate question whether Christ, admitting his supernatural conception, was born in the natural way like other children, or miraculously (clauso utero). This question troubled the pious curiosity of some nuns of Vesona (?), and reached the convent of Corbie. Paschasius Radbertus, following the lead of St. Ambrose and St. Jerome, defended the theory that the holy Virgin remained virgo in partu and post partum, and used in proof some poetic passages on the hortus conclusus and fons signatus in Son_4:12, and the porta clausa Domini in Eze_44:2. The whole incarnation is supernatural, and as the conception so the birth of Christ was miraculous. He was not subject to the laws of nature, and entered the world “sine dolore et sine gemitu et sine ulla corruptione carnis.” See Radbert’s tract De Partu Virginis in his Opera, ed. Migne, col. 1365-1386.

Ratramnus, in his book De eo quod Christus ex Virgine natus est (in D’Achery, “Spicilegium,” I., and in Migne, Tom. 121, col. 82-102), likewise taught the perpetual virginity of Mary, but assumed that Christ came into the world in the natural way (“naturaliter per aulam virgineam” or “per virginalis januam vulvae”). The conception in utero implies the birth ex utero. But he does not controvert or name Radbert, and uses the same Scripture passages for his view. He refers also to the analogy of Christ’s passing through the closed doors on the day of the resurrection. He quotes from Augustin, Jerome, Pope Gregory, and Bede in support of his view. He opposes only the monstrous opinion that Christ broke from the womb through some unknown channel (“monstruose de secreto ventris incerto tramite luminis in auras exisse, quod non est nasci, sed erumpi.” Cap. 1, col. 83). Such an opinion, he thinks, leads to the docetic heresy, and to the conclusion that “nec vere natus Christus, nec vere genuit Maria.”



Vol. 4, Chapter XI (Cont’d) – The Berengar Controversy

 

128. 

While the doctrine of a corporeal presence and participation of Christ in the eucharist made steady progress in the public opinion of Western Christendom in close connection with the rising power of the priesthood, the doctrine of a spiritual presence and participation by faith was re-asserted by way of reaction in the middle of the eleventh century for a short period, but condemned by ecclesiastical authority. This condemnation decided the victory of transubstantiation.

Let us first review the external history of the controversy, which runs into the next period (till 1079).

Berengar (c. 1000-1088), a pupil of Fulbert of Chartres (d. 1029), was canon and director of the cathedral school in Tours, his native city, afterwards archdeacon of Angers, and highly esteemed as a man of rare learning and piety before his eucharistic views became known. He was an able dialectician and a popular teacher. He may be ranked among the forerunners of a Christian rationalism, who dared to criticize church authority and aimed to reconcile the claims of reason and faith. But he had not the courage of a martyr, and twice recanted from fear of death. Nor did he carry out his principle. He seems to have been in full accord with catholic orthodoxy except on the point of the sacrament. He was ascetic in his habits and shared the prevailing respect for monastic life, but saw clearly its danger. “The hermit,” he says with as much beauty as truth, in an Exhortatory Discourse to hermits who had asked his advice, “is alone in his cell, but sin loiters about the door with enticing words and seeks admittance. I am thy beloved — says she — whom thou didst court in the world. I was with thee at the table, slept with thee on thy couch; without me, thou didst nothing. How darest thou think of forsaking me? I have followed thy every step; and dost thou expect to hide away from me in thy cell? I was with thee in the world, when thou didst eat flesh and drink wine; and shall be with thee in the wilderness, where thou livest only on bread and water. Purple and silk are not the only colors seen in hell, — the monk’s cowl is also to be found there. Thou hermit hast something of mine. The nature of the flesh, which thou wearest about thee, is my sister, begotten with me, brought up with me. So long as the flesh is flesh, so long shall I be in thy flesh. Dost thou subdue thy flesh by abstinence? — thou becomest proud; and lo! sin is there. Art thou overcome by the flesh, and dost thou yield to lust? sin is there. Perhaps thou hast none of the mere human sins, I mean such as proceed from sense; beware then of devilish sins. Pride is a sin which belongs in common to evil spirits and to hermits.”

By continued biblical and patristic studies Berengar came between the years 1040 and 1045 to the conclusion that the eucharistic doctrine of Paschasius Radbertus was a vulgar superstition contrary to the Scriptures, to the fathers, and to reason. He divulged his view among his many pupils in France and Germany, and created a great sensation. Eusebius Bruno, bishop of Angers, to whose diocese he belonged, and Frollant, bishop of Senlis, took his part, but the majority was against him. Adelmann, his former fellow-student, then arch-deacon at Luettich (Liège), afterwards bishop of Bresci, remonstrated with him in two letters of warning (1046 and 1048).

The controversy was fairly opened by Berengar himself in a letter to Lanfranc of Bec, his former fellow-student (1049). He respectfully, yet in a tone of intellectual superiority, perhaps with some feeling of jealousy of the rising fame of Bec, expressed his surprise that Lanfranc, as he had been informed by Ingelram of Chartres, should agree with Paschasius Radbertus and condemn John Scotus (confounded with Ratramnus) as heretical; this showed an ignorance of Scripture and involved a condemnation of Ambrose (?), Jerome, and Augustin, not to speak of others. The letter was sent to Rome, where Lanfranc then sojourned, and caused, with his co-operation, the first condemnation of Berengar by a Roman Synod held under Pope Leo IX. in April, 1050, and attended mostly by Italian bishops. At the same time he was summoned before another Synod which was held at Vercelli in September of the same year; and as he did not appear, he was condemned a second time without a hearing, and the book of Ratramnus on the eucharist was burned. “If we are still in the figure,” asked one member indignantly (probably Peter Damiani), “when shall we have the thing?” A Synod of Paris in October, 1050 or 1051, is said to have confirmed this judgment and threatened Berengar and his friends with the severest punishment, even death; but it is uncertain whether such a Synod was held.

After a short interval of silence, he was tried before a Synod of Tours in 1054 under Leo IX., but escaped condemnation through the aid of Hildebrand who presided as papal representative, listened calmly to his arguments and was perfectly satisfied with his admission that the consecrated bread and wine are (in a spiritual sense) the body and blood of Christ. At the same time he was invited by Hildebrand to accompany him to Rome for a final settlement.

Confiding in this powerful advocate, Berengar appeared before a Lateran council held in 1059, under Nicolas II., but was bitterly disappointed. The assembled one hundred and thirteen bishops, whom he compares to “wild beasts,” would not listen to his notion of a spiritual communion, and insisted on a sensuous participation of the body and blood of Christ. The violent and bigoted Cardinal Humbert, in the name of the Synod, forced on him a formula of recantation which cuts off all spiritual interpretation and teaches a literal mastication of Christ’s body. Berengar was weak enough from fear of death to accept this confession on his knees, and to throw his books into the fire. “Human wickedness,” he says, “extorted from human weakness a different confession, but a change of conviction can be effected only by the agency of Almighty God.” He would rather trust to the mercy of God than the charity of his enemies, and found comfort in the pardon granted to Aaron and to St. Peter.

As soon as he returned to France, he defended his real conviction more boldly than ever. He spoke of Pope Leo IX. and Nicolas II. in language as severe as Luther used five centuries later. Lanfranc attacked him in his book on the eucharist, and Berengar replied very sharply in his chief work on the Lord’s Supper (between 1063 and 1069.) His friends gradually withdrew, and the wrath of his enemies grew so intense that he was nearly killed at a synod in Poitiers (1075 or 1076).

Hildebrand who in the mean time had ascended the papal throne as Gregory VlI., summoned Berengar once more to Rome in 1078, hoping to give him peace, as he had done at Tours in 1054. He made several attempts to protect him against the fanaticism of his enemies. But they demanded absolute recantation or death. A Lateran Council in February, 1079, required Berengar to sign a formula which affirmed the conversion of substance in terms that cut off all sophistical escape. He imprudently appealed to his private interviews with Gregory, but the pope could no longer protect him without risking his own reputation for orthodoxy, and ordered him to confess his error. Berengar submitted. “Confounded by the sudden madness of the pope,” he says, “and because God in punishment for my sins did not give me a steadfast heart, I threw myself on the ground and confessed with impious voice that I had erred, fearing the pope would instantly pronounce against me the sentence of excommunication, and that, as a necessary consequence, the populace would hurry me to the worst of deaths.” The pope, however, remained so far true to him that he gave him two letters of recommendation, one to the bishops of Tours and Angers, and one to all the faithful, in which he threatened all with the anathema who should do him any harm in person or estate, or call him a heretic.

Berengar returned to France with a desponding heart and gave up the hopeless contest. He was now an old man and spent the rest of his life in strict ascetic seclusion on the island of St. Côme (Cosmas) near Tours, where he died in peace 1088. Many believed that he did penance for his heresy, and his friends held an annual celebration of his memory on his grave. But what he really regretted was his cowardly treason to the truth as he held it. This is evident from the report of his trial at Rome which he drew up after his return. It concludes with a prayer to God for forgiveness, and to the Christian reader for the exercise of charity. “Pray for me that these tears may procure me the compassion of the Almighty.”

His doctrine was misrepresented by Lanfranc and the older historians, as denying the real presence. But since the discovery of the sources it is admitted also by Roman Catholics that, while he emphatically rejected transubstantiation, he held to a spiritual real presence and participation of Christ in the eucharist.

This explains also the conduct of Gregory VII., which is all the more remarkable, as he was in every other respect the most strenuous champion of the Roman church and the papal power. This great pope was more an ecclesiastic than a theologian. He was willing to allow a certain freedom on the mysterious mode of the eucharistic presence and the precise nature of the change in the elements, which at that time had not yet been authoritatively defined as a change of substance. He therefore protected Berengar, with diplomatic caution, as long and as far as he could without endangering his great reforms and incurring himself the suspicion of heresy. The latest known writing of Berengar is a letter on the death of Gregory (1085), in which he speaks of the pope with regard, expresses a conviction of his salvation, and excuses his conduct towards himself.

Berengar was a strange compound of moral courage and physical cowardice. Had he died a martyr, his doctrine would have gained strength; but by his repeated recantations he injured his own cause and promoted the victory of transubstantiation.

 

Notes. Hildebrand and Berengar

Sudendorf’s Berengarius Turonensis (1850) is, next to the discovery and publication of Berengar’s De Sacra Coena (1834), the most important contribution to the literature on this chapter. Dr. Sudendorf does not enter into the eucharistic controversy, and refers to the account of Staeudlin and Neander as sufficient; but he gives 1) a complete chronological list of the Berengar literature, including all the notices by friends and foes (p. 7-68); 2) an account of Gaufried Martell, Count of Anjou, stepfather of the then-ruling Empress Agnes of Germany, and the most zealous and powerful protector of Berengar (p. 69-87); and 3) twenty-two letters bearing on Berengar, with notes (p. 88-233). These letters were here published for the first time from manuscripts of the royal library at Hanover, contained in a folio volume entitled: “Codex epistolaris Imperatorum, Regum, Pontificum, Episcoporum.” They throw no new light on the eucharistic doctrine of Berengar; but three of them give us interesting information on his relation to Hildebrand.

1. A letter of Count Gaufried of Anjou (d. 1060) to Cardinal Hildebrand, written in March, 1059, shortly before the Lateran Synod (April, 1059), which condemned Berengar (p. 128 and 215). The Count calls here, with surprising boldness and confidence, on the mighty Cardinal to protect Berengar at the approaching Synod of Rome, under the impression that he thoroughly agreed with him, and had concealed his real opinion at Tours. He begins thus: “To the venerable son of the church of the Romans, H.[ildebrand]. Count Gauf. Bear thyself not unworthy of so great a mother. B.[erengar] has gone to Rome according to thy wishes and letters of invitation. Now is the time for thee to act with Christian magnanimity (nunc magnanimitate christiana tibi agendum est), lest Berengar have the same experience with thee as at Tours [1054], when thou camest to us as delegate of apostolic authority. He expected thy advent as that of an angel. Thou wast there to give life to souls that were dead, and to kill souls that should live …. Thou didst behave thyself like that person of whom it is written [Joh_19:38]: ‘He was himself a disciple of Jesus, but secretly from fear of the Jews.’ Thou resemblest him who said [Luk_23:22]: ‘I find no cause of death in him,’ but did not set him free because he feared Caesar. Thou hast even done less than Pilate, who called Jesus to him and was not ashamed to bear witness: I find no guilt in him … To thee applies the sentence of the gospel [Luk_9:26]: ‘Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall I be ashamed before my heavenly Father.’ To thee applies the word of the Lord [Luk_11:52]: ‘Woe unto you, for ye took away the key of knowledge; ye entered not in yourselves, and hindered those that were entering.’… Now the opportune time has come. Thou hast Berengar present with the pope. If thou again keepest silence on the error of those fools, it is clear that thou formerly didst not from good reasons wait for the proper time, but from weakness and fear didst not dare to defend the cause of the innocent. Should it come to this, which God forbid, we would be wholly disappointed in our great hope placed on thee; but thou wouldst commit a monstrous injustice to thyself, yea even to God. By thee the Orient with all its perverseness would be introduced into the Occident; instead of illuminating our darkness, thou wouldest turn our light into darkness according to the best of thy ability. All those who excel in erudition and judge the case according to the Scriptures, bore testimony that Berengar has the right view according to the Scriptures …. That popular delusion [of transubstantiation] leads to pernicious heresy. The resurrection of the body, of which Paul says that the corruptible must put on the incorruptible, cannot stand, if we contend that the body of Christ is in a sensuous manner broken by the priest and torn with the teeth (sensualiter sacerdotum manibus frangi, dentibus atteri). Thou boastest of thy Rome that she was never conquered in faith and military glory. Thou wilt put to shame that glory, if, at this time when God has elevated thee above all others at the papal see, that false doctrine, that nursery of the most certain heresy, by thy dissimulation and silence should raise its head. Leave not thine honor to others, by retiring to the corner of disgraceful silence.”

2. A letter of Berengar to Pope Gregory VII. from the year 1077, in which he addresses him as “pater optime,” and assures him of his profound reverence and love (p. 182 and 230). He thanks him for a letter of protection he had written to his legate, Bishop Hugo of Die (afterwards Archbishop of Lyons), but begs him to excuse him for not attending a French council of his enemies, to which he had been summoned. He expresses the hope of a personal conference with the pope (opportunitatem vivendi praesentiam tuam et audiendi), and concludes with the request to continue his patronage. “Vel [i.e. Valeat] Christianitas tua, pater optime, longo parvitati meae tempore dignum sede apostolica patrocinium impensura.” The result of this correspondence is unknown. Berengar’s hope of seeing and hearing the pope was fulfilled in 1078, when he was summoned to the Council in Rome; but the result, as we have seen, was his condemnation by the Council with the pope’s consent.

3. A letter of Berengar to Archbishop Joscelin of Bordeaux, written in a charitable Christian spirit after May 25, 1085, when Gregory VII. died (p. 196 and 231). It begins thus: “The unexpected death of our G.[regory] causes me no little disturbance (G. nostri me non parum mors inopinato [a] perturbat).” The nostri sounds rather too familiar in view of Gregory’s conduct in 1079, but must be understood of the personal sympathy shown him before and after in the last commendatory letters. B. then goes on to express confidence in the pope’s salvation, and forgives him his defection, which he strangely compares with the separation of Barnabas from Paul. “Sed, quantum mihi videor novisse hominem, de salute hominis certum constat, quicquid illi prejudicent, qui, secundum dominicam sententiam [Mat_23:24], culicem culantes, camelum sorbent. In Christo lesu, inquit Apostolus [Gal_6:15], neque circumcisio est aliquid, neque preputium, sed nova creatura. Quod illum fuisse, quantum illum noveram, de misericordia presumo divina. Discessit a Paulo Barnabas [Act_15:39, Act_15:40], ut non cum illo secundum exteriorem commaneret hominem, nec minus tamen secundum interiorem hominem Barnabas in libro vitae permansit.” In remembrance of Gregory’s conduct in forcing him at the Roman Council in 1079 to swear to a formula against his conviction, he asserts that the power of the keys which Christ gave to Peter (Mat_16:19) is limited. The binding must not be arbitrary and unjust. The Lord speaks through the prophet to the priests (per prophetam ad prelatos): “I will curse your blessings (Mal_2:2: maledicam benedictionibus vestris).” From this it follows necessarily that He also blesses their curses (Ex quo necessarium constat, quod etiam benedicat maledictionibus talium). Hence the Psalmist says (Psa_109:28): “Let them curse, but bless thou.” The blessed Augustin, in his book on the Words of the Lord, says: “Justice solves the bonds of injustice;” and the blessed Gregory [I.] says [Homil. XXVI.]: “He forfeits the power to bind and to loose, who uses it not for the benefit of his subjects, but according to his arbitrary will (ipsa hac ligandi atque solvendi potestate se privat, qui hanc non pro subditorum moribus, sed pro suae voluntatis motibus exercet).” Berengar thus turns the first Gregory against the seventh Gregory.

Hildebrand’s real opinion on the eucharistic presence can only be inferred from his conduct during the controversy. He sincerely protected Berengar against violence and persecution even after his final condemnation; but the public opinion of the church in 1059 and again in 1079 expressed itself so strongly in favor of a substantial or essential change of the eucharistic elements, that he was forced to yield. Personally, he favored a certain freedom of opinion on the mode of the change, provided only the change itself was admitted, as was expressly done by Berengar. Only a few days before the Council of 1078 the pope sought the opinion of the Virgin Mary through an esteemed monk, and received as an answer that nothing more should be held or required on the reaI presence than what was found in the Holy Scriptures, namely, that the bread after consecration was the true body of Christ. So Berengar reports; see Mansi, XIX. 766; Gieseler, II. 172; Neander, III. 519. (The charge of Ebrard that the pope acted hypocritically and treacherously towards B., is contradicted by facts).

The same view of a change of the elements in a manner inexplicable and therefore indefinable, is expressed in a fragment of a commentary on Matthew by a certain “Magister Hildebrand,” published by Peter Allix (in Determinatio Ioannis praedicatoris de, modo existendi Corp. Christi in sacramento altaris. Lond., 1686). “In this fragment,” says Neander, III. 511, “after an investigation of the different ways in which the conversio of the bread into the body of Christ may be conceived, the conclusion is arrived at, that nothing can be decided with certainty on this point; that the conversio therefore is the only essential part of the doctrine, namely, that bread and wine become body and blood of Christ, and that with regard to the way in which that conversion takes place, men should not seek to inquire. This coincides with the view which evidently lies at the basis of the cardinal’s proceedings. But whether the author was this Hildebrand, must ever remain a very doubtful question, since it is not probable, that if a man whose life constitutes an epoch in history wrote a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, it should have been so entirely forgotten.” Sudendorf, however (p. 186), ascribes the fragment to Pope Hildebrand.

 

129. Berengar’s Theory of the Lord’s Supper

The chief source is Berengar’s second book against Lanfranc, already quoted. His first book is lost with the exception of a few fragments in Lanfranc’s reply.

Berengar attacked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and used against it nearly every argument: it is not only above reason, but against reason and against the testimony of the senses; it involves a contradiction between subject and predicate, and between substance and its qualities, which are inseparable; it is inconsistent with the fact of Christ’s ascension and presence in heaven; it virtually assumes either a multiplication or an omnipresence of his body, which contradicts the necessary limitations of corporeality. There can be only one body of Christ, and only one sacrifice of Christ. The stories of the appearances of blood on the altar, be treated with scorn, from which some of his enemies inferred that he denied all miracles. He called the doctrine of transubstantiation an absurdity (ineptio) and an insane folly of the populace (vecordia vulgi).

To this notion of a corporeal or material presence on the altar, he opposed the idea of a spiritual or dynamic presence and participation. His positive view agrees essentially with that of Ratramnus; but he went beyond him, as Calvin went beyond Zwingli. He endeavors to save the spiritual reality without the carnal form. He distinguishes, with St. Augustin and Ratramnus, between the historical and the eucharistic body of Christ, and between the visible symbol or sacramentum and the thing symbolized or the res sacramenti. He maintains that we cannot literally eat and drink Christ’s body and blood, but that nevertheless we may have real spiritual Communion by faith with the flesh, that is, with the glorified humanity of Christ in heaven. His theory is substantially the same as that of Calvin. The salient points are these:

1) The elements remain in substance as well as in appearance, after the consecration, although they acquire a new significance. Hence the predicate in the words of institution must be taken figuratively, as in many other passages, where Christ is called the lion, the lamb, the door, the vine, the corner-stone, the rock, etc. The discourse in the sixth chapter of John is likewise figurative, and does not refer to the sacrament at all, but to the believing reception of Christ’s death.

2) Nevertheless bread and wine are not empty, symbols, but in some sense the body and blood of Christ which they represent. They are converted by being consecrated; for whatever is consecrated is lifted to a higher sphere and transformed. They do not lose their substance after consecration; but they lose their emptiness, and become efficacious to the believer. So water in baptism remains water, but becomes the vehicle of regeneration. Wherever the sacramentum is, there is also the res sacramenti.

3) Christ is spiritually present and is spiritually received by faith. Without faith we can have no real communion with him, nor share in his benefits. “The true body of Christ,” he says in a letter to Adelmann, “is placed on the altar, but spiritually to the inner man and to those only who are members of Christ, for spiritual manducation. This the fathers teach openly, and distinguish between the body and blood of Christ and the sacramental signs of the body and blood. The pious receive both, the sacramental sign (sacramentum) visibly, the sacramental substance (rem sacramenti) invisibly; while the ungodly receive only the sacramental sign to their own judgment.”

4) The communion in the Lord’s Supper is a communion with the whole undivided person of Christ, and not with flesh and blood as separate elements. As the whole body of Christ was sacrificed in death, so we receive the whole body in a spiritual manner; and as Christ’s body is now glorified in heaven, we must spiritually ascend to heaven.

Here again is a strong point of contact with Calvin, who likewise taught such an elevation of the soul to heaven as a necessary condition of true communion with the life-giving power of Christ’s humanity. He meant, of course, no locomotion, but the sursum corda, which is necessary in every act of prayer. It is the Holy, Spirit who lifts us up to Christ on the wings of faith, and brings him down to us, and thus unites heaven and earth.

A view quite similar to that of Berengar seems to have obtained about that time in the Anglo-Saxon Church, if we are to judge from the Homilies of Aelfric, which enjoyed great authority and popularity.

 

130. Lanfranc and the Triumph of Transubstantiation

The chief opponent of Berengar was his former friend, Lanfranc, a native of Pavia (b. 1005), prior of the Convent of Bet in Normandy (1045), afterwards archbishop of Canterbury (1070-1089), and in both positions the predecessor of the more distinguished Anselm. He was, next to Berengar, the greatest dialectician of his age, but used dialectics only in support of church authority and tradition, and thus prepared the way for orthodox scholasticism. He assailed Berengar in a treatise of twenty-three chapters on the eucharist, written after 1063, in epistolary form, and advocated the doctrine of transubstantiation (without using the term) with its consequences. He describes the change as a miraculous and incomprehensible change of the substance of bread and wine into the very body and blood of Christ. He also teaches (what Radbert had not done expressly) that even unworthy communicants (indigne sumentes) receive the same sacramental substance as believers, though with opposite effect.

Among the less distinguished writers on the Eucharist must be mentioned Adelmann, Durandus, and Guitmund, who defended the catholic doctrine against Berengar. Guitmund (a pupil of Lanfranc, and archbishop of Aversa in Apulia) reports that the Berengarians differed, some holding only a symbolical presence, others (with Berengar) a real, but latent presence, or a sort of impanation, but all denied a change of substance. This change he regards as the main thing which nourishes piety. “What can be more salutary,” he asks, “than such a faith? Purely receiving into itself the pure and simple Christ alone, in the consciousness of possessing so glorious a gift, it guards with the greater vigilance against sin; it glows with a more earnest longing after all righteousness; it strives every day to escape from the world … and to embrace in unclouded vision the fountain of life itself.”

From this time on, transubstantiation may be regarded as a dogma of the Latin church. It was defended by the orthodox schoolmen, and ecumenically sanctioned under Pope Innocent III. in 1215.

With the triumph of transubstantiation is closely connected the withdrawal of the communion cup from the laity, which gradually spread in the twelfth century, and the adoration of the presence of Christ in the consecrated elements, which dates from the eleventh century, was enjoined by Honorius III. in 1217, and gave rise to the Corpus Christi festival appointed by Urban IV., in 1264. The withdrawal of the cup had its origin partly in considerations of expediency, but chiefly in the superstitious solicitude to guard against profanation by spilling the blood of Christ. The schoolmen defended the practice by the doctrine that the whole Christ is present in either kind. It strengthened the power of the priesthood at the expense of the rights of the laity and in plain violation of the command of Christ: “Drink ye all of it” (Mat_26:27).

The doctrine of transubstantiation is the most characteristic tenet of the Catholic Church of the middle age, and its modern successor, the Roman Church. It reflects a magical supernaturalism which puts the severest tax upon the intellect, and requires it to contradict the unanimous testimony of our senses of sight, touch and taste. It furnishes the doctrinal basis for the daily sacrifice of the mass and the power of the priesthood with its awful claim to create and to offer the very body and blood of the Saviour of the world. For if the self-same body of Christ which suffered on the cross, is truly present and eaten in the eucharist, it must also be the self-same sacrifice of Calvary which is repeated in the mass; and a true sacrifice requires a true priest, who offers it on the altar. Priest, sacrifice, and altar form an inseparable trio; a literal conception of one requires a literal conception of the other two, and a spiritual conception of one necessarily leads to a spiritual conception of all.

 

Notes

A few additional remarks must conclude this subject, so that we need not return to it in the next volume.

1. The scholastic terms transsubstantiatio, transsubstantiare (in Greek μετουσίωσις, Engl. transubstantiation, Germ. Wesensverwandlung), signify a change of one substance into another, and were introduced in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The phrase substantialiter converti was used by the Roman Synod of 1079 (see p. 559). Transsubstantiatio occurs first in Peter Damiani (d. 1072) in his Expos. can. Missae (published by Angelo Mai in “Script. Vet. Nova Coll.” VI. 215), and then in the sermons of Hildebert, archbishop of Tours (d. 1134); the verb transsubstantiare first in Stephanus, Bishop of Autun (1113-1129), Tract. de Sacr. Altaris, c. 14 (“panem, quem accepi, in corpus meum transsubstantiavi”), and then officially in the fourth Lateran Council, 1215. See Gieseler, II. ii. 434 sq. (fourth Germ. ed.). Similar terms, as mutatio, transmutatio, transformatio, conversio, transitio, had been in use before. The corresponding Greek noun μετουσίωσις was formally accepted by the Oriental Church in the Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogilas, 1643, and later documents, yet with the remark that the word is not to be taken as a definition of the manner in which the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ. See Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, II. 382, 427, 431, 495, 497 sq. Similar expressions, such as μεταβολή, μεταβάλλειν, μεταποιεῖν, had been employed by the Greek fathers, especially by Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, and John of Damascus. The last is the chief authority quoted in the Russian Catechism (see Schaff, l.c. II. 498).

All these terms attempt to explain the inexplicable and to rationalize the irrational — the contradiction between substance and accidents, between reality and appearance. Transubstantiation is devotion turned into rhetoric, and rhetoric turned into irrational logic.

2. The doctrine of transubstantiation was first strongly expressed in the confessions of two Roman Synods of 1059 and 1079, which Berengar was forced to accept against his conscience; see p. 557 and 559. It was ecumenically sanctioned for the whole Latin church by the fourth Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III., a.d. 1215, in the creed of the Synod, cap. 1: “Corpus et sanguis [Christi] in sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini veraciter continentur, transsubstantiatis pane in corpus et vino in sanguinem, potestate divina, ut ad perficiendum mysterium unitatis accipiamus ipsi de suo, quod accepit ipse de nostro. Et hoc utique sacramentum nemo potest conficere, nisi sacerdos, qui fuerit rite ordinatus secundum claves Ecclesiae, quas ipse concessit Apostolis et eorum successoribus lesus Christus.”

The Council of Trent, in the thirteenth session, 1551, reaffirmed the doctrine against the Protestants in these words: “that, by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord (conversionem fieri totius substantiae panis in substantiam corporis Christi Domini), and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood; which conversion is by the holy Catholic Church suitably and properly called Transubstantiation.” The same synod sanctioned the adoration of the sacrament (i.e. Christ on the altar under the figure of the elements), and anathematizes those who deny this doctrine and practice. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, II. 130-139.

3. Thomas Aquinas, the prince of scholastic divines, has given the clearest poetic expression to the dogma of transubstantiation in the following stanzas of his famous hymn, “Lauda Sion Salvatorem,” for the Corpus Christi Festival:

 

 

 

“Dogma datur Christianis, Quod in carnem transit panis, Et vinum in sanguinem. Quod non capis, quod non Animosa firmat fides Praeter rerum ordinem. “Hear what holy Church maintaineth, That the bread its substance changeth Into Flesh, the wine to Blood. Doth it pass thy comprehending? Faith, the law of sight transcending, Leaps to things not understood.   

“Sub diversis speciebus, Signis tantum et non rebus, Latent res eximiae. Caro cibus, sanguis potus, Manet tamen Christus totus, Sub utraque specie. Here, in outward signs, are hidden Priceless things, to sense forbidden; Signs, not things, are all we see: Flesh from bread, and Blood from wine: Yet is Christ, in either sign, All entire, confess’d to be.   

“A sumente non concisus, Non confractus, non divisus, Integer accipitur. Sumit unus, sumunt mille, Quantum isti, tantum ille, Nec sumitus consumitur. They, too, who of Him partake, Sever not, nor rend, nor break, But entire, their Lord receive. Whether one or thousands eat, All receive the self-same meat, Nor the less for others leave.   

“Sumunt boni, sumunt mali, Sorte tamen inaequali Vitae vel interitus. Mors est malis, vita bonis: Vide, paris sumptionis Quam sit dispar exitus.” Both the wicked and the good Eat of this celestial Food; But with ends how opposite! Here ’tis life, and there ’tis death; The same yet issuing to each In a difference infinite.”  

 

See the Thes. Hymnol. of Daniel, II. 97-100, who calls St. Thomas “summus laudator venerabilis sacramenti,” and quotes the interesting, but opposite judgments of Möhler and Luther. The translation is by Edward Caswall (Hymns and Poems, 2nd ed., 1873, and previously in Lyra Catholica, Lond., 1849, p. 238). The translation of the last two stanzas is not as felicitous as that of the other two. The following version preserves the double rhyme of the original:

 

 

 

“Eaten, but without incision,” Broken, but without division, Each the whole of Christ receives: Thousands take what each is taking, Each one breaks what all are breaking, None a lessened body leaves.   

“Here alike the good and evil, High and low in social level, Take the Feast for woe or weal: Wonder! from the self-same eating, Good and bad their bliss are meeting Or their doom herein they seal.”  

 

4. The doctrine of transubstantiation has always been regarded by Protestants as one of the fundamental errors and grossest superstitions of Romanism. But we must not forget the underlying truth which gives tenacity to error. A doctrine cannot be wholly false, which has been believed for centuries not only by the Greek and Latin churches alike, but as regards the chief point, namely, the real presence of the very body and blood of Christ — also by the Lutheran and a considerable portion of the Anglican communions, and which still nourishes the piety of innumerable guests at the Lord’s table. The mysterious discourse of our Saviour in the synagogue of Capernaum after the miraculous feeding of the multitude, expresses the great truth which is materialized and carnalized in transubstantiation. Christ is in the deepest spiritual sense the bread of life from heaven which gives nourishment to believers, and in the holy communion we receive the actual benefit of his broken body and shed blood, which are truly present in their power; for his sacrifice, though offered but once, is of perpetual force to all who accept it in faith. The literal miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is spiritually carried on in the vital union of Christ and the believer, and culminates in the sacramental feast. Our Lord thus explains the symbolic significance of that miracle in the strongest language; but he expressly excludes the carnal, Capernaitic conception, and furnishes the key for the true understanding, in the sentence: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life” (Joh_6:63).