Chapter IV…

Chapter IV

EARLY CHURCH CUSTOMS, FASTS, AND FESTIVALS.

CHURCH HISTORY DIVIDED INTO AGES AND PERIODS.

Dr. Schaff, in his "History of the Apostolic Church," has divided the whole history of the Church as follows:--

FIRST AGE.--The Primitive or Universal Church, from its foundation on the day of Pentecost to Gregory the Great, thus embracing the first six centuries (A.D. 30-590).

First Period.--The Apostolic Church, from the first Christian Pentecost to the death of the Apostles (A.D. 30-100).

Second Period.--The Persecuted Church, to Constantine (A.D. 100-311).

Third Period.--The Established Church of the Græco-Roman Empire, and amidst the Barbarian storms, to Gregory the Great. (A.D. 311-590).

SECOND AGE.--The Church of the Middle Ages, or Romano-Germanic Catholicism, from Gregory the Great to the Reformation (A.D. 590-1517).

Fourth Period.--The commencement of the Middle Ages, the planting of the Church among the Germanic nations, to the time of Hildebrand (A.D. 590-1049).

Fifth Period.--The flourishing period of the Middle Ages, the summit of the Papacy, monasticism, and scholastic and mystic theology, to Boniface VIII. (A.D. 1049-1303).

Sixth Period.--The dissolution of the Middle Ages and preparation for the Reformation (A.D. 1303-1517).

THIRD AGE.--The Modern or Evangelical Protestant Church in conflict with the Roman Catholic Church from the Reformation to the present time.

Seventh Period.--The Reformation, or productive Protestantism and reacting Romanism (A.D. 1517-1600).

Eighth Period.--Orthodox Confessional and Scholastic Protestantism in conflict with ultramontane Jesuitism, and this again with semi-Protestant Jansenism (seventeenth century and first part of eighteenth).

Ninth Period.--Subjective and negative Protestantism, Rationalism, and Sectarianism, and positive preparation for a new age in both Churches (middle of eighteenth century to present time).

THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

The Apostolic period, from A.D. 30 to 100, or rather 117, the death of John, may be subdivided into three: (1) the founding of the Christian Church among the Jews, chiefly the labours of St. Peter, A.D. 30-50; (2) the founding of the Christian Church among the Gentiles, or the labours of St. Paul (A.D. 50-64), who made Christianity more and more independent of Jerusalem, and the destruction of Jerusalem completed the severance; (3) the summing-up and organic union of Jewish and Gentile Christianity in one whole, chiefly the work of John. The three important local centres were Jerusalem, the mother Church of Jewish Christianity; Antioch, the starting-point of the heathen missions; Ephesus, the later residence of John. At the same time, Rome, where Peter and Paul spent their last days, was the centre of Western Christianity. The Apostolic period differs essentially from all subsequent periods. In the first place, Christianity comes forth from the bosom of Judaism, and for a long time clothes itself in the forms of that religion. The Apostles are all Jews. In their preaching they all, not excepting Paul, go first to their brethren, preach in the synagogues, visit the Temple at Jerusalem. The Church gradually separates from the home of its birth. The second peculiarity is the unstained purity and primitive freshness of doctrine and life, and its extraordinary spiritual gifts, working harmoniously together, and providing, by their creative and controlling power, for all the wants and relations of the infant Church. Müller called the first century the century of wonders. At the head of the Church were men who enjoyed immediate intercourse with the Saviour of the world, were trained by Him in person, and filled in an extraordinary degree with the Holy Ghost. Such infallible vehicles of Divine revelation, such sanctified and influential persons, are found in no subsequent age. The Apostolic period contained the germs of all subsequent periods, Christian personalities, and tendencies.

EARLY CHURCH AND THE MILLENNIUM.

In the ancient Church of the first three centuries there was always an expectation of the millennium, as they counted, according to the Septuagint Version then current, 6,000 years to end soon after the coming of Christ. The primitive Church of Antioch considered the creation of the world took place 6,000 years before Christ. In the fourth century this period was reduced to 5,500, next to 5,200. The authority of the Vulgate and of the Hebrew text, as accepted by the moderns, fixed 4,004 as the period. The joyful Sabbath of 1,000 years was then to begin, and Christ would reign in the New Jerusalem. The assurance of such millennium was inculcated by a succession of Fathers, from Justin Martyr and Irenæus (130), who conversed with the immediate disciples of the Apostles down to Lactantius, who was the preceptor to the son of Constantine (317). The joys of the millennium were to be balanced by a concurrent conflagration and destruction of Rome, as the mystic Babylon. It was affirmed that those who since the death of Christ had obstinately persisted in the worship of demons would be delivered over to eternal torture. And the Christians of that time were said to enjoy a spiritual pride in witnessing the destruction of their enemies. Tertullian, who died in 240, an energetic Father and champion of the truth, thus alluded to the matter: "You are fond of spectacles: expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of the universe. How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs and fancied gods groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates who persecuted the name of God liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians declaiming their own sufferings; so many dancers," etc., etc.

EARLY CHRISTIANS AND THE COMMUNITY OF GOODS.

One of the difficulties of the early Christians was to know how to act as regards their worldly goods, seeing that they were all brethren. They acknowledged this brotherhood, and yet were not clear where to draw the line. They used to salute each other with a holy kiss (Rom. xvi. 16); and they held love-feasts (or agapæ), by way of maintaining their fellowship; and these were held especially in connection with the Lord's Supper. But these feasts were found not to work satisfactorily--chiefly, perhaps, because there was no suitable place of meeting. They were condemned and discontinued even in the time of the Apostles. In the first ardour of the Church at Jerusalem, they tried the experiment of community of goods. The Apostles were careful to point out that the surrender was entirely voluntary. Instances of hypocrisy and avarice soon disgusted many, as in the notable case of Ananias (Acts v. 1), and the dissatisfied Hebrew widows (Acts vi. 1). It is not known how long this experiment lasted at Jerusalem. It was an experiment which could not succeed according to the constitution of human nature; for the love of an exclusive proprietorship is inherent, and it has been found in all succeeding ages that individuals, as well as nations, flourish most when each attends to his own business, and is satisfied to make the best of his own opportunities, and to cease to covet the acquisitions of others. It is found most salutary when each seeks only to gain riches by his own exertions, and without undue interference with others. Many dreamers have often looked forward to a community of goods as the most perfect state; but a little practical knowledge soon teaches every one that it is a dream, and nothing more. All the virtues of life are compatible with the exclusive possession of property; and few virtues are possible when there is no security for property as a basis.

FAVOURITE EMBLEMS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS.

In the early centuries, before paintings and images were introduced in places of worship, and which at first were thought to resemble too closely the Pagan practices, there were some favourite emblems used by the Christians on their walls and drinking vessels and rings. One was the figure of the Good Shepherd, representing Christ carrying a lamb on His shoulders. On rings would be carved a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit; or an anchor of hope, or a fisherman with a draught of fishes; or a lyre, signifying joy and praise. These were suggested by the subjects that made most impression on their daily thoughts.

CHRISTIAN NAMES OF PEOPLE.

One of the early notions of Christians was to select the name of some apostle or saint as one of the names of their children; and this was deemed, if not an infallible, at least a wise and prudent incentive to worthy actions. Hence it became universal to adopt a Christian name, and to mention it at the time of baptism; and heathen names were, on the other hand, forbidden. It was long thought right that the bishop, if he found some pagan name suggested, should forbid it and alter it into some proper Christian name. Indeed, it was long deemed an accepted custom, if not the law, that the Christian name once given either by a bishop or priest at baptism was indelible, and that some offence was or would be committed by seeking to change it. This, however, in modern times, is known to be a delusion; and whatever may have been the name or names given to a child by parents or priests, it is the right of every one, without anybody's leave, at any time thereafter, to change his name, both Christian and surname if he thinks fit, into any other; and if he choose to adhere to one name of his own choice, people will seldom trouble themselves to dispute it or to deny him this gratification. The only condition is that this change must not be made for purposes of fraud.

AURICULAR CONFESSION AND PENANCE.

Mr. Roberts, in his "Church Memorials," says that in 459, which was the last year but one of the eventful pontificate of Leo I., the usage which had long prevailed in the Churches of the West, that there should be a public recital of sins which had been privately confessed, and a committal of the same to writing, was suppressed by the authority of Leo as of dangerous consequence to morals and good government. It seemed to that Pope that the practice of bringing these secret things to light before the congregation was unnecessary and pernicious. He deemed it enough for the penitent to make his confession first to God, and then to the priest who was to make intercession for him and procure the needful remission. And this may be considered as the date of private or auricular confession under the full sanction of ecclesiastical authority. Nor was public confession in general understood to be interdicted by this arbitrary Pope, but only the promulgation in public of such sins as were clandestine and could transpire only by the revelation of the secret by the sinner himself. The Roman Church has, however, always maintained the confession to a priest to be necessary, as a ground for the remission of sins committed after baptism, and essential as a constituent part of the penitential ordinance. It seems but of little importance to investigate the origin of the rite of penance, which lies buried behind the rubbish of superstition and priestcraft, or to travel through the various periodical changes in its forms and ceremonies. It is to the praise of the early Church that none of the Fathers of the apostolical and primitive ages laid stress on auricular confession as an essential part of Christian duty. The Council of Lateran in 1215 declared it necessary to salvation. And in 1521 the Council of Trent issued a decree making both penance and auricular confession alike necessary.

RELIGIOUS RIOTS ABOUT THE TRISAGION.

The sixth century opened a sanguinary internecine feud between sects of the Church, and the first religious war was said to arise about the correct words of the Trisagion as used in the Church service in Constantinople. The blood of thousands was shed in the streets, squares, and churches; and at last the Emperor had to abdicate to conciliate an insolent mob, principally composed of infuriated monks. Gibbon thus describes it: "In the fever of the times the tense, or rather the sound, of a syllable was sufficient to disturb the peace of an empire. The Trisagion (thrice holy), 'Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts!' is supposed by the Greeks to be the identical hymn which the angels and cherubim eternally repeat before the throne of God, and which about the middle of the fifth century was miraculously revealed to the Church of Constantinople. The devotion of Antioch soon added, 'who was crucified for us'; and this grateful address, either to Christ alone or to the whole Trinity, may be justified by the rules of theology, and has been gradually adopted by the Catholics of the East and the West. The Trisagion, with and without this obnoxious addition, was chanted in the Cathedral by the two adverse choirs; and when their lungs were exhausted, they had recourse to the more solid arguments of sticks and stones. The aggressors were punished by the Emperor, and defended by the Patriarch, and the crown and the mitre were staked on the event of this momentous quarrel."

THE ANCIENTS' PREACHING APPLAUDED ON THE SPOT.

One remarkable feature of the ancient services of the Church was, that the people used to applaud and encourage the preacher with clapping of hands and loud acclamations. St. Jerome, writing to Vigilantius, says, "The time was when he himself had applauded him with his hands and feet, leaping by his side and crying out 'Orthodox' for his sermon on the Resurrection." And George of Alexandria relates that "the people applauded the sermons of St. Chrysostom, some by tossing their thin garments, others moving their plumes, others laying their hands upon their swords, and others waving their handkerchiefs and crying out, 'Thou art worthy of the priesthood! thou art the thirteenth apostle! Christ hath sent thee to save souls!'" etc. And Gregory in his dream describes how the people during the sermon moved their bodies like the waves of the sea raised by the wind. But the great ambition of the preacher was rather to melt the congregation into tears. St. Jerome says the preacher should labour to excite the groans of the people rather than their applauses. St. Austin says he once preached in Cæsarea, in Mauritania, where a savage custom existed of the citizens engaging in a bloody fight once a year by throwing stones at each other. And he directed all his eloquence against this custom, and was glad to notice the tears shed by many, and he rejoiced at the time of writing that eight years had since passed and the fight had never been there renewed. St. Chrysostom, the most effective of all the ancient preachers, said once, "I have thought of making it a law to forbid such acclamations, and to persuade you to hear in silence." It was a frequent practice for notaries to take down the sermons of favourite preachers in shorthand, and in that way many have been preserved to the present day.

DRESS AND APPEARANCE OF EARLY CLERGY.

At a very early period the leaders of the Church attributed great importance to the particular dress and appearance of the clergy, and laid down stringent rules on that subject. The Canons said a decent mean must be observed--neither too nice nor too slovenly. In particular the extremes of baldness and long hair were equally objectionable, so that all were obliged to shave the crown of the head and beard. This distinguished them from the priests of pagan deities. So they were to observe a medium in dress, and to wear neither white nor black. But the colours varied in different times and places. It was noticed that these directions as to garb arose after the danger of detection during times of persecution had ceased. One garment, called the caracalla, and since cassock, was adopted after the time of Constantine. It was a long garment, reaching down to the heels, such as the Roman people put on when they went to salute the Emperor.

THE FOPPISH PRIESTS AND DEACONS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY.

So early as the fourth century there were very worldly and self-seeking officers in the Church. St. Jerome in his "Treatise on Virginity" says: "There are some of them who aspire to the office of priest or deacon that they may visit women with the greater liberty. Their chief care is to be well dressed, neatly shod, and perfumed; they curl their hair with irons, they have bright rings on their fingers, and they walk on tiptoe, looking more like bridegrooms than clerks. Some of them make it their only business to find out the names and residences of ladies of quality, and to discover their dispositions. I will describe one of them who is a master in the art. He rises with the sun, the order of his visits is arranged, he finds out the shortest ways, and the troublesome old man enters almost the very chambers in which they rest. If he sees a cushion, a napkin, or any other little article that he likes, he praises it and admires the neatness of it; he takes it in his hand, then complains that he has not something of that kind; and, in short, he snatches it away before it is given to him." St. Jerome also mentions the avarice of these self-seeking priests, who, under pretence of giving blessings, reach out their hands to receive money. This plain speaking of St. Jerome made him many enemies, who attacked in turn his own reputation and the fascination he exercised over fashionable ladies, so that he had to leave Rome and retreat to Palestine.

THE EARLY BISHOPS.

Great learning has been shown by ecclesiastical historians as to the precise position of early bishops--one side contending that these high officials were appointed by Christ, or at least by His Apostles; and the further inference is then drawn, that therefore this mode of governing the Church is the best possible and the only right and orderly kind of government for a true Church. Both points have been denied, and especially the second, because it is urged that even if there were bishops appointed by the Apostles, it would prove nothing, except that the Apostles thought them the best kind of officers for the time being, and yet that they might not be the best in other and different countries and circumstances. Most of the Christians of all times till the Reformation too hastily overlooked the fundamental principle, that each country and age is necessarily the best judge of the peculiar mode of governing the Church, and should not surrender its better judgment to the views of earlier and less experienced ages as to matters not expressly enjoined by Scripture. The defenders of bishops delight to dwell on some facts, or assumed facts, in favour of their theory. They say that St. John was one of the authors of the order of bishops, and that he went about ordaining for various stations, and especially Polycarp, while St. Peter ordained Clement at Rome and St. Paul ordained Timothy at Ephesus. The list of the first bishops is, however, very obscure. It is said that James, the Lord's brother, was the first Bishop of Jerusalem, and was ordained by the Apostles immediately after the Crucifixion. And hence it is argued that our Lord must have sanctioned this act in some way. One consequence of the theory of bishops was, that the bishop alone had an inherent right to administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and also to preach and ordain others; while a presbyter could only do so with his permission express or implied. And, above all, the bishop could call presbyters to account and excommunicate and censure them, thereby implying that the one order of priests was inferior to the other in jurisdiction.

SOME PRIVILEGES OF EARLY BISHOPS.

In the early centuries it became a custom for people to refer disputes of all kinds to the bishops as arbitrators, and in that respect their so acting superseded the action of courts of law. St. Augustine said that nearly his whole time was taken up with this duty, so that it became a burden to him. It became also an early practice for bishops to intercede with the government for prisoners. There was an ancient custom for the people to bow their head whenever they met a bishop, as if asking for his blessing; and even emperors rendered this mark of respect. It was also usual for people to kiss the bishop's hand, for Ambrose said people thereby thought themselves protected by the bishop's prayers. Sometimes a still higher honour was rendered to the bishop by singing hosannas to him; but Jerome admits this was too great an honour to mere mortal man. Bishops also wore a mitre or crown, and they sat upon what was called a kind of throne. It is said that St. James, Bishop of Jerusalem, first sat on this throne. When a bishop was consecrated, he was conducted by the other bishops to a throne; and the form of prayer at their consecration besought the Almighty to give the bishop power to remit sins, and loose every bond according to the power which was given to the Apostles. One of the curious things connected with the early bishops and presbyters also was, that they were frequently seized by force and compelled to act if elected by a congregation. St. Austin himself was thus compelled, and so was Paulinus.

THE PASTORAL STAFF.

The bishops of all countries seem to have agreed in using the pastoral staff as one of the symbols of their authority. The form used is that of a shepherd's crook, or a straight cane or staff, with a knob or volute made of cypress wood or ivory or some metal ornamented. Each bishop used some peculiarity of workmanship, and it went with the office to his successor. The head of some was formed like a serpent, or a lion, or a bird.

THE SACRED CHARACTER OF ANCIENT CHURCHES.

The ceremony of consecrating churches was adopted in the three first centuries, and indeed some say from the time of the Apostles. Nothing very distinct, however, is found till the fourth century, when Constantine's protection gave an impetus to church-building. St. Ambrose composed a form of prayer for such occasions. In the sixth century a practice began to consecrate also the altar separately. A church was not allowed to be put to any profane use, though religious assemblies and meetings of clergy were not forbidden. But no one was to have meat or lodging there. The sacred vessels of the church were also kept religiously for the single use of the sacraments. And when Julian the Apostate once sent two officers to plunder the Church of Antioch and fetch away the vessels and convert them into money, all believed that Julian was immediately seized with an ulcer and died miserably. One ancient custom was for the congregation to wash their hands before entering. In some places also, particularly in Egypt, the members took off their shoes. It is doubtful whether the custom of bowing toward the altar on entrance was not general, because it was merely following the custom of the Jews. One gate of the church was called the Beautiful or Royal Gate, being that at which kings entered, in which case they had to lay aside their crowns, for it was deemed indecent that they should wear such badges in presence of the King of kings. Even though it was a universal custom to allow debtors and criminals to take refuge for a time in churches, they were not allowed to lodge there, but were maintained in a precinct outside. The women sat in a separate part of the church from the men, and each entered by a separate door. In the fourth century pictures of saints and martyrs began to be set up in churches, and this continued, subject to the iconoclast persecution, to become more and more in keeping with the thoughts and views of the time till the Reformation finally stopped it in all the Reformed Churches.

THE ANCIENT OFFICE OF DEACONESS.

It is said that the office of deaconess existed in the Apostolic age, for St. Paul called Phoebe a servant or deaconess of the Church (Rom. xvi. 1). The deaconess was always a widow, who had had children, who had been only once married, and who was at least forty, fifty, or sixty years old. Immense importance was attached to her having been only once married. Learned men differ as to whether she was ordained by the imposition of hands, or, if so, whether this meant anything more than a benediction. But all seemed to admit that she could not administer the sacraments, though some heretics allowed women this power also. The main duties of the deaconess were to assist at the baptism of women; to be private catechists to the women preparing for baptism; to visit women who were sick and in distress; to minister to the martyrs and confessors in prison; to attend the women's gate and regulate the behaviour of women in the church, for the women went into church at a different gate from the men. The order of deaconess flourished till the twelfth century in the Greek Church, and the tenth or eleventh century in the Latin Church, and then the practice fell into abeyance, probably owing to the new views about the celibacy of the clergy.

THE FORM OF LITURGY IN ANCIENT TIMES.

The clergy have been said to be at first all bishops, until the growth of population and numbers made it expedient to subdivide a city or country into parishes of such size that one priest might conveniently attend to it. Each bishop at first appointed his own form of service. And the learned have disputed whether in the earliest ages the service included or consisted of what corresponds to a modern liturgy or stereotyped form of prayer and praise. There are authorities for both views. The Lord's Prayer was generally one of the forms, and there were always hymns and psalms, and these would naturally be in set forms. Also, there were certain set prayers for special occasions. Peter Diaconus in 520 says that St. Basil, seeing that men's sloth and degeneracy made them weary of a long liturgy, prepared a shorter form for them. And Julian the Apostate was said to admire the Church forms of worship; for when he intended the heathen priests to imitate the Christians, he specified particularly those prayers which were so composed that the people might make their responses. St. Ephraim of Syria and St. Ambrose were great composers of hymns. The grand hymn of Te Deum was composed by St. Ambrose and St. Austin jointly. St. Austin says there were five parts in the liturgy or service of the Church--namely, psalmody, reading of the Scriptures, preaching, prayers of the bishop, and the bidding prayers of the deacon. The last were directions to the people what particulars they were to pray for, the deacon going before them and repeating every petition, to which the people made answer: "Lord, hear us," "Lord, help us," or "Lord, have mercy," and the like. It seems to have been a practice for the people to turn their faces to the east in the solemn adorations, the east being the symbol of Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, and also of the locality of Paradise. The Psalms were usually sung by the people standing. The sermons and homilies, which were an hour or even two hours long, were sometimes written and sometimes extempore. The preacher usually sat and the people stood; but there was no fixed rule, for the preacher seems also to have stood and the people to have sat. Many people in those times also thought the sermon too long, and went out before it ended.

THE RISE OF RITUALISM.

In the ninth century some attention began to be paid to the meaning of rites and ceremonies. One Amalarius, a deacon of Metz, in 820 composed a treatise on the Divine office, and on the order of the antiphonary, in which he attempted to make all the stages of the liturgy represent some doctrine. All the incidents of Divine service, every attitude and gesture, the dresses of the clergy, the ornaments of the church, the sacred seasons and festivals, were expounded as full of symbolical meaning. Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, on the other hand, being something of an iconoclast, and severe against the superstitions of relic hunters, advocated the exclusion of much irrelevant matter, as profane and heretical, from the service-book and hymn-book. He said that far too much attention had been given to music, and far too little to the study of Scripture. Agobard opposed the writings of Amalarius as full of idle comments and errors in doctrine. Not content with this exposure, Florus, master of the cathedral school of Lyons, wrote strongly against Amalarius, and cited him before two councils, the latter of which examined the mystical theories of Amalarius, and condemned them as being founded on nothing but the writer's fancy, and dangerous. The theories of Amalarius, however, kept possession of many writers of the Middle Ages, and even in the nineteenth century had their admirers and advocates.

THE MASS, OR HOLY COMMUNION.

The great distinguishing ceremony of Christians is the celebration of the Mass or Communion, or Administration of the sacrament in commemoration of our Lord's Supper. The word Mass was used as early as about the second century, and is derived from the Hebrew missach, signifying a freewill offering, or mincha, an oblation of meal. The name of Mass was used to include all the offices and festivals of which the Holy Communion was a leading feature. After the Reformation the word Mass was discontinued in England, and superseded by the words Holy Communion. The days and times of celebrating the Communion have differed from age to age. High Mass was sung with music and solemn ceremony and the assistance of numerous ministers, but the Communion was seldom given at High Mass. Low Mass was said by a priest attended by a single clerk. The Eucharistic bread, or Host (from hostia, the sacrifice), was required by a council of Toledo in 925 to be made in form of a wafer, so as to be easily broken, and was expressly baked for the altar. Unleavened bread came to be almost universally used. In England, after the Reformation, ordinary bread is ordered to be used, and not wafers or stamped bread. The Elevation of the Host, or lifting up of the paten (a small flat plate so called) and consecrated bread above the head of the celebrant, was instituted by Pope Honorius III. in 1210, and he directed that it was to be adored when elevated. This practice has been prohibited in England since the Reformation. The pyx is the box in which the Host is kept or conveyed, often made of silver or ivory. The wine for the Communion used by the Greeks was mixed with water, and was red wine. The Roman Church now uses white wine. The English Church forbids water to be mixed with the wine. When the custom of carrying about and exposing the Host began, about the fourteenth century, the name of the vessel in which it was shown was called a monstrance, resembling a chalice. The Agnus Dei is a little round cake of perfumed wax, stamped with the figure of the Holy Lamb bearing the standard of the Cross. The cakes were burned as perfumes, symbolical of good thoughts, or in memory of the deliverance of men from the power of the grave at Easter by the Lamb of God. The French shepherds, during the time of the Crusades, were observed to use these perfumes. And people burned them in their houses as a safeguard against evil spirits. The Agnus Dei was also the name given to a hymn sung in the canon of the Mass.

ANCIENT CHURCH SERVICE IN THE MOTHER TONGUE.

The learned Bingham, in his "Antiquities of the Christian Church," says that there is abundant testimony that in the earliest services of the Church it was a rule that the liturgies and forms of prayers should be in the mother tongue of the people, and not, as had been a modern practice, invariably in the Latin tongue. St. Jerome says that at the funeral of Lady Paula the Psalms were sung in Syriac, Greek, and Latin, because there were men of each language present at the solemnity. He also says it was the practice for the young virgins to sing the Psalter morning and evening, and to learn the Psalms and some portion of the Scripture every day; and St. Basil says that all the people sung the Psalms alternately, and the children joined. And the Church took care to have the Bible translated into all languages--Syrian, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Ethiopian, Armenian, Roman, Scythian, and Gothic. Another custom pointing to the same conclusion was, that Bibles were laid in the churches for the people to read in private at their leisure. So that none of the ancient Fathers ever dreamt that a time would come when the Scriptures should be only in the hands of the bishops and clergy. St. Chrysostom, in one of his sermons upon Lazarus, says expressly, "The reading of the Scriptures is our great guard against sin. Our ignorance of them is a dangerous precipice and a deep gulf." A Church Council of Chalons in 813 expressly ordered that the bishops should set up schools to teach the knowledge of the Scriptures. There was an order of officers, called Readers, expressly to assist the people in this matter. And Eusebius relates that a blind man called John, one of the martyrs of Palestine, had so good a memory that he could repeat any part of the Bible as readily as the reader could do. Therefore it was an entire departure from ancient practice when the Church in mediæval and later times discountenanced the reading of the Scriptures by the people at large.

USE OF ORGANS AND BELLS IN CHURCHES.

Though music in Divine service had always a place, yet the use of instrumental music seems not to have become general till the time of Thomas Aquinas, about 1250. And it is related that one Marinus Sanutus, who lived about 1290, was the first to introduce wind organs into churches, whence he was called Torcellus, which is the name for an organ in the Italian tongue. This instrument had long been known as a curiosity before that time, and one was sent by the Greek Emperor about 766 to King Pepin. The use of bells as a mode of summoning worshippers to Divine service was soon thought of as a substitute for employing deacons or deaconesses to give private notice to each attendant. In Egypt the early Christians imitated the Jews by blowing a trumpet. In the early monastery set up by Paula at Jerusalem, one of the virgins was set apart to go round singing hallelujah. In the time of Bede, in the seventh century, bells began to be used as a mode of summoning to worship. And in 968 Pope John XIII. consecrated the great bell of the Lateran Church in Rome, calling it John.

SEPARATION OF SEXES IN CHURCHES.

The custom of separating the sexes in church had a very remote origin. John Gregorie, in his works (published in 1646), says: "There is a tradition that in the ark, so soon as ever the day began to break, Noah stood up towards the body of Adam and before the Lord, he and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet. And Noah prayed and his sons; and the women answered from another part of the ark, 'Amen, Lord.' Whence you may note too (if the tradition be sound enough) the antiquity of that fit custom (obtaining still, especially in the Eastern parts) of the separation of the sexes, or the setting of women apart from the men in the houses of God. Which sure was matter of no slight concernment if it could not be neglected, no, not in the ark, in so great a straightness and distress of congregation."

THE ANCIENT CHURCH PRAYING FOR THE DEAD.

Bingham, in his "Christian Antiquities," says that the Ancient Church used prayers for all the saints, martyrs, confessors, patriarchs, apostles, and even the Virgin Mary herself. But the practice was not founded in a belief in purgatory, but upon a supposition that they were going to a place of rest and happiness, the soul being supposed to be in an imperfect state of happiness till the Resurrection. Moreover, many of the ancients held the opinion of the millennium, or the reign of Christ a thousand years upon earth before the final day of judgment. There was also a kindred practice by which the holy books or diptychs used to be rehearsed during the service. These recited the names of famous bishops, emperors, and magistrates connected with the district; also the names of those who had lived righteously, and had attained to the perfections of a virtuous life. And this was done partly to excite and conduct the living to the same happy state by following their example, and partly to celebrate the memory of them as still living according to the principles of religion, and not properly dead, but only translated by death to a more Divine life.

OLD CUSTOM OF SIN-EATERS AT FUNERALS.

In Kennet's "Parochial Antiquities" it is stated by an old person living about 1640 that "in the county of Hereford there was an old custom at funerals to hire poor people, who were to take upon them all the sins of the deceased party, and were called sin-eaters. One of them lived in a cottage near Ross, in Herefordshire. The manner was this: When the corpse was brought out of the house and laid on the bier, a loaf of bread was delivered to the sin-eater over the corpse, as also a mazar bowl (gossips' bowl) full of beer, which he was to drink up, and sixpence in money. In consideration whereof he took upon him at once all the sins of the defunct, and freed him or her from walking after they were dead. In North Wales the sin-eaters were frequently made use of; but there, instead of a bowl of beer, they have a bowl of milk. This custom was by some people observed even in the strictest time of the Presbyterian government."

PRAISING THE LORD DAY AND NIGHT.

About 400 or soon after, a monk, Alexander, projected a new order of monks, who were to be detailed into companies for the performing of Divine offices day and night without intermission. This order acquired the name of watches, dividing the twenty-four hours into three watches, each relieving the other, and thus keeping a perpetual course of Divine service. This order attained great esteem and veneration, and many monasteries were built for their use at Constantinople. Among others one Studius, a nobleman of Rome of consular dignity, renounced the world and joined the order, erecting a famous monastery for their use, which was called after him Studium. In course of time, however, these monks were believed to be led away by the Nestorian heresy, and lost credit. We are also told that Sigismund, Burgundian king, after renouncing Arianism about 524, restored the ruined monastery of Agaune at the entrance of the principal passage of the Alps, the gorge of the Valais on the Rhone. It was built in honour of St. Maurice and the Theban Legion, whose relics were collected and there deposited. A hundred monks were obtained from Condat to give a beginning, and eight hundred more were brought together and bound under conditions, the chief of which was, that a service of praise was to be kept up without a break, day and night. For the purpose the nine hundred monks were divided into nine choirs, who sang alternately and without intermission the praises of God and the martyrs. The king, to expiate an offence in his own family, himself become a monk for a time. This notion of keeping up the praise of God every day and night during the whole year was also carried out in the seventeenth century by an English gentleman, Nicholas Ferrar, who with his family made up a small colony, all having semi-monastic tendencies, and lived at the retired parish of Little Gidding, eighteen miles from Cambridge. He was the son of a wealthy London merchant, was born about 1586, and educated at Cambridge, and for some time was a Member of Parliament, and had also travelled. He, with his mother, sister, nephews, nieces, and servants, numbering thirty, at last took vows of celibacy, settled at this rustic abode, decorated their little chapel with great care, and devoted their time to works of charity; but one peculiarity was always in view--namely, that all day and night they relieved each other in turns, and kept up constant services of prayer and praise. Isaac Walton says that in this continued serving of God the Psalter or whole Book of Psalms was in every twenty-four hours sung or read over from the first to the last verse, and this was done as constantly as the sun runs his circle every day about the world, and then begins again the same instant that it ended. The ritual was that of the Church of England. And there were candles of white and green wax, and suitable decorations. At every meeting every person present bowed reverently towards the Communion table. The community was called "The Protestant Nunnery" by the peasants living near. In that age the Puritans were developing their power, and there were also reactions, so that both parties had their zealous champions in turns.

CHRISTMAS DAY AND EASTER DAY.

One of the most universally cherished customs of Christians was to keep in remembrance the day of Christ's nativity, and celebrate and hold it in honour by some special service of praise and thanksgiving of a religious character. A kind of feast was celebrated on that day, and in the fourth century it was very generally observed. But the correct date was long matter of doubt in the early centuries. Some reckoned it on January 6th; some in April and May. The Western Christians soon accepted December 25th as the proper anniversary, while the Oriental Churches preferred January 6th. But by the time of the sixth century all Christians concurred in observing December 25th. Almost every country has some peculiar custom of a religious or festive character connected with Christmas Day. Another commemoration day of universal observance was Easter Day, the anniversary of the Resurrection, the preceding Friday being called Good Friday. And in the early centuries there were also controversies as to the correct mode of fixing the date. It was a day on which good Christians observed the solemn Communion, as well as baptisms and acts of hospitality and almsgiving. Choral processions and singing of hymns and anthems were thought fit exercises for this memorable anniversary. The Sunday before Easter Sunday, called Palm Sunday, in commemoration of the strewing of palms on Christ's entry into Jerusalem, is also attended with particular observances. In Italy it is called Olive Sunday; in Spain, Portugal, and France it is called Branch Sunday; in Russia, Sallow Sunday; in Wales, Flower Sunday; in Hertfordshire, Fig Sunday, in allusion to the cursing of the fig tree.

FESTIVAL OF ALL SAINTS.

The festival of All Saints was instituted in Rome in the eighth century. At the end of the tenth century a new celebration was annexed to it. It was related that a French pilgrim, on returning from Jerusalem, had been cast on a little island in the Mediterranean, where he met a hermit, who told him that the souls of sinners were tormented in the volcanic fires of the island, and that he could often hear the devils howling with rage because their prey was rescued from time to time by the prayers and alms of pious men, and especially of the monks of Cluny. The hermit solemnly adjured the pilgrim to report this when he returned home, and accordingly the pilgrim mentioned it to the Abbot Odilo of Cluny, who in 998 appointed the morrow of All Saints to be solemnly observed there for the repose of all faithful souls, with psalmody, masses, and copious alms to all the poor people present. The celebration was soon extended to the whole Cluniac order; and eventually some Pope, whose name is not known, ordered its observance throughout Christendom.

HOLIDAYS AND FEASTS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

There were several holidays or celebrations of events very popular with young people and the lower clergy during the Middle Ages, and which had some connection with religious matters. These were the Feasts of the Ass, of the Deacons, of the Kings, of the Buffoons, and of the Innocents, all involving some horseplay and rude merriment, such as the Carnival still exhibits. About the twelfth century the Feast of the Kalends was conducted by actors having hideous beards over their faces. In the Feast of Buffoons of the same period the duties and rank of the clergy were caricatured and turned into fun and ribaldry. In the Feast of the Ass that animal was dressed like a priest, and all the people brayed as the incidents at the stable of Bethany and of Balaam's conversation were rehearsed. In the Feast of Buffoons there were mock cardinals and a mock Pope. In the procession of the Mère Folle there were a mock tribunal, mock judgments, and mock sentences. As a counterpart to these boisterous revels, there were famous legends or superstitions represented, such as the story of the "Wandering Jew," so called from a rebuke given to an insulting assault made on the Saviour at the Crucifixion, which was followed by a supposed sentence on the offender that he should await Christ's second coming; the superstition about Prester John, a sort of pontiff king, half Jew, half Christian, who was said to have governed a vast Indian empire, but no particulars of which were ever ascertained, and yet he was said to have invited the Pope to go and live in his dominions.

FEAST OF THE ASS.

The Feast of the Ass, already alluded to, was a feast celebrated in several churches in France in commemoration of the Virgin Mary's flight into Egypt. And the gross absurdities then practised under the pretence of devotion would surpass belief were there not such incontrovertible evidence of the facts. A young female, richly dressed, with an infant in her arms, was placed upon an ass, when High Mass was performed with solemn pomp. The ass was taught to kneel; and a hymn replete with folly and blasphemy was sung in his praise by the whole congregation. And as the climax to this monstrous scene of absurdity and profaneness, the priest used at the conclusion of the ceremony, and as a substitute for the words with which he on other occasions dismissed the people, to bray three times like an ass, which was answered by three similar brays by the people, instead of the usual response, "We bless the Lord," etc.

FESTIVAL OF THE BOY BISHOP.

The childish solemnities of the boy bishop on the Festival of St. Nicholas, though prohibited so early as 1274 by the Synod and Bishop of Salzburg, were always much appreciated by the public. On the eve of the Holy Innocents the child bishop and his youthful clergy, in little copes and with burning tapers in their hands, went in procession chanting versicles, made some prayers before the altar, and sang complin. By the Statute of Sarum no one was to interrupt or press upon the children during their procession or service in the cathedral upon pain of anathema. This ceremony existed not only in collegiate churches, but in almost every parish. It is supposed that the anniversary montem at Eton, which used to be celebrated in winter, was only a corruption of this ceremony, and was as such suppressed by an order of Henry VIII.

MIRACLE PLAYS.

The miracle play was a theatrical representation of scenes in the Scriptures, and it seemed to be popular in mediæval times, and the monks took part in it as active promoters. But there were some of these in every century after the third. In times when reading was impossible, and the fancy of the public was kept alive chiefly by the pictures and images in churches, it was natural that this cognate representation by means of actors on a stage should occur to those who catered for something like a recreation. Chaucer and Piers Plowman allude to this as a frequent indulgence. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries religious plays were acted in England, France, and Spain. Bishops and canons and monks all supported them, and they were acted in churches and on Sundays, as was said to be the case in St. Paul's until the time of Charles I. At length it was found that they degenerated into buffoonery and indecency. Some have said that the practice arose out of the lively spirits of the troops of pilgrims returning from the shrines of Compostella or St. Michael or Canterbury, and chanting or reciting sacred songs and hymns. The plays went out in England soon after the Reformation, and they became thereafter mere secular amusements.

THE PASSION PLAYS OF THE AMMERGHAU.

Dean Milman says he was present at one of the performances of the last of the ancient mysteries which still linger in Europe, the Passion Spiel by the peasants of the Ammerghau. He never saw even in leading theatres finer scenic effects, more rich and harmonious decorations, and dresses more brilliant with blended colours. All was serious, solemn, and devout; actors and audience were equally in earnest. The Saviour was represented with a quiet gentle dignity, admirably contrasting with the wild life and tumult, the stern haughty demeanour of the Pharisees and rulers in their secret plottings and solemn council, and the frantic agitation of the Jewish people. There were one or two comic touches and rude jests, as in the greedy grasping of Judas after the pieces of silver, and the eager quarrelling of the Roman soldiers throwing dice for the seamless coat. The theatre was not roofed, but was erected at the bottom of a green valley flanked by picturesque mountains. The effect of all this on the peasants was said to be excellent. No one was permitted to appear even in the chorus unless of unimpeachable character.

THE FESTIVAL OF THE ROSE AT SALENCY.

St. Medard or Mard, who died in 545, was in his youth impulsively generous. One night a thief entered his garden and stole his grapes; but, losing his way in the dark, was caught and brought before Medard. All that the saint said was, "Let him go; I have given him the grapes." It was St. Mard who founded the Festival of the Rose at Salency. He charged his family estate with a fund sufficient to yield a sum of money, to be given annually with a crown of roses to the best-behaved girl in the village. Not only must the girl have the highest character, but her parents also. As lord of the manor, he had the privilege of selecting one of three girls, who were presented to him as candidates. When he had named the successful one, he announced it next Sunday from the pulpit, and asked all who had any objections to bring them forward. Then at the day and hour appointed, the Rosière, dressed in white, and attended by twelve girls in white with blue sashes, and twelve boys, went to the castle in a procession, and thence to the church. Vespers were sung, and afterwards the priest took the crown or hat of roses from the altar, blessed it, and gave her the hat and a purse containing twenty-five francs. The procession returned to the church, where a Te Deum was chanted with an anthem. This custom was said to be a standing encouragement for centuries of the good behaviour of all the girls in the parish.

THE ROSARY.

The Rosary is a festival instituted to commemorate the victory of the Christians over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. It was a practice of the ancient anchorites to count the number of their prayers by little stones or grains. In the twelfth century one lady was said to recite every day sixty angelical salutations. Peter the Hermit taught the laity who would not read the Psalter to say a certain number of "Our Fathers" and "Hail Martyrs." St. Dominic was eminent for encouraging the custom of reciting fifteen decades of the angelical salutations, with one "Our Father" before each decade, in honour of the principal mysteries of the Incarnation. This repetition of a hundred and fifty angelical salutations was instituted by him in imitation of the hundred and fifty Psalms, on which account the Rosary has been often called the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin.

THE MILLENNIUM EXPECTED IN 1000.

As the year 1000 approached, among the many senseless notions then prevalent, and industriously cherished by the priests for the sake of lucre, was the persuasion that the last day was at hand. This doctrine had been broached in the preceding century, grounded upon the Revelation of St. John, and now was generally taught and received in Europe, and produced an excessive terror in the minds of the people. For the apostle had clearly foretold, as was taken for granted, that, after the tenth decade from the birth of Christ, Satan would be let loose, Antichrist would come, and the destruction of the earth would ensue. Hence great numbers, leaving their possessions and giving them to churches or monasteries, repaired to Palestine, where they thought that Christ would descend from heaven to judge the world. Others solemnly devoted themselves and all their goods to churches, monasteries, and the clergy, and entered their service as bond-slaves, performing a daily task. Their hope was that, if found in such a condition of life, their fate would be more favourably judged. Hence, when an eclipse of the sun or moon happened, they fled to rocks and caverns to hide themselves. Crowds flocked to be near where the Saviour was expected to appear for judgment. Others consecrated their effects at once to God and the saints--that is, to priests and friars. Hence many also suffered their houses to go to ruin, thinking these would soon be of no use. This delusion was not got rid of till the end of the eleventh century.

THE CHURCH-BUILDING AGE.

As the millennium had been expected by all Christendom to occur in the year 1000, most pious people at that date suspended all undertakings of a lasting character. When the time arrived and the event did not take place, a passion arose to build churches. Old churches were taken down, and new churches built on a larger scale and with splendid embellishments. Charlemagne's cathedral at Aix, which had been copied from the Byzantine type, was imitated in many churches built along the Rhine. St. Mark's at Venice was built about that time. The art of staining glass was supposed to be invented or greatly extended at this period, and the cathedral of Rheims was described as having windows adorned with divers histories.

THE ROUND TOWERS OF SCOTLAND AND IRELAND.

The learned men of many generations have been much exercised as to the origin, object, and use of the round towers, of which there are two in Scotland and seventy-six in Ireland, and, like the campaniles of Italy, are altogether detached from any neighbouring structure. In Scotland one is at Brechin, and the other at Abernethy. The height is eighty-six and seventy-two feet; the building tapers gradually, and the interior is divided into seven sections. The entrance in one case is on the west side; the other on the north side, in the form of a semicircular arch, surmounted by a figure of the Crucifixion, a small statue on each side, one carrying a pastoral staff, the other a cross-headed staff, and also a book. The walls are three and a half feet thick, and the diameter of one is about thirteen feet and the other eight feet in the interior. These structures are both in ancient churchyards. The learned have concluded that the Scotch towers were erected by Irish monks between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Those being warlike ages, it is conjectured that they were meant as a defence against the savage irruptions of the Danes--not only as a refuge for ecclesiastics, but also as a secure hiding-place for relics, shrines, books, bells, crosiers, and other treasures of the Church.

PETER DAMIANI ADVOCATES WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN.

Peter Damiani was born at Ravenna in 1002, and soon became a famous teacher. He developed a strong turn for asceticism, wore sackcloth, fasted and prayed, and used to tame his passions by rising from bed and standing for hours in a stream till his limbs were cold and stiff, and then he would hasten to visit churches and recite the Psalter. Once, on offering a silver cup to some monks as a present to their abbot, and which they refused because it was too heavy to carry, he was so pleased with their unworldly views that he soon became monk, and no one could equal him in his austerities. He was early enlisted by Hildebrand to propagate the doctrine of the supremacy of the Pope over all emperors and kings; and though his style of preaching was only a rhapsody of scriptural phrases and allegories, he always carried out the High Church doctrines of his employer. He distinguished himself by his deification of the Virgin and his devotion to flagellation. His glorification of the Virgin consisted in making her the centre of all power in heaven and in earth. His enthusiasm on this subject led to offices of prayer being framed for her, which afterwards became developed into a series of prayers known as the Rosary. But Damiani's masterpiece was the discovery and education of Dominic, a priest, and the greatest master of the art of self-flagellation. Dominic wore a light iron cuirass, which he never put off except to chastise himself. His body and arms were confined by iron rings, his neck loaded with heavy chains, his clothes were scanty rags. His usual exercise was to recite the Psalter twice a day, while he flogged himself with both hands at the rate of a thousand lashes to ten psalms. These self-flagellations were said to serve as a satisfaction for the sins of other men. This system of Dominic was extolled by Damiani as something divine. Damiani was also a determined enemy to the marriage of the clergy, which he denounced as a very Gomorrah. By Hildebrand's influence he was made a cardinal, and died in 1072.

THE TRUCE OF GOD.

At the end of the tenth century Guido, Bishop of Puy, in Velai, was said to be the first to establish the Treuga Dei, which was the origin of the great expedient for securing peace, emanating a century later from the monks of Cluny. The Council of Clermont (1095) decreed that the Truce of God should be observed during the leading Church festivals, and every week from sunset on Wednesday till sunrise on Monday. At the Council of Soissons in 1155 King Louis VII. and many princes assembled, and swore to observe the Truce of God inviolably. And in 1209 the Pope's legate prescribed its observance to the barons of France. Others say that the Truce of God was brought into prominence by Rudolph the Bald in 1033, as in that year there had been, after three years' famine, a most abundant harvest, and the clergy suggested that men's minds would then be well disposed to any sacrifice, more especially as the recent events connected with the expected millennium in 1000 were still in vivid remembrance. The Council of Limoges resolved that those who refused to adopt a similar practice, called the Peace of God, should be excommunicated, and their country laid under an interdict. Yet there was a vigorous opponent, named Gerard of Cambray, who protested that war was an affair of state in which the clergy had no business to interfere; moreover, that the exercise of arms was sanctioned by Scripture. But the vast majority of the people welcomed the new practice, and the time chosen, between the evening of Wednesday and the dawn of Monday, was noted to include the interval between the Saviour's betrayal and the Resurrection. The time was soon, however, abridged. Odilo of Cluny had been a prominent advocate of this restriction on the military barbarism of his time; and William the Conqueror, before the Conquest, had also joined in its observance.

THE NUMBER SEVEN IN SCRIPTURE.

Students of Scripture have noticed how frequently the number seven is chosen as the standard for a vast variety of computations. The seventh day after the Creation God rested. The children of Israel on the seventh day of the seventh month feasted seven days and remained seven days in tents. The seventh year was the Sabbath of rest for all things: for the land lying fallow; for release of debts. Seven was fixed for Jacob's years of serving for Rachel; for years of plenty and then for famine in Egypt; for fat beasts and lean beasts; for ears of full corn and blasted corn; for bullocks and rams sacrificed; for King Ahasuerus' feast days; for Queen Esther's maids of honour; for days of unleavened bread; for days of feast of tabernacles; for Joseph mourning; for Churches of Asia; for golden candlesticks; for stars, lamps, seals, angels, devils, phials of wrath. It is noticed that our Saviour spoke seven times from the cross, remained seven hours, appeared seven times. Then there were seven heavens, planets, stars; seven notes in music, primary colours, deadly sins, senses. A child was not named before seven days; the teeth sprang in the seventh month, renewed in the seventh year; faculties develop in thrice seven years, and life extends to ten times seven.

THE POPE MAKING A JUBILEE YEAR.

In 1300 Pope Boniface VIII., whose chief objects were ambition, avarice, and revenge, celebrated with religious ceremonies the year of Jubilee. A rumour had been raised in 1299 among the people of Rome that whosoever in the ensuing year should visit the temple of St. Peter might obtain remission of all his sins, and that this blessing and felicity was annexed to every secular year. Boniface ordered inquiry to be made into the truth of this common opinion, and found, from the testimony of many witnesses of undoubted credit, that it was decreed from the most ancient times that they who repaired to St. Peter's Church with a devout disposition on the first day of the secular year should obtain indulgences of a hundred years. The Pope, therefore, by a circular epistle addressed to all Christian people, declared that those who at this time would piously visit the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome, confessing their offences, and declaring their sorrow for them, should receive an absolute and plenary remission. The successors of Boniface not only adorned this institution with many new rites, but, learning by experience how honoured and how lucrative it was to the Church of Rome, brought it within a narrower compass of time, so that soon every twenty-fifth year was a year of Jubilee. From every part of Latin Christendom crowds of the faithful began to pour towards Rome. John Villani, the chronicler, who was present, estimates that there were 200,000 strangers in the city. Another chronicler describes the multitudes as resembling an army constantly marching both ways along the street. And even the poet Dante, who was then a visitor, being away from the republic of Florence, watched the people in their multitudes passing to and from St. Peter's, along the bridge of St. Angelo, which, to prevent confusion, had a partition erected to facilitate the passengers. Some authors say that the magnificence of the scene gave the poet, and also a contemporary chronicler, the idea of composing their respective works. The coffers of the Pope were filled to overflowing, and one chronicler says he saw at St. Paul's two of the official clergy raking together infinite heaps of money. Boniface was so intoxicated with his success that next day he showed himself in the attire of an emperor, with a sword in his hand, explaining that he was Cæsar and emperor, as well as successor of St. Peter. Boniface, in his soaring ambition to subject to his jurisdiction all temporal powers, met in Philip the Fair of France an antagonist as keen and unscrupulous as himself, and their quarrels have amused posterity. He died of insanity and rage in 1303.

VILLANI'S ACCOUNT OF THE JUBILEE IN 1300.

John Villani, the chronicler of Florence, who died of the plague in 1348, thus relates his visit to Rome at the Jubilee of 1300: "For the consolation of the Christian pilgrims every Friday and solemn festival, there was shown in St. Peter's the sudarium of Christ; on which account a great portion of the Christians then living made this pilgrimage, women as well as men, from different and distant countries, from afar off as from near places. And it was the most astonishing thing that ever was seen, how continually throughout the whole year they had in Rome, beside the Roman people, 200,000 pilgrims, besides those who were on the road going and coming; and all were furnished and satisfied with food in just measure, men and horses, with great patience and without noise or contentions, and I can bear witness to it, for I was present and saw it. And from the offerings made by the pilgrims the Church gained great treasure, and the Romans from supplying them all grew rich. And I, finding myself in that blessed pilgrimage in the holy city of Rome, seeing her great and ancient remains, and reading the histories and great deeds of the Romans, as written by Virgil, Sallust, Lucan, Livy, Valerius, Paulus, Orosius, and other masters of history, who wrote the exploits and deeds, both great and small, of the Romans, and also of strangers in the whole world, to leave a record and example to those who are to come, so I took style and form from them, though as a disciple I was not worthy to do so great a work, and I began to compile a book in honour of God and of the Blessed John, and in praise of our city of Florence."

A PIOUS ARAB KING'S PRAYER FOR RAIN (A.D. 1343).

In 1343 Juzef Ben Ismail, King of Granada, made a truce of ten years with King Alphonso of Castile, and was noted for his pious laws and ordinances. Among other reforms he forbade people to go through the streets praying for rain, as he said those who made that offering should go forth to the fields with much devotion and humility, and utter the following prayer: "O Lord Allah, Thou, the ever merciful, who hast created us out of nothing, and knowest our faults, by Thy clemency, O Lord, Thou, who dost not desire to destroy us, regard not our shortcomings, but rather consider Thy mercy and longsuffering. Thou who hast no need of us or our services, O Lord, have pity upon Thy innocent creatures, the unconscious animals and birds of the air, who find not wherewithal to sustain their lives. Look upon the earth which Thou hast created, and upon the plants thereof, which perish and are wasted for lack of the waters that should be their nourishment. O Lord Allah, open to us Thy heavens, turn upon us the blessing of Thy waters, let us again be refreshed with Thy life-giving airs, and send upon us that mercy that shall revive and refresh the dying earth, giving succour and support to Thy creatures, that the infidel may no longer say Thou hast ceased to hear the prayer of Thy true believers. O Lord, we implore Thee by Thy great mercy, for Thou lookest with pity on all Thy creatures. O Lord Allah, in Thee it is we believe, Thee we adore, from Thee we hope for pardon for our errors, and at Thy hands we seek for succour in our need."

THE TERROR OF THE BLACK DEATH IN 1348.

The black death, which was said to have carried off one-fourth of the population in four years, and in England carried off half the population, was a disease which puzzled the scientific men of the period. Carbuncles, tumours, spots on arms and thighs, became fatal in about three days, and the disease spread like fire among dry fuel. The effect on society was enormous. Merchants of unbounded wealth began to carry their treasures to monasteries and churches, and to lay them at the foot of the altar; but the monks in their turn shuddered at the gift, as in their view it only brought death, and they threw it over the convent walls. People were driven by despair to take up pious works as a last defence. In Avignon the Pope found it necessary to consecrate the Rhone, so that bodies might be thrown into the river as the speediest mode of burial. The morals of the people suffered by the hopeless and ghastly spectacles around, for churches were deserted by priests, and the people without shepherds gave way to covetousness as well as licentiousness. When the alarm was over, there was a notable increase of lawyers, who, like locusts, devoured the property left without owners. The plague raged from 1347 to 1350; and owing to the Pope Clement VI. appointing a jubilee in 1350, and a vast concourse of pilgrims to Rome, it was said that scarcely one in a hundred escaped alive. The Brotherhood of the Cross or of the Flagellants reappeared at this time, which betokened the end of the world to many, and, taking on themselves the sins of the people, went about scourging themselves in churches and markets, as a mode of averting the wrath of Heaven. This imposing sacrificial ceremony had been invented about a century before by Dominic, and was kept up from time to time in various countries. The panic of the black death was in some places ascribed to the infidel practices of Jews, who were accordingly hunted to death and burnt in their synagogues, or put to the sword without compunction. The physicians of the period were all at their wits' end how to administer remedies to those requiring a remedy. Among those carried off by this scourge was John Villani, the historian, and Laura, the beloved of Petrarch. Though the black death was so fatal in England, it was noted that Ireland escaped.

THE DANCING MANIA AND SWEATING SICKNESS IN GERMANY AND HOLLAND.

Scarcely had the panic of the black death subsided when a delusion arose in Germany, a demoniacal epidemic, called the dance of St. John or St. Vitus, which seized upon people, convulsing body and soul, and leading them to perform a wild dance, screaming and foaming with fury. Assemblages of these fanatics became prominent in 1374, and continued more or less to exhibit the same fascination for about two centuries. They first broke out at Aix-la-Chapelle among crowds who were said to come from Germany, who formed circles hand in hand, whirling about for hours together in wild delirium, shrieking, and insensible to the wonder, horror, and jeers of the bystanders. After the fit they fell down and groaned, as if in the agonies of death, when their companions swathed them in cloths tightly drawn round the wrists, and then thumped or trampled on the parts affected. Some after this frenzy pretended to see the heavens open, and the Saviour and the Virgin Mary enthroned and beckoning to them. The clergy were gradually led to believe that these people were possessed of devils which required to be exorcised. The people affected were mostly of the class of poor, and little removed from vagabondism. Another visitation of a kindred nature was the sweating sickness, which was a violent inflammatory fever, that after a short rigor prostrated the powers as with a blow, and amid painful oppression of the stomach, headache, and lethargic stupor suffused the body with a fetid perspiration. In England it prevailed in 1485, and some chroniclers estimated that scarcely one in a hundred escaped when once seized; and it was said to be locally confined to England, and did not extend either to Scotland or Ireland or Calais. The disease was said to be traced to a season of heavy torrents of rain and inundations of rivers.

THE MONK FLAGELLANTS.

The austerities of monks for ages had created an admiration for the practice of flagellation, and this grew till a new sect arose, which believed in this as a supreme rule of life. Sovereign princes, as Raymond of Toulouse, kings, as Henry II. of England, had yielded their backs to the scourge. And St. Louis of France used it as if it were a daily luxury. Peter Damiani had taught it by precept and example. Dominic, called the Cuirassier, had invented or popularised by his fame the usage of singing psalms to the accompaniment of self-scourging. At last, about 1259, all ranks, both sexes, all ages, were possessed with this madness; nobles, wealthy merchants, modest and delicate women, even children of five years old, admired it. They stripped themselves naked to the waist, covered their faces that they might not be known, and went two and two in solemn slow procession with a cross and a banner before them, scourging themselves till the blood tracked their steps, and shrieking out their doleful psalms. They travelled from city to city. Whenever they entered a city, the contagion seized the onlookers. They marched by night as well as by day. The busy mart and the crowded streets were visited by processions; in the dead midnight the sound of the scourge and the screaming chant were accompanied with tapers and torches. Thirty-three days and a half, the number of the years of our Lord's sojourn on earth, was the usual period of this penance. In the burning heat of summer, and when the wintry roads were deep with snow, the crowds moved on. At length the madness wore itself out. Some princes and magistrates, finding it was not sanctioned by the Roman See or by the authority of any great saint, began to interpose, and after being for a time an object of respectful wonder the practice sank into general contempt. A contemporary tells us that in the height of the mania for flagellation the fields and mountains echoed with the voices of the sinners calling to God. Usurers and robbers restored their ill-gotten gains, criminals confessed their sins and renounced their vices, the prison doors were thrown open, and the captives walked forth; homicides offered themselves on their knees with drawn swords to the kindred of their victims, and were embraced with tears; old enemies were forgiven, and exiles were permitted to return to their homes. The movement spread to the Rhine lands, and throughout Germany and Bohemia. But the excitement disappeared as rapidly as it came, and was even denounced as a heresy. Ulberto Pallavicino was resolved to keep the new heretics out of Milan, and erected three hundred gibbets by the roadside, at the sight of which the enthusiasts abruptly retraced their steps, and their enthusiasm left them.

EXTRAVAGANT DRESS OF CLERGY IN 1347.

Dress was carried to a pitch of costliness and vanity in the time of Edward III. Men holding dignities, parsonages, prebends, benefices with cure of souls, treated the tonsure with scorn, and allowed their hair to hang down over their shoulders. They imitated the dress of soldiers, having an upper jump remarkably short and wide, and long hanging sleeves not covering the elbows. Their hair was curled and powdered. They wore caps with tippets of great length, rings on their fingers, long beards, costly girdles, to which were attached purses enamelled with figures, and sculptured knives hanging at their sides to look like swords. Their sleeves were chequered with red and green, exceedingly long, and pinked with various colours. They had also ornamented cruppers to their saddles, and baubles like horns hanging down from their horses' necks, and their cloaks were furred at the edge, though this was contrary to canonical rules.

TELLING FORTUNES BY THE BIBLE.

In the sixth century an abuse crept into religious circles of using the Bible, like a book of fate, to discover future events. Cæsarius, Bishop of Arles, warned his people against many of the current superstitions, such as a superstition against sneezing, considering Friday an unlucky day, etc. He told them not to return anybody's salutation on the way, but on starting merely to make the sign of the cross and trust the rest to the Lord. One abuse, however, withstood all his efforts, and that was the practice of seeking for oracles in the Bible. St. Augustine also, a century before, had observed on this pagan practice. He said the custom displeased him of wishing to use the Word of God, which speaks in reference to another life, for worldly concerns and the vain objects of the present life. Even among the clergy the abuse prevailed. In doubtful earthly concerns persons would lay down a Bible in a church upon the altar, or especially on the grave of a saint, would fast and pray and invoke the saint that he would indicate the future by a passage of Scripture, and sought for the answer on the first passage which met the eye on opening the Bible. Against the practice a decree of the Council of Agde, in 508, was made, to the effect that since many persons, both of the clergy and laity, practised divination under the semblance of religion, or promised a disclosure of the future by looking into the Scriptures, all who advised or taught this were to be excluded from Church communion.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter V

DIFFICULTIES WITH PAGANS, JEWS, IMAGE WORSHIPPERS, AND CIVIL POWERS.

THE NAME OF CHRISTIAN.

Though for the last sixteen centuries the name of Christian has been used throughout the whole world, this descriptive word was not much used in the first four centuries. The Christians used to call each other disciples, believers, elect, saints, and brethren. Third parties called them at first Jesseans, spiritual physicians, or gnostics. When heretics or followers of peculiar opinions of a novel kind arose, these were called by the name of their leaders, as Marcionites, Valentinians, Donatists; while those holding the standard or orthodox opinions adhered to the name of Christians or Catholic Churchmen. The heathen often called the new body Jews, as the early Christians were of that race. There were also names of reproach given by the heathen, such as Nazarenes, Galileans, atheists, Greeks, impostors, magicians, superstitionists, Sibyllists, self-murderers (on account of their desire for martyrdom), desperadoes, fagot-men (from being so often burned), skulkers (from meeting in secret). The division between clergy and laity was soon acknowledged, all those who held regular offices in the Church being called clerici, or clerics, or clerks; and to this day the word "clerk" is the proper legal denomination of a priest of the Church of England. The origin of the word is disputed, but is generally traced to the Greek word "cleros," signifying that the clergy at first were chosen by lot.

AN EARLY PAGAN RIOT AGAINST CHRISTIANS.

The teaching of Christian doctrines seems to have already begun to tell upon Pagan practices when St. Paul worked at Ephesus. After he had been preaching there two years, the great feasts and shows connected with the worship of Diana came round. A silversmith, named Demetrius, found out during the fair that his little silver shrines were not sold so extensively as before, and that business was slack. He spoke to many in the trade, and they all agreed that their business had fallen off, and that it could be caused by nothing but by the missionary preaching of Paul. So they resolved to hold an indignation meeting, and, if necessary, get rid of this new-fangled sect. Demetrius harangued the mob, and they all shouted, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" and "Down with the Jews!" They all rushed to seize that invidious sect. Paul was concealed from the popular vengeance by Priscilla and her husband. The crowd then rushed to the theatre, which was large enough to hold 30,000 people. Paul wanted to address the excited audience, but his friends warned him to avoid it. One Alexander was asked to satisfy them that all the Jews were not Christians. The yelling and confusion grew worse. At last the town clerk made a most businesslike speech, never to be forgotten for worldly wisdom, and which amounted to this--that if Paul or the Christians had done wrong, the law was open to the persons thereby aggrieved, but that this was no excuse for dragging them about and maltreating them. This soon quelled the storm, and the mob became more peaceable. And soon after Paul left the city, and went elsewhere to carry out his missionary labours.

THE EARLY CHRISTIANS AND SLAVERY.

The Pagans treated slavery as an integral part of society, and their wisest men never dreamt of a time when slaves could be dispensed with. On the contrary, one radical doctrine of Christianity being that all men are brethren, it is at first difficult to understand how it took eighteen centuries to bear upon this old vice. Dr. Schaff, in his "History of the Apostolic Church," states the reasons in this way: The Apostles did not attempt even a sudden political and social abolition, and would have discountenanced any stormy and tumultuous measures to that effect. For, in the first place, the immediate abolition of slavery could never have been effected without a revolution which would have involved everything in confusion, a radical reconstruction of the whole domestic and social life with which the system is interwoven. In the next place, a sudden emancipation would not have bettered the condition of the slaves themselves, but would have rather made it worse, for outward liberation, in order to work well, must be prepared by moral training for the rational use of freedom, and by education until majority was attained. And this can only be done by a gradual process. Paul, moreover (1 Cor. vii. 17), lays down the general principle that Christianity primarily proposes no change in the outward relations in which God has placed a man by birth, education, or fortune; but teaches him rather to strive for a higher point of view, and to attain glimpses of a new spirit, until in time a suitable change shall be worked out. He recommends Christians to emancipate their slaves (Eph. vi. 9), and he himself sent back Onesimus, a runaway slave, to his master, asking that master to receive the slave kindly. He does not exhort slaves to burst their bonds, but to give reverential and single-hearted obedience to their masters for the time being.

NERO AND THE FIRST PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS.

St. Paul was released from his first trial at Rome in A.D. 63, and the next year Rome was devastated by a great conflagration. Some say that the Emperor Nero set fire to one place, and this, owing to the inflammable materials, spread in all directions, and the inhabitants fled to the fields. Men were going about with torches, saying that they had orders to spread the fire, though perhaps this was only an excuse for plunder. Nero at the moment was at Antium, and did not return till his own palace had caught fire. He set apart the Campus Martius and his own gardens whereon to fix temporary structures to accommodate the houseless. A general report was circulated that Nero went on the stage of his private theatre while the city was burning, and sang "The Fall of Troy," as being similar in its catastrophe. At length on the sixth day numbers of buildings had been demolished, so as to intercept the flames. The capital was rebuilt with wider streets. Meanwhile the rumour spread more and more that Nero had himself ordered the fire. To stop this rumour Nero accused and punished with exquisite tortures the people called Christians. Many were clothed in skins of wild animals and torn to pieces by dogs, or crucified, or set on fire, and were burned like lamps. Nero made a holiday spectacle of these atrocities, riding about like a charioteer in the circus. Tacitus, though referring to Christ as a Jewish malefactor put to death by Pilate, and treating Christianity as an Eastern superstition, yet said the people were slain, not for the public good, but because of the cruelty of one man. This is usually called the first persecution of the Christians. Four years later Paul was tried again at Rome for some offence, and it is usually believed that he perished there by the sword.

HOW THE EARLY CHRISTIANS APPEARED TO PAGANS.

Pliny the younger, one of the most eminent advocates of Rome, and full of sprightliness and good-nature, when appointed a governor of Pontus and Bithynia, near the Black Sea, wrote to the Emperor Trajan in 101 this account of the Christians, who used to be charged before him for refusing to worship the Pagan gods. He said: "Some who said they had once been Christians affirmed the whole of their guilt or their error to be, that they met on a certain stated day before it was light, and addressed themselves in some form of prayer to Christ or to some god, binding themselves by a solemn oath--not for the purposes of any wicked design, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery--never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up, after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to eat in common a harmless meal. I tried to extort the real truth by putting two female slaves to the torture who were said to administer religious functions, but I could discover nothing more than an absurd and excessive superstition on their part. This contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among the country villages. Nevertheless, it still seems possible to remedy this evil and restrain its progress. It is possible that numbers might be reclaimed from their error if a pardon were granted to those who shall repent." The tone of this letter showed that Pliny had misgivings as to the proper way of treating the new sect. The Emperor in reply said that Pliny seemed to have acted rightly, though it was difficult to lay down a rule; but that though these Christians were not to be run after, yet should they chance to be accused and convicted they ought to be punished.

CHRISTIANITY OPPOSES SHOWS OF WILD BEASTS.

The brutal spectacles in which Pagan Rome delighted--the fights of gladiators, and the combats of men with beasts--roused the indignation of the Christians. Not merely did women crowd the amphitheatre during these fierce and almost naked encounters, but it was the especial privilege of the Vestal virgins to give the signal for the mortal blow, and to watch the sword driven into the quivering entrails of the victim. St. Augustine describes the frenzy and fascination of the spectators for these brutal shows. A Christian student of the law was once compelled by the importunity of his friends to enter the amphitheatre. He sat with his eyes closed and his mind totally abstracted from the scene. He was suddenly startled from his trance by a tremendous shout from the whole audience. He opened his eyes. He could not choose but gaze on the spectacle. Directly he beheld the blood, his heart caught the common frenzy; he could not choose to turn away; his eyes were riveted on the arena. The interest, the excitement, the pleasure grew into complete intoxication. He looked on, he shouted, he was inflamed; he carried away from the amphitheatre an irresistible propensity to return to its cruel enjoyments. Emperor after emperor gradually prohibited first one part then another part of these disgusting spectacles, being influenced by the persistent remonstrances of Christians. The progress was not, however, very rapid. At last an Eastern monk, named Telemachus, travelled all the way to Rome, in order to protest against the disgraceful barbarities. In his noble enthusiasm he leaped into the arena to separate the combatants; but whether with or without the sanction of the prefect or that of the infuriated assembly, he was torn to pieces--a martyr to Christian humanity. The impression of this awful scene of a Christian and a monk thus murdered in the arena was so profound, that Honorius (who died 423) issued an edict, putting an end to such bloody spectacles. This edict, however, only suppressed the mortal combats of men; the conflict of wild beasts continued till the supply was cut off by the narrowing of the limits of the empire. The distant provinces no longer rendered their accustomed contributions of lions from Libya, leopards from the East, dogs of remarkable ferocity from Scotland, crocodiles and bears and other wild animals from remote regions. Towards the end the improving humanity of the people allowed artificial methods to be substituted, so as to excite the fury of the beasts without endangering the lives of the combatants. In the West these games sank with the Western Empire; in the East they disappeared at the close of the seventh century under the prohibition of the Council of Trullo.

EMPEROR CONSTANTIUS TESTING THE FIDELITY OF CHRISTIANS.

Sozomen says that the Emperor Constantius (who died at York in 306) wished to test the fidelity of certain Christians as excellent and good men who were attached to his palace. He called them all together, and told them that if they would sacrifice to idols as well as serve God they should remain in his service and retain their appointments; but that if they refused compliance with his wishes, they should be sent from the palace, and should scarcely escape his vengeance. When difference of judgment had divided them into two parties, separating those who consented to abandon their religion from those who preferred the honour of God to their present welfare, the Emperor determined upon retaining those who had adhered to their faith as his friends and counsellors; but he turned away from the others, whom he regarded as unmanly impostors, and sent them from his presence, judging that those who had so readily betrayed their God could not be faithful to their king. Hence, as Christians were deservedly retained in the service of Constantius, he was not willing that Christianity should be accounted unlawful in the countries beyond the confines of Italy--that is to say, in Gaul, in Britain, or in the region of the Pyrenean mountains as far as the Western Ocean.

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT FIRST FAVOURS THE CHRISTIANS.

Constantine the Great, son of the Emperor Constantius, deserved the appellation of the first emperor who publicly professed and established the Christian religion, and in whose epoch, accordingly, all Christendom is interested. While the Pagans represented him as a disgraceful tyrant, the Christians treat him as a hero, or even as a saint, and equal to the Apostles. His stature was lofty, his countenance majestic, and his deportment graceful. He delighted in society, and had a turn for raillery; and, though rather illiterate, he was indefatigable in business, and a consummate general in the field. He accepted the purple at York, where his father, Constantius, died in 306, and in his career gained signal victories over the foreign and domestic policy of the republic. In the last fourteen years of his life (323-337) he was said to have degenerated, being corrupted by fortune, and growing rapacious and prodigal. He affected an effeminate and luxurious dress. He is represented with false hair of various colours, laboriously arranged by the skilful artists of the times; a diadem of expensive fashion; a profusion of gems and pearls, of collars and bracelets; and a variegated and flowing robe of silk, most curiously embroidered with flowers of gold. He was twice married, and had an only son, Crispus, by the first wife, and by the second wife, Fausta, three daughters and three sons. Crispus was amiable and popular, and had been a pupil of the eloquent Christian Lactantius, but he soon incurred the suspicion and jealousy of his father, and was, owing to the intrigues and jealousies of the second family, put to death. Constantine, it was said, then discovered the falsehood of the charges against his son, erected a golden statue to his memory, and the cruel stepmother, in turn, was said to have suffered death or imprisonment. In his latter days Constantine had to chastise the pride of the Goths, then led by Alaric, and spreading terror and desolation. In 337 Constantine, the only emperor since Augustus who had reigned so long as thirty years, died at the age of sixty-four at Nicomedia. His body, adorned with purple and diadem, was transported to Constantinople, and deposited on a golden bed, at which the great officials, with bended knees, offered their respectful homage as seriously as if he had been alive, so that his flatterers remarked that by the peculiar indulgence of Heaven he reigned after his death.

CONSTANTINE'S STANDARD OF THE CROSS.

When Constantine, in 324, was invested with the sole dominion of the Roman world, he exhorted, by circular letters, all his subjects to imitate without delay his example and embrace the Divine truths of Christianity. The Christians, knowing that the Emperor's father, Constantius, was on their side, had looked to the elevation of Constantine as intimately connected with the designs of Providence, and they confidently expected some Divine and miraculous aid to attest the great revolution in the world's affairs then at hand. History accordingly has preserved full particulars of the standard, the dream, and the celestial sign which sealed their hopes. The Emperor took measures to have the standard of the cross affixed to his own statue, and on the helmets, shields, and banners of his army. The principal standard was styled the labarum, which was a long pike intersected by a transverse beam, from which hung down a silken veil, which was curiously inwrought with the images of the reigning monarch and his children. The summit of the pike supported a crown of gold, which enclosed the mysterious monogram at once expressive of the figure of the cross and the initial letters of the name of Christ. The safety of the labarum was entrusted to fifty guards of approved valour and fidelity. The opinion soon grew that so long as the guards of the labarum were in the execution of their office, they were secure and invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy. The sight of the standard gave the troops an invincible enthusiasm, and scattered terror and dismay among the enemies. There is still extant a medal of the Emperor Constantine, where the standard of the labarum is accompanied with these memorable words, "By this sign thou shalt conquer!"

THE DREAM OF CONSTANTINE.

In the age of Constantine the sign of the cross had come to be used by the primitive Christians in all their ecclesiastical rites, in all the daily occurrences of life, as an infallible preservative against every species of spiritual and temporal evil. A contemporary writer affirms with perfect confidence that in the night which preceded the last battle against Maxentius Constantine was admonished in a dream to inscribe the shields of his soldiers with the celestial sign of God, the sacred monogram of the name of Christ; that he executed the commands of Heaven; and that his valour and obedience were rewarded by the decisive victory of the Milvian Bridge. The senate and people, exulting in the success of Constantine, acknowledged that his victory surpassed the power of man. The triumphal arch which was erected about three years after the event recognised that by an instinct or impulse of the Divinity Constantine had saved and avenged the Roman Republic. Twenty-six years after the event the historian Eusebius narrates that in one of his marches Constantine saw a luminous cross in the sky inscribed with the words, "By this conquer," and this sign astonished the whole army; and that in a vision of the ensuing night Christ appeared to the Emperor, displaying the same celestial sign of the cross, and directing him to march with an assurance of victory. These incidents were universally adopted, as undoubted truths, by the Catholic Church both of the East and the West; but it is noted by the sceptics that, though the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries often celebrated the triumphs of Constantine, they do not allude to these signs and wonders as accompanying the event.

THE EMPEROR CONSTANTINE PREACHING (A.D. 314).

The Emperor Constantine revolutionised the Empire by giving a chief place to Christian doctrines and practices. He issued an edict of toleration in 313; decreed the observance of Sunday, the use of prayer in the army; abolished the punishment of crucifixion, gladiatorial games, infanticide, private divinations; and encouraged slave emancipation. He was a great admirer of good preaching. Eusebius says he himself once delivered a sermon in the palace before the marvellous man on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There was a crowded audience. The Emperor stood erect the whole time; would not be induced to sit down on the throne close by; paid the utmost attention; would not hear of the sermon being too long; insisted on its continuance; and on being entreated to sit down, replied, with a frown, that he could not bear to hear the truths of religion in any easier posture. More often he was himself the preacher, and one sermon of his is preserved by Eusebius. These sermons were always in Latin, but they were translated into Greek by interpreters appointed for the purpose. On these occasions a general invitation was issued, and thousands of people flocked to the palace to hear the Emperor do duty as the preacher. He stood erect, and then with a set countenance and grave voice poured forth his address, to which, at the striking passages, the audience responded with loud cheers of approbation. He usually discoursed on the follies of Paganism, the scheme of Providence and redemption, and the avarice and rapacity of courtiers.

THE LAST ILLNESS OF CONSTANTINE (A.D. 337).

The Emperor Constantine was anxious to see a reunion of the Arian and Athanasian controversialists; but owing to the sudden death of Arius at a critical moment, and, as was often surmised, by a Divine judgment, the opportunity lapsed. Constantine had been seized with sudden illness while preparing for his Persian expedition, and he tried the mineral waters near Helenopolis in vain. He now bethought himself of the necessity of baptism, which he had omitted, though he had been for twenty-five years convinced of the Christian faith. In the church of Helenopolis he was admitted a catechumen by the imposition of hands. He then cast off his imperial purple robes and assumed those of dazzling whiteness, and was baptised by an Arian bishop, but nevertheless ordered the recall of the orthodox Athanasius. He was greatly comforted at the accomplishment of his baptism, and on his deathbed bade his friends rejoice at his speedy departure. He died at the age of sixty-four. His body was laid out in a coffin of gold, and carried by a procession of the whole army to Constantinople. For three months the body lay in state in the palace, lights burning around and guards watching. The Bishop of Nicomedia, who had been entrusted with the Emperor's will, alarmed at its contents, placed it for security in the dead man's hand till his son Constantius arrived. It was believed to express the Emperor's conviction that he had been poisoned by his brothers and their children, and to call on Constantius to avenge his death. That bequest was obeyed by the massacre of six princes of the imperial family. Prayers were offered up to the dead Emperor, and miracles were believed to be wrought by him.

THE FIRST CHURCH COUNCIL OF NICE (A.D. 325).

When the first great Church controversy arose as to the Trinity, the Emperor Constantine summoned the first great Council of the Church at Nice in 325 to settle this and other doubtful points. Three hundred bishops attended, with many presbyters and deacons and laity. The assembly sat in solemn silence till the Emperor entered with great state and glittering with jewels. The whole assembly rose to do him honour. He advanced with modest dignity to a low golden seat, and did not take the seat till a sign of permission had been given by the bishops. A leading prelate began with a short address and hymn; then the Emperor delivered an exhortation to unity. The debate next began, and mutual accusations, defences, and recriminations followed, the Emperor occasionally softening asperities and commending pacific views. The council sat two months, and at the end the Emperor invited the bishops to a sumptuous banquet. They all attended, and were delighted at the prosperous turn which affairs had at last taken. The Nicene Creed was the result. Three hundred and eighteen bishops signed it, and five dissented, though ultimately only two of these withstood to the last.

AN EARLY BISHOP SILENCING THE PAGANS.

When Alexander was Bishop of Byzantium, about 314, being then seventy-three years old, he presided at a conference which the Emperor Constantine appointed to be held between the Pagan philosophers and the bishop. The latter was called an apostolic bishop, owing to his reputation for sanctity. And the historians say that on the occasion of the conference he put the spokesman of the Pagans to silence by firmly exclaiming, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I command thee to be silent!" On another occasion the same bishop was an ardent opponent of Arius, who then enjoyed the patronage of the Court party. The Emperor Constantine ordered that Arius should be admitted to the Communion. But Alexander was determined not to admit the heretic, and rather than comply with the royal command shut himself up in the church of Irene for purposes of prayer. Strange to say, Arius died suddenly on the following morning, as he was proceeding in triumph to the cathedral, and the people all believed that this was a judgment on the heretic in answer to the good bishop's prayers.

HOW TO CHALLENGE AND REFUTE A HERETIC.

Gregory of Nyssa relates of Ephraim the Syrian, who died about 373, and who was a most voluminous author, preacher, commentator, and hymn-writer: One Apollinaris had written a treatise in two volumes, containing much that was contrary to Scripture. These volumes he had entrusted to a lady at Edessa, from whom Ephraim obtained a loan of them by pretending that he was a disciple of Apollinaris, and was preparing to defend his views. But before returning them he glued the leaves together, and then challenged the heretic to a public disputation. Apollinaris accepted the challenge, but only so far as to consent to read from these books what he had written, and declining to do more on account of his great age. The controversialists met; but when Apollinaris endeavoured to open the books, he found the leaves so firmly fastened together that the attempt was in vain, and he withdrew, mortified almost to death by his opponent's unworthy triumph.

JULIAN THE APOSTATE.

As there are many examples of kings and emperors converted to the Christian religion, so there is a notable example of one relapsing to the condition of an apostate. Julian the Emperor was brought up as a Christian, and had the repute even of a zealous Christian till he attained the age of twenty, when he took a grudge against the Christians, and resolved to restore, if possible, the worship of the gods as it used to be before the Christian era. He was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, and studied with the Pagan philosophers. He composed an elaborate work against the Christians. To spite the Christians he resolved to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem; but earthquakes, whirlwinds, or fiery eruptions destroyed these attempts. He prohibited the Christians from teaching rhetoric and grammar, and excluded them from offices of trust, ordered the Christian temples to be demolished and the Pagan temples to be rebuilt, and showed an irrepressible dislike to the progress of Christianity. Julian admitted that neither fire nor the sword could change the faith of mankind. He therefore prohibited the putting to death of the Galileans, as he called the Christians. He looked on them as wild, savage, and intractable brutes, or at least poor, blind, misguided creatures, who needed only be left to punish themselves. The Pagans of Antioch received him with rapture; but on entering the temple of Apollo, where he expected to find a magnificent procession, he found only a solitary priest, and a single goose for sacrifice, at the very sight of which parsimonious neglect he was greatly incensed. While he was busy urging on the restoration of Apollo's temple, it took fire, and this the Christians viewed as a judgment; while Julian, on the other hand, attributed it to their malice. He retaliated on the cathedral at Antioch by despoiling it of the sacred vessels. Julian died in battle after two years' enjoyment of the throne, and it was said his last words were, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!" But the most trustworthy accounts state that he died in 363 without remorse, as he had lived without guilt, and delivered an impressive address to his friends, submitting with dignity to the stroke of fate.

HOW JULIAN THE APOSTATE DIED OF WORMS (A.D. 363).

Sozomen relates that Julian, when governor of Egypt, put the presbyter, Theodoret of Antioch, the custodian of the sacred ornaments of the church, to cruel tortures, and then caused him to be slain. Julian then proceeded to the sacrilege of the sacred vases, which he flung upon the ground and sat upon, at the same time uttering incredible blasphemies against Christ; but his impious course was suddenly arrested, for certain parts of his body were turned into corruption, and generated enormous quantities of worms. The physicians confessed that the disease was beyond the reach of their art; but from fear and reverence towards the Emperor, they tried all the resources of medicine. They procured the most costly and the fattest birds, and applied them to the corrupted part, in hope that the worms might be thereby attracted to the surface. But this was of no effect; for, in proportion as some of the worms were thus drawn out, others were generated in the flesh, by which he was ceaselessly devoured, until they put an end to his life. Many believed that this disease was an infliction of Divine wrath visited upon him in consequence of his impiety, and this supposition appears the more probable from the fact that the treasurer of the Emperor, and others of the chief officers of the Court who had persecuted the Church, died in an extraordinary and dreadful manner, as if Divine wrath had been visited upon them.

THEOLOGICAL DISPUTES THE TALK OF THE DAY.

When the Arians and Athanasians, early in the fourth century, were in the height of their controversy about the mysteries of the Trinity, the public also took sides, and things beyond all human comprehension became the fashionable topic of conversation at Court. The dispute spread to the people of high rank, and then pervaded the classes below. Socrates said that a war of dialectics was carried on in every family. Gregory of Nyssa in one of his orations thus graphically described the state of public excitement: "Every corner and nook of the city is full of men who discuss incomprehensible subjects--the streets, the markets, the people who sell old clothes, those who sit at the tables of the money-changers, those who deal in provisions. Ask a man how many pence it comes to, he gives you a specimen of dogmatising on generated and ungenerated beings. Inquire the price of bread, you are answered, 'The Father is greater than the Son, and the Son subordinate to the Father.' Ask if the bath is ready, and you are answered, 'The Son of God was created from nothing.'"

THE GREAT CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE TRINITY.

The controversy between the Arians and the Athanasians exercised the leaders of the Church from the time of Constantine to the Second Ecumenic Council in 381. All the great and commanding minds of the age were with the Trinitarians, each condemning the Arian heresy in his own peculiar way. One leader was Ephraim, the Syrian monk, who wept night and day for the sins of mankind and for his own, and who poured forth verse and prose in defence of orthodoxy. It was said his very writings wept, even his panegyrics and festival homilies flowed with tears. His psalms and hymns, however, animated his monkish companions, and were the occupation and delight of all the earnest believers, and all his thoughts and emotions were rigidly Trinitarian. St. Basil the monk, whose boast it was to be "without wife, without property, without flesh, almost without blood," was equally zealous for the Trinity, and as its champion he was made Archbishop of Cæsarea. St. Gregory of Nazianzen was equally zealous and eloquent in the same cause; and even the Arian monks and virgins were excited to tumults and bloodshed by his exasperating popularity. Chrysostom in the same cause offended the Empress, who was inclined to the Arians. He was banished; but the Empress, on seeing the commotion caused by an earthquake, was afraid, and he was recalled amid the enthusiasm of the whole inhabitants, who went forth to welcome his return. His renewed insults led the Emperor to send his military officers to seize Chrysostom at the altar during the celebration of the Sacrament, and he was carried off. The same night the church took fire, for which his followers were blamed, and he never returned from exile. The cause of the Trinitarians triumphed at last and became the settled faith.

ATHANASIUS ATTACKED IN HIS OWN CHURCH.

Athanasius, the great champion of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, who died in 373, escaped many imminent dangers in his career. When Syrianus, Duke of Egypt, at the head of five thousand soldiers attacked Alexandria in 356, the Archbishop Athanasius was with his clergy and people engaged in their nocturnal devotions. The troops with horrid imprecations battered in the door and interrupted the service; but the archbishop, seated on his throne and expecting the approach of death, merely desired the trembling congregation to chant one of the Psalms of David which celebrates the triumph of the God of Israel over the haughty and impious tyrant of Egypt. When the door was burst in, a cloud of arrows was discharged, and the soldiers with drawn swords rushed forward, their armour gleaming under the lights round the altar. Athanasius refused the importunate prayers of the monks and presbyters who urged him to escape, and insisted on keeping his seat till he had dismissed in safety the last of the congregation. The darkness and tumult of the night favoured his own retreat, though he was thrown down in the crowd and was eagerly searched for by the soldiers, who had been instructed by their Arian guides that the head of Athanasius would be a most acceptable present to the Emperor Constantius, who was zealous for the Arian faction. It was on this occasion that Athanasius was lost sight of for six years, making hairbreadth escapes during all that period.

ATHANASIUS CONCEALED BY A HOLY VIRGIN.

Sozomen says that Athanasius, the champion of orthodoxy, on hearing of the death of Constantius in 362, appeared by night in the church at Alexandria, to the astonishment of his friends. He told them that while his enemies were seeking to arrest him he had concealed himself in the house of a holy virgin in Alexandria. She was only twenty years old, and was of such extraordinary beauty, modesty, and wisdom that the gravest and best men felt indescribable fascination in her presence. It is said that Athanasius was led by the revelation of God to seek refuge in her house, and the result showed that all the events were directed by Providence. The friends and relatives of Athanasius would thus have been preserved from danger had search been made for him amongst them, and had they been compelled to swear that he was not concealed with them. There was nothing to excite suspicion of a bishop being concealed in the house of so lovely a virgin. She had, moreover, the courage to receive him and sufficient prudence to preserve his life. She alone ministered to him and supplied his wants. She washed his feet, brought him food, provided him with the books he wanted, and acted so prudently that during the whole time of his residence with her none of the inhabitants of Alexandria suspected the place of his retreat. The people of Alexandria rejoiced at this unexpected reappearance of Athanasius, and at once restored his churches to him.

AN IMPRESSIVE SERMON ON THE TRINITY.

Alanus de Insulis was a schoolman of immense renown in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He had appointed a certain day to preach on the Blessed Trinity and to give a perfect explanation of that mystery to his auditors. On the preceding day, as he took a solitary walk on the margin of a river, he saw a little boy scooping out a small trench, and trying to fill it with water from a shell; but the water escaped through the sandy bottom as fast as he filled it. "What are you doing, my pretty child?" asked Alanus. The reply was, "I am going to put all the water of the river into my trench." "And when do you think, my child, that you will succeed in this great design?" "Oh," said the child, "I shall succeed before you succeed in yours. For they say you are to explain the Trinity, in your sermon to-morrow, by the rules of science." Alanus was struck with this reply and seized with compunction. He returned home meditating deeply on the child's remarks and his own presumption. On the morrow, when the hour of the sermon arrived, a great crowd assembled. Alanus mounted the pulpit and uttered these words, which were his whole discourse, "It is sufficient, my friends, that you have seen Alanus." He immediately descended and withdrew, leaving the people in astonishment. The same day he left Paris for Burgundy, and repaired to the abbey of Citeaux, where he became a monk, and ended his days in holy offices and far-reaching reflections.

PAGANS PLEADING AGAINST DEMOLISHING TEMPLES.

When the young Emperor Valentinian, who died A.D. 375, was about to carry out the edict of his predecessor and demolish the Pagan temples and remove the statue of Victory, the eloquent prefect of Rome, Symmachus, ventured to remonstrate, and in the Senate he lavished his eloquence in defence of the immortal gods and the religion of his ancestors. He was cautious, dextrous, and conciliatory. He told the Emperor how their old religion had subdued the world to the Roman dominion, that Heaven was above them all, and there were many ways by which we arrive at the great secret. But he presumed not to contend on this occasion; he was a humble suppliant. It would surely be a disgrace to the imperial treasury to be enriched by the paltry saving in the maintenance of the Vestal Virgins and by confiscating legacies bequeathed by the piety of individuals. Yea, the deified father of the Emperor would look down with sorrow from the starry citadel to see the intolerance of that day's proceedings. Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan, was, however, at hand to confront and confute this Pagan harangue. He told the Emperor that ancestors were to be treated with reverence, but that the question now was the right way of treating with God alone. No part of the public revenue must be given to maintain idolatry. He who offered to images would have his offerings returned by the Church with disdain. All the gods of Rome had done nothing for her. It was the courage of the legions, and not the influence of all the false idols, that turned in their favour the issue of battles. Valentinian was murdered before the final step was taken, and his successor hesitated. Ambrose had to fly from Milan, for the soldiery boasted that they would stable their horses in the churches and press the clergy as soldiers. Alaric soon arrived on the scene, the Roman aristocracy became absorbed by the Christianising population, and Paganism at last gradually died out in 493, and the new religion took its place in the old temples.

THE DEFENCE OF THE PAGAN IDOLS.

The ruin of Paganism and its idols took place in the age of the Emperor Theodosius (378-395). The Roman priests, with their robes of purple, chariots of state, and sumptuous entertainments, were the admiration of the people; and they found their great champion and advocate in Symmachus, who in turn was baffled by Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, whose influence caused the Pagan orator to be exiled. On a vote of the Senate as to whether the worship of Jupiter or of Christ should be the religion of the Romans, a large majority condemned Jupiter, and this led to a special committee of officers, who were directed to shut up the temples and destroy the instruments of idolatry. The Sophists who stood by the Pagan religion describe the acts of the Christian image-breakers as a dreadful and amazing prodigy which covered the earth with darkness. They pathetically relate how the Pagan temples were converted into sepulchres, and how the filthy monks polluted holy places with relics of martyrs which were nothing better than the heads--salted and pickled--of those infamous malefactors who, for the multitude of their crimes, had suffered an ignominious death. But the monks triumphed, and the bodies of St. Andrew, St. Luke, and St. Timothy were transported from their obscure graves in solemn pomp and deposited in the Church of the Apostles, which the magnificence of Constantine had founded in Constantinople. The example of Rome and Constantinople confirmed the faith and discipline of the Catholic world; and the influence of this part of the worship of the faithful lasted during the twelve hundred years which elapsed between the reign of Constantine and the reformation of Luther.

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN DEMOLITION OF TEMPLES.

When Theodosius, the Christian Emperor, in 379 made an edict ordering the demolition of idolatrous temples, it filled the Pagans with dismay. Theophilus, the Archbishop of Alexandria, hastened to execute the order. Marching at the head of the military, he entered the proud temple of the god Serapis, to which a hundred steps led up, and magnificent portices and pillars surrounded the spot. There stood the celebrated colossal statue of the god, made of gold, silver, and other metals fused together, and inlaid with precious stones. When the Christians entered the vast deserted building, the centre of adoration for centuries, they stood silent and awestruck, and after a pause of wonder a soldier was ordered to strike the statue on the knee. He did so timidly, for the spectators expected some terrific outburst of thunder and lightning to destroy him instantaneously. There was an echo, but no sign came. The man, being emboldened, then climbed up to the head, and with one blow struck it off and made it roll to the ground. Another pause. Still no sign of insulted godhead; but a large colony of rats, disturbed from their peaceful abode, suddenly leapt out and scampered about in all directions. The multitude, with their high-strung nerves, were prepared for some act of personal vengeance, but at once dissolved with mirth; peals of loud laughter and jests and mockery mingled with the rest of the work. The curious crowd were further gratified by discovering some of the machinery by which the tricks were produced which had so long imposed on their simple faith, such as letting the light through an aperture fall suddenly on the lips of the statue at the right moment, also a magnet in the roof, which kept a small statue suspended in the air. The fragments of the statue of Serapis were zealously dragged through the streets, and the foundations of the walls were rooted up. The Pagans waited in vain for some sequel of god-like retribution to come; but the river Nile flowed on unmindful of its god without any unusual outbreak. And like scenes were repeated in other cities with the same impunity. In some of the earlier demolitions, however, in other parts of the empire the Pagans resisted, and in some cases successfully. The war against the temples began in Syria. One enthusiastic iconoclast, named Marcellus of Apamea, after successfully destroying temples in other neighbouring places, when attacking that in his own district was seized rudely by the inhabitants and burned alive. The synod of Christians, thinking it a glorious death, refused to revenge on the ignorant barbarians their precipitate outrage.

DESTROYING PAGAN TEMPLES TOO ABRUPTLY.

When the Emperor Theodosius in 386 directed the prætorian prefect Cynegius, an ardent supporter of Christianity, to shut up all the Pagan temples, this was not done without great excitement. One Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, a somewhat worldly man, who was rather bent on erecting splendid churches than on carrying out the spirit of Christianity, obtained from the Emperor a gift of a temple of Bacchus, and he proceeded to convert it into a Christian church. He acted most injudiciously, first collecting all the indecent decorations out of that impure place, and ordering these to be carried in a procession through the streets, so as to expose them to the ridicule and contempt of the people. But it had rather a contrary effect, for it roused the fanatical spirit, and caused the mob to create a riot and retaliate on the Christians, driving them off and themselves taking refuge in the magnificent temple of Serapis, the pride of Pagan idolaters. There a fanatical Pagan named Olympius, who was clad in the garb of a philosopher, harangued his followers, and instigated them to fight for the sanctuaries of their fathers. The spirit of the mob rose to fever heat, and the loss of life in these commotions was so great that the Emperor took occasion of it to issue a decree, in which he found it necessary to pardon the ringleaders of the Pagans, but at the same time he directed all the heathen temples at Alexandria to be destroyed, since it was through these that such serious disturbances had been created. And this led, amongst others, to the demolition of the celebrated temple of Serapis, and its conversion into churches and cloisters. After these events it was expected that Paganism would soon die out.

DEMOLISHING AN IMAGE AT THE PALACE.

There was a magnificent image of Christ erected over the bronze portal of the Imperial Palace at Constantinople. The legend was, that Theodore, a wealthy merchant, after losing all his property at sea, went to borrow some capital from a wealthy Jew, who demanded good security. Theodore had nothing of value but an image of Christ, and this he boldly offered as his surety. The Jew was so amused and yet overwhelmed at this simplicity that he agreed to accept it. The result was that the merchant won back all his wealth, and repaid the Jew to the uttermost farthing, and the great image called the Surety was set up. When the imperial decree was published against this and other images, a soldier of the Emperor's guard erected a ladder in order to take it down to be burned. But a crowd of women collected, demanding that the image should be spared; and when they watched the soldier striking his axe at it, they were so maddened with indignation, that they pulled the ladder from under his feet, and caused him to fall, and he was killed. The Emperor sent troops to the spot to drive away the people, and set up a plain cross instead of the image which had so won upon the reverence of the lieges.

ST. MARTIN OF TOURS DEMOLISHING TEMPLES (A.D. 380).

St. Martin of Tours (who died 396) distinguished himself by his zeal and efficiency as a destroyer of the Pagan temples when the word was given to destroy them. The Pagans occasionally used to resist. Once, after demolishing a temple, he was also desirous of cutting down a pine that stood near it. But the Pagans opposed this, and after some argument agreed that they themselves would fell it upon condition that he, who boasted so much of his trust in God, would stand under it where they would place him. The saint consented, and suffered himself to be tied to that side of the tree on which it leaned. When it seemed just ready to fall upon him, he made the sign of the cross, and it fell on the contrary side. Whereupon the Pagans were so astonished that they all upon the spot demanded to be enrolled in his list of catechumens. Another time he was pulling down a temple, when a great number of Pagans fell upon him with fury, and one attacked him sword in hand. The saint, however, merely took off his mantle and presented his bare neck to him, whereupon the Pagan was so terrified that he fell backwards, and begged the saint to forgive him.

THE KING OF THE GOTHS RESPECTS THE CHURCHES.

When Alaric, King of the Goths, besieged Rome the third time, in 410, the Salarian Gate was silently opened by his confederates inside at midnight, and the inhabitants were roused by the piercing sound of the Gothic trumpet. The tribes of Germany and Scythia then rushed in, eager to enrich themselves with the spoils of the great city. Alaric exhorted his troops to respect the churches of the Apostles, St. Peter, and St. Paul. The Goths were impressed, and showed here and there some self-restraint. One barbarian chief burst open the humble dwelling of an aged virgin, demanding all her silver and gold, and was astounded at the readiness with which she conducted him to a splendid hoard of massy plate curiously inwrought, which made the eye of the captor sparkle with delight. But the woman with a confident air said to him, "These are the consecrated vessels belonging to St. Peter; if you presume to touch them, the sacrilegious deed will haunt your conscience. As for me, I dare not keep what I am unable to defend." The captain was awestruck; and after reporting the circumstance to the king, the latter ordered all the consecrated plate and ornaments to be transported without damage or delay to the Church of the Apostles, and a detachment of Goths thereupon marched in battle-array, bearing aloft these sacred treasures amid barbarian shouts and the psalms of rejoicing Christians who joined in the procession. The Goths, in pillaging the city, spared nothing beyond these select vessels of the Church; and gold, jewels, silks, and works of art were piled in waggons for their own spoil. The victorious Goths evacuated the city on the sixth day and marched south, spreading terror and destruction. On reaching Sicily, Alaric's life was cut short, and his funeral was celebrated with barbaric pomp. A small river, Busentinus, that washes the walls of Consentia, was diverted from its course, and in its bed the hero's body with the spoils and trophies of Rome were buried. The prisoners who had been compelled to execute this work were then massacred, and the river was restored to its former channel, so as to conceal for ever the place of burial.

ATTILA, KING OF THE HUNS, IMPRESSED BY THE POPE (A.D. 453).

When Attila, the King of the Huns, was supposed to meditate the invasion of Italy, so great was the consternation that the Senate and people thought it prudent to send a solemn embassy to deprecate the wrath of that ferocious monarch. He listened to the appeal, and the deliverance of Italy was purchased by the immense ransom or dowry of the Princess Honoria. When Attila talked of carrying his victorious arms to the gates of Rome, both friends and foes warned him that Alaric did not long survive the conquest of the Eternal City; but in 453 he carried out his resolution. Meanwhile, Leo, the bishop, was induced to venture his life to endeavour to mollify the conqueror. Leo's eloquence and majestic aspect and sacerdotal robes made an immense impression on the superstitious barbarian. It was said by the chroniclers that the two apostles St. Peter and St. Paul appeared in person on the occasion, and threatened Attila with instant death if he rejected the prayer of their successor. He was much embarrassed; but before he evacuated Italy he still threatened to return more dreadful and implacable if the Princess Honoria were not delivered up to him according to the treaty. Fortunately for Italy, Attila was one night seized with sudden illness, during which a blood-vessel burst and suffocated him in his sleep. After solemnly exposing his body under a silken pavilion, squadrons of Huns wheeled round, chanting a funeral song to his memory. They inclosed his remains in three coffins, of gold, of silver, and of iron, and privately buried him in the night, throwing into his grave the spoils of nations and the bodies of captives massacred for the purpose.

THE VANDALS SACKING ROME AND CAPTURING SACRED VESSELS (455).

When Genseric, King of the Vandals, was secretly invited by the Empress Eudoxia to deliver her from the brutal treatment of the Emperor Maximus, the African galleys brought an army to the mouth of the Tiber. Maximus being, meanwhile, slain in a tumult of his subjects, the Vandals advanced at once to the gates of Rome; but instead of meeting an army, saw only a procession of clergy, headed by the bishop, who by his venerable appearance sought to mitigate the ferocity of the conqueror. Some show of mercy was promised; but the conquerors, nevertheless, were allowed to pillage the city, which they did for fourteen days and nights. Vast spoils were collected, including the splendid relics of the temples, both Pagan and Christian. Magnificent furniture, sideboards of massy plate, and jewels stripped from the persons of the Empress and her daughters were collected and stowed in the ships. Amongst others, the holy instruments of the Jewish worship, the gold table and the gold candlestick with seven branches, originally framed by the direction of God Himself, and which were placed in the sanctuary of His Temple, had been displayed to the Roman people by Titus, and afterwards deposited in the Temple of Peace. These spoils of Jerusalem at the end of four hundred years were transferred from Rome to Carthage by the Vandals. It has been related that the vessel which transported the relics of the Capitol was the only one of the fleet which suffered shipwreck. Thousands of Romans of both sexes, and mostly those skilled in the arts, were included among the captives; and the Bishop of Carthage generously sold the gold and silver plate of his church to relieve them.

JUSTINIAN DRIVING OUT THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS (526).

Though Julian the Apostate, in his zeal to re-establish Paganism, made no great impression, the schools of the Greek philosophers, with their dreamy morality, were not allowed to expire like a worn-out veteran in peaceful dignity. The impatient zeal of the Emperor Justinian in 526 led him to forcibly expel the remnant of the old philosophers from the ancient groves and porches of Athens. Seven followers of Proclus were obliged to find a retreat in Persia; but the Magi there were still more intolerant than the Christians. Philosophy found no resting-place; it found itself supplanted by a new faith, which now domineered over the human mind. Justinian governed the Roman Empire for thirty-eight years (527-565), and great and curious events occurred in his time. The Empress Theodora was daughter of an official called the Master of the Bears, and took to the stage in her youth. Her forte was not to sing or dance or play on the flute, but to act in pantomime and buffoonery, her eyes being bright, and her agile and elegant form drawing down endless applause. She captivated the nephew of the Emperor Justin, young Justinian, whom she married, and she maintained an ascendency over him to the last. She developed into a rapacious and cruel tyrant, and yet patronised many charitable schemes; and her influence and power with the Emperor were unbounded, and many a courtier fell a victim to her caprice. Her physicians at last warned her that her health required her to use the Pythian warm baths. She went there attended by a splendid train of four thousand officials. Highways and palaces were repaired and made ready during the progress. In passing through Bithynia she distributed liberal alms to the churches, the monasteries, and hospitals that they might implore Heaven for the restoration of her health. At last in 548, the twenty-second year of her reign, she was carried away by a cancer.

MAHOMET'S KNOWLEDGE OF CHRISTIANITY (632).

Mahomet's knowledge of and connection with Christianity are inferred from the fact that his favourite slave Zeyd leaned to the Christian faith. And the monk Bahari, who conversed with Mahomet on his first journey with the camel-drivers, who professed to foresee and welcome the future greatness of the prophet, may have communicated many of the traditions of the faith. Though Mahomet was not well acquainted with the canonical gospels, yet the apocryphal gospels with the current traditions of the time were familiar to him. He adopted the legend of the Seven Sleepers at Ephesus, and of the Wandering Jew. Many incidents of ecclesiastical history have analogies in the Koran. There is a priesthood in the sense of men devoted to the interpretation of the Koran. The saints are also venerated, and pilgrims make annual visitations. The ceremonial rites are even more mechanical than are to be found in any portion of the Christian Church.

THE OAK OF GEISMAR DEMOLISHED (724).

When St. Boniface was sent as a missionary by the Pope in 724 to convert the Germans, they were found grovelling in Pagan superstition, putting their faith in sacred groves and fountains. The missionary, when made a bishop, determined to strike a blow at this creed. There was an old and venerable oak of immense size in the grove of Geismar, in Upper Hesse, hallowed for ages to Thor, the thunder-god. Attended by all the clergy, Boniface, who felt that one visible ark of sacred confidence must be replaced by another, went publicly forth to fell this tree. The Pagans assembled in multitudes to behold a trial of strength between the rival gods. They awaited the issue in profound silence, some expecting that the sacrilegious axe would recoil on the impious Christians. But only a few blows had been struck when a sudden wind was heard in the groaning branches, and down it came toppling, and split into four pieces. The shuddering Pagans at once bowed before the superior might of Christianity. Boniface at once built out of the wood a chapel dedicated to St. Peter. After this churches and monasteries sprang up, and zealous labourers from England flocked to help in civilising the Teutonic race. Eadberga, the abbess of Minster, in the isle of Thanet, sent presents of clothes and books. Boniface was then made a metropolitan, with his throne at Mentz, on the Rhine, and Christianity spread from that time throughout that district, and it was by his hand that Pepin the Little was anointed king. In his old age Boniface descended the Rhine in a boat towards the Zuyder Zee. He took with him a shroud, in which his body might be wrapped and sent back to Fulda in Hesse in case of accident. It proved that the Pagan priests attacked him, and then, laying his head upon a volume of the gospels, he received the fatal blow, being killed in 755, and his seventy-fifth year.

THE POPE DEFENDING ROME AGAINST FOREIGNERS (742).

When Luitprand, the Lombard King, was conquering Italy in 742, and was approaching Rome, Pope Zacharias went and met him at Terni, surrounded with a courtly array of bishops. He chose the church of St. Valentine for the place of meeting; and the Pope, availing himself of the solemnity of the building, and reminding the king of the last account and the damnation that must await him, made such an impression that the king was overawed and agreed to a treaty, making the concessions asked; and the Pope, after a solemn service in church, ended by inviting the king to a banquet. But ten years later another Pope (Stephen) was less successful with the next Lombard king, Astolph. The Pope's ambassadors were received and listened to, but nothing more. The king did not stay his career, but approached Rome. Not all the Litanies, not all the solemn processions to the most revered altars of the city, in which the Pope himself with naked feet bore the cross and the whole people followed with ashes on their heads, and with a wild howl of agony implored the protection of God against the blaspheming Lombards, arrested for an instant his progress. The Pope appealed to Heaven by tying a copy of the treaty violated by Astolph to the holy cross. Astolph entered notwithstanding; and, strange to say, while he remained he busied himself digging up the bodies of saints, not for insult, but as the most precious trophies, and carried them off as tutelar deities to Lombardy. At the same time the Pope was making a journey to King Pepin of France, and there met with a warm reception, which led to many future favours from that quarter.

THE FORGED DECRETALS ABOUT CONSTANTINE (795).

Pope Adrian I., who died 795, in his troubles with emperors and kings, finding Charlemagne a rising power, wrote a letter to him exhorting him to imitate the liberality and revive the name of the great Constantine. He used for that purpose a legend for which he vouched, and which was to this effect: The first of the Christian emperors was healed of the leprosy, and purified in the waters of baptism by St. Sylvester, the Roman bishop, and the physician was gloriously recompensed, for that emperor withdrew from the seat and patrimony of St. Peter, declared his resolution of founding a new capital in the East, and resigned to the Popes the free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West. By this plausible story it was made to appear that the Popes were made by the best of titles supreme; and such were the ignorance and credulity of the times, that this absurd fable was received with equal reverence in Greece and France. It turned out that the story was a forgery concocted near the end of the eighth century by one Isidore, a scribe. It was, nevertheless, accepted and handed down as a magna charta of papal rights, until some opposition to its authenticity proceeded from a Sabine monastery about 1100. In the revival of letters, an eloquent critic and Roman patriot, named Laurentius Valla, who died 1457, completed the exposure of the forgery, to the amazement of his contemporaries, and before the end of the next age the imposture was rejected with the contempt of all the historians. But it served its purpose. As Gibbon observes, "The Popes themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar, but a false obsolete title still sanctifies their reign; and by the same fortune which has attended these forged decretals, and the Sibylline oracles, the edifice has subsisted after the foundations have been undermined."

POPE NICOLAS AND THE FALSE DECRETALS (867).

One of the clever stratagems by which Pope Nicolas I., who died in 867, tried to establish his supremacy over the whole world in all things spiritual was the promulgation of the false decretals. This Pope was said to have tamed kings and tyrants, and to have ruled the world like a sovereign. A rebel Transalpine prelate, Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, had disputed the jurisdiction of the Pope, but was compelled to submit. On a sudden, at the nick of time, there was promulgated a new code, including thirty-nine (false) decrees of Popes and councils. These not only asserted the supremacy of the Pope, his dignity and privileges, but included a whole system of Church discipline on Church property, sacraments, festivals, rites, and ceremonies. The whole is composed with an air of profound piety and reverence, and a specious purity of tone. But for the too manifest design, the aggrandisement of the whole clergy in subordination to the See of Rome; but for the monstrous ignorance of history, which betrayed itself in glaring anachronisms, and in the utter confusion of the order of events and the lives of distinguished men--the former awakening keen and jealous suspicion, the latter making the detection of the spuriousness of the whole easy, clear, irrefragable--the false decretals might still have maintained their place in ecclesiastical history. They are now given up by all; not a voice is raised in their favour. The utmost done is to palliate the guilt of the forger, who fortunately is unknown.

SEPARATION OF THE GREEK AND LATIN CHURCHES (1054).

The restoration of the Western Empire by Charlemagne was speedily followed by the permanent separation of the Greek and Latin Churches. About 850 Photius, an ambitious layman and captain of the guards, was promoted to the office of Patriarch of Constantinople, thereby superseding Ignatius, who had a large following. Both appealed to Pope Nicolas I., a proud and aspiring pontiff, who embraced the welcome opportunity of judging and condemning his rival of the East. The patriarch had the aid of his own court, and deposed the Pope; but in turn he and his patrons lost ground, and the original patriarch, Ignatius, was restored. Thereafter the feud continued more or less fiercely, till at last, in 1054, the then patriarch was excommunicated in Constantinople by the Pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema, which enumerated seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and consigned the Eastern Church, its teachers and sectaries, to everlasting damnation. Though the forms of civility thereafter were sometimes maintained, the Greeks never recanted the errors and the Popes never repealed their sentence. This aversion of the Greeks and Latins was nourished and manifested in the three first expeditions to the Holy Land. The Eastern Christians never gave a cordial welcome to the Crusaders, and rather treated them as schismatics, and sometimes took part in thwarting them. In 1183 the Greeks carried out a massacre, in which the Latins were slaughtered in houses and streets, their clergy burnt in the churches, and the sick in their hospitals. The Greek monks and priests actually chanted a thanksgiving to the Lord when the head of a Roman cardinal, the Pope's legate, was severed from his body, fastened to the tail of a dog, and dragged in savage mockery through the city.

EARLY CONTENTIONS OF JEW AND CHRISTIAN.

In the fourth century, after miraculous powers ceased to attend the progress of Christianity, and a system of wonder-working was established, the Jews, who had long watched with jealousy the advance of their rivals, began to think that they could also become adepts in pious frauds. Next one party took to magical arts as weapons of superiority. A conference is said to have taken place in the presence of Constantine and the devout empress-mother Helena between the Jews and the Christians. Pope Sylvester had already triumphed in argument over his infatuated opponents, when the Jews had recourse to magic. A noted enchanter commanded an ox to be brought forward; he whispered into the ear of the animal, which instantly fell dead at the feet of Constantine. The Jews shouted in triumph, for it was the word Ham-semphorash, the ineffable name of God, at the sound of which the awestruck beast had expired. Sylvester, with some shrewdness, observed, "As he who whispered the name must be well acquainted with it, why does not he fall dead in like manner?" The Jews answered contemptuously, "Let us have no more verbal disputations; let us come to actions." "So be it," said Sylvester; "and if this comes to life again at the name of Christ, will ye believe?" They all assented. Sylvester then raised his eyes to heaven, and said with a loud voice, "If He be the true God whom I preach, in the name of Christ arise, you ox, and stand on your feet." The ox sprang up and began to move and feed. The legend then adds that the whole assembly was baptised.

JULIAN INCITING THE JEWS TO REBUILD THE TEMPLE.

Sozomen says that, though Julian the Apostate hated and oppressed the Christians, he was benevolent to the Jews merely in order to spite the Christians. He commanded the Jews to rebuild their Temple at Jerusalem, and gave them money to do so. They entered on the undertaking without reflecting that according to their holy prophets it could not be accomplished. They sought the most skilful artisans, collected materials, cleared the ground, and entered so earnestly on the task that even the women carried heaps of earth and sold their ornaments towards defraying the expense. Yet when they cleared the ground an earthquake occurred, and stones were thrown up from the earth, wounding those near, and houses were thrown down. After the earthquake the workmen returned to the task; and instead of regarding the unexpected wonder as a manifest indication that God was opposed to the re-creation of the Temple, they were consumed by a fire which burst from the foundations. This fact is related by all the contemporaries, who agree that the fire burst out either from the foundations or from the bowels of the earth. A still more extraordinary prodigy occurred, for the sign of the cross appeared on the garments of the workmen. These crosses were disposed like stars, and appeared the work of art. Many were hence led to confess that Christ was God, and repented and were baptised.

CHRISTIANS HATING THE JEWS.

Southey says, "That the primitive Christians should have regarded the Jews with hostile feelings as their first persecutors was but natural, and that that feeling should have been aggravated by a just and religious horror for the crime which has drawn upon this unhappy nation its abiding punishment. But it is indeed strange that during so many centuries this enmity should have continued to exist, and that no sense of compassion should have mitigated it. For the Jews to have inherited the curse of their fathers was in the apprehension of ordinary minds to inherit their guilt; and the cruelties which man inflicted upon them were interpreted as proofs of the continued wrath of Heaven, so that the very injuries and sufferings which in any other case would have excited commiseration served in this to close the heart against it. Being looked on as God's outlaws, they were everywhere placed, as it were, under the ban of humanity. And while these heart-hardening prepossessions subsisted against them in full force, the very advantages of which they were in possession rendered them more especial objects of envy, suspicion, and popular hatred."

THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM (A.D. 800).

The Jews seemed never to be so prosperous as in the age of Pepin and Charlemagne (about 768-800). The laws were not enforced against them, and they were practically free from restrictions, except as to keeping Christian slaves and following the law of dower. Bishops, abbots, and abbesses were only prevented by heavy penalties from pledging or selling to the circumcised the costly vestments, rich furniture, and precious vessels of the churches. Jews became physicians, ministers of finance to nobles and monarchs; and when Charlemagne sent an embassy to Caliph Haroun al Raschid, a Jew was sent with two Christian counts as ambassadors, and as they died on the road he conducted the business and brought back costly presents, including an enormous elephant, which the monks of the period described as a wonder of the world. The monks also described the accomplishments of a Jew physician named Zedekiah, who was a confidential adviser of Louis the Débonnaire or the Pious. They relate that he could swallow a whole cart of hay and fly in the air. The toleration and equal treatment of Jews and Christians greatly shocked Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, who issued edicts to his people prohibiting their intercourse. But on appeal the king ordered an inquiry, and the edicts were withdrawn. About the same time in Spain, from the conquest by the Moors till the end of the tenth century, the Jews enjoyed nearly equal laws; and one Moses, their rabbi, became wealthy and influential; and when his grandson Nathan enjoyed a drive in the groves near Cordova, seven hundred chariots joined in the procession that followed him.

THE POPE AND THE JEWS (1140).

Various Christian countries for centuries maintained laws making it necessary that Jews should wear a particular dress or badge to distinguish them. They were always viewed by Christian communities with suspicion. One of the common accusations against them was that of crucifying children, after scourging them and crowning them with thorns; and this they were suspected of doing annually. This was said to be done out of hatred to the Christian religion, and it was even alleged that the Jews received the heart of the sacrificed child at their own Communion. The Jews were also accused of scourging crucifixes and profaning images and crosses. These and other imputations were adroitly used as pretexts for confiscating the wealth of the Jews. One remarkable badge of subjection and suspicion took its rise in the twelfth century--namely, the conduct of the Jews at the installation of a new Pope. They are obliged to wait for the Pontiff on the road to St. John de Lateran, and there on their knees they present him with a copy of their Law. On receiving this, the Pope thus addresses them: "I revere the law which God gave to Moses, but condemn the false sense you give it by vainly expecting the Messiah who has been long come, and whom the Church believes to be Jesus Christ our Lord." This custom took its rise when Pope Innocent II., on his retreat to France, made his entry into Paris, on which occasion the Jews went to meet him with great solemnity, and in a very respectful manner presented him with the holy books of their Law.

THE JEWS OF YORK DEFENDING THEMSELVES (1189).

A time of monstrous persecution and cruelty towards the Jews was the coronation of Richard I. in 1189. One Benedict, a York Jew, to save his life had submitted to baptism in London, but died of injuries received during a riot there. The people of York, equally excited, attacked Benedict's house there, and his wife and children took refuge in the Castle with their valuable effects. Other Jews being with them, all at last suspected that the governor was in treaty with their enemies to surrender them, and while the governor was temporarily absent they shut the gates against him. This made the populace frantic, and eager to enter and despatch them. A canon urged the mob on; and at last a rabbi, seeing the hopelessness of their situation, addressed his fellow Jews as follows: "Men of Israel, the God of our fathers calls upon us to die for our Law. Death is inevitable, but we may yet choose whether we will die speedily and nobly, or ignominiously, after horrible torments. My advice is that we shall voluntarily render up our souls to our Creator, and fall by our own hands. The deed is both reasonable and according to the Law, and is sanctioned by the example of our most illustrious ancestors." The old man sat down in tears. The assembly was divided, but debated; and finally, while a few left the place, the great majority made up their minds to die. They collected their precious effects into a pile and burnt them. They then cut the throats of their wives and children. The rabbi and Joachim were the last to suffer; but one slew the other and then himself. Next morning the mob broke in, only to find the fire burning in all quarters, and they took care to have all the bonds and obligations and money securities of the dead men burned in an enormous bonfire. No proper punishment was ever inflicted on the ringleaders who thus caused the death of seven or eight hundred persons, though some of the ringleaders were arrested.

JEWS ATTEMPTING TO CRUCIFY AN ENGLISH BOY.

Matthew Paris says: "About 1240 the Jews circumcised a Christian boy at Norwich, and after he was circumcised they called him Jurnim; they then kept him to crucify him, in contempt of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The father of the boy, however, from whom the Jews had stolen him, after a diligent search at length discovered him confined in custody of the Jews, and with a loud cry he pointed out his son, whom he believed lost, shut up in a room of one of the Jews' houses. When this extraordinary crime came to the knowledge of William de Kele, the bishop, a wise and circumspect prelate, and of some other nobles, in order that such an insult to Christ should not be passed over unpunished through the neglect of the Christians, all the Jews of that city were made prisoners; and when they wished to place themselves under the protection of the royal authority, the bishop said, 'These matters belong to the Church; and when the question raised is concerning circumcision and insult to religion, it is not to be decided by the King's Court.' Four of the Jews therefore, having been found guilty of the aforesaid crime, were first dragged at the tails of horses, and afterwards hung on a gibbet, where they breathed forth the wretched remains of life."

JEWS CRUCIFYING AN ENGLISH BOY (1255).

Matthew Paris also says that in 1255 some Jews of Lincoln stole a boy of eight years, shut him up in a room, fed him on milk, and then sent to all the cities in England where Jews lived to come and be present at a sacrifice to take place at Lincoln, when a boy was to be crucified. A great many Jews attended, and one was appointed to take the place of Pilate, who subjected the boy to divers tortures. They beat him till blood flowed and he was quite livid; they crowned him with thorns, derided him, and spat upon him. Then he was pierced by each of them with a wood knife, was made to drink gall, was overwhelmed with reproaches and blasphemies, and was repeatedly called "Jesus, the false prophet," by his tormentors, who surrounded him, grinding and gnashing their teeth. At last they crucified him, and pierced him to the heart with a lance, took down his body from the cross, disembowelled him, and used his body to practise magical operations, and then threw it into a well. The boy's mother began tracing the boy to a Jew's house, and excited the compassion of the citizens by her suspicions. A wise man, John of Lexington, encouraged the hue and cry with his eloquence, and one or two Jews were arrested, and a pardon offered if confession were made. One Jew professed then to confess that the Jews crucified a boy every year as an insult to the name of Jesus. The boy's body was afterwards found in the well, and exposed to the gaze of the citizens. The canons of the cathedral inquired into it, and the king was informed. The Jew who confessed was tied to a horse's tail and dragged to the gallows; and at a later day eighteen wealthy Jews were also hanged, and others imprisoned to await a like fate, though it was said that some indiscreet minor brethren interceded for them.

JEWS BLAMED FOR THE BLACK DEATH IN 1347.

The disease known as the Black Death first appeared at Constantinople in 1347, and soon spread along the north of the Black Sea, then to Sicily, Marseilles, France, Italy, and Spain. The black patches on the skin and the pestilential breath of the sick, who spat blood, carried contagion far and near. There were also atmospheric disturbances, deluges of rain, and earthquakes. In England in 1349 the Parliament was prorogued on account of this plague. The Princess Joan, daughter of Edward III., then on her way to marry the eldest son of the King of Castile, caught the disease at Bordeaux and died. Wicliff, then a student at Oxford, wrote a book on "The Last Age of the Church," in which it was predicted that the end of the world would be in 1400 at latest. The effect on people was twofold. Some lived more temperately, while others gave themselves up to revelling and drinking. The Flagellants, as a new religious order, went about scourging and being scourged, as a means of propitiating Heaven, and singing psalms and ringing bells. Some started the theory that the Jews were the cause of this disease, and many were put to death (as was mentioned ante, p. 90). Labourers, from the scarcity, demanded higher wages, and under Wat Tyler many joined in a local rebellion.

JEWS STEALING THE HOST TO INSULT IT (1350).

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the German Jews were subject to frequent spoliations and massacres. The sect of Flagellants, who, with mad enthusiasm, passed through the cities of Germany, preceded by a crucifix and scourging their naked and bleeding backs, used, as they said, to atone for their own transgressions by plundering and murdering as many Jews as they could in Frankfort and other places. The Jews were thus hunted through all Germany, Silesia, Brandenburg, Bohemia, Lithuania, and Poland. As a justification for this systematic cruelty, the following legend was circulated and believed in most countries: A certain Jew, named Jonathan of Enghien, desired to possess himself of the consecrated Host in order to treat it with sacrilegious insult. He bribed a desperado, named John of Louvain, to procure the sacred symbol. John mounted by night into the chapel of St. Catherine, stole the pyx, with the sacred contents, and conveyed it to Jonathan. The latter assembled his friends, who most impiously met and blasphemed and pierced it with knives. At that time Jonathan was advised for safety to migrate to Brussels; and there, in the synagogue, the Jews treated the Host with every insult, piercing it with knives, and though blood flowed forth the obdurate unbelievers, unmoved, continued their insults. They next sent the treasure to Cologne for similar treatment; but having entrusted it to a woman whose conscience smote her, she betrayed them to the clergy. The consequence was that the Jews were arrested, put to the torture, convicted, and sentenced to be torn with red-hot pincers and then burnt alive. This memorable act of vengeance was said to be justified by many miracles that were worked in Brussels, the place of punishment.

BANQUETING WITH THE JEWS (1478).

Though the Jews were often treated with gross cruelty and injustice in the Middle Ages, they sometimes had it in their power to retaliate. The Jews, often acquiring great wealth, defied the clergy and refused to pay tithe. It was often a question whether the clergy should admit servants of the Jews to baptism. Once large numbers of bishops forbade Christians, under pain of excommunication, to frequent the banquets of the Jews. In 1478 one Francis de Pizicardis, a great and cruel usurer, was buried in the Church of St. Francis in Placentia. It happened to rain torrents during many days, till a report spread through the city that it would never cease as long as the said body was in holy ground. The young men of the city in a body, as if convoked by the bishop, went to the church, burst open the gates, dug up the body, and dragged it by a cord through all the streets of the city. And as they passed the house of one old woman, she ran out and insulted it, saying, "Give me back my eggs!" for she had given him two fresh eggs every day as interest for a ducat which she owed him. At length the body was dragged out of the city, suspended from a willow tree, and finally thrown into the Po. And, strange to say, according to the annalist, the rain then ceased. Some Polish rulers were so indebted to the Jews that, in order to keep their creditors quiet, they favoured the Jewish merchants more than the Christian.

TORQUEMADA'S ZEAL AGAINST SPANISH JEWS (1492).

After the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella had succeeded in driving the Moors from Spain, and when at last they had agreed to send Columbus on his expedition to the New World, the clergy inflamed the minds of the sovereigns and the Inquisition against the Jews, who obstinately resisted all efforts to convert them. While the Jews were negotiating with the sovereign to avert this odium, Torquemada, the Inquisitor-General, burst into the apartment of the palace, and, drawing a crucifix from under his mantle, held it up, and exclaimed, "Judas Iscariot sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. Your Highnesses would sell Him anew for thirty thousand. Here He is; take Him and barter Him away." So saying, this demon priest threw the crucifix on the table, and left the apartment. The royal pair were overawed, and their superstitious forebodings were so effectually worked upon that they signed, in 1492, the edict for the expulsion of the Jews which caused so much misery. The Jews, who were then estimated to be about six hundred and fifty thousand, resolved to abandon the country and sacrifice all rather than their religion. They had to sell their property for a trifle, owing to the market being glutted. A house would be sold for an ass and a vineyard for a piece of cloth. Some Jews swallowed their jewels; others tried to conceal them in clothes and saddles. Some ships carrying the fugitives were visited by the plague. Those suffered all the miseries of hunger who travelled by land, and many sold their children for bread. Some were cast naked and desolate on the African coast. Some tried to escape into Portugal; and King Joan II. drove a hard bargain, fixing a high capitation tax, which his tax-gatherers lined the frontiers in order to collect. This was only for permission to pass through the country and embark for Africa. The new king, Emanuel, acted still more brutally, and ordered all Jewish children to be kidnapped and torn from their parents' arms, in order to be brought up in the Catholic faith. The Dominicans watched, during these years of massacre and pillage, the moment when a Jewish person was visible, rushed forth with crucifix in their hands to hunt and roast the offender, and for this brutal work of merit the reward was said to be that the sufferings in purgatory should be confined to a hundred days. This expulsion of Jews seriously marred the national prosperity.

THE PREJUDICE AGAINST JEWISH PHYSICIANS.

Southey says that nothing exposed the Jews to more odium, in ages when they were held most odious, than the reputation which they possessed as physicians. So late as the middle of the sixteenth century, Francis I., after a long illness, finding no benefit from his own physicians, despatched a courier to Spain, requesting Charles V. to send him the most skilful Jewish practitioner in his dominions. This afforded matter for merriment to the Spaniards. No Jewish physician being heard of, a Christian one was sent, but was dismissed without a trial; and at last a Jew came from Constantinople, who, however, prescribed nothing more for the royal patient than asses' milk. This reputation of the Jewish physicians was said to be founded on the notion that they had stores of knowledge not accessible to other people, especially as to all the drugs known in the East. Yet at the same time there were tales as to the disreputable knowledge they had, such as killing Christian children to use their fat as cosmetics. The conduct of the Romish Church tended to strengthen this obloquy. Several councils of the Church denounced excommunication against any persons who should place themselves under the care of a Jewish physician; for it was said to be pernicious and scandalous that Christians, who ought to despise and hold in horror the enemies of their holy religion, should have recourse to them for remedies in sickness. The decree of the Lateran Council, by which physicians were enjoined under heavy penalties to require that their patients should confess and communicate before they administered any medicines to them, seems to have been designed as much against Jewish practitioners as heretical patients. The Jews on their part were not more charitable, and used to forbid rabbis to attend upon either a Christian or Gentile unless he dared not refuse, and above all never to attend such patients gratuitously.

A HOLY FATHER CONVERTING A JEW (1600).

In the seventeenth century one Engelberger, a Bohemian Jew, was sentenced to imprisonment for stealing the plate from a synagogue at Prague. In prison he became a great reader; and a holy Father, who visited him and took an interest in him, promised him not only absolution but a considerable reward if he would renounce his faith. He did so, and was received into the Church, thereby drawing on him the contempt and vengeance of the other Jews, and the praise and congratulation of the Christians. He published a book vindicating his conversion, became a favourite of high society, and was invited to Vienna, where he was well received by the Emperor Ferdinand III. But the convert by degrees was suspected of hypocrisy; and on the first opportunity he robbed the royal treasury, and after trial was condemned to death. He again affected sincere piety and contrition, expecting that his sentence would be remitted. But at the last moment, being told the contrary, and while receiving the last Sacrament on the scaffold, he spat the sacred wafer from his mouth; he shouted to the mob that he deserved his fate for abjuring the faith of Moses, and he called on them to bear witness that he died in the faith of the patriarchs. The mob, who had formerly almost deified the renegade, were now enraged at this insult to the Catholic faith, and wanted to tear him to pieces; but he was withdrawn for a few days. He was then again exposed, and drawn on a hurdle through the streets of Vienna. And a more diabolical sentence had meanwhile been passed. His right hand was first cut off; his tongue torn from his mouth; he was suspended from the gallows with his head downward, and dogs were allowed to tear him to pieces; and then his dead body was thrown into the Danube. An inscription in the Guildhall at Vienna records the date of this appalling example of religious fanaticism.

THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT IMAGE WORSHIP (A.D. 726).

The mode in which the great controversy about worship of images in churches arose was said to be as follows: A hermit had sent to Gregory the Great, who was appointed Pope in 589, for an image of Christ and other religious symbols. The latter sent him a picture of Christ and the Virgin Mary, also of St. Peter and St. Paul, and added some observations as to the right use of images. The Pope observed that, though it was grounded in man's nature that he should seek to represent things invisible by means of the visible, yet the representations were not to be worshipped as God, but only used to enkindle the love of Him whose image was present to the eye. About that time country bishops reported that the worship of images was spreading, and that those opposed to that tendency demolished them and cast them out of churches. Parties began to be formed on both sides. In the Greek Church the church books had long been ornamented with pictures of Christ, of the Virgin, and the Saints; and private houses and household furniture also had like embellishments. There were legends connected with each. Some prostrated themselves whenever they approached within sight of these symbols. The most noted and determined enemy of images was the Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, who was full of zeal, and paid small respect to what he thought to be wrong. He was very arbitrary. He forced the Jews to receive baptism, which only made them more and more tenacious of their antipathy. He also forced the Montanists to join the dominant Church, and this so enraged them that they burned themselves in their own churches. Leo's first ordinance of 726 forbade any kind of reverence to be paid to images or pictures, and any prostration or kneeling. One bishop in defence attributed miracles which were wrought to these images, and said he knew from his personal experience this was not a delusion; moreover, an image of Mary at Sozopolis, in Posidia, distilled balsam, as was well attested. In short, party spirit ran high, and at last a great champion of images arose, named John of Damascus. Leo waged war against images for twelve years, until his death. His son Constantine was as zealous an iconoclast as his father; but great disturbances were caused by his proceedings. In 754 he convoked a council of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops, who agreed with the Emperor. They denounced the wretched painters who with profane hands attempted to depict the sacred feelings of the heart, and laid down the rule of faith to be, that there was only one true image or symbol, which was the bread and wine used in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Painting was described as a Pagan, godless art, which degraded the Divine Majesty; and whoever in future should manufacture an image to worship it either in church or dwelling-house should, if an ecclesiastic, be deposed; if a monk or a layman, he should be expelled from the communion of the Church. An anathema was pronounced accordingly against all images. Though the council by a majority so decided, yet the monks as a body were equally zealous and determined to resist all attempts to do away with images. It was said the monk Stephen was thrown into prison for his zeal in favour of images; he refused to touch the food which the gaoler's wife secretly brought to him, until she secretly assured him that she kept a casket in her own chamber containing several images of Divine persons, and which she showed to the monk to reassure him of her genuine devotion. Constantine, during the thirty years of his reign, flattered himself that he had struck a final blow at image worship; but after his death the next emperor married Irene, an Athenian lady, who was an unscrupulous supporter of images, and she cunningly brought about a reaction and restored things to their former footing.

THE ICONOCLASTS AND THEIR FIRST REVOLT.

Thus a strong feeling grew up, maintained by the Emperor Leo, the Isaurian, that the Christians were going to an excess in their worship of images, and the contest raged for a hundred and twenty-five years, and led to bloodshed and civil war. The precise occasion of this revolt is not known with certainty; and it was thought afterwards to be unfortunate, for Christians at that time were called upon rather to combine against Mohammedanism than think of dividing their forces. When Leo had reigned ten years, he issued in 726 a prohibition against the worship of all statues and pictures of the Saviour, the Virgin, and the Saints; and all statues and pictures were to be raised sufficiently high that they could not receive pious kisses. Soon after a second edict was issued, commanding the total destruction of all images and the whitewashing of the walls of churches. The clergy and monks were driven to absolute fury by this tyrannical measure. An imperial officer had orders to destroy a statue of our Saviour in a church in Constantinople, an image renowned for its miracles. The crowd (as stated ante, p. 112), consisting chiefly of women, saw with horror the officer mount the ladder. Thrice he struck with his impious axe the holy countenance which had so benignly looked down upon them. Heaven interfered not; but the women seized the ladder, threw down the officer, and beat him to death with clubs. The Emperor sent his troops to put down the riot, and a frightful massacre ensued; but the image worshippers were viewed as martyrs, and cheerfully encountered mutilation and banishment, while the Emperor was denounced as worse than a Saracen. The Pope prohibited the Italians from paying tribute to the Emperor, and wrote letters defending the practice of the Church. He alludes to that practice as including pictures of the miracles, of the Virgin with choirs of angels, of the Last Supper, the Transfiguration, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and other like subjects. The Pope's letter, however, had no effect.

JOHN OF DAMASCUS, CHAMPION OF IMAGES (A.D. 756).

The great champion who rose to defend image worship against Leo, the iconoclast, was John of Damascus, the most learned man in the East, and a subject of the Sultan. The ancestors of John, when that city was taken by the Mohammedans, had remained faithful Christians; but, being wealthy and respectable, were employed by the Sultan in high judicial posts. One day, when John's father was a judge, a Christian monk, named Cosmas, was about to be executed, and was weeping and bewailing so much that he was asked why he, a monk, should so earnestly plead for his life. The monk answered that he did not weep so much for losing life as for the treasures of knowledge that would be buried with him, for he knew nearly everything under the sun--rhetoric, logic, philosophy, geometry, music, astronomy, theology. All he wanted was some heir who could inherit this vast patrimony of knowledge, so that he might not go down to the tomb an unprofitable servant. John's father saw at once that this was a remarkable monk, begged his life, and made him tutor to his son; and in due course the son John became, under such tuition, the greatest master of knowledge extant, as the monk took care to assure the grateful father. With these accomplishments John of Damascus entered the lists in due course, and composed three immortal orations in favour of image worship, in which all the learning of the world was brought to bear upon that delicate subject. The Emperor being indignant at John's oration, procured a letter to be forged in a similar handwriting, containing a proposal to betray his native city of Damascus to the Christians, and purporting to be signed by John. This letter was sent by the Emperor to the Sultan with specious friendly comments. The result was that John's right hand was cut off for his wicked treason. John, however, entreated the Virgin to restore his hand; and after kneeling before her image and praying fervently, he fell asleep, and when he woke his hand was restored and was as well as ever. This astonished and convinced the Sultan, who reinstated John at once in all his honours. These orations, while containing some puerile matter, are distinguished for zeal and ingenuity. John of Damascus maintained that pictures were great standing memorials of triumph over the devil; that whoever destroys these memorials is a friend of the devil; that to reprove material images is Manicheism, as betraying the hatred of matter, which is the first tenet of that odious heresy; and that it was a kind of Docetism too, asserting the unreality of the body of the Saviour. In support of his doctrine John concluded by citing a copious list of miracles wrought by certain images. This question of images was so serious a disturbance that a council met, called the Third Council of Constantinople, in 746; and three hundred and forty-eight bishops attended, and all these united in condemning images and excommunicating those who set them up. The Empress Irene, however, afterwards favoured the image worshippers; and in 787 another council, called the Second Council of Nicæa, again considered the subject; and three hundred and eighty-seven bishops and monks came to a decision the reverse of the decision of the former council. Succeeding emperors, however, again favoured the iconoclasts, till the Empress Theodora, in 842, at last restored the images and made the clergy happy. They all then met and held a solemn festival, marching with processions of crosses, torches, and incense to the church of St. Sophia, in Constantinople. They made the circuit of the church, and bowed to every statue and picture; and the heresy of the iconoclasts was extinguished for ever from that time.

JOHN OF DAMASCUS AND HIS TAUNTS.

John of Damascus, the champion of image worship, in his many eloquent discourses in support of it, sneered at Leo's arbitrary decrees against what was noticed to be a rising influence among the nations of the West. "You have only to go," said John, "into the schools where the children are learning to read and write, and tell them you are the persecutor of images, and they would instantly throw their tablets at your head. Even the ignorant would teach you what you would not learn from the wise." "Men," he further said, "spent their estates to have these sacred stories represented in paintings. Husbands and wives took their children by the hand, others led youths and strangers from Pagan lands, to these paintings, where they could point out to them the sacred stories with the finger, and so edify them as to lift their hearts and minds to God; but you hinder poor people from doing all this, and teach them to find their amusements in harp-playing and flute-playing, in carousals and buffoonery."

CLAUDIUS OF TURIN AGAINST IMAGES AND PILGRIMAGES.

Claudius of Turin, a bishop who flourished about 795-839, was great in censuring the gross superstition attaching to the use of the cross and pilgrimages. Though a chaplain of King Louis I. of France, who became emperor, he devoted himself to purifying the ritual of the Church by writing commentaries on the Scriptures and exposing the abuses of image worship. He said those who worship the images of the saints have not forsaken idols, but changed their names. Whether the walls of churches are painted with figures of St. Peter and St. Paul or of Jupiter and Saturn, the latter are not gods, and the former are not apostles. Better worship the living than the dead. If the works of God's hands, the stars of heaven, are not to be worshipped, much less ought the works of human hands to be worshipped. Whoever seeks from any creature in heaven or on earth the salvation which he should seek from God alone is an idolater. Those who pretend to honour the memory of Christ's passion forget His resurrection. If one must worship every piece of wood bearing the image of the cross because Christ hung on the cross, for the same reason one should worship many other things with which Christ came in contact while living in the flesh. God has commanded us to bear the cross, not to adore it. Those are not adoring it who are unwilling to bear it either spiritually or bodily. In like manner it is foolish in people, and an undervaluing of spiritual instruction, to be always striving to go to Rome in order to obtain everlasting life. It is vain to ascribe so much merit to pilgrimages, and forget the seal of true penitence in the soul. One gets no nearer to St. Peter by finding himself on the spot where his body was buried, for the soul is the real man. In this manner Claudius displayed his aversion to the monastic life as misleading. It was thought that he must soon be proceeded against as a heretic; but after publishing works which made a great impression on his age, the bishop died.

TRYING TO CONVERT THE IMAGE WORSHIPPERS.

When Leo the Isaurian had secured his empire against foreign enemies, he set himself resolutely to convert heretics. He issued a decree that Jews and Montanists should be forcibly baptised. In 724 he issued his first decree against the superstitious use of images, which made the monks and John of Damascus so furious. When Leo died in 741, his son, Constantine Copronymus, so called from his having polluted the baptismal font, succeeded him, and reigned thirty-four years. He was also a resolute enemy of image worship. He procured a council of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops to sit in 754, and resolve unanimously that all pictures and sculptures of sacred subjects were Pagan and idolatrous, and that all images must be removed out of churches. They pronounced anathemas against John of Damascus and other champions of images. Constantine, on the strength of this council, ordered paintings on church walls to be effaced, and paintings of birds and fruits to be substituted. The monks were furious; and he ordered, in retaliation, monasteries to be destroyed and turned into barracks. One of his governors, named Lachanadraco, put many rebellious monks to death. He anointed the beards of some of these with oil and wax, and set them on fire; he burnt the monasteries, the books, and the relics. The relics of St. Euphemia at Chalcedon, which used to exude a fragrant balsam, were thrown into the sea, though the monks afterwards narrated that these were miraculously preserved. One monk, named Stephen, exasperated by these brutalities, boldly defied the Emperor, and to show his contempt produced a coin stamped with the Emperor's head, threw it on the ground, and trod on it. The Emperor ordered him to prison; but noticing that some sympathy seemed to be shown by his attendants, exclaimed, "Am I or is this monk emperor of the world?" The courtiers in turn, in their zeal to defend the Emperor, rushed to the prison where Stephen was kept, brought him out, and, tying a rope round his neck, dragged the body through the streets, and then tore it to pieces. The patriarch being also charged with abetting the monks, was stripped of his robes, set upon an ass with his face towards the tail, led through the streets, jeered by the mob, and then beheaded. Constantine died in 775, a resolute enemy of images to the last.

THE EMPRESS IRENE RESTORING IMAGES (A.D. 780).

Though Leo the Isaurian and his son Constantine had for thirty years worked so energetically in stamping out image worship, yet at the death of the latter a reaction was brought about. The Emperor Leo, grandson of the Isaurian, married an Athenian wife, Irene, who was constitutionally devoted to image worship and sensuous art, and her devotion to these so worked on her irresolute husband as to baffle the labour of years. She took care to procure all the important vacancies in the Church to be filled by monks. Her household officers were encouraged to practise in secret the adoration of images, and there were concealed some figures under her pillow; and though the Emperor, on discovering this petty treason, ordered the chief actors to be scourged, yet on his death in 780 Irene assumed the government and changed everything. She took care to get a patriarch appointed who was of her way of thinking, and for that purpose first induced the then holder of the office to resign and retire into a monastery. She then spread the report that this change was due to remorse of conscience; and the new patriarch, acting in concert with her, professed his inability to assume the high office unless she would convoke a council to review the late heresy of the iconoclasts. After great manoeuvring on the part of the monks, and secret meetings to canvas the chief men of the assembly, and by the Empress deciding to attend in person and with great state, she so managed affairs that a council of three hundred and fifty bishops met, and they all in her presence returned to the old traditions, declaring the worship of images agreeable to Scripture and reason, and shouted their approval and ended with the enthusiastic exclamation, "Long live the orthodox Queen Regent!"

EMPRESS THEODORA CONQUERING FOR THE IMAGES (A.D. 842).

The Empress Irene having in 780 so skilfully turned the tide in favour of images, the contest was still maintained during the five succeeding reigns, a period of thirty-eight years between the worshippers of images and the iconoclasts. The final victory of the images was achieved by a second female, the widow Theodora, after the death of the Emperor Theophilus in 842. Her measures were bold and decisive. She sentenced the iconoclast patriarch to a whipping of two hundred lashes instead of the loss of his eyes. At this stroke of power the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the images. The only point left unsettled was, whether images were endowed with any proper and inherent sanctity, and this continued to be discussed in the eleventh century. The Churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain had steered a middle course between the adoration and the destruction of images, which they professed to admit into their temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. Charlemagne had used his authority in assembling a synod of three hundred bishops at Frankfort in 794, who professed to blame the superstition of the Greeks. But the worship of images advanced with silent progress, and reached to the idolatry of the ages which preceded the Reformation. Theodora skilfully gained over many bishops by representing that her husband the Emperor on his deathbed repented of his errors, and that her young son at the same time had also registered a vow to restore images.

IMAGE WORSHIP IN SPAIN.

In Spain image worship reached a height hardly attained in any other part of Christendom. Besides the most holy effigies heaven-descended, like the Black Lady of the Pillar at Saragossa, and the Christ of the Vine Stock at Valladolid, there were many sacred images, which, even before the hands which fashioned them were cold, began to make the blind see, the lame walk, and friars flourish and grow powerful. St. Bernard was modelled and clothed like a brother of the order in his own white robes; St. Dominic scourged himself in effigy till the red blood flowed from his painted shoulders; and the Virgin, copied from the loveliest models, was presented to her adorers gloriously apparelled in clothing of wrought gold. Many of these figures not only presided in their chapels throughout the year, but, decked with garlands and illuminated by tapers, were carried by brotherhoods or guilds instituted in their honour in the religious processions. The colouring was sometimes laid on canvas, with which the figure was covered as with a skin. The effects and gradation of tints were studied as carefully as in paintings on canvas. The imitation of rich stuffs for draperies was a nice and difficult branch of the art. For single figures real draperies were sometimes used, especially for those of the Madonnas, which possessed large and magnificent wardrobes and caskets of jewels worthy of the queens of the Mogul.

THE AMBITIOUS POPE HILDEBRAND (1046-1085).

During the time that Hildebrand, son of a carpenter of Soan in Tuscany, became noted and acquired an ascendency with the Popes, he advocated certain reforms. The first was to make the Popes independent of the Emperor: this he achieved by procuring a decree that the Pope should be chosen by the cardinals, bishops, and priests assembled in college. He also put a stop to the immorality of the clergy by enforcing celibacy of priests. He also procured more stringent laws against simony. He succeeded to the popedom in 1073 as Gregory VII., and in carrying out his ambitious schemes he summoned the German king, Henry IV., and ultimately excommunicated him, in retaliation for Henry having procured a sentence of deposition by the Synod of Worms against himself as Pope. These two potentates exchanged some defiant and insulting letters. Henry at last was reduced to such difficulties that he had to go in the guise of a penitent, clad in a thin white dress, while the ground was deep in snow, and he waited humbly at the outer gate of the Castle of Canossa three days before he was received into the presence of his Holiness, who gave him absolution, but under most humiliating circumstances. Gregory, however, at last was punished in his turn in 1080, and he had to become an exile, in which condition he died friendless and deserted in 1085, and muttering the words: "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die an exile."

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, THE ANGELIC DOCTOR (A.D. 1227).

St. Thomas Aquinas was born in 1227, and became the greatest theologian and master of logic and powerful reasoner of his age. He was at first thought dull at school, and used to be called the great dumb Sicilian ox; but his genius soon broke forth, and he came to be called the angelical doctor. His versatility, power of abstraction, and memory astonished everybody. Louis IX. of France (St. Louis) made him a privy councillor, and often consulted him. Once at dinner with the king, after a long silence, Thomas thumped the table energetically, muttering to himself, "That is an overwhelming argument against the Manicheans!" and the king, curious to know what sudden thought it was, begged him to explain it, which was done, and committed to writing by clerks. While praying one day in the church at Naples, his friend Romanus, who had died some time before, appeared to Thomas and spoke to him, and said that his works pleased God, and that he (Romanus) was now in eternal bliss. Thomas then asked whether the habits which are acquired in this life remain to us in heaven. Romanus answered, "Brother Thomas, I see God, and do not ask for more." He then vanished. One day Thomas was writing a treatise on the Sacrament, and was praying, when the figure on the crucifix turned towards him and said, "Thomas, thou hast written well of Me: what reward desirest thou?" "Nought, save Thyself, Lord," was the saint's immediate reply. Another time Thomas, while celebrating Mass, was seized with a sudden rapture, owing to a vision which appeared to him, and which he said was so glorious that all he had written appeared worthless compared with what he had just seen. In his last illness the monks of Fossa Nuova, near Maienza, waited on him with unceasing devotion, and begged of him to expound to them the Canticle of Canticles, as St. Bernard did. The saint replied, "Get me Bernard's spirit, and I will do your bidding." He yielded to their wish. The saint, growing feebler, died; and while a corpse, a blind man begged to approach and pay his last tribute of respect, when the man's sight was restored that moment.

ATTITUDES OF POPES TO FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS.

Guizot thus sums up the attitude between Popes and foreign governments: "From the tenth century and the accession of the Capetians (989) the policy of the Holy See had been enterprising, bold, full of initiative, often even aggressive, and more often than not successful in the prosecution of its designs. Under Innocent III. (1198-1216) it had attained the apogee of its strength and fortune. At that point its motion forward and upward came to a stop. Boniface VIII. (1294-1303) had not the wit to recognise the changes which had taken place in European communities, and the decided progress which had been made by laic influences and civil powers. He was a stubborn preacher of maxims he could no longer practise. He was beaten in his enterprise; and the Papacy, even on recovering from his defeat, found itself no longer what it had been before him. Starting from the fourteenth century, we find no second Gregory VII. or Innocent III. Without expressly abandoning their principles, the policy of the Holy See became essentially defensive and conservative, more occupied in the maintenance than the aggrandisement of itself, and sometimes even more stationary and stagnant than was required by necessity or recommended by foresight. The posture assumed and the conduct adopted by the earliest successors of Boniface VIII. showed how far the situation of the Papacy was altered, and how deep had been the stab which, in the conflict between the two aspirants to absolute power, Philip the Fair (1283-1314) had inflicted on his rival."

THE POPES AS TEMPORAL PRINCES (1118-1185).

The feuds of Guelphs and Ghibellines kept up constant irritation at Rome. In 1118, when Paschal II. was officiating at the altar on Holy Thursday, he was interrupted by a mob, who demanded that he should confirm the appointment of a favourite magistrate, and his silence only exasperated them. During the festival of Easter, while the bishop and clergy barefoot and in procession visited the tombs of the martyrs, they were twice assaulted with volleys of stones and darts. The houses of the Pope's friends were demolished, he escaped with difficulty, and his last days were embittered by the strife of civil war. His successor, Gelasius II., in 1118 was dragged by his hair along the ground, beaten and wounded, and bound with an iron chain in the house of a factious baron named Cencio Frangipani, who stripped and beat and trampled on the cardinals. An insurrection of the people delivered the Pope for a while; but a few days later he was again assaulted at the altar, and during a bloody encounter between the factions he escaped in his sacerdotal garments. He then shook the dust from his feet, and withdrew from a city where, as he described it, one emperor would be more tolerable than twenty. About a quarter of a century later, Pope Lucius II., as he ascended in battle-array to assault the Capitol, was struck on the temple by a stone, and expired in a few days in 1145. Again in 1185 a body of priests were seized, and the eyes of all put out except those of one. They were crowned with mock mitres, mounted on asses with their faces to the tail, and paraded as a lesson to Pope Lucius III.

RIENZI AS TRIBUNE OF ROME (1353).

The Pope having lived long away from Rome, and the government of the city being impracticable, a youth named Rienzi, the son of a publican and a washerwoman, who was handsome and gifted with eloquence, aspired to raise the enthusiasm of the mob and revive the old glory of the first city of the world. He assumed the title of tribune, began to introduce order, and for a time he carried all before him. He was, however, soon intoxicated with his success, claimed a Divine mission, procured himself to be crowned as a successor of the Cæsars, imposed heavy taxes, and displayed great extravagance in dress and in vulgar exhibitions of grandeur. At last the Pope's legate anathematised him as a heretic, and enemies combined to crush him. He fled in 1308 to Prague; there he entered into wild schemes, was captured and imprisoned, but was spared from punishment as a heretic. He reappeared, and again obtained such favour with the Pope as to be made a senator in 1353, and encouraged to resume his influence over the mob in Rome. He was placed in high command, but again ruined his position with tyrannical and foolish schemes. His personal habits were gross and sensual; he became addicted to wine, and his body became bloated with his indulgences till he was likened to a fatted ox. In a sudden riot brought on by his own folly he attempted to escape, but the mob captured him and cut him to pieces.

LAST HOURS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1453).

When Mahomet II. in 1453 besieged Constantinople, the Greek Emperor implored the assistance of earth and Heaven to check the invaders and ward off the destruction of the Roman Empire. The celestial image of the Virgin was exposed in solemn procession, but no succour came. At last the houses and convents were deserted, and the inhabitants flocked together in the streets like a herd of timid animals, and poured into the church of St. Sophia, filling every corner. They placed no small confidence on some prophecy that had been circulated that an angel would descend from heaven and deliver the empire with some celestial weapon. While so wailing and confiding, the doors were broken in with axes, and the Turks seized the company, binding the males with cords, and the females with their veils and girdles. All ranks were mixed in groups--senators, slaves, plebeians and nobles, maids and children. The loudest in their wailings were the nuns, who were torn from the altar and consigned to the usual fate of slavery, and worse. The monasteries and churches were profaned. The dome of St. Sophia itself, a throne of heavenly splendour, was despoiled of the oblations of ages, and the gold and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal ornaments, were most wickedly perverted to the basest uses. After the divine images were stripped, the canvas and woodwork were torn or burnt or trodden under foot. The libraries, with a hundred and twenty thousand manuscripts, were sold as wastepaper. The Sultan passed in triumph through the wreck and plunder. He ordered the church to be converted into a mosque; the instruments of superstition to be removed; the crosses, images, and mosaics to be dismantled and washed and purified. The cathedral of St. Sophia was soon crowned with lofty minarets, and surrounded with groves and fountains for the devotion and refreshment of the Moslems. He took care, however, to leave the churches of Constantinople to be shared between the Mussulmans and the Christians.

ELECTION TO THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.

The empire which Charlemagne founded over so many kingdoms, being a revival of the old Roman Empire and in imitation of the empire claimed by the Bishop of Rome over all other Churches, was commonly believed till the end of the sixteenth century to be elective, and the privilege of electing was confined by a decree of Gregory V. about 996 to seven persons. These were the archbishops of Mentz, Treves, and Cologne; the dukes of the Franks, Swabians, Saxons, and Bavarians. The Franks and Swabians were superseded respectively by the palatinate of the Rhine and the margravate of Brandenburg. A golden bull of Charles IV. in 1356 regulated the mode of election and fixed the place at Frankfort. A majority of votes carried the election. An eighth and ninth elector were added afterwards, the eighth being the elector of Brunswick, who succeeded to the English throne in 1714. An extravagant importance was attached to this titular potentate and his electors. Though he was only elected, yet he was thought to reign by a Divine right as a sort of Lord of the World. The sovereigns of Europe long continued to address the Emperor as a superior and as entitled to precedence, and it was even thought that he had the power of creating kings, though in actual resources he stood below the kings of France and England. The epithet "holy" was applied by Frederick I. (Barbarossa) in 1156. There was once a vague notion that the English kingdom was a vassal of the empire, but Edward I. and Edward III. notably disclaimed any such submissiveness. When Charles V. was elected, Francis I. of France and Henry VIII. of England were competitors. Charles V. not succeeding in dragooning the Protestants into conformity to the Catholic Church, the influence of the empire declined. After long flickering, the Holy Roman Empire came to an end by the resignation of Francis II. in 1806, about a thousand years after the coronation of Charlemagne.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us