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326 AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST.
CHAPTER XV. THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST.
THE THREE ATTACKS: NORTHERN OR MORAL; WESTERN OR INTELLECTUAL; EASTERN OR MILITARY. THE NORTHERN OR MORAL ATTACK ON THE ITALIAN SYSTEM, AND ITS TEMPORARY REPULSE.
Geographical Boundaries of Italian Christianity. Attacks upon it. The Northern or moral Attack.-The Emperor of Germany insists on a reformation in the Papacy.-Gerbert, the representative of these Ideas, is made Pope.-They are both poisoned by the Italians. Commencement of the intellectual Rejection of the Italian System.-Originates in the Arabian doctrine of the supremacy of Reason over Authority.-The question of Transubstantiation.-Rise and development of Scholasticism.-Mutiny among the Monks. Gregory VII. spontaneously accepts and enforces a Reform in the Church. - Overcomes the Emperor of Germany.-Is on the'point of establishing a European Theocracy.-The Popes seize the military and monetary Resources of Europe through the Crusades.
THE realm of an idea may often be defined by geometrical lines. If from Rome, as a centre, two lines be drawn, one of which passes eastward, and touches the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, the other westward, and crosses the Pyrenees, nearly all those Mediterranean countries lying to the south of these lines were living, at the time of which we speak, under the dogma, " There is but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet;" but the countries to the north had added to the orthodox conception of the Holy Trinity the adoration of the Virgin, the worship of images, the invocation of saints, and a devout attachment to relics and shrines. I have now to relate how these lines were pushed forward on Europe, that to the east by military, that to the west by intellectual force. On Rome, as on a pivot, they worked; now opening, now closing, now threatening to curve round at their extremes and compress paganizing Christendom in their clasp; then, through the convulsive throes of the nations they had inclosed, receding from one another and quivering throughout their whole length, but receding only for an instant, to shut more closely again. It was as if from the hot sands of Africa invisible arms were put forth, enfolding Europe in their grasp, and struggling to join their hands to give to paganizing Christendom a fearful and mortal compression. There were struggles and resistances, but the portentous hands clasped at last. Historically, we call the pressure that was then made the Reformation. Not without difficulty can we describe the convulsive struggles of na-
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THE PRESSURES UPON ROME. 327
tions so as to convey a clear idea of the forces acting upon them. I have now to devote many perhaps not uninteresting, certainly not uninstructive pages to these events. In this chapter I begin that task by relating the consequences of the state of things heretofore described-the earnestness of converted Germany and the immoralities of the popes. The Germans insisted on a reformation among ecclesiastics, and that they should lead lives in accordance with religion. This moral attack was accompanied also by an intellectual one, arising from another source, and amounting to a mutiny in the Church itself. In the course of centuries, and particularly during the more recent evil times, a gradual divergence of theology from morals had taken place, to the dissatisfaction of that remnant of thinking men who here and there, in the solitude of monasteries, compared the dogmas of theology with the dictates of reason. Of those, and the number was yearly increasing, who had been among the Arabs in Spain, not a few had become infected with a love of philosophy. Whoever compares the tenth and twelfth centuries together can not fail to remark the great intellectual advance which Europe was making. The ideas occupying the minds of Christian men, their very turn of thought, had altogether changed. The earnestness of the Germans, commingling with the knowledge of the Mohammedans, could no longer be diverted from the misty clouds of theological discussion out of which Philosophy emerged, not in the Grecian classical vesture in which she had disappeared at Alexandria, but in the grotesque garb of the cowled and mortified monk. She timidly came back to the world as Scholasticism, persuading men to consider, by the light of their own reason, that dogma which seemed to put common sense at defiance -transubstantiation. Scarcely were her whispers heard in the ecclesiastical ranks when a mutiny against authority arose, and since it was necessary to combat that mutiny with its own weapons, the Church was compelled to give her countenance to Scholastic Theology. Lending himself to the demand for morality, and not altogether refusing to join in the intellectual progress, a great man, Hildebrand, brought on an ecclesiastical reform. He raised the papacy to its maximum of power, and prepared the way for his successors to seize the material resources of Europe through the Crusades. Such is an outline of the events with which we have now to deal. A detailed analysis of those events shows that there were three directions of pressure upon Rome. The pressure from the West and that from the East were Mohammedan. Their resultant was a pressure from the North: it was essentially Christian. While they were foreign, this was domestic. It is almost immaterial in what order we consider them; the manner in which I am handling the subject leads
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328 THE LIFE OF GERBERT.
me, however, to treat of the Northern pressure first, then of that of the West, and on subsequent pages of that of the East. It had become absolutely necessary that something should be done for the reformation of the papacy. Its crimes, such as we have related in Chapter XII., outraged religious men. To the master-spirit of the movement for accomplishing this end we must closely look. He is the representative of influences that were presently to exert a most important agency. In the train of the Emperor Otho III., when he resolved to put a stop to all this wickedness, was Gerbert, a French ecclesiastic, born in Auvergne. In his boyhood, while a scholar in the Abbey of Avrillac, he attracted the attention of his superiors; among others, of the Count of Barcelona, who took him into Spain. There he became a proficient in the mathematics, astronomy, and physics of the Mohammedan schools. He spoke Arabic with the fluency of a Saracen. His residence at Cordova, where the khalif patronized all the learning and science of the age, and his subsequent residence in Rome, where he found an inconceivable ignorance and immorality, were not lost upon his future life. He established a school at Rheims, where he taught logic, music, astronomy, explained Virgil, Statius, Terence, and introduced what were at that time regarded as wonders, the globe and the abacus. He labored to persuade his countrymen that learning is far to be preferred to the sports of the field. He observed the stars through tubes, invented a clock, and an organ played by steam. He composed a work on Rhetoric. Appointed Abbot of Bobbio, he fell into a misunderstanding with his monks, and had to retire first to Rome, and then to resume his school at Rheims. In the political events connected with the rise of Hugh Capet, he was again brought into prominence. The speech of the Bishop of Orleans at the Council of Rheims, which was his composition, shows us how his Mohammedan education had led him to look upon the state of things in Christendom: " There is not one at Rome, it is notorious, who knows enough of letters to qualify him for a door-keeper; with what face shall he presume to teach who has never learned?" He does not hesitate to allude to papal briberies and papal crimes: "If King Hugh's embassadors could have bribed the pope and Crescentius, his affairs had taken a different turn." He recounts the disgraces and crimes of the pontiffs: how John XII had cut off the nose and tongue of John the Cardinal; how Boniface had strangled John XIII; how John XIV had been starved to death in the dungeons of the Castle of St. Angelo. He demands, " To such monsters, full of all infamy, void of all knowledge, human and divine, are all the priests of God to submit -men distinguished throughout the world for their learning and holy lives? The pontiff who so sins against his brother-who, when admonished, refuses to hear the voice of counsel, is as a publican and a sinner."
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THE LIFE OF GERBERT. 329
With a prophetic inspiration of the accusations of the Reformation, he asks, " Is he not Anti-Christ?" He speaks of him as " the Man of Sin," "the Mystery of Iniquity." Of Rome he says, with an emphasis doubtless enforced by his Mohammedan experiences, "She has already lost the allegiance of the East; Alexandria, Antioch, Africa, and Asia are separate from her; Constantinople has broken loose from her; the interior of Spain knows nothing of the pope." He says, "How do your enemies say that, in deposing Arnulphus, we should have waited for the judgment of the Roman bishop? Can they say that his judgment is before that of God which our synod pronounced? The Prince of the Roman bishops and of the apostles themselves proclaimed that God must be obeyed rather than men; and Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, announced anathema to him, though he were an angel, who should preach a doctrine different to that which had been delivered. Because the pontiff Marcellinus offered incense to Jupiter, must, therefore, all bishops sacrifice?" In all this there is obviously an insurgent spirit against the papacy, or, rather, against its iniquities. In the progress of the political movements Gerbert was appointed to the archbishopric of Rheims. On this occasion, it is not without interest that we observe his worldly wisdom. It was desirable to conciliate the clergy-perhaps it might be done by the encouragement of marriage. He had lived in the polygamic court of the khalif, whose family had occasionally boasted of more than forty sons and forty daughters. Well then may he say, "I prohibit not marriage. I condemn not second marriages. I do not blame the eating of flesh." His election not only proved unfortunate, but, in the tortuous policy of the times, he was removed from the exercise of his episcopal functions and put under interdict. The speech of the Roman legate, Leo, who presided at his condemnation, gives us an insight into the nature of his offense, of the intention of Rome to persevere in her ignorance and superstition, and is an amusing example of ecclesiastical argument: " Because the vicars of Peter and their disciples will not have for their teachers a Plato, a Virgil, a Terence, and the rest of the herd of philosophers, who soar aloft like the birds of the air, and dive into the depths like the fishes of the sea, ye say that they are not worthy to'be door-keepers, because they know not how to make verses. Peter is, indeed, a door-keeper-but of heaven!" He does not deny the systematic bribery of the pontifical government, but justifies it. "Did not the Savior receive gifts of the wise men?" Nor does he deny the crimes of the pontiffs, though he protests against those who would expose them, reminding them that "Ham was cursed for uncovering his father's nakedness." In all this we see the beginnings of that struggle between Mohammedan learning and morals and Italian ignorance and crime, at last to produce such important results for Europe.
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330 POISONING OF GERBERT AND OTHO.
Once more Gerbert retired to the court of the emperor. It was at the time that Otho III. was contemplating a revolution in the empire and a reformation of the Church. He saw how useful Gerbert might be to his policy, and had him appointed Archbishop of Ravenna, and, on the death of GregoryV., issued his decree for the election of Gerbert as pope. The low-born French ecclesiastic, thus attaining to the utmost height of human ambition, took the name of Sylvester II., a name full of meaning. But Rome was not willing thus to surrender her sordid interests; she revolted. Tusculum, the disgrace of the papacy, rebelled. It required the arms of the emperor to sustain his pontiff. For a moment it seemed as if the Reformation might have been anticipated by many centuries that Christian Europe might have been spared the abominable papal disgraces awaiting it. There was a learned and upright pope, an able and youthful emperor; but Italian revenge, in the person of Stephania, the wife of the murdered Crescentius, blasted all these expectations. From the hand of that outraged but noble criminal, who, with more than Roman firmness of purpose, could deliberately barter her virtue for vengeance, the unsuspecting emperor took the poisoned cup, and left Rome only to die. He was but twenty-two years of age. Sylvester, also, was irretrievably ruined by the drugs that had been stealthily mixed with his food. He soon followed his patron to the grave. His steam organs, physical experiments, mechanical inventions, foreign birth, and want of orthodoxy, confirmed the awful imputation that he was a necromancer. The mouth of every one was full of stories of mystery and magic in which Gerbert had borne a part. Afar off in Europe, by their evening firesides, the goblin-scared peasants whispered to one another that in the most secret apartment of the palace at Rome there was concealed an impish dwarf, who wore a turban, and had a ring that could make him invisible, or give him two different bodies at the same time; that, in the midnight hours, strange sounds had been heard, when no one was within but the pope; that, while he was among the infidels in Spain, the future pontiff had bartered his soul to Satan, on condition that he would make him Christ's vicar upon earth, and now it was plain that both parties had been true to their compact. In their privacy, hollow-eyed monks muttered to one another under their cowls, "Homagium diabolo fecit et male finivit." To a degree of wickedness almost irremediable had things thus come. The sins of the pontiffs were repeated, without any abatement, in all the clerical ranks. Simony and concubinage prevailed to an extent that threatened the authority of the Church over the coarsest minds. Ecclesiastical promotion could in all directions be obtained by purchase; in all directions there were priests boasting of illegitimate families. But yet, in the Church itself, there were men of irreproachable life, who, like
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MUTINY IN THE CHURCH. 331
Peter Damiani, lifted up their voices against the prevailing scandal. He it was who proved that nearly every priest in Milan had purchased his preferment and lived with a concubine. The immoralities thus forced upon the attention of pious men soon began to be followed by the consequences that might have been expected. It is but a step from the condemnation of morals to the criticism of faith. The developing intellect of Europe could no longer bear the acts or the thoughts that it had heretofore submitted to. The dogma of transubstantiation led to revolt. The early fathers delighted to point out the agreement of doctrines flowing from the principles of Christianity with those of Greek philosophy. For long it was asserted that a correspondence between faith and reason exists; but by degrees, as one dogma after another of a mysterious and unintelligible kind was introduced, and matters of belief could no longer be co-ordinated with the conclusions of the understanding, it became necessary to force the latter into a subordinate position. The great political interests involved in these questions suggested the expediency and even necessity of compelling such a subordination by the application of civil power. In this manner, as we have described, in the reign of Constantine the Great, philosophical discussions of religious things came to be discountenanced, and implicit faith required in the decisions of existing authority. Philosophy was subjugated and enslaved by theology. We shall now see what were the circumstances of her revolt. In the solitude of monasteries there was every inducement for those who had become weary of self-examination to enter on the contemplation of the external world. Herein they found a field offering to them endless occupation, and capable of worthily exercising their acuteness. But it was not possible for them to take the first step without offending against the decisions established by authority. The alternative was stealthy proceeding or open mutiny; but before mutiny there occurs a period of private suggestion and another of more extensive discussion. It was thus that the German monk Gotschalk, in the ninth century, occupied himself in the profound problem of predestination, enduring the scourge and death in prison for the sake of his opinion. The presence of the Saracens in Spain offered an incessant provocation to the restless intellect of the West, now rapidly expanding, to indulge itself in such forbidden exercises. Arabian philosophy, unseen and silently, was diffusing itself throughout France and Europe, and churchmen could sometimes contemplate a refuge from their enemies among the infidel. In his extremity, Abelard himself expected a retreat among the Saracens-a protection from ecclesiastical persecution. In the conflict with Gotschalk on the matter of predestination was al
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332 ATTACK ON TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
ready foreshadowed the attempt to set up reason against authority. John Erigena, who was employed by Hincmar, the Archbishop of Rheims, on that occasion, had already made a pilgrimage to the birthplaces of Plato and Aristotle, A.D. 825, and indulged the hope of uniting philosophy and religion in the manner proposed by the ecclesiastics who were studying in Spain. From Eastern sources John Erigena had learned the doctrines of the eternity of matter, and even of the creation, with which, indeed, he confounded the Deity himself. He was, therefore, a Pantheist; accepting the Oriental ideas of emanation and absorption not only as respects the soul of man, but likewise all material things. In his work "On the Nature of Things," his doctrine is, "That, as all things were originally contained in God, and proceeded from him into the different classes by which they are now distinguished, so shall they finally return to him and be resolved into the source from which they came; in other words, that as, before the world was created, there was no being but God, and the causes of all things were in him, so, after the end of the world, there will be no being but God, and the causes of all things in him." This final resolution he denominated deification, or theosis. He even questioned the eternity of hell, saying, with the emphasis of a Saracen, "There is nothing eternal but God." It was impossible, under such circumstances, that he should not fall under the rebuke of the Church. Transubstantiation, as being, of the orthodox doctrines, the least reconcilable to reason, was the first to be attacked by the new philosophers. What was, perhaps, in the beginning, no more than a jocose Mohammedan sarcasm, became a solemn subject of ecclesiastical discussion. Erigena strenuously upheld the doctrine of the Stercorists, who derived their name from the fact that they asserted a part of the consecrated elements to be voided from the body in the manner customary with other relics of food; a doctrine which was denounced by the orthodox, who declared that the priest could "make God," and that the eucharistic elements were not liable to digestion. And now, A.D. 1050, Berengar of Tours prominently brought forward the controversy respecting the real presence. The question had been formularized by Radbert under the term transubstantiation, and the opinions entertained respecting the sacred elements greatly differed; mere fetish notions being entertained by some, by others the most transcendental ideas. In opposition to Radbert and the orthodox party, who asserted that those elements ceased to be what to the senses they appeared, and actually became transformed into the body and blood of the Savior, Berengar held that, though there is a real presence in them, that presence is of a spiritual nature. These heresies were condemned b; repeated councils, Berengar himself being offered the
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THE DOCTRINES OF ABELARD. 333
choice of death or recantation. He wisely preferred the latter, but more wisely resumed his offensive doctrines as soon as he had escaped from the hands of his persecutors. As might be supposed from the philosophical indefensibility of the orthodox doctrine, Berengar's opinions, which, indeed, issued from those of Erigena, made themselves felt in the highest ecclesiastical regions, and, from the manner in which Gregory VII. dealt with the heresiarch, there is reason to believe that he himself had privately adopted the doctrines thus condemned. But it is in Peter Abelard that we find the representative of the insurgent spirit of those times. The love of Heloisa seems in our eyes to be justified by his extraordinary intellectual power. In his oratory, "The Paraclete," the doctrines of faith and the mysteries of religion were without any restraint discussed. No subject was too profound or too sacred for his contemplation. By the powerful and orthodox influence of St. Bernard, "a morigerous and mortified monk," the opinions of Abelard were brought under the rebuke of the authorities. In vain he appealed from the Council of Sens to Rome; the power of St. Bernard at Rome was paramount. " He makes void the whole Christian faith by attempting to comprehend the nature of God through human reason. He ascends up into heaven; he goes down into hell. Nothing can elude him, either in the height above or in the nethermost depths. His branches spread over the whole earth. He boasts that he has disciples in Rome itself, even in the College of Cardinals. He draws the whole earth after him. It is time, therefore, to silence him by apostolic authority." Such was the report of the Council of Sens to Rome, A.D. 1140. Perhaps it was not so much the public accusation that Abelard denied the doctrine of the Trinity, as his assertion of the supremacy of reason -which clearly betrayed his intention of breaking the thraldom of authority-that insured his condemnation. It was impossible to restrict the rising discussions within their proper sphere, or to keep them from the perilous ground of ecclesiastical history. Abelard, in his work entitled " Sic et Non," sets forth the contradictory opinions of the fathers, and exhibits their discord and strifes on great doctrinal points, thereby insinuating how little of unity there was in the Church. It was a work suggesting a great deal more than it actually stated, and was inevitably calculated to draw down upon its author the indignation of those whose interests it touched. Out of the discussions attending these events sprang the celebrated doctrines of Nominalism and Realism, though the terms themselves seem not to have been introduced till the end of the twelfth century. The Realists thought that the general types of things had a real existence; the Nominalists, that they were merely a mental abstraction expressed by a word. It was therefore the old Greek
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334 SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY.
dispute revived. Of the Nominalists, Roscelin of Compiegne, a little before A.D. 1100, was the first distinguished advocate; his materializing views, as might be expected, drawing upon him the reproof of the Church. In this contest, Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, attempted to harmonize reason in subordination to faith, and again, by his example, demonstrated the necessity of submitting all such questions to the decision of the human intellect. The development of scholastic philosophy, which dates from the time of Erigena, was accelerated by two distinct causes: the dreadful materialization into which, in Europe, all sacred things had fallen, and the illustrious example of the Mohammedans, who already, by their physical inquiries, had commenced a career destined to end in brilliant results. The Spanish universities were filled with ecclesiastics from many parts of Europe. Peter the Venerable, the friend and protector of Abelard, who had spent much time in Cordova, and not only spoke Arabic fluently, but actually translated the Koran into Latin, mentions that, on his first arrival in Spain, he found many learned men, even from England, studying astronomy. The reconciliation of many of the dogmas of authority with common sense was impossible for men of understanding. Could the clear intellect of such a statesman as Hildebrand be for a moment disgraced by accepting the received view of a doctrine like that of transubstantiation? His great difficulty was to reconcile what had been rendered orthodox by the authority of the Church with the suggestions of reason, or even with that reverence for holy things which is in the heart of every intelligent man. In such sentiments we find an explanation of the lenient dealings of that stern ecclesiastic with the heretic Berengar. He saw that it was utterly impossible to offer any defense of many of the materialized dogmas of the age, but then those dogmas had been put forth as absolute truth by the Church. Things had come to the point at which reason and theology must diverge; yet the Italian statesmen did not accept this issue without an additional attempt, and, under their permission, Schoticlastic Theology, which originated in the scholastic philosophy of Erigena and his followers, sought, in the strange union of the Holy Scriptures, the Aristotelian Philosophy, and Pantheism, to construct a scientific basis for Christianity. Heresy was to be combated with the weapons of the heretics, and a co-ordination of authority and reason effected. Under such auspices scholastic philosophy pervaded the schools, giving to some of them, as the University of Paris, a fictitious reputation, and leading to the foundation of others in other cities. It answered the object of its politic promoters in a double way, for it raised around the orthodox theology an immense and impenetrable bulwark of what seemed to be profound learning, and also diverted the awakening mind of Western Europe to occupations which, if profitless, were yet exciting,
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THE IMPORTANCE OF SCHOLASTICISM TO THE CHURCH. 335
and without danger to the existing state of things. In that manner was put off for a while the inevitable day in which philosophy and theology were to be brought in mortal conflict with each other. It was doubtless seen by Hildebrand and his followers that, though Berengar had set the example of protesting against the principle that-the decision of a majority of voters in a council or other collective body should ever be received as ascertaining absolute truth, yet so great was the uncertainty of the principles on which the scholastic philosophy was founded, so undetermined its mental exercise, so ineffectual the results to which it could attain, that it was unlikely for a long time to disturb the unity of doctrine in the Church. While men were reasoning round and round again in the same vicious circle without finding any escape, and indeed without seeking any, delighted with the dexterity of their movements, but never considering whether they were making any real advance, it was unnecessary to anticipate inconvenience from their progress. Here stood the difficulty. The decisions of the Church were asserted to be infallible and irrevocable; her philosophy, if such it can be called -as must be the case with any philosophy reposing upon a final revelation from God-was stationary. But the awakening mind of the West was displaying, in an unmistakable way, its propensity to advance. As one who rides an unruly horse will sometimes divert him from a career which could not be checked by main force by reining him round and round, and thereby exhausting his spirit and strength, and keeping him in a narrow space, so the wanton efforts of the mind may be guided, if they can not be checked. These principles of policy answered their object for a time, until metaphysical were changed for physical discussions. Then it became impossible to divert the onward movement, and on the first great question arising-that of the figure and place of the earth-a question dangerous to the last degree, since it inferentially included the determination of the position of man in the universe, theology suffered an irretrievable defeat. Between her and philosophy there was henceforth no other issue than a mortal duel. Though Erigena is the true founder of Scholasticism, Roscelin, already mentioned as renewing the question of Platonic Universals, has been considered by some to be entitled to that distinction. After him,William of Champeaux opened a school of logic in Paris, A.D. 1109, and from that time the University made it a prominent study. On the rise of the mendicant orders, Scholasticism received a great impulse, perhaps, as has been affirmed, because its disputations suited their illiterate state; Thomas Aquinas, the Dominican, and Duns Scotus, the Franciscan, founding rival schools, which wrangled for three centuries. In Italy, Scholasticism never prevailed as it did in France
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336 CONCENTRATION OF PAPAL POWER.
and elsewhere, and at last it died away, its uselessness, save in the political result before mentioned, having been detected. The middle of the eleventh century ushers in an epoch for the papacy the and for Europe. It is marked by an attempt at a moral reformation in the Church-by a struggle for securing the independence of the papacy both of the Emperors of Germany and of the neighboring Italian nobles-thus far the pope being the mere officer of the emperor, and often the creature of the surrounding nobility-by the conversion of the temporalities of the Church, heretofore indirect, into absolute possessions, by securing territories given " to the Church, the blessed Peter, and the Roman republic" to the first of those beneficiaries, excluding the last. As events proceeded, these minor affairs converged, and out of their union arose the great conflict of the imperial and papal powers for supremacy. The same policy which had succeeded in depriving the Roman people of any voice in appointments of popes which had secularized the Church in Italy, for a while seized all the material resources of Europe through the device of the Crusades, and nearly established a papal autocracy in all Europe. These political events demand from us a notice, since from them arose intellectual consequences of the utmost importance. The second Lateran Council, under Nicolas II., accomplished the result of vesting the elective power to the papacy in the cardinals. That was a great revolution. It was this council which gave to Berengar his choice between death and recantation. There were at this period three powers engaged in Italy-the Imperial, the Church party, and the Italian nobles. It was for the sake of holding the last in check-for, since it was the nearest, it required the most unremitting attention-that Hildebrand had advised the popes who were his immediate predecessors to use the Normans, who were settled in the south of the peninsula, by whom the lands of the nobles were devastated. Thus the difficulties of their position led the popes to a repetition of their ancient policy; and as they had, in old times, sought the protection of the Frankish kings, so now they sought that of the Normans. But in the midst of the dissensions and tumults of the times, a great man was emerging- Hildebrand, who, with almost superhuman abnegation, again and again abstained from making himself pope. On the death of Alexander II. his opportunity came, and, with acceptable force, he was raised to that dignity, A.D. 1073. Scarcely was Hildebrand Pope Gregory VII. when he vigorously proceeded to carry into effect the policy he had been preparing during the pontificates of his predecessors. In many respects the times were propitious. The blameless lives of the German popes had cast a veil of oblivion over the abominations of their Italian predecessors. Hildebrand addressed himself to tear out every vestige of si-
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THE POLICY OF HILDEBRAND. 337
mony and concubinage with a remorseless hand. That task must be finished before he could hope to accomplish his grand project of an ecclesiastical autocracy in Europe, with the pope at its head, and the clergy, both in their persons and property, independent of the civil power; and it was plain that, apart from all moral considerations, the supremacy of Rome in such a system altogether turned on the celibacy of the clergy. If marriage was permitted to the ecclesiastic, what was to prevent him from handing down, as an hereditary possession, the wealth and dignities he had obtained. In such a state of things, the central government at Rome necessarily stood at every disadvantage against the local interests of an individual, and still more so if many individuals should combine together to promote, in common, similar interests. But very different would it be if the promotion must be looked for from Rome-very different as regards the hold upon public sentiment, if such a descent from father to son was absolutely prevented, and a career fairly opened to all irrespective of their station in life. To the Church it was to the last degree important that a man should derive his advancement from her, not from his ancestor. In the trials to which she was perpetually exposed, there could be no doubt that by such persons her interests would be best served. In these circumstances Gregory VII. took his course. The synod held at Rome in the first year of his pontificate denounced the marriage of the clergy, enforcing its decree by the doctrine that the efficacy of the sacraments altogether depended on their being administered by hands sinless in that respect, and made all communicants partners in the pastoral crime. With a provident foresight of the coming opposition, he carried out the policy he had taught his predecessors of conciliating the Normans in the south of Italy, though he did not hesitate to resist them, by the aid of the Countess Matilda, when they dared to touch the possessions of the Church. It was for the sake of this that the Norman invasion of England under William the Conqueror had already been approved of, a consecrated standard and a ring containing a hair from the head of St. Peter sent him, and permission given for the replacement of Saxon bishops and other dignitaries by Normans. It was not forgotten how great had been the gains to the papacy, three centuries before, by changing the dynasty of the Franks; and thus the policy of an Italian town gave a permanent impress to the history of England. Hildebrand foresaw that the sword of the Italian-Norman would be wanted to carry out his projected ends. He did not hesitate to authorize the overthrow of a Saxon dynasty by the French-Norman, that he might be more sure of the fidelity of that sword. Without the countenance of the pope, the Norman could never have consolidated his power, nor even held his ground in England. From these movements of the papacy sprang the conflict with the
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338 CONFLICT BETWEEN THE EMPEROR AND HILDEBRAND.
Emperors of Germany respecting The Bishop investitures. of Milan-who, it appears, had perjured himself in the quarrel respecting concubinage-had been excommunicated by Alexander II. The imperial council appointed as his successor one Godfrey; the pope had nominated Atto. Hereupon Alexander had summoned the emperor to appear before him on a charge of simony, and granting investitures without his approbation. While the matter was yet in abeyance, Alexander died; but Gregory took up the contest. A synod he had assembled ordered that, if any one should accept investiture from a layman, both the giver and receiver should be excommunicated. The pretense against lay-investiture was that it was a usurpation of a papal right, and that it led to the appointment of evil and ignorant men; the reality was a determination to extend papal power, by making Rome the fountain of emolument. Gregory, by his movements, had thus brought upon himself three antagonists-the imperial power, the Italian nobles, and the married clergy. The latter, unscrupulous and exasperated, met him with his own weapons, not hesitating to calumniate his friendship with the Countess Matilda. It was also suspected that they were connected with the outrage perpetrated by the nobles that took place in Rome. On Christmas night, A.D. 1075, in the midst of a violent rain, while the pope was administering the communion, a band of soldiers burst into the church, seized Gregory at the altar, stripped and wounded him, and haling him on horseback behind one of the soldiers, carried him off to a strong-hold, from which he was rescued by the populace by force. But, without wavering for a moment, the undaunted pontiff pressed on his conflict with the imperial power, summoning Henry to Rome to account for his delinquencies, and threatening his excommunication if he should not appear before an appointed day. In haste, under the auspices of the king, a synod was assembled at Worms; charges against the pope of licentious life, bribery, necromancy, simony, murder, atheism, were introduced, and sentence of deposition pronounced against him. On his side, Gregory assembled the third Lateran Council, A.D. 1076, placed King Henry under interdict, absolved his subjects from allegiance, and deposed him. A series of constitutions, clearly defining the new bases of the papal system, was published. They were to the following effect: "That the Roman pontiff can alone be called universal; that he alone has a right to depose bishops; that his legates have a right to preside over all bishops in a general council; that he can depose absent prelates; that he alone has a right to use imperial ornaments; that princes are bound to kiss his feet, and his only; that he has a right to depose emperors; that no synod or council summoned without his commission can be called general; that no book can be called canonical without his authority; that his sentence can be annulled by none, but that he may annul the
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HILDEBRAND'S VICTORY. 339
decrees of all; that the Roman Church has been, is, and will continue to be infallible; that whoever dissents from it ceases to be a catholic Christian, and that subjects may be absolved from their allegiance to wicked princes." The power that could assert such resolutions was near its culmination. And now was manifest the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal power. The quarrel with Henry went on, and, after a hard struggle and many intrigues to draw the Normans' over to him, that monarch was compelled to submit, and in the depth of winter to cross the snowy Alps, under circumstances of unparalleled hardship, to seek absolution from his adversary. Then ensued the scene at Canosa-a penitent in white raiment standing in the dreary snow of three winter days, January, 1077, cold and fasting at the gate, seeking pardon and reconciliation of the inexorable pontiff; that penitent was the King of Germany. Then ensued the dramatic scene at the sacrament, in which the gray-haired pontiff called upon Heaven to strike him dead upon the spot if he were not innocent of the crimes of which he had been accused, and dared the guilty monarch to do the same. Whoever will reflect on these interesting events cannot fail to discern two important conclusions. The tone of thought throughout Europe had changed within the last three ages; ideas were entertained, doctrines originated or controverted, a policy conceived and attempted altogether in advance of the old times. Intellect, both among the clergy and the laity, had undergone a great development. But the peculiar character of the papal power is also ascertained-that it is worldly, and the result of the policy of man. The outrage on Hildebrand shows how that power had diminished at its centre, but the victory over Henry that it maintained its strength at a distance. Natural forces diminish as the distance increases; this unnatural force displayed an opposite quality. Gregory had carried his point. He had not only beaten back the Northern attack, but had established the supremacy of the ecclesiastical over the temporal power, and that point, with inflexible resolution, he maintained, though in its consequences it cost Germany a civil war. But, while he was thus unyielding in his temporal policy, there is reason to suppose that he was not without misgivings in his theological belief. In the war between Henry and his rival Rodolph, Gregory was compelled by policy to be at first neutral. He occupied himself with the Eucharistic controversy. This was at the time that he was associated with Berengar, who lived with him for a year. Nor did the pope think it unworthy of himself to put forth, in excuse of the heretic, a vision, in which the Virgin Mary had asserted the orthodoxy of Berengar; but, as his quarrel with King Henry went on to new excommunications and depositions, a synod of bishops
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340 HIS EVENTUAL DEFEAT AND DEATH.
presumed to condemn him as a partisan of Berengar and a necromancer. On the election of Gilbert of Ravenna as antipope, Gregory, without hesitation, pushed his principles to their consequences, denouncing kingship as a wicked and diabolical usurpation, an infraction of the equal rights of man. Hereupon Henry determined to destroy him or to be destroyed; and descending again into Italy, A.D. 1081, for three successive years laid siege to Rome. In vain the amorous Matilda, with more than the devotion of an ally, endeavored to succor her beleaguered friend. The city surrendered to Henry at Christmas, A.D. 1084. With his antipope he entered it, receiving from his hands the imperial crown. The Norman allies of Hildebrand at last approached in strength. The emperor was compelled to retreat. A feeble attempt to hold the city was made. The Normans took it by surprise, and released Gregory from his imprisonment in the Castle of St. Angelo. An awful scene ensued. Some conflicts between the citizens and the Normans occurred; a battle in the streets was the consequence, and Rome was pillaged, sacked, and fired. Streets, churches, palaces, were left a heap of smoking ashes. The people by thousands were massacred. The Saracens, of whom there were multitudes in the Norman army, were in the Eternal City at last, and, horrible to be said, were there as the hired supporters of the Vicar of Christ. Matrons, nuns, young women, were defiled. Crowds of men, women, and children were carried off and sold as slaves. It was the treatment of a city taken by storm. In consternation, the blasted pontiff retired, with his infidel deliverers, from the ruined capital to Salerno, and there he died, A.D. 1085. He had been dead ten years, when a policy was entered upon by the papacy which imparted to it more power than all the exertions of Gregory. The Crusades were instituted by a French pope, Urban II. Unpopular in Italy, perhaps by reason of his foreign birth, he aroused his native country for the recovery of the Holy Land. He began his career in a manner not now unusual, interfering in a quarrel between Philip of France and his wife, taking the part of the latter, as experience had shown it was always advisable for a pope to do. Soon, however, he devoted his attention to something more important than these matrimonial broils. It seems that a European crusade was first distinctly conceived of and its value most completely comprehended by Gerbert, to whom, doubtless, his Mohammedan experiences had suggested it. In the first year of his pontificate, he wrote an epistle, in the name of the Church of Jerusalem, to the Church throughout the world, exhorting Christian soldiers to come to her relief either with arms or money. It had been subsequently contemplated by Gregory VII. For many years, pilgrimages to Palestine had been on the increase; a very valuable export trade in relics from that country had arisen; crowds from
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THE CRUSADES. 341
all parts of Europe had of late made their way to Jerusalem, for the singular purpose of being present at the great assize which the Scriptures were supposed to prophesy would soon take place in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The Mohammedans had inflicted on these pious persons much maltreatment, being unable to comprehend the purport of their extraordinary journey, and probably perceiving a necessity of putting some restriction upon the apparition of such countless multitudes. Peter the Hermit, who had witnessed the barbarities to which his Christian brethren were exposed, and the abominations of the holy places now in the hands of the infidel, roused Europe, by his preaching, to a frantic state; and Urban, at the Council of Clermont, A.D. 1095, gave authority to the Holy War. "It is the will of God," was unanimous shout of the council and the populace. The periodical shower of shooting stars was seen with remarkable brilliancy on April 25th, and mistaken by the council for a celestial monition that the Christians must precipitate themselves in like manner on the East. From this incident we may perceive how little there was of inspiration in these blundering and violent ecclesiastical assemblages; the moment that they can be brought to a scientific test their true nature is detected. As a preliminary exercise, a ferocious persecution of the Jews of France had burst forth, and the blood and tortures of multitudes offered a tardy expiation for the crimes that their ancestors had committed at the Crucifixion in Jerusalem, more than a thousand years before. It does not fall within my plan to give a detailed description of the Crusades. It is enough to say that, though the clergy had promised the protection of God to every one who would thus come to his assistancean ample reward for their pious work in this life, and the happiness of heaven in the next-Urban's crusade failed not only disastrously, but hideously, so far as the ignorant rabbles, who, under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless, were concerned. Nevertheless, under the better-organized expeditions that soon followed, Jerusalem was captured, July 15th, A.D. 1099. The long and ghastly line of bones whitening the road through Hungary to the East showed how different a thing it was for a peaceable and solitary pilgrim to beg his way, with his staff, and wallet, and scallop-shell, and a disorderly riot of thousands upon thousands to rush forward without any subordination, any organization, trusting only to the providence of God. The van of the Crusades consisted of two hundred and seventy-five thousand men, accompanied by eight horses, and preceded by a goat and a goose, into which some one had told them that the Holy Ghost had entered. Driven to madness by disappointment and famine-expecting, in their ignorance, that every town they came to must be Jerusalem-in their extremity they laid hands on whatever was in their way. Their track was marked by robbery, bloodshed, and fire. In the first crusade more than half
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342 RESULTS OF THE CRUSADE.
a million of men died. It was far more disastrous than the Moscow retreat. But still, in a military sense, the first crusade accomplished its object. The capture of Jerusalem, as might be expected under such circumstances, was attended by the perpetration of atrocities almost beyond belief. What a contrast to the conduct of the Arabs! When the Khalif Omar took Jerusalem, A.D. 637, he rode into the city by the side of the Patriarch Sophronius, conversing with him on its antiquities. At the hour of prayer, he declined to perform his devotions in the Church of the Resurrection, in which he chanced to be, but prayed on the steps of the Church of Constantine; "for," said he to the patriarch, "had I done so, the Mussulmen in a future age would have infringed the treaty, under color of imitating my example." But, in the capture by the Crusaders, the brains of young children were dashed out against the walls; infants were pitched over the battlements; every woman that could be seized was violated; men were roasted at fires; some were ripped up, to see if they had swallowed gold; the Jews were driven into their synagogue, and there burnt; a massacre of nearly 70,000 persons took place; and the pope's legate was seen "partaking in the triumph." It had been expected by the politicians who first projected these wars that they would heal the divisions of the Latin and Greek churches, and give birth to a European republic, under the spiritual presidency of the pope. In these respects they proved a failure. It does not appear that the popes themselves personally had ever any living faith in the result. Not one of them ever joined a crusade; and the Church, as a corporation, took care to embark very little money in these undertakings. But, though they did not answer to the original intention, they gave, in an indirect way, a wonderful stimulus to the papal power. Under the plausible pretenses offered by them, the pope obtained control over the person of every Christian man from the highest to the lowest. The cross once taken, all civil control men and money over the Crusader ceased-he became the man of the Church. Under those pretenses also, a right was imperceptibly acquired of raising revenue in all parts of Europe; even the clergy might be assessed. A drain was thus established on the resources of distant nations for an object which no man dared to gainsay; if he adventured on any such thing, he must encounter the odium of an infidel-an atheist. A steady stream of money flowed into Italy. Nor was it alone by this taxation of every Christian nation without permission of its government-this empire within every empire-immense wealth accrued to the projectors, while the infatuation could be kept up, by the diminished rate at which land could be obtained. Domains were thrown into the market; there were few purchasers but the Church. Immense domains were also given
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BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX. 343
away by weak-minded sinners, and those on the point of death, for the salvation of their souls. Thus, all things considered, the effect of the Crusades, though not precisely that which was expected, was of singular advantage to the Church, giving it a commanding strength it had never possessed before. In their resistance to the German attack the popes never hesitated at any means. They prompted Prince Henry to revolt against their great antagonist, his father; they intervened, not to rebuke, but to abet him, when he threw his father into prison and deprived him of the necessaries of life. They carried their vengeance beyond the grave. When the aged emperor, broken in heart, escaped from their torment, and was honorably buried by the Bishop of Liege, that prelate was forthwith excommunicated and compelled to disinter the corpse. But crimes like these, against which human nature revolts, meet with a retribution. This same Prince Henry, becoming Henry V., was forced by circumstances to resume his father's quarrel, and to refuse to yield his right of granting investitures. He marched upon Rome, and at the point of the sword compelled his adversary, Pope Paschal II., to surrender all the possessions and royalties of the Church-compelled him to crown him emperor-not, however, until the pontiff had been subjected to the ignominy of imprisonment, and brought into condemnation among his own party. Things seemed to be going to ruin in Rome, and such must inevitably have been the issue, had not an extraneous influence arisen in Bernard of Clairvaux, to whom Europe learned to look up as the beater down of heresies, theological and political. He had been a pupil of William of Champeaux, the vanquished rival of Abelard, and Abelard he hated with a religious and personal hate. He was a wonder-worker, though some of his miracles now only excite a smile; as when he excommunicated the flies which infested a church, and they all fell down dead and were swept out by the basketful. He has been described as "the mellifluous doctor, whose works are not scientific, but full of unction." He could not tolerate the principle at the basis of Abelard's philosophy-the assertion of the supremacy of reason. Of Arnold of Brescia-who carried that principle to its political consequences, and declared that the riches and power of the clergy were inconsistent with their profession-he was the accuser and punisher. Bernard preached a new crusade, authenticating his power by miracles, affirmed to be not inferior to those of our Savior; promising to him who should slay an unbeliever happiness in this life and Paradise in the life to come. This second crusade was conducted by kings, and included fanatic ladies, dressed in the armor of men; but it ended in ruin. It was reserved for the only Englishman who ever attained to the papacy to visit Rome with the punishment she had so often inflicted upon
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344 SUMMARY OF THE FOREGOING EVENT.
others. Nicolas Breakspear-Hadrian IV.-put the Eternal City under interdict, thereby ending the republic which the partisans of Arnold of Brescia had set up. But herein he was greatly aided by a change of sentiment in many of the inhabitants of Rome, who had found to their cost that it was more profitable for their city to be the centre of Christianity than the seat of a phantom republic. As an equivalent for his coronation by Hadrian, Frederick Barbarossa agreed to surrender to the Church Arnold of Brescia. With indecent haste, the moment she had obtained possession of her arch enemy she put him to death not delivering him over to the secular arm, as the custom had been, but murdering him with her own hand. Seven centuries have elapsed, and the blood of Arnold is still crying from the ground for retribution. Notwithstanding a new-the third-crusade, things went from bad to worse in the Holy Land. Saladin had retaken Jerusalem, A.D. 1187. Barbarossa was drowned in a river in Pisidia. Richard of England was treacherously imprisoned; nor did the pope interfere for this brave soldier of the Cross. In the mean time, the Emperors of Germany had acquired Sicily by marriage-an incident destined to be of Birth of Fred- no little importance in the history of Europe; for, on the death of the Emperor Henry VI. at Messina, his son Frederick, an infant not two years old, was left to be brought up in that island. What the consequences were we shall soon see. If we review the events related in this chapter, we find that the idolatry and immorality into which Rome had fallen had become connected with material interests sufficiently powerful to cause their perpetuation; that converted Germany insisted on a reform, and therefore made a moral attack upon the Italian system, attempting to carry it into effect by civil force. This attack was, properly speaking, purely moral, the intellectual element accompanying it being derived from Western or Arabian influences, as will be shown in the next chapter; and, in its resistance to this, the papacy was not only successful, but actually was able to retaliate, overthrowing the Emperors of Germany, and being even on the point of establishing a European autocracy, with the pope at its head. It was in these events that the Reformation began, though circumstances intervened to postpone its completion to the era of Luther. Henceforth we see more and more plainly the attitude in which the papacy, through its material interests, was compelled to stand, as resisting all intellectual advancement. Our subject has therefore here to be left unfinished until we shall have described the Mohammedan influences making pressures on the West and the East.
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THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST. 345
CHAPTER XVI. THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST-(Continued). THE WESTERN OR INTELLECTUAL ATTACK ON THE ITALIAN SYSTEM.
The intellectual Condition of Christendom contrasted with that of Arabian Spain. Diffusion of Arabian intellectual Influences through France and Sicily.-Example of Saracen Science in Allhazen, and of Philosophy in Algazzali.-Innocent III. prepares to combat these Influences.-Results to Western Europe of the Sack of Constantinople by the Catholics. The spread of Mohammedan light Literature is followed by Heresy.-The crushing of Heresy in the South of France by armed Force, the Inquisition, mendicant Orders, auricular Confession, and Casuistry. The rising Sentiment is embodied in Frederick II. in Sicily.-His Conflict with and Overthrow by the Pope.-Spread of Mutiny among the mendicant Orders.
A PRESSURE upon the Italian system had meantime been arising in the West. It was due to the presence of the Arabs in Spain. It is necessary, therefore, to relate the circumstances of their invasion and conquest of that country, and to compare their social and intellectual condition with the contemporary state of Christendom. From the barbarism of the native people of Europe, who could scarcely be said to have emerged from the savage state, unclean in person, benighted in mind, inhabiting huts in which it was a mark of wealth if there were bulrushes on the floor and straw mats against the wall; miserably fed on beans, vetches, roots, and even the bark of trees; clad in garments of untanned skin, or at the best of leather-perennial in durability, but not conducive to personal purity a state in which the pomp of royalty was sufficiently and satisfactorily manifested in the equi-
Page of the sovereign, an ox-cart, drawn by not less than two yokes of cattle, quickened in their movements by the goads of pedestrian serfs, whose legs were wrapped in wisps of straw; from a people, devout believers in all the wild fictions of shrine-miracles and preposterous relics; from the degradation of a base theology, and from the disputes of ambitious ecclesiastics for power, it is pleasant to turn to the southwest corner of the continent, where, under auspices of a very different kind, the irradiations of light were to break forth. The crescent in the West was soon to pass eastward to its full. But I must retrace my steps through four centuries, and resume the description of the Arabian movement after the subjugation of Africa, as related in the former volume, Chapter 11.
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346 MOHAMMEDAN CONQUEST OF SPAIN.
These were the circumstances of the Arab conquest of Spain. In that country the Arian Creed had been supplanted by the orthodox, and the customary persecutions had set in. From the time of the Emperor Hadrian, who had transported 50,000 Jewish families into Spain, that race had singularly increased, and, as might be expected, had received no mercy at the hands of the orthodox. Ninety thousand individuals had recently suffered compulsory baptism, and so had been brought under the atrocious Catholic law that whoever has been baptized shall be compelled to continue the observances of the Church. The Gothic monarchy was elective, and Roderic had succeeded to the throne, to the prejudice of the heirs of his predecessor. Though a very brave soldier, he was a luxurious and a licentious man. It was the custom of the Goths to send their children to Toledo to be educated, and, under these circumstances, a young girl of extraordinary beauty, the daughter of Count Julian, governor of Ceuta in Africa, was residing there. King Roderic fell passionately in love with her, and, being unable to overcome her virtuous resolution by persuasion, resorted to violence. The girl found means to inform her father of what had occurred. "By the living God!" exclaimed the count, in a paroxysm of rage, "I will be revenged." But, dissembling his wrath, he crossed over into Spain, had an understanding with Oppas, the Archbishop of Toledo, and other disaffected ecclesiastics, and, under specious pretenses, lulled the suspicions of Roderic, and brought his daughter away. And now he opened communications with the Emir Musa, prevailing upon him to attempt the conquest of the country, and offering that he himself would take the lead. The conditions were settled between them, and the consent of the khalif to the expedition obtained. Tarik, a lieutenant of the emir, was sent across the Straits with the van of the army. He landed on the rock called, in memory of his name, Gibraltar, April, A.D. 711. In the battle that ensued, a part of Roderic's troops, together with the Archbishop of Toledo, consummated their treasonable compact, and deserted to the Arabs; the rest were panic-stricken. In the rout, Roderic himself was drowned in the waters of the Guadalquivir. Tarik now proceeded rapidly northward, and was soon joined by his superior, the Emir Musa, who was not, perhaps, without jealousy at his success. As the Arab historians say, the Almighty delivered the idolators into their hand, and gave them one victory after another. As the towns successively fell, they left them in charge of the Jews, to whose revenge the conquest was largely due, and who could be thoroughly trusted; nor did they pause in their march until they had passed the French frontier and reached the Rhone. It was the intention of Musa to cross the European continent to Constantinople, subjugating the Frank, German, and Italian barbarians by the way. At this time it seemed impossible that France could escape the fate of Spain; and if she fell, the threat of Musa would inevitably have come to pass, that he
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ARREST OF THE MOHAMMEDAN ADVANCE. 347
would preach the Unity of God in the Vatican. But a quarrel had arisen between him and Tarik, who had been imprisoned and even scourged. The friends of the latter, however, did not fail him at the court of Damascus. An envoy from the Khalif Alwalid appeared, ordering Musa to desist from his enterprise, to return to Syria, and exonerate himself of the things laid to his charge. But Musa bribed the envoy to let him advance. Hereupon the angry khalif dispatched a second messenger, who, in face of the Moslems and Christians, audaciously arrested him, at the head of his troops, by the bridle of his horse. The conqueror of Spain was compelled to return. He was cast into prison, fined 200,000 pieces of gold, publicly whipped, and his life with difficulty spared. As is related of Belisarius, Musa was driven as a beggar to solicit charity, and the Saracen conqueror of Spain ended his days in grief and absolute want. These dissensions among the Arabs, far more than the sword of Charles Martel, prevented the Mohammedanization of France. Their historians admit the great check received at the battle of Tours, in which Abderrahman was killed; they call that field the Place of the Martyrs; but their accounts by no means correspond to the relations of the Christian authors, who affirm that 375,000 Mohammedans fell, but only 1500 Christians. The defeat was not so disastrous but that in a few months they were able to resume their advance, and their progress was arrested only by renewed dissensions among themselves-dissensions not alone among the leaders in Spain, but also more serious ones of aspirants for the khalifate in Asia. On the overthrow of the Ommiade house, Abderrahman, one of that family, escaped to Spain, which repaid the patronage of its conquest by acknowledging him as its sovereign. He made Cordova the seat of his government. Neither he nor his immediate successors took any other title than that of emir, out of respect to the khalif, who resided at Bagdad, the metropolis of Islam, though they maintained a rivalry with.him in the patronage of letters and science. Abderrahman himself strengthened his power by an alliance with Charlemagne. Scarcely had the Arabs become firmly settled in Spain before they commenced a brilliant career. Adopting what had now become the established policy of the Commanders of the Faithful in Asia, the Khalifs of Cordova distinguished themselves as patrons of learning, and set an example of refinement strongly contrasting with the condition of the native European princes. Cordova, under their administration, at its highest point of prosperity, boasted of more than two hundred thousand houses, and more than a million of inhabitants. After sunset, a man might walk through it in a straight line for ten miles by the light of the public lamps. Seven hundred years after this time there was not so much as one public lamp in London. Its
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348 LUXURY OF THE SPANISH MOHAMMEDAN.
streets were solidly paved. In Paris, centuries subsequently, whoever stepped over his threshold on a rainy day stepped up to his ankles in mud. Other cities, as Granada, Seville, Toledo, considered themselves rivals of Cordova. The palaces of the khalifs were magnificently decorated. Those sovereigns might well look down with supercilious contempt on the dwellings of the rulers of Germany, France, and England, which were scarce better than stables-chimneyless, windowless, and with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape, like the wigwams of certain Indians. The Spanish Mohammedans had brought with them all the luxuries and prodigalities of Asia. Their residences stood forth against the clear blue sky, or were embosomed in woods. They had polished marble balconies, overhanging orange-gardens; courts with cascades of water; shady retreats provocative of slumber in the heat of the day; retiring-rooms, vaulted with stained glass, speckled with gold, over which streams of water were made to gush; the floors and walls were of exquisite mosaic. Here, a fountain of quicksilver shot up in a glistening spray, the glittering particles falling with a tranquil sound like fairy bells; there, apartments into which cool air was drawn from flower-gardens, in summer, by means of ventilating towers, and in the winter through earthen pipes, or caleducts, imbedded in the walls-the hypocaust, in the vaults below, breathing forth volumes of warm and perfumed air through these hidden passages. The walls were not covered with wainscot, but adorned with arabesques, and paintings of agricultural scenes and views of Paradise. From the ceilings, corniced with fretted gold, great chandeliers hung, one of which, it is said, was so large that it contained 1084 lamps. Clusters of frail marble columns surprised the beholder with the vast weights they bore. In the boudoirs of the sultanas they were sometimes of verd antique, and incrusted with lapis lazuli. The furniture was of sandal and citron wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ivory, silver, or relieved with gold and precious malachite. In orderly confusion were arranged vases of rock crystal, Chinese porcelains, and tables of exquisite mosaic. The winter apartments were hung with rich tapestry; the floors were covered with embroidered Persian carpets. Pillows and couches, of elegant forms, were scattered about the rooms, which were perfumed with frankincense. It was the intention of the Saracen architect, by excluding the view of the external landscape, to concentrate attention on his work; and since the representation of the human form was religiously forbidden, and that source of decoration denied, his imagination ran riot with the complicated arabesques he introduced, and sought every opportunity of replacing the prohibited works of art by the trophies and rarities of the garden. For this reason, the Arabs never produced artists; religion turned them from the beautiful, and made them soldiers, philosophers, and men of affairs. Splendid flowers and rare exotics ornamented the court
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THEIR SOCIAL LIFE. 349
yards and even the inner chambers. Great care was taken to make due provision for the cleanliness, occupation, and amusement of the inmates. Through pipes of metal, water, both warm and cold, to suit the season of the year, ran into baths of marble; in niches, where the current of air could be artificially directed, hung dripping alcarazzas. There were whispering-galleries for the amusement of the women; labyrinths and marble play-courts for the children; for the master himself, grand libraries. The Khalif Alhakem's was so large that the catalogue alone filled forty volumes. He had also apartments for the transcribing, binding, and ornamenting of books. A taste for caligraphy and the possession of splendidly-illuminated manuscripts seems to have anticipated in the khalifs, both of Asia and Spain, the taste for statuary and paintings among the later popes of Rome. Such were the palace and gardens of Zebra, in which Abderrahman III. honored his favorite sultana. The edifice had 1200 columns of Greek, Italian, Spanish, and African marble. Its hall of audience was incrusted with gold and pearls. Through the long corridors of its seraglio black eunuchs silently glided. The ladies of the harem, both wives and concubines, were the most beautiful that could be found. To that establishment alone 6300 persons were attached. The body-guard of the sovereign was composed of 12,000 horsemen, whose cimeters and belts were studded with gold. This was that Abderrahman who, after a glorious reign of fifty years, sat down to count the number of days of unalloyed happiness he had experienced, and could only enumerate fourteen. "Oh man!" exclaimed the plaintive khalif, " put not thy trust in this present world." No nation has ever excelled the Spanish Arabs in the beauty and costliness of their pleasure-gardens. To them, also, we owe the introduction of very many of our most valuable cultivated fruits, such as the peach. Retaining the love of their ancestors for the cooling effect of water in a hot climate, they spared no pains in the superfluity of fountains, hydraulic works, and artificial lakes in which fish were raised for the table. Into such a lake, attached to the palace of Cordova, many loaves were cast each day to feed the fish. There were also menageries of foreign animals; aviaries of rare birds; manufactories in which skilled workmen, obtained from foreign countries, displayed their art in textures of silk, cotton, linen, and all the miracles of the loom; in jewelry and filigree-work, with which they ministered to the female pride of the sultanas and concubines. Under the shade of cypresses cascades disappeared; among flowering shrubs there were winding walks, bowers of roses, seats cut out of the rock, and crypt-like grottoes hewn in the living stone. Nowhere was ornamental gardening better understood; for not only did the artist try to please the eye as it wandered over the pleasant gradation of vegetable color and form-he also boast
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850 MOHAMMEDAN LITERATURE.
ed his success in the gratification of the sense of smell by the studied succession of perfumes from beds of fl6wers. To these Saracens we are indebted for many of our personal comforts. Religiously cleanly, it was not possible for them to clothe, cording to the fashion of the natives of Europe, in a garment unchanged till it dropped to pieces of itself, a loathsome mass of vermin, stench, and rags. No Arab who had been a minister of state, or the associate or antagonist of a sovereign, would have offered such a spectacle as the corpse of Thomas a Becket when his haircloth shirt was removed. They taught us the use of the often-changed and often-washed under-garment of linen or cotton, which still passes among ladies under its old Arabic name. But to cleanliness they were not unwilling to add ornament. Especially among women of the higher classes was the love of finery a passion. Their outer garments were often of silk, embroidered and decorated with gems and woven gold. So fond were the Moorish women of gay colors, and the lustre of chrysolites, hyacinths, emeralds, and sapphires, that it was quaintly said that the interior of any public building in which they were permitted to appear looked like a flower-meadow in the spring besprinkled with rain. In the midst of all this luxury, which can not be regarded by the historian with disdain, since in the end it produced a most important result in the south of France, the Spanish khalifs, emulating the example of their Asiatic compeers, and in this strongly contrasting with the popes of Rome, were not only the patrons, but the personal cultivators of all the branches of human learning. One of them was himself the author of a work on polite literature in not less than fifty volumes; another wrote a treatise on algebra. When Zaryab the musician came from the East to Spain, the Khalif Abderrahman rode forth to meet him in honor. The College of Music in Cordova was sustained by ample government patronage, and is said to have produced many illustrious professors. The Arabs never translated into their own tongue the great Greek poets, though they so sedulously collected and translated the Greek philosophers. Their religious sentiments and sedate character caused them to abominate the lewdness of our classical mythology, and to denounce indignantly any connection between the licentious, impure Olympian Jove and the Most High God as an insufferable and unpardonable blasphemy. Haroun Alraschid had gratified his curiosity by causing Homer to be translated into Syriac, but he did not adventure on rendering the great epics into Arabic. Notwithstanding this aversion to our graceful but not unobjectionable ancient poetry, among them originated the Tensons, or poetic disputations, carried afterward to perfection among the Troubadours; from them, also, the Proven9als learned to employ jongleurs. Across the Pyrenees, literary, philosoph-
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ical, and military adventurers were perpetually passing; and thus the luxury, the taste, and, above all, the chivalrous gallantry and elegant courtesies of Moorish society found their way from Granada and Cordova to Provence and Languedoc. The French, and German, and English nobles imbibed the Arab admiration of the horse; they learned to pride themselves on skillful riding. Hunting and falconry became their fashionable pastimes; they tried to erulate that Arab skill which had produced the celebrated breed of Andalusian horses. It was a scene of grandeur and gallantry; the pastimes were tilts and tournaments. The refined society of Cordova prided itself in its politeness. A gay contagion also spread from the beautiful Moorish miscreants to their sisters beyond the mountains; the South of France was full of the witcheries of female fascinations, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Even in Italy and Sicily the love-song became the favorite composition; and out of these genial but not orthodox beginnings the polite literature of modern Europe arose. The pleasant epidemic spread by degrees along every hill- side and valley. In monasteries, voices that had been vowed to celibacy might be heard caroling stanzas of which St. Jerome would hardly have approved; there was many a juicy abbot, who could troll forth in jocund strains, like those of the merry sinners of Malaga and Xeres, the charms of women and wine, though one was forbidden to the Moslem and one to the monk. The sedate graybeards of Cordova had already applied to the supreme judge to have the songs of the Spanish Jew, Abraham Ibn Sahal, prohibited; for there was not a youth, nor woman, nor child in the city who could not repeat them by heart. Their immoral tendency was a public scandal. The light gayety of Spain was reflected in the coarser habits of the northern countries. It was an archdeacon of Oxford who some time afterward sang, " Mihi sit propositum in taberna mori, Vinum sit appositum morientis ori, Ut dicant, cum venerint angelorum chori;'Deus sit propitius huic potatori,'" etc. Even as early as the tenth century, persons having a taste for learning and for elegant amenities found' their way into Spain from all adjoining countries; a practice in subsequent years still more indulged in, when it became illustrated by the brilliant success of Gerbert, who, as we have seen, passed from the infidel University of Cordova to the papacy of Rome. The khalifs of the West carried out the precepts of Ali, the fourth successor of Mohammed, in the patronage of literature. They established libraries in all their chief towns; it is said that not less than seventy were in existence. To every mosque was attached a public school, in which the children of the poor were taught to read
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352 SCHOOLS AND COLLEGE.
and write, and instructed in the precepts of the Koran. For those in easier circumstances there were academies, usually arranged in twenty five or thirty apartments, each calculated for accommodating four students; the academy being presided over by a rector. In Cordova, Granada, and other great cities, there were universities frequently under the superintendence of Jews; the Mohammedan maxim being that the real learning of a man is of more public importance than any particular religious opinions he may entertain. In this they followed the example of the Asiatic khalif, Haroun Alraschid, who actually conferred the superintendence of his schools on John Masue, a Nestorian Christian. The Mohammedan liberality was in striking contrast with the intolerance of Europe. Indeed, it may be doubted whether at this time any European nation is sufficiently advanced to follow such an example. In the universities, the professors of polite literature gave lectures upon Arabic classical works; others taught rhetoric, or composition, or mathematics, or astronomy, or other sciences. From these institutions many of the practices observed in our colleges were derived. They held Commencements as we do, at which poems were read and orations delivered in presence of the public. They had also, in addition to these schools of general learning, professional ones, particularly for medicine. With a pride perhaps not altogether inexcusable, the Arabians boasted of their language as being the most perfect spoken by man. Mohammed himself, when challenged to produce a miracle in proof of the authenticity of his mission, uniformly pointed to the composition of the Koran, its unapproachable excellence vindicating its inspiration. The orthodox Moslems-the Moslems are those who are submissively resigned to the Divine will-are wont to assert that every
Page of that book is indeed a conspicuous miracle. It is not then surprising that, in the Arabian schools, great attention was paid to the study of language, and that so many celebrated grammarians were produced. By these scholars, dictionaries, similar to those now in use, were composed; their copiousness is indicated by the circumstance that one of them consisted of sixty volumes, the definition of each word being illustrated or sustained by quotations from Arab authors of acknowledged repute. They had also lexicons of Greek, Latin, Hebrew; and cyclopedias such as the Historical Dictionary of Sciences of Mohammed Ibn Abdallah, of Granada. In their highest civilization and luxury they did not forget the amusements of their forefathers-listening to the tale-teller, who never failed to obtain an audience in the midst of Arab tents. Around the evening fires in Spain the wandering literati exercised their wonderful powers of Oriental invention, edifying the eager listeners by such narrations as those that have descended to us in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. The more sober and higher efforts of the educated were, of course, directed to pulpit eloquence, in conformity to the exam-
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ple of all the great Oriental khalifs, and sanctified by the practice of the Prophet himself. Their poetical productions embraced all the modern minor forms-satires, odes, elegies, etc.; but they never produced any work in the higher walks of poesy, no epic, no tragedy. Perhaps this was due to their false fashion of valuing the mechanical execution of a work. They were the authors and introducers of rhyme; and such was the luxuriance and abundance of their language, that, in some of their longest poems, the same rhyme is said to have been used alternately from the beginning to the end. Where such mechanical triumphs were popularly prized, it may be supposed that the conception and spirit would be indifferent. Even among the Spanish women there were not a few who, like Velada, Ayesha, Labana, Algasania, achieved reputation in these compositions; and some of them were daughters of khalifs. And this is the more interesting to us, since it was from the Provengal poetry, the direct descendant of these efforts, that European literature arose. Sonnets and romances at last displaced the grimly-orthodox productions of the wearisome and ignorant fathers of the Church. If fiction was prized among the Spanish Arabs, history was held in not less esteem. Every khalif had his own historian. The instincts of the race are perpetually peeping out; not only were there historians of the Commanders of the Faithful, but also of celebrated horses and illustrious camels. In connection with history, statistics were cultivated; this having been, it may be said, a necessary study from the first, enforced on the Saracen officers in their assessment of tribute on conquered misbelievers, and subsequently continued as an object of taste. It was, doubtless, a similar necessity, arising from their position, that stamped such a remarkably practical aspect on the science of the Arabs generally. Many of their learned men were travelers and voyagers, constantly moving about for the acquisition or diffusion of knowledge, their acquirements being a passport to them wherever they went, and a sufficient introduction to any of the African or Asiatic courts. They were thus continually brought in contact with men of affairs, soldiers of fortune, statesmen, and became imbued with much of their practical spirit; and hence the singularly romantic character which the biographies of many of these men display, wonderful turns of prosperity, violent deaths. The scope of their literary labors offers a subject well worthy of meditation; it contrasts with the contemporary ignorance of Europe. Some wrote on chronology; some on numismatics; some, now that military eloquence had become objectless, wrote on pulpit oratory; some on agriculture and its allied branches, as the art of irrigation. Not one of the purely mathematical, or mixed, or practical sciences was omitted. Out of a list too long for detailed quotation, I may recall a few names: Assamh, who wrote on topography and statistics, a brave sol-
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354 SCIENTIFIC WRITING.
dier, who was killed in the invasion of France, A.D. 720; Avicenna, the great physician and philosopher, who died A.D. 1037; Averrhoes, of Cordova, the chief commentator on Aristotle, A.D. 1198. It was his intention to unite the doctrines of Aristotle with those of the Koran. To him is imputed the discovery of spots upon the sun. The leading idea of his philosophy was the numerical unity of the souls of mankind, though parted among millions of living individuals. He died at Morocco. Abu Othman wrote on zoology; Alberuni, on gems he had traveled to India to procure information; Rhazes, Al Abbas, and Al Beithar, on botany-the latter had been in all parts of the world for the purpose of obtaining specimens. Ebn Zoar, better known as Avenzoar, may be looked upon as the authority in Moorish pharmacy. Pharmacopoeias were published by the schools, improvements on the old ones of the Nestorians: to them may be traced the introduction of many Arabic words, such as sirup, julep, elixir, still used among our apothecaries. A competent scholar might furnish not only an interesting, but valuable book, founded on the remaining relics Arab vocabulary; for, in whatever direction we may look, we meet, in the various pursuits of peace and war, of letters and of science, Saracenic vestiges. Our dictionaries tell us that such is the origin of admiral, alchemy, alcohol, algebra, chemise, cotton, and hundreds of other words. The Saracens commenced the application of chemistry, both to the theory and practice of medicine, in the explanation of the functions of the human body and in the cure of its diseases. Nor was their surgery behind their medicine. Albucasis, of Cordova, shrinks not from the performance of the most formidable operations in his own and in the obstetrical art; the actual cautery and the knife are used without hesitation. He has left us ample descriptions of the surgical instruments then employed; and from him we learn that, in operations on females in which considerations of delicacy intervened, the services of properly instructed women were secured. How different was all this from the state of things in Europe: the Christian peasant, fever-stricken or overtaken by accident, hied to the nearest saint-shrine and expected a miracle; the Spanish Moor relied on the prescription or lancet of his physician, or the bandage and knife of his surgeon. In mathematics the Arabians acknowledged their indebtedness to two sources, Greek and Indian, but they greatly improved upon both. The Asiatic khalifs had made exertions to procure translations of Euclid, Apollonius, Archimedes, and other Greek geometers. Almaimon, in a letter to the Emperor Theophilus, expressed his desire to visit Constantinople if his public duties would have permitted. He requests of him to allow Leo the mathematician to come to Bagdad to impart to him a portion of his learning, pledging his word that he
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ARITHMETIC AND ASTRONOMY. 355
would restore him quickly and safely again. "Do not," says the highminded khalif, "let diversity of religion or of country cause you to refuse my request. Do what friendship would concede to a friend. In return, I offer you a hundred weight of gold, a perpetual alliance and peace." True to the instincts of his race and the traditions of his city, the Byzantine sourly and insolently refused the request, saying that "the learning which had illustrated the Roman name should never be imparted to a barbarian." From the Hindus the Arabs learned arithmetic, especially that valuable invention termed by us the Arabic numerals, but honorably ascribed by them to its proper source, under the designation of "Indian numerals." They also entitled their treatises on the subject "Systems of Indian Arithmetic." This admirable notation by nine digits and cipher occasioned a complete revolution in arithmetical computations. As in the case of so many other things, the Arab impress is upon it; our word cipher, and its derivatives, ciphering, etc., recall the Arabic word tsaphara or ciphra, the name for the 0, and meaning that which is blank or void. Mohammed Ben Musa, said to be the earliest of the Saracen authors on algebra, and who made the great improvement of substituting sines for chords in trigonometry, wrote also on this Indian system. He lived at the end of the ninth century; before the end of the tenth it was in common use among the African and Spanish mathematicians. Ebn Junis, A.D. 1008, used it in his astronomical works. From Spain it passed into Italy, its singular advantage in commercial computation causing it to be eagerly adopted in the great trading cities. We still use the word algorithm in reference to calculations. The study of algebra was intently cultivated among the Arabs, who gave it the name it bears. Ben Musa, just referred to, was the inventor of the common method of solving quadratic equations. In the application of mathematics to astronomy and physics they had been long distinguished. Almaimon had determined with considerable accuracy the obliquity of the ecliptic. His result, with those of some other Saracen astronomers, is as follows: A.D. 830. Almaimon............................................ 230 3' 52" " 879. Albategnius, at Aracte.......................................... 23~ 35' 00 " 987. Aboul Wefa, at Bagdad.......................................... 23 35' 00 " 995. Aboul Rihau, with a quadrant of 25 feet radius............ 23~ 35' 00 " 1080. Arzachael........................................................... 23 34' 00 Almaimon had also ascertained the size of the earth from the measurement of a degree on the shore of the Red Sea-an operation implying true ideas of its form, and in singular contrast with the doctrine of Constantinople and Rome. While the latter was asserting, in all its absurdity, the flatness of the earth, the Spanish Moors were teaching geography in their common schools from globes. In Africa, there was still pre
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356 ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES.
served, with almost religious reverence, in the library at Cairo, one of brass, reputed to have belonged to the great astronomer Ptolemy. Al Idrisi made one of silver for Roger II., of Sicily; and Gerbert used one which he had brought from Cordova in the school he established at Rheims. It cost a struggle of several centuries, illustrated by some martyrdoms, before the dictum of Lactantius and Augustine could be overthrown. Among problems of interest that were solved may be mentioned the determination of the length of the year by Albategnius and Thebit Ben Corrah; and increased accuracy was given to the correction of astronomical observations by Alhazen's great discovery of atmospheric refraction. Among the astronomers, some composed tables; some wrote on the measure of time; some on the improvement of clocks, for which purpose they were the first to apply the pendulum; some on instruments, as the astrolabe. The introduction of astronomy into Christian Europe has been attributed to the translation of the works of Mohammed Fargani. In Europe, also, the Arabs were the first to build observatories; the Giralda, or tower of Seville, was erected under the superintendence of Geber, the mathematician, A.D. 1196, for that purpose. Its fate was not a little characteristic. After the expulsion of the Moors it was turned into a belfry, the Spaniards not knowing what else to do with it. I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of to Europe has contrived to put out of sight our scientific obligations to the Mohammedans. Surely they can not be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancor and national conceit can not be perpetuated forever. What should the modern astronomer say when, remembering the contemporary barbarism of Europe, he finds the Arab Abul Hassan speaking of tubes, to the extremities of which ocular and object diopters, perhaps sights, were attached, as used at Meragha? what when he reads of the attempts of Abderrahman Sufi at improving the photometry of the stars? Are the astronomical tables of Ebn Junis (A.D. 1008), called the Hakemite tables, or the Ilkanic tables of Nasser Eddin Tasi, constructed at the great observatory just mentioned, Meragha, near Tauris, A.D. 1259, or the measurement of time by pendulum oscillations, and the methods of correcting astronomical tables by systematic observations-are such things worthless indications of the mental state? The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe, as, before long, Christendom will have to confess; he has indelibly written it on the heavens, as any one may see who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe. Our obligations to the Spanish Moors in the arts of life are even more marked than in the higher branches of science, perhaps only because our ancestors were better prepared to take advantage of things connected with daily affairs. They set an example of skill-
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ful agriculture, the practice of which was regulated by a code of laws. Not only did they attend to the cultivation of plants, introducing very many new ones; they likewise paid great attention to the breeding of cattle, especially sheep and the horse. To them we owe the introduction of the great products, rice, sugar, cotton, and also, as we have previously observed, nearly all the fine garden and orchard fruits, together with many less important plants, as spinach and saffron. To them Spain owes the culture of silk; they gave to Xeres and Malaga their celebrity for making wine. They introduced the Egyptian system of irrigation by flood-gates, wheels, and pumps. They also promoted many important branches of industry; improved the manufacture of textile fabrics, earthenware, iron, steel; the Toledo sword-blades were every where prized for their temper. The Arabs, on their expulsion from Spain, carried the manufacture of a kind of leather, in which they were acknowledged to excel, to Morocco, from which country the leather itself has now taken its name. They also introduced inventions of a more ominous kind -gunpowder and artillery. The cannon they used appeared to have been made of wrought iron. But perhaps they more than compensated for these evil contrivances by the introduction of the mariner's compass. The mention of the mariner's compass might lead us correctly to infer that the Spainish Arabs were interested in commercial pursuits, a conclusion to which we should also come when we consider the revenues of some of their khalifs. That of Abderrahman III. is stated at five and a half millions sterling-a vast sum if considered by its modern equivalent, and far more than could possibly be raised by taxes on the produce of the soil. It probably exceeded the entire revenue of all the sovereigns of Christendom taken together. From Barcelona and other ports an immense trade with the Levant was maintained, but it was mainly in the hands of the Jews, who, from the first invasion of Spain by Musa, had ever been the firm allies and collaborators of the Arabs. Together they had participated in the dangers of the invasion; together they had shared its boundless success; together they had held in irreverent derision, nay, even in contempt, the woman-worshipers and polytheistic savages beyond the Pyrenees-as they mirthfully called those whose long-delayed vengeance they were in the end to feel; together they were expelled. Against such Jews as lingered behind the hideous persecutions of the Inquisition were directed. But in the days of their prosperity they maintained a merchant marine of more than a thousand ships. They had factories and consuls on the Tanais. With Constantinople alone they maintained a great trade; it ramified from the Black Sea and East Mediterranean into the interior of Asia; it reached the ports of India and China, and extended along the African coast as far as Madagascar. Even in these commercial affairs the singular genius of the Jew and Arab shine forth. In the midst of the tenth
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858 REVIEW OF ALHAZEN.
century, when Europe was about in the same condition that Caffraria is now, enlightened Moors, like Abul Cassem, were writing treatises on the principles of trade and commerce. As on so many other occasions, on these affairs they have left their traces. The smallest weight they used in trade was the grain of barley, four of which were equal to one sweet pea, called in Arabic carat. We still use the grain as our unit of weight, and still speak of gold as being so many carats fine. Such were the Khalifs of the West; such their splendor, their luxury, their knowledge; such some of the obligations we are under to them-obligations which Christian Europe, with singular insincerity, has ever been fain to hide. The cry against the misbeliever has long outlived the Crusades. Considering the enchanting country over which they ruled, it was not without reason that they caused to be engraven on the public seal, " The servant of the Merciful rests contented in the decrees of God." What more, indeed, could Paradise give them? But, considering also the evil end of all this happiness and pomp, this learning, liberality, and wealth, we may well appreciate the solemn truth which these monarchs, in their day of pride and power, grandly wrote in the beautiful mosaics on their palace walls, an everrecurring monition to him who owes dominion to the sword, " There is no conqueror but God." The value of a philosophical or political system may be determined by its fruits. On this principle I examined in Chapter XII. the Italian system, estimating its religious merit from the biographies of the popes, which afford the proper criterion. In like manner, the intellectual state the Mohammedan nations at successive epochs may be ascertained from what is its proper criterion, the contemporaneous scientific manifestation. At the time when the Moorish influences in Spain began to exert a pressure on the Italian system, there were several scientific writers, fragments of whose works have descended to us. As an architect may judge of the skill of the ancient Egyptians in his art from a study of the Pyramids, so from these relics of Saracenic learning we may demonstrate the intellectual state of the Mohammedan people, though much of their work has been lost and more has been purposely destroyed. Among such writers is Alhazen; his date was about A.D. 1100. It appears that he resided both in Spain and Egypt, but the details of his biography are very confused. Through his optical works, which have been translated into Latin, he is best known to Europe. He was the first to correct the Greek misconception as to the nature of vision, showing that the rays of light come from external objects to the eye, and do not issue forth from the eye and impinge on external things, as, up to his time, had been supposed. His explanation does not depend upon mere hypothesis or supposition, but is
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plainly based upon anatomical investigation as well as on geometrical discussion. He determines that the retina is the seat of vision, and that impressions made by light upon it are conveyed along the optic nerve to the brain. Though it might not be convenient, at the time when Alhazen lived, to make such an acknowledgment, no one could come to these conclusions, nor, indeed, know any thing about these facts, unless he had been engaged in the forbidden practice of dissection. With felicity he explains that we see single when we use both eyes, because of the formation of the visual images on symmetrical portions of the two retinas. To the modern physiologist the mere mention of such things is as significant as the occurrence of an arch in the interior of the pyramid is to the architect. But Alhazen shows that our sense of sight is by no means a reliable guide, and that there are illusions arising from the course which the rays of light may take when they suffer refraction or reflection. It is in the discussion of one of these physical problems that his scientific greatness truly shines forth. He is perfectly aware that the atmosphere decreases in density with increase of height; and from that consideration he shows that a ray of light, entering it obliquely, follows a curvilinear path which is concave toward the earth; and that, since the mind refers the position of an object to the direction in which the ray of light from it enters the eye, the result must be an illusion as respects the starry bodies; they appear to us, to use the Arabic term, nearer to the zenith than they actually are, and not in their true place. We see them in the direction of the tangent to the curve of refraction as it reaches the eye. Hence also he shows that we actually see the stars, and the sun, and the moon before they have risen and after they have set a wonderful illusion. He shows that in its passage through the air the curvature of a ray increases with the increasing density, and that its path does not depend on vapors that chance to be present, but on the variation of density in the medium. To this refraction he truly refers the shortening, in their vertical diameter, of the horizontal sun and moon; to its variations he imputes the twinkling of the fixed stars. The apparent increase of size of the former bodies when they are in the horizon he refers to a mental deception, arising from the presence of intervening terrestrial objects. He shows that the effect of refraction is to shorten the duration of night and darkness by prolonging the visibility of the sun, and considering the reflecting action of the air, he deduces that beautiful explanation of the nature of twilight-the light that we perceive before the rising and after the setting of the sun-which we accept at the present time as true. With extraordinary acuteness, he applies the principles with which he is dealing to the determination of the height of the atmosphere, deciding that its limit is nearly 58.5 miles.
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360 REVIEW OF ALHAZEN.
All this is very grand. Shall we compare it with the contemporaneous monk miracles and monkish philosophy of Europe? It would make a profound impression if communicated for the first time to a scientific society in our own age. Nor perhaps does his merit end here. If the Book of the Balance of Wisdom, for a translation of which we are indebted to M. Khanikoff, the Russian consul-general at Tabriz, is the production of Alhazen, as there seems to be internal proof, it offers us evidence of a singular clearness in mechanical conception for which we should scarcely have been prepared, and, if it be not his, at all events it indisputably shows the scientific acquirements of his age. In that book is plainly set forth the connection between the weight of the atmosphere and its increasing density. The weight of the atmosphere was therefore understood before Tdrricelli. He shows that a body will weigh differently in a rare and in a dense atmosphere; that its loss of weight will be greater in proportion as the air is more dense. He considers the force with which plunged bodies will rise through heavier media in which they are immersed, and discusses the submergence of floating bodies, as ships upon the sea. He understands the doctrine of the centre of gravity. He applies it to the investigation of balances and steelyards, showing the relations between the centre of gravity and the centre of suspension-when those instruments will set and when they will vibrate. He recognizes gravity as a force; asserts that it diminishes with the distance; but falls into the mistake that the diminution is as the distance, and not as its square. He considers gravity as terrestrial, and fails to perceive that it is universal-that was reserved for Newton. He knows correctly the relation between the velocities, spaces, and times of falling bodies, and has very distinct ideas of capillary attraction. He improves the construction of that old Alexandrian invention, the hydrometer-the instrument which, in a letter to his fair but pagan friend Hypatia, the good Bishop of Ptolemais, Synesius, six hundred years before, requests her to have made for him in Alexandria, as he wishes to try the wines he is using, his health being a little delicate. The determinations of the densities of bodies, as given by Alhazen, approach very closely to our own; in the case of mercury they are even more exact than some of those of the last century. I join, as, doubtless, all natural philosophers will do, in the pious prayer of Alhazen, that, in the day of judgment, the All-Merciful will take pity on the soul of Abur-Raihan, because he was the first of the race of men to construct a table of specific gravities; and I will add Alhazen's name thereto, for he was the first to trace the curvilinear path of a ray of light through the air. Though more than seven centuries part him from our times, the physiologists of this age may accept him as their compeer, since he received and defended the doctrine, now forcing its way, of the progressive de
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velopment of animal forms. He upheld the affirmation of those who said that man, in his progress, passes through a definite succession of states; not, however, "that he was once a bull, and was then changed to an ass, and afterward into a horse, and after that into an ape, and finally became a man." This, he says, is only a misrepresentation by "common people" of what is really meant. The " common people" who withstood Alhazen have representatives among us, themselves the only example in the Fauna of the world of that non-development which they so loudly affirm. At the best they are only passing through some of the earlier forms of that series of transmutations to which the devout Mohammedan in the above quotation alludes. The Arabians, with all this physical knowledge, do not appear to have been in possession of the thermometer, though they knew the great importance of temperature measures, employing the areometer for that purpose. They had detected the variation in density of liquids by heat, but not the variation in volume. In their measures of time they were more successful; they had several kinds of clepsydras. A balance clepsydra is described in the work from which I am quoting. But it was their great astronomer, Ebn Junis, who accomplished the most valuable of all chronometric improvements. He first applied the pendulum to the measure of time. Laplace, in the fifth note to his Systeme du Monde, avails himself of the observations of this philosopher, with those of Albategnius and other Arabians, as incontestible proof of the diminution of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit. He states, moreover, that the observation of the obliquity of the ecliptic, properly corrected for parallax and refraction, gives for the yearA.D. 1000 a result closely approaching to the theoretical. He also mentions another observation of Ebn Junis, October 31, A.D. 1007, as of much importance in reference to the great inequalities of Jupiter and Saturn. I have already remarked that, in the writings of this great Arabian, the Arabic numerals and our common arithmetical processes are currently used. From Africa and Spain they passed into Italy, finding ready acceptance among commercial men, who recognized at once their value, and, as William of Malmesbury says, being a wonderful relief to the "sweating calculators;" an epithet of which the correctness will soon appear to any one who will try to do a common multiplication or division sum by the aid of the old Roman numerals. It is said that Gerbert-Pope Sylvester-was the first to introduce a knowledge of them into Europe; he had learned them at the Mohammedan university of Cordova. It is in allusion to the cipher, which follows the 9, but which, added to any of the other digits, increases by tenfold its power, that, in a letter to his patron, the Emperor Otho III., with humility he playfully but truly says, " I am like the last of all the numbers."
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362 REVIEW OF ALGAZZALI.
The overthrow of the Roman by the Arabic numerals foreshadowed the result of a far more important-a political-contest between those rival names. But, before showing how the Arabian intellect pressed upon Rome, and the convulsive struggles of desperation which Rome made to resist it, I must for a moment consider the former under another point of view, and speak of Saracen philosophy. And here Algazzali shall be my guide. He was born A.D. 1058. Let us hear him speak for himself. He is relating his attempt to detach himself from the opinions which he had imbibed in his childhood: "I said to myself, 'My aim is simply to know the truth of; consequently, it is indispensable for me to ascertain what is knowledge.' Now it was evident to me that certain knowledge must be that which explains the object to be known in such a manner that no doubt can remain, so that in future all error and conjecture respecting it must be impossible. Not only would the understanding then need no efforts to be convinced of certitude, but security against error is in such close connection with knowledge, that, even were an apparent proof of falsehood to be brought forward, it would cause no doubt, cause no suspicion of error would be possible. Thus, when I have acknowledged ten to be more than three, if any one were to say, 'On the contrary, three is more than ten, and, to prove the truth of my assertion, I will change this rod into a serpent,' and if he were to change it, my conviction of his error would remain unshaken. His manoeuvre would only produce in me admiration for his ability. I should not doubt my own knowledge. " Then was I convinced that knowledge which I did not possess in this manner, and respecting which I had not this certainty, could inspire me with neither confidence nor assurance; and no knowledge without assurance deserves the name of knowledge. " Having examined the state of my own knowledge, I found it divested of all that could be said to have these qualities, unless perceptions of the senses and irrefragable principles were to be considered such. I then said to myself, 'Now, having fallen into this despair, the only hope of acquiring incontestable convictions is by the perceptions of the senses and by necessary truths.' Their evidence seemed to me to be indubitable. I began, however, to examine the objects of sensation and speculation, to see if they possibly could admit of doubt. Then doubts crowded upon me in such numbers that my incertitude became complete. Whence results the confidence I have in sensible things? The strongest of all our senses is sight; and yet, looking at a shadow, and perceiving it to be fixed and immovable, we judge it to be deprived of movement; nevertheless, experience teaches us that, when we return to the same place an hour after, the shadow is displaced, for it does not vanish suddenly, but gradually, little by little, so as never to be at rest.
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REVIEW OF ALGAZZALI. 363
If we look at the stars, they seem to be as small as money-pieces; but mathematical proofs convince us that they are larger than the earth. These and other things are judged by the senses, but rejected by reason as false. I abandoned the senses, therefore, having seen all my confidence in their truth shaken. "' Perhaps,' said I,' there is no assurance but in the notions of reason, that is to say, first principles, as that ten is more than three; the same thing can not have been created and yet have existed from all eternity; to exist and not to exist at the same time is impossible.' "Upon this the senses replied, 'What assurance have you that your confidence in reason is not of the same nature as your confidence in us? When you relied on us, reason stepped in and gave us the lie; had not reason been there, you would have continued to rely on us. Well, may there not exist some other judge superior to reason, who, if he appeared, would refute the judgments of reason in the same way that reason refuted us? The non-appearance of such a judge is no proof of his non-existence.' " I strove in vain to answer the objection, and my difficulties increased when I came to reflect on sleep. I said to myself, 'During sleep, you give to visions, a reality and consistence, and you have no suspicion of their untruth. On awakening, you are made aware that they were nothing but visions. What assurance have you that all you feel and know when you are awake does actually exist? It is all true as respects your condition at that moment; but it is nevertheless possible that another condition should present itself which should be to your awakened state that which to your awakened state is now to you sleep; so that, as respects this higher condition, your waking is but sleep.'" It would not be possible to find in any European work a clearer statement of the skepticism to which philosophy leads us than what is thus given by this Arabian. Indeed, it is not possible to put the argument in a more effective way. His perspicuity is in singular contrast with the obscurity of many metaphysical writers. " Reflecting on my situation, I found myself bound to this world by a thousand ties, temptations assailing me on all sides. I then examined my actions. The best were those relating to instruction and education, and even there I saw myself given up to unimportant sciences, all useless in another world. Reflecting on the aim of my teaching, I found it was not pure in the sight of the Lord. I saw that all my efforts were directed toward the acquisition of glory to myself. Having, therefore, distributed my wealth, I left Bagdad and retired into Syria, where I remained two years in solitary struggle with my soul, combating my passions, and exercising myself in the purification of my heart and in preparation for the other world."
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364 REVIEW OF ALGAZZALI.
This is a very beautiful picture of the mental struggles and the actions of a truthful and earnest man. In all this the Christian philosopher can sympathize with the devout Mohammedan. After all, they are not very far apart. Algazzali is not the only one to whom such thoughts have occurred, but he has found words to tell his experience better than any other man. And what is the conclusion at which he arrives? The life of man, he says, is marked by three stages: " the first, or infantile stage, is that of pure sensation; the second, which begins at the age of seven, is that of understanding; the third is that of reason, by means of which the intellect perceives the necessary, the possible, the absolute, and all those higher objects which transcend the understanding. But after this there is a fourth stage, when another eye is opened, by which man perceives things hidden from others-perceives all that will be-perceives the things that escape the perceptions of reason, as the objects of reason escape the understanding, and as the objects of the understanding escape the sensitive faculty. This is prophetism." Algazzali thus finds a philosophical basis for the rule of life, and reconciles religion and philosophy. And now I have to turn from Arabian civilized life, its science, its philosophy, to another, a repulsive state of things. With reluctance I come back to the Italian system, defiling the holy name of religion with its intrigues, its bloodshed, its oppression of human thought,.its hatred of intellectual advancement. Especially I have now to direct attention to two countries, the scenes of important events-countries in which the Mohammedan influences began to take effect and to press upon Rome. These are the South of France and Sicily. Innocent III had been elected pope at the early age of thirty-seven years, A.D. 1198. The papal power had reached its culminating point. The weapons of the Church had attained their utmost force. In Italy, in Germany, in France and England, interdicts and excommunications vindicated the pontifical authority, as in the cases of the Duke of Ravenna, the Emperor Otho, Philip Augustus of France, King John of England. In each of these cases it was not for the sake of sustaining great moral principles or the rights of humanity that the thunder was launched-it was in behalf of temporary political interests; interests that, in Germany, were sustained at the cost of a long war, and cemented by assassination; in France, strengthened by the well-tried device of an intervention in a matrimonial broil-the domestic quarrel of the king and queen about Agnes of Meran. " Ah! happy Saladin!" said the insulted Philip, when his kingdom was put under interdict; "he has no pope above him. I too will turn Mohammedan." So, likewise, in Spain, Innocent interfered in the matrimonial life of the King of Leon. The remorseless venality of the papal government
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was in every direction felt. Portugal had already been advanced to the dignity of a kingdom on payment of an annual tribute to Rome. The King of Aragon held his kingdom as feudatory to the pope. In England, Innocent's interference assumed a different aspect. He attempted to assert his control over the Church in spite of the king, and put the nation under interdict because John would not permit Stephen Langton to be Archbishop of Canterbury. It was utterly impossible that affairs could go on with such an empire within an empire. For his contumacy, John was excommunicated; but, base as he was, he defied his punishment for four years. Hereupon his subjects were released from their allegiance, and his kingdom offered to any one who would conquer it. In his extremity, the King of England is said to have sent a messenger to the Emir Al Mouenim, offering to become a Mohammedan. The religious sentiment was then no higher in him than it was, under a like provocation, in the King of France, whose thoughts turned in the same direction. But, pressed irresistibly by Innocent, John was compelled to surrender his realm, agreeing to pay to the pope, in addition to Peter's pence, 1000 marks a year as a token of vassalage. When the prelates whom he had refused or exiled returned, he was compelled to receive them on his knees-humiliations which aroused the indignation of the stout English barons, and gave strength to those movements which ended in extorting Magna Charta. Never, however, was Innocent more mistaken than in the character of Stephen Langton. John had, a second time, formally surrendered his realm to the pope, and done homage to the legate for it; but Stephen Langton was the first-at a meeting of the chiefs of the revolt against the king, held in London, August 25th, 1213-to suggest that they should demand a renewal of the charter of Henry I. From this suggestion Magna Charta originated. Among the miracles of the age, he was the greatest miracle of all; his patriotism was stronger than his profession. The wrath of the pontiff knew no bounds when he learned that the Great Charter had been conceded. In his bull, he denounced it as base and ignominious; he anathematized the king if he observed it; he declared it null and void. It was not the policy of the Roman court to permit so much as the beginnings of such freedom. The appointment of Simon Langton to the archbishopric of York was annulled. One De Gray was substituted for him. It illustrated the simony into which the papal government had fallen, that De Gray had become, in these transactions, indebted to Rome $50,000. In fact, through the operation of the Crusades, all Europe was tributary to the pope. He had his fiscal agents in every metropolis; his traveling ones wandering in all directions, in every country, raising revenue by the sale of dispensations for all kinds of offenses, real and fictitious-money for the sale of appoint
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366 THE FOURTH CRUSADE.
ments, high and low-a steady drain of money from every realm. Fifty years after the time of which we are speaking, Robert Grostete, the Bishop of Lincoln and friend of Roger Bacon, caused to be ascertained the amount received by foreign ecclesiastics in England. He found it to be thrice the income of the king himself. This was on the occasion of Innocent IV. demanding provision to be made for three hundred additional Italian clergy by the Church of England, and that one of his nephewsa mere boy-should have a stall in Lincoln cathedral. While thus Innocent III. was interfering and intriguing with every court, and laying every people under tribute, he did not for a moment permit his attention to be diverted from the Crusades, the rope an singular advantages of which to the papacy had now been fully discovered. They had given to the pope a suzerainty in Europe, the control of its military as well as its monetary resources. Not that a man like Innocent could permit himself to be deluded by any hopes of eventual success. The Crusades must inevitably prove, so far as their avowed object was concerned, a failure. The Christian inhabitants of Palestine were degraded and demoralized beyond description. Their ranks were thinned by apostasy to Mohammedanism. In Europe, not only had the laity begun to discover that the money provided for the wars in the Holy Land was diverted from its purpose, and, in some inexplicable manner, found its way into Italy-even the clergy could not conceal their suspicions that the proclamation of a crusade was merely the preparation for a swindle. Nevertheless, Innocent pressed forward his schemes, goading on Christendom by throwing into its face the taunts of the Saracens. "Where," they say, " is your God, who can not deliver you out of our hands? Behold! we have defiled your sanctuaries; we have stretched forth our arm; we have taken at the first assault, we hold in despite of you, those your desirable places, where your superstition had its beginning. Where is your God? Let him arise and protect you and himself." "If thou be the Son of God, save thyself if thou canst; redeem the land of thy birth from our hands. Restore thy cross, that we have taken, to the worshipers of the Cross." With great difficulty, however, Innocent succeeded in preparing the fourth crusade, A.D. 1202. The Venetians consented to furnish a fleet of transports. But the expedition was quickly diverted from its true purpose; the Venetians employing the Crusaders for the capture of Zara from the King of Hungary. Still worse, and shameful to be said-partly from the lust of plunder, and partly through ecclesiastical machinations-it again turned aside for an attack upon Constantinople, and took that city by storm, A.D. 1204, thereby establishing Latin Christianity in the Eastern metropolis, but, alas with bloodshed, rape, and fire. On the night of the assault more houses were burned than could be found in any three of the largest cities in France. Even Chris-
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tian historians compare with shame the storming of Conistantinople by the Catholics with the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin. Pope Innocent himself was compelled to protest against enormities that had outrun his intentions. He says: "They practiced fornications, incests, adulteries in the sight of men. They abandoned matrons and virgins, consecrated to God, to the lewdness of grooms. They lifted their hands against the treasures of the churches-what is more heinous, the very consecrated vessels-tearing the tablets of silver from the very altars, breaking in pieces the most sacred things, carrying off crosses and relics." In St. Sophia, the silver was stripped from the pulpit; an exquisite and highly-prized table of oblation was broken in pieces; the sacred chalices were turned into drinking-cups; the gold fringe was ripped off the veil of the sanctuary. Asses and horses were led into the churches to carry off the spoil. A prostitute mounted the patriarch's throne, and sang, with indecent gestures, a ribald song. The tombs of the emperors were rifled; and the Byzantines saw, at once with amazement and anguish, the corpse of Justinian-which even decay and putrefaction had for six centuries spared in his tomb-exposed to the violation of a mob. It had been understood among those who instigated these atrocious proceedings that the relics were to be brought into a common stock and equitably divided among the conquerors; but each ecclesiastic seized and secreted whatever he could. The idolatrous state of the Eastern Church is illustrated by some of these relics. Thus the Abbot Martin obtained for his monastery in Alsace the following inestimable articles: 1. A spot of the blood of our Savior; 2. A piece of the true cross; 3. The arm of the Apostle James; 4. Part of the skeleton of John the Baptist; 5.-I hesitate to write such blasphemy-" A bottle of the milk of the Mother of God!" In contrast with the treasures thus acquired may be set relics of a very different kind, the remains of ancient art which they destroyed: 1. The bronze charioteers from the Hippodrome; 2. The she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus; 3. A group of a Sphinx, riverhorse, and crocodile; 4. An eagle tearing a serpent; 5. An ass and his driver, originally cast by Augustus in memory of the victory of Actium; 6. A Bellerophon and Pegasus; 7. A bronze obelisk; 8. Paris presenting the apple to Venus; 9. An exquisite statue of Helen; 10. The Hercules of Lysippus; 11. A Juno, formerly taken from the temple at Samos. The bronzes were melted into coin, and thousands of manuscripts and parchments were burned. From that time the works of many ancient authors disappeared altogether. With well-dissembled regret, Innocent took the new order of things in the city of Constantinople under his protection. The Bishop of Rome at last appointed the Bishop of Constantinople. The acknowledgment of papal supremacy was complete. Rome and Venice divided between
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368 THE LITERATURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
them the ill-gotten gains of their undertaking. If any thing had been wanting to open the eyes of Europe, surely what had thus occurred should have been enough. The pope and the doge -the trader in human credulity and the trader of the Adriatic-had shared the spoils of a crusade meant by religious men for the relief of the Holy Land. The bronze horses, once brought by Augustus from Alexandria, after his victory over Antony, and transferred from Rome to Constantinople by its founder, were set before the Church of St. Mark. They were the outward and visible sign of a less obvious event that was taking place. For to Venice was brought a residue of the literary treasures that had escaped the fire and the destroyer; and while her comrades in the outrage were satisfied, in their ignorance, with fictitious relics, she took possession of the poor remnant of the glorious works of art, of letters, and of science. Through these was hastened the intellectual progress of the West. So fell Constantinople,, and fell by the parricidal hands of Christians. The days of retribution for the curse she had inflicted on Western civilization were now approaching. In these events she received a first installment of her punishment. Three hundred years before, the historian Luitprand, who was sent by the Emperor Otho I. to the court of Nicephorus Phocas, says of her, speaking as an eye-witness, " That city, once so wealthy, so flourishing, is now famished, lying, perjured, deceitful, rapacious, greedy, niggardly, vainglorious;" and since Luitprand's time she had been pursuing a downward career. It might have been expected that the concentration of all the literary and scientific treasures of the Roman empire in Constantinople should have given rise to great mental vigor-that to Europe she would have been a brilliant focus of light. But when the works on jurisprudence by Tribounder Justinian, have been mentioned, what is there that worthlessness remains? There is Stephanus, the grammarian, who wrote a dictionary, and Procopius, the historian, who was secretary to Belisarius in his campaigns. There is then a long interval almost without a literary name, to Theophylact Simocatta, and to the Ladder of Paradise of John Climacus. The mental excitement of the iconoclastic dispute presents us with John of Damascus; and the ninth century, the Myriobiblion and Nomacanon of Photius. Then follows Constantine Porphyrogenitus, vainly and voluminously composing; and Basil II. doubtless truly expresses the opinion of the time, as he certainly does the verdict of posterity as regards the works of his country, when he says that learning is useless and unprofitable lumber. The Alexiad of Anna Comnena, and the history of Byzantine affairs by Nicephorus Bryennius, hardly redeem their age. This barrenness and worthlessness was the effect of the system introduced by Constantine the Great. The long line of emperors had been consistent in one policy-the repression or expulsion
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of philosophy; and yet it is the uniform testimony of those ages that the Eastern convents were full of secret Platonism-that, in stealth, the doctrines of Plato were treasured up in the cells of Asiatic monks. The Byzantines had possessed in art and letters all the best models in the world, yet in a thousand years they never produced one original.- Millions of Greeks never advanced one step in philosophy or science-never made a single practical discovery, composed no poem, no tragedy worth perusal. The spirit of their superficial literature-if literature it can be called-is well shadowed forth in the story of the patriarch Photius, who composed at Bagdad, at a distance from his library, an analysis of 280 works he had formerly read. The final age of the city was signalized by the Baarlamite controversy respecting the mysterious light of Mount Thabor-the possibility of producing a beatific vision, and of demonstrating, by an unceasing inspection of the navel for days and nights together, the existence of two eternal principles, a visible and an invisible God I What was it tha