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And from the starry spheres above All cause of war and dangerous discord takes. This sweet consent In equal bands doth tie The nature of each element So that the moist things yield unto the dry. The piercing cold With flames doth friendship heap The trembling fire the highest place doth hold, And the gross earth sinks down into the deep. The flowery year Breathes odours in the spring, The scorching summer corn doth bear The autumn fruit from laden trees doth bring. The falling rain Doth winter’s moisture give. These rules thus nourish and maintain All creatures which we see on earth to live. And when they die, These bring them to their end, While their Creator sits on high, Whose hand the reins of the whole world doth bend. He as their king Rules them with lordly might. From Him they rise, flourish, and spring, He as their law and judge decides their right. Those things whose course Most swiftly glides away His might doth often backward force, And suddenly their wandering motion stay. Unless his strength Their violence should bound, And them which else would run at length, Should bring within the compass of a round, That firm decree Which now doth all adorn Would soon destroyed and broken be, Things being far from their beginning borne. This powerful love Is common unto all.
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Which for desire of good do move Back to the springs from whence they first did fall. No worldly thing Can a continuance have Unless love back again it bring Unto the cause which first the essence gave.
Boethius was, until the end, a friend of Theodoric. His father was consul, he was consul, and so were his two sons. His father-in-law Symmachus (probably grandson of the one who had a controversy with Ambrose about the statue of Victory) was an important man in the court of the Gothic king. Theodoric employed Boethius to reform the coinage, and to astonish less sophisticated barbarian kings with such devices as sun-dials and water-clocks. It may be that his freedom from superstition was not so exceptional in Roman aristocratic families as elsewhere; but its combination with great learning and zeal for the public good was unique in that age. During the two centuries before his time and the ten centuries after it, I cannot think of any European man of learning so free from superstition and fanaticism. Nor are his merits merely negative; his survey is lofty, disinterested, and sublime. He would have been remarkable in any age; in the age in which he lived, he is utterly amazing.
The medieval reputation of Boethius was partly due to his being regarded as a martyr to Arian persecution—a view which began two or three hundred years after his death. In Pavia, he was regarded as a saint, but in fact he was not canonized. Though Cyril was a saint, Boethius was not.
Two years after the execution of Boethius, Theodoric died. In the next year, Justinian became Emperor. He reigned until 565, and in this long time managed to do much harm and some good. He is of course chiefly famous for his Digest. But I shall not venture on this topic, which is one for the lawyers. He was a man of deep piety, which he signalized, two years after his accession, by closing the schools of philosophy in Athens, where paganism still reigned. The dispossessed philosophers betook themselves to Persia, where the king received them kindly. But they were shocked—more so, says Gibbon, than became philosophers—by the Persian practices of polygamy and incest, so they returned home again, and faded into obscurity. Three
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years after this exploit ( 532), Justinian embarked upon another, more worthy of praise—the building of St. Sophia. I have never seen St. Sophia, but I have seen the beautiful contemporary mosaics at Ravenna, including portraits of Justinian and his empress Theodora. Both were very pious, though Theodora was a lady of easy virtue whom he had picked up in the circus. What is even worse, she was inclined to be a Monophysite.
But enough of scandal. The Emperor himself, I am happy to say, was of impeccable orthodoxy, except in the matter of the «Three Chapters.» This was a vexatious controversy. The Council of Chalcedon had pronounced orthodox three Fathers suspected of Nestorianism; Theodora, along with many others, accepted all the other decrees of the council, but not this one. The Western Church stood by everything decided by the Council, and the empress was driven to persecute the Pope. Justinian adored her, and after her death in 548, she became to him what the dead Prince Consort was to Queen Victoria. So in the end he lapsed into heresy. A contemporary historian
( Evagrius) writes: «Having since the end of his life received the wages of his misdeeds, he has gone to seek the justice which was his due before the judgment-seat of hell.»
Justinian aspired to reconquer as much as possible of the Western Empire. In 535 he invaded Italy, and at first had quick success against the Goths. The Catholic population welcomed him, and he came as representing Rome against the barbarians. But the Goths rallied, and the war lasted eighteen years, during which Rome, and Italy generally, suffered far more than in the barbarian invasion.
Rome was five times captured, thrice by Byzantines, twice by Goths, and sank to a small town. The’same sort of thing happened in Africa, which Justinian also more or less reconquered. At first his armies were welcomed; then it was found that Byzantine administration was corrupt and Byzantine taxes were ruinous. In the end, many people wished the Goths and Vandals back. The Church, however, until his last years, was steadily on the side of the Emperor, because of his orthodoxy. He did not attempt the reconquest of Gaul, partly because of distance, but partly also because the Franks were orthodox.
In 568, three years after Justinian’s death, Italy was invaded by a new and very fierce German tribe, the Lombards. Wars between them and the Byzantines continued intermittently for two hundred years,
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until nearly the time of Charlemagne. The Byzantines held gradually less and less of Italy; in the South, they had also to face the Saracens. Rome remained nominally subject to them, and the popes treated the Eastern emperors with deference. But in most parts of Italy the emperors, after the coming of the Lombards, had very little authority or even none at all. It was this period that ruined Italian civilization. It was refugees from the Lombards who founded Venice, not, as tradition avers, fugitives from Attila.
CHAPTER VI Saint Benedict and Gregory the Great
IN the general decay of civilization that came about during the incessant wars of the sixth and succeeding centuries, it was above all the Church that preserved whatever survived of the culture of ancient Rome. The Church performed this work very imperfectly, because fanaticism and superstition prevailed among even the greatest ecclesiastics of the time, and secular learning was thought wicked. Nevertheless, ecclesiastical institutions created a solid framework, within which, in later times, a revival of learning and civilized arts became possible.
In the period with which we are concerned, three of the activities of the Church call for special notice: first, the monastic movement; second, the influence of the papacy, especially under Gregory the Great; third, the conversion of the heathen barbarians by means of missions. I will say something about each of these in succession.
The monastic movement began simultaneously in Egypt and Syria about the beginning of the fourth century. It had two forms, that of solitary hermits, and that of monasteries. Saint Anthony, the first of the hermits, was born in Egypt about 250, and withdrew from the
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world about 270. For fifteen years he lived alone in a hut near his home; then, for twenty years, in remote solitude in the desert. But his fame spread, and multitudes longed to hear him preach. Accordingly, about 305, he came forth to teach, and to encourage the hermit’s life. He practised extreme austerities, reducing food, drink, and sleep to the minimum required to support life. The devil constantly assailed him with lustful visions, but he manfully withstood the malign diligence of Satan. By the end of his life, the Thebaid * was full of hermits who had been inspired by his example and his precepts.
A few years later-about 315 or 320—another Egyptian, Pachomius, founded the first monastery. Here the monks had a common life, without private property, with communal meals and communal religious observations. It was in this form, rather than in that of Saint Anthony, that monasticism conquered the Christian world. In the monasteries derived from Pachomius, the monks did much work, chiefly agricultural, instead of spending the whole of their time in resisting the temptations of the flesh.
At about the same time, monasticism sprang up in Syria and Mesopotamia. Here asceticism was carried to even greater lengths than in Egypt. Saint Simeon Stylites and the other pillar hermits were Syrian. It was from the East that monasticism came to Greek-speaking countries, chiefly owing to Saint Basil (about 360).
