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H. B. Cotterill
Medieval Italy

p55 CHAPTER IV

THEODOSIUS THE CATHOLIC

The first duty of the new Emperor of the Eastern Empire was to avenge the defeat of Hadrianople. Before setting out against the Visigoths from Thessalonica, where he had reconstituted the imperial army, Theodosius underwent the rite of baptism and issued to his troops, or perhaps read to the congregation assembled to view the ceremony,1 the following edict, in the name, it is said, of the three Emperors, Gratian, Valentinian, and himself:2 'It is our pleasure that all our subjects adhere to the religion taught to the Romans by St. Peter. . . . According to the teaching of the Apostles and the doctrine of the Gospels, we are to believe in the one Godhead of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, of majesty co-equal in Holy Trinity. We will that the followers of this doctrine be called Catholic Christians, brand all others with the infamous name of Heretics, and declare that their conventicles shall no longer usurp the name of Churches.' We should note here the assumption of the three temporal lords of the Roman empire that they possessed the right not only to insist on the acceptation of the Christian religion, but to give their own version of apostolic teachings. Not less that fifteen severe edicts of this nature, directed against heretics, were issued by Theodosius, and enforced with heavy — sometimes with capital — punishment.  The office of p56Inquisitors of the Faith, a name so justly abhorred, was first instituted, it is said, in his reign.3

The campaign against the Visigoths, who evaded a general battle, ended in a compact by which the barbarians were allowed to settle south of the Danube as allies (foederati) of the Empire on the condition that they should in case of need supply a contingent of 40,000 men. Some twenty years later that last of the Roman poets, Claudian, deplored the existence of this great standing army as a danger certain to cause the ruin of the Empire; and such it proved, for only six years after Claudian's lament these Visigoths, as we shall see, captured Rome.

In the next year (383) Gratian was slain at Lyon, whither he had fled from Paris — betrayed by his own legions and captured by the cavalry of Maximus the usurper, who had led over from Britain so vast a number of followers that, as has been already said, it was afterwards 'remembered as the emigration of a considerable part of the British nation.' In connexion with this exodus may be mentioned here the legend of St. Ursula, the princess of Brittany, and her eleven thousand British virgins, who are said to have made their way as pilgrims up the Rhine and over the Alps to Rome, and on their return to have been massacred by Huns, or Frisians, near Cologne — where their skulls are yet to be seen.4 It seems not unlikely (though uncertain dates make it doubtful) that the source of this legend was the fate of a large convoy of British damsels, perhaps under the charge of a lady of Brittany, who were intended as wives for some of the 100,000 followers of Maximus, and who may have been driven by contrary winds into the Rhine, and have fallen into the hands of Salian Franks or savage Frisians — such as some p57four centuries later killed the great English missionary, St. Boniface.

Had Maximus been content with his usurped Empire of Britain and Gaul and Spain, he might have been known in aftertimes as one of the most successful of Western Emperors, for he ruled a vast realm and possessed a powerful army, levied mainly from the warlike tribes of Germany. Moreover he obtained recognition from Theodosius, who found it prudent to allow his claims to the countries north and west of Italy. But he was led to attack Italy itself, incited perhaps not only by insatiable ambition, but also by the hope, or the certainty, that the Catholic majority among the Italians would gladly shake off the rule of the boy-Emperor Valentinian — or rather that of his mother Justina, who was strongly attached to the Arian heresy in spite of the eloquence and the miracles of the great Bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose. Sending forward a body of troops on the pretence of lending them to Valentinian, the usurper seized the Alpine passes and soon appeared before Milan with a great army.

On his approach Justina fled with her son — now a youth of fifteen years — leaving St. Ambrose5 to face the enemy. The fugitives reached Aquileia, but, not feeling secure, took ship and, coasting round Greece, arrived after a wearisome voyage at Thessalonica. Here they were visited and welcomed by Theodosius; but the formidable resources of Maximus made the Eastern Emperor hesitate to accede at once to the entreaties of Justina. Soon, however, his hesitation was overcome by the charms of her daughter, the sister of the youth Valentinian, the Princess Galla, already renowned for her youthful beauty, and to become still more renowned as the mother of Galla Placidia, of whom ere long we shall hear so much. Theodosius was a widower, having lost his first wife, the mother of his two sons, some two years before. He determined to marry the young and fascinating princess; and after the wedding he set forth with an army in which there were strong contingents p58not only of the Visigoths but also of Huns and of Oriental races.

He found Maximus with his Gallic and German forces on the further banks of the Save,6 and by a bold frontal attack his cavalry, after swimming the river, put the enemy to flight. Maximus fled to Aquileia, the town near the Adriatic shore which is famous for the scene of so many conflicts, and on the arrival of Theodosius, who seems to have swooped down from the Julian Alps like an eagle after a wounded hare, the usurper was 'dragged from his throne, rudely stripped of the imperial ornaments, the robe, the diadem, and the purple slippers, and conducted like a malefactor to the camp and presence of Theodosius, at a place about three miles distant from Aquileia. The Emperor showed some disposition to pity and forgive the tyrant of the West . . . but the feeble emotion was checked by his regard for public justice and the memory of Gratian, and he abandoned his victim to the pious zeal of the soldiers, who drew him out of the imperial presence and instantly separated his head from his body.'6

After this victory Theodosius took up his residence for more than two years (388‑91) in Italy, being practically the sole overlord of both the East and the West, though he recognized the rule of Valentinian and Justina (who, however, died soon after her return to Italy). From Milan the two Emperors in the spring of 389 visited Rome, where they made a triumphal entry, and, it is believed, began the erection, on the site of a church built by Constantine, of what was until 1823, when it was burnt, the grandest of all the ancient basilicas of Rome — that of S. Paolo fuori le mura.7

In 390 we find Theodosius again in Milan, and it was then that occurred the dramatic scene which we associate with the well-known basilica of S. Ambrogio.

Some three years earlier there had been a serious anti-Catholic and anti-taxation riot at Antioch. The mob had overthrown the statues of the Emperor and his sons and had p59dragged them with contumely through the streets. Terrible was the wrath of Theodosius.

The city was degraded and chastised, and a great number of prisoners awaited torture and death. But a suppliant petition was sent to Constantinople, and — partly by the influence of St. Chrysostom, who has given us a vivid picture of these days and whose wondrous eloquence sustained the despair of his fellow-citizens — the order for the execution was deferred till the answer arrived; and the answer was a general pardon.

But the riot of Antioch doubtless rankled in the mind of Theodosius, and when, in 390, a tumult occurred at Thessalonica, the wealthy naval and military centre of the Macedonian province, the results were far more tragic. The trouble was caused by the imprisonment of a charioteer who was greatly in favour with the public. There was a collision between the populace and the authorities; officials were killed and their bodies ignominiously treated. Theodosius on this occasion rejected all appeals for mercy. He planned a most dastardly and iniquitous revenge. The Thessalonians were led to believe that the incident had been condoned and were invited in the name of the Emperor to an exhibition of games in the Circus, and here they were assailed by armed men and massacred indiscriminately. Seven thousand — some say fifteen thousand — perished. The guilt of this almost incredible atrocity is aggravated by the fact that Theodosius was especially fond of Thessalonica and of its bishop, who some years before had baptized him there, doubtless in the presence of many of these same Thessalonians.

The name of St. Ambrose has already been mentioned. He is known to many as the spiritual father of the elder St. Augustine, as the possible author (with Augustus) of the Te Deum, as the writer of noble Latin hymns, and as the inventor of the Ambrosian musical ritual and that system of antiphonal chanting on which, and on the Gregorian modes, the 'plain song' of the Anglican Church is founded.9.  But p60all who know Milan,10 when they hear the name of St. Ambrose think also of the basilica of S. Ambrogio, and its old doors of cypress-wood, although, alas! it is uncertain whether we still possess even the fragments of those doors that were shut in the face of Theodosius the Great.

Ambrose was the son of a prefect of Gaul and of noble Roman descent. He was born at Trèves in 340, and became the magistrate of a district that included Liguria and Milan, in which city he was so popular that on the death of the bishop (in 374) he was acclaimed as his successor by the voice of the whole people, and 'to his own surprise and to that of the world,' says Gibbon, 'was suddenly transformed from a governor into an archbishop before he had received the sacrament of baptism.' And well was the choice of the people justified, for there is in the annals of the medieval Church no personality that more strongly appeals to us. It is true that most of us have to put gently aside such stories as that of his dream and the discovery of the sacred skeletons which by their miraculous aid saved him from the wrath of Justina and from exile — even though we may have been shown the bones themselves of Gervasius and Protasius11 in the crypt of S. Ambrogio. But no one can fail to be impressed by his splendid courage and his noble impulses. In him the Christian Church first stepped forward to champion the cause of justice and humanity against the legalized tyranny of the civil power. His calm defiance of Theodosius was, as Milman says, 'a culminating point of pure Christian influence.' If only the Church had chosen such influence as its sole ideal!

On several occasions Ambrose had already displayed his courage. Once, when Justina had demanded imperiously certain churches in Milan to be given over to the Arians, and had sent her Gothic soldiers to occupy one of these churches, p61he met them at the church door with his thunders of excommunication and so dismayed them that the queen-regent held it wiser to withdraw her demands.

When Ambrose heard of the Thessalonian massacre he at first retreated into the country and avoided Theodosius. Then, feeling further silence to be cowardly, he sent him a letter in which, in his own name and that of other bishops, he expressed abhorrence of the atrocious deed and added that such blood-guiltiness should betake itself to prayer and penance and not dare to approach the altar, and that he himself had been warned by a vision not to offer the sacrifice of the Eucharist in the presence of one whose hands were stained with the innocent blood of thousands.12

Modern scepticism sees in this letter the origin of what it holds to be a picturesque fiction, namely, the tradition that when the Emperor with his retinue approached the portal of the cathedral he found the great wooden doors fast closed against him — or that, as others relate, he found Ambrose himself before the portal, once more defending the house of God from pollution with the thunders of excommunication.13 Moreover, says the tradition, when Rufinus, the notorious minister of Theodosius, was sent to expostulate and to intimate that his master had the power to force his entrance into the church, the saint undauntedly replied; 'Then he will have to pass over my dead body.'

Whether or not we are to believe this dramatic story, there seems no doubt (for it is attested by Ambrose himself and by Augustine and by others) that on further reflexion, impressed by the courage of Ambrose, and doubtless also influenced by a consciousness of the inhumanity to which he had been impelled by passion, Theodosius did public penance in the cathedral and, attired as a penitent, prostrated himself, repeating the words of the Psalmist: 'My soul cleaveth unto the dust: p62quicken thou me according to thy word.'  When we think of this scene and remember the edict issued a few years before by Theodosius in which he arrogated to himself, as if he were both spiritual and temporal overlord, the right to dictate a creed to the Roman Empire and to define the nature of the Trinity, we are conscious that a new and already mighty power had arisen and extended itself with almost incredible rapidity since the day when Constantine first granted protection to the weak and persecuted Church. And when again we think of the Emperor Henry at Canossa, or of Frederick Barbarossa kneeling in the porch of St. Mark's at Venice, how vividly it makes us realize the difference between the motives and ideals of St. Ambrose and those of Hildebrand or Pope Alexander!

In the following year (391) Theodosius returned to Constantinople and entered in triumph through the Golden Gate, which had been erected in his absence to commemorate his victory over Maximus. This gate was afterwards used specially for the state entry of the Emperors. It still exists, and possesses some very fine columns; but it has been blocked up. A tradition is said to persist among the Turks through this gate some day will enter a Christian conqueror — a contingency that some years ago seemed a possibility, and now (March 1915) seems more possible than ever!

In 392 Valentinian II was found strangled in his bedroom at Vienne. The deed was doubtless committed or instigated by Arbogast, a pagan Frank who had risen to the chief command of the imperial legions in Gaul, and had assumed such a disloyal and insolent attitude that the young monarch, a few days before his murder, had snatched a sword from a soldier and was with difficulty restrained from plunging it into the heart of the traitor. Arbogast, not venturing to assume the purple, proclaimed as Emperor of the West, a rhetorician named Eugenius, his former secretary.

Valentinian's sister, Galla, whom Theodosius had married, and for whom he had the deepest affection, urgently incited her husband to avenge the murder of her brother. But p63Arbogast had a large army, and in the name of his imperial puppet he had made himself master of Rome and the Western Empire. But Arbogast had a large army, and in the name of his imperial puppet he had made himself master of Rome and the Western Empire.14  It was therefore necessary for Theodosius to collect a large force before venturing once more on an Italian campaign. But ere he formed any resolution the pious Emperor, says Gibbon,15 was anxious to discover the will of Heaven. 'Since the progress of Christianity had silenced the oracles of Dodona and Delphi, he consulted an Egyptian monk, who possessed, in the opinion of the age, the gift of miracles and the knowledge of futurity. Eutropius, one of the favourite eunuchs of the palace of Constantinople, embarked for Alexandria, whence he sailed up the Nile as far as the city of Lycopolis, or of Wolves, in the remote province of Thebaïs. In the neighbourhood of that city, and on the summit of a lofty mountain, the holy John had constructed with his own hands an humble cell, in which he had dwelt above fifty years, without opening the door, without seeing the face of a woman, and without tasting any food that had been prepared by fire or any human art. Five days of the week he spent in prayer and meditation, but on Saturdays and Sundays he regularly opened a small window and gave audience to the crowd of suppliants who flowed from every part of the Christian world. The envoy of Theodosius approached the window with respectful steps, proposed his questions concerning the event of the civil war, and soon returned with a favourable oracle, which animated the courage of the Emperor by the assurance of a bloody but infallible victory. The accomplishment of the prediction was forwarded by all the means that human prudence could supply.'

Ere these preparations were finished Theodosius was afflicted by the loss of his young and beautiful wife, who died in giving birth to her only child, the Princess Galla Placidia. This, however, did not make him relinquish his design, and on September 6, 394, the rival armies met on the river Frigidus, p66not far from Aquileia. For two days the battle raged. Ten thousand of the Gothic auxiliaries of Theodosius16 perished in vainly assaulting the ramparts of the enemy; but at length, aided by a violent Bora (a storm-wind from the north) and by the desertion of some Gallic troops of Arbogast, the Eastern army put the foe to flight. Eugenius was caught and decapitated. Arbogast, after wandering for several days in the mountains and finding escape impossible, fell on his sword. How Theodosius died four months later at Milan, leaving the Empire to his two sons, Honorius and Arcadius, has been already related (p9). It is said that he had ordered a splendid exhibition of Circensian games as a public welcome for Honorius, who was a lad of about ten years, and that he himself was present at the morning performance, but was compelled to absent himself in the afternoon and expired during the following night.

The character of Theodosius seems easily read from his actions; but we cannot feel sure that those actions are always accurately stated and always placed in quite a fair light by contemporary writers. On the one hand we have his eulogists, the Christian Latin poet Prudentius and the Catholic or Trinitarian Fathers, such as Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 379), the other the chief chronicler of this period, the pagan Zosimus, a 'partial and malignant historian,' as Gibbon justly says, 'who misrepresents every action of this reign.' But even Zosimus has the grace to allow that Theodosius was 'one of the greatest of the Roman princes,' and in spite of the horror that is excited in our minds by the Thessalonian massacre, not unlike the astonishment and horror with which we read of the persecution of Christians by Marcus Aurelius, we cannot, I think, fail to feel that in his nature, side by side with strange superstitions and savage impulses, there must have been much that was noble and admirable. p65It is, however, more satisfactory to state facts, when one can discover them, than to attempt to analyse character and attribute motives. I shall therefore only add here a few facts connected with the extension of Christianity in this reign and the final extinction of paganism.

Among the numberless incidents, more or less attested, that stand at the service of the historian of Christianity during this period perhaps the one that will best serve our purpose, being typical of many others and indicative of the whole religious movement, is what happened in connexion with a statue of Victory which Julius Caesar brought from Tarentum and erected in the Roman Senate-house — a grand figure with expanded wings and a laurel crown in her outstretched hand. At the altar that stood before this Victory the senators took the oath of allegiance, and on it were offered solemn oblations of wine and incense before the Senate began its deliberations. The statue, together with the altar, seems to have been removed by Constantius, and perhaps sent to adorn Constantinople. The altar was restored by Julian, and again removed by Gratian,17 restored (c. 393) by Eugenius, who was perhaps a pagan, or by Arbogast, who certainly was one, and once more removed by Theodosius shortly before his death, or else by Honorius. Thus during about half a century we can trace the varying fortunes of the battle between Christianity and paganism. Four times were deputations sent by the adherents of the old religion to solicit from various Emperors the restoration of the altar. An interesting account of one of these visits to the imperial court is extant, written by Symmachus, a Roman of noble birth distinguished for his eloquence, and for the high office that he had held as pontiff and augur and proconsul of Africa and prefect of Rome. This deputation was sent to the court of Theodosius and Valentinian in Milan, and the rhetoric of Symmachus (who in his oration makes Rome herself plead her own cause before the two Emperors) was met and overcome by the eloquence p66and sarcasm of St. Ambrose, who, as we learn from his account, derided the idea of Roman victories having ever been granted by the gods of Olympus, and asked whether Jupiter still spoke by the voice of the legendary geese which saved the Capitol.

But the victory of Ambrose and Christianity on this occasion by no means extinguished paganism. How slowly and with what great difficulty it was eradicated is very evident. In spite of the severe code of Theodosius, which threatened death or confiscation for the treasonable crimes of sacrifice and entrail-divination, in spite too of much ruthless destruction and alienation of old temples, pagan ceremonies, so modified as to evade the law, continued for many years to be performed both publicly and privately, the hereditary pagan priesthoods continued to be held by the noblest families, and the worship of the sun-god Mithras and of the Great Mother, Cybele, and of other strange deities, continued to defy proscription.

It is said that on one occasion when Theodosius was in Rome (perhaps on his triumphal visit to the capital with Valentinian in 389) he formally proposed to the Senate the question whether Christ or Jupiter should be accepted as the God of the Romans, and that 'on a regular division of the assembly Jupiter was condemned and degraded by the sense of a very large majority.' But doubtless — if the story be true — the imperial presence accounted for this sudden change of faith, for it is a striking fact that in spite of all the opportunities offered by persecution the pagans did not court martyrdom; they 'desisted with plaintive murmurs,' as Gibbon says, from those rites which in the awe-inspiring presence of their Emperor they had themselves condemned — or, more probably, in many cases, they continued to practise them in secret.

Let us now note how temples disappeared and churches increased. In the reign of Gratian (c. 380) there still existed in Rome, it is said, 424 temples devoted to the worship of the ancient deities, while, according to the Notitia Urbis, a description of Rome written about this date, there was 'not one Christian church worthy to be named among the edifices of the p67city'; and although there certainly did exist some Christian churches, and some of no mean size,18 these words doubtless give a true picture of their comparative insignificance.

At the end of the reign of Theodosius we find a very different state of things. Theodosius was a Spaniard, in feeling if not by descent, and in Spain orthodox Christianity had become supreme with scarcely an effort, and viewed with equal disdain the present impotence and the past glories of paganism. And it we ask how it was possible that the Romans themselves, both in the mother-city and in the provinces, could have so ruthlessly destroyed the splendid monuments of their ancestors, we may find a sufficient explanation not only in the dangerous encouragement given by such memorials of the pagan Empire and the possibility of another imperial apostate, but also in the horror and dread with which most Christians of these ages, as also in later ages, regarded heathen temples as the haunts of malignant demons19 and the images of the heathen gods as dangerous fetishes. Indeed, with the average Christian of early days the belief in the actual existence of the old gods p68was probably more real than it was in the case of the pagans themselves.

This destruction of ancient shrines and images, against which Libanius, the learned teacher of Chrysostom, vainly protested in his fervid oration Pro Templis, was not limited to Rome. The many monuments of classical antiquity20 which adorned Constantinople had been stolen from Greece and Rome. This was bad enough; but elsewhere innumerable beautiful buildings and works of art were annihilated by monks and other fanatics, who were incited and supported by the edicts of Theodosius and by the commissioners whom he sent to distant provinces to carry out his edicts. The work of vandalism21 began, it seems in Syria, where a certain Bishop Marcellus, after demolishing with immense labour the great temple of Zeus in Apamea, attacked with his band of fanatics other towns for a similar purpose until he was seized by the enraged inhabitants and burnt alive. In Gaul the soldier-Bishop of Tours (c. 370), the famous St. Martin, to whom some 160 English churches are dedicated, captained great throngs of monks and other zealots from place to place, annihilating all relics of pagan architecture and art in spite of apparitions of the old gods in hostile demon-shapes. In Alexandria, after bloody fighting between the pagans and Christians, the patriarch, the notorious Theophilus, sacked and demolished the huge temple of Serapis, which was regarded as the chief stronghold of Egyptian paganism — and it is possible that p69one of the two great Alexandrian libraries perished with the Serapeum.22

While speaking of these distant parts of the Empire in which the old gods — Olympian, Oriental, and Northern — were disappearing before the new religion, I may perhaps mention the early Christian Churches of Britain and Ireland. Into Britain Christianity was first introduced by the Romans, but, of course, not by the papal Roman Church. Of this period hardly anything is known, and we have to content ourselves with little more than legends about St. Alban and St. Helena — unless, indeed, one prefers to treat seriously the old fables about Joseph of Arimathea. But it is certain that great Christian communities, mainly monastic, existed in very early days at various centres, of which Avalon (the Saxon Glastonbury) and Bangor (on the Dee) are the most famous.23

Not many years after Stilicho had withdrawn the Roman legions from Britain (c. 405) Christianity was almost extirpated from the country by the Angles and the Saxons, and the Irish Church was cut off from Christendom for about 150 years by a wedge of savage paganism. We shall see later how these Angles and Saxons were converted by the younger St. Augustine (c. 600), the missionary sent by Gregory the Great. The remnants of the ancient British Church held out, it is said, obstinately against the papal supremacy proclaimed by Augustine, professing the jurisdiction of their own Bishop of Avalon (Glastonbury); and a sinister tradition accuses the saint (falsely, we may hope, as Augustine died in 604) of having incited the terrible massacre of the monks of Bangor when the Britons were routed by the Saxons near Chester in 607. The extraordinary missionary zeal in a somewhat later p70age both of the ancient Irish and the younger Anglo-Saxon Church will be described when we reach the days of the later Lombard kings and of Charles the Great.

That sublime and simple precepts and doctrines should in course of time suffer from gross and grotesque caricature seems due to incorrigible tendencies of human nature, and if in the case of Christianity such results are especially painful and astounding, we must seek whatever consolation we can find in the words — perhaps of Gregory the great — corruptio optimi pessima, or in Shakespeare's version, 'Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.' It lies, of course, far beyond my scope to trace in detail the evolution of medieval religion24 in Italy, but I shall attempt to point out certain striking religious phenomena which appeared in the period that we are considering and which strongly influenced the course of Italian art and Italian history.

Of these remarkable phenomena I select two, namely, the superstitious veneration paid to 'relics,' and the almost incredible enthusiasm excited by the ascetic, or anchoret, movement.

Reverence felt for the relics of what in its day has been great or beautiful is of course an admirable emotion, differing totally from mere antiquarian enthusiasm. But the medieval veneration for so‑called sacred relics was founded on, or very closely combined with, a superstitious belief in the miraculous properties of such relics, and involved a fetish-worship quite as gross as that of the older religion.25 p71Doubtless some genuine relics did exist, but the demand became so important that innumerable new discoveries were made, often (as in the case of St. Ambrose already mentioned) aided by dreams and visions; and the supply that met the demand was enormous. The True Cross, discovered on Calvary by Helena, afforded, it is said, enough wood to build a warship — a fact that led to the fabrication of a legend affirming its 'vegetative,' or self-renewing, powers. Astounding stories of the miracles effected by bones and hair and drops of blood, and sacred oil, and many other objects, were spread abroad, and increased still more the demand. Every town longed to possess some such treasure. No church was built until some relic26 had been secured.

The origins of the great ascetic movement may be sought in the far East, where the Indian fakir and the Thibetan monk and other such lusus naturae seem to have existed from time immemorial; or perhaps it is more correct to say that the tendency to such aberrations, which seems to be latent in the Oriental character, generated such results as the Jewish anchorets of the Dead Sea, the Essenes, and the Egyptian Therapeutae, whose monasteries preceded those of the Christians by many years, and that the first movement among the p72Christians of Egypt and Syria was, partly at least, due to the influence of Neoplatonic philosophy, the eccentricities of which have been noted.

About the year in which Constantine the Great assumed the purple (305) a youthful religious enthusiast known as Antony of the Thebaïs, in Egypt, retired to a solitary life in the desert. His example was soon followed, and ere long many thousands of fanatics, who called themselves desert-men (eremites), or recluses (anchorets), began to people the great sandy and rocky wastes of the Nile country, until it was believed that their number equalled the population of all the towns and cities of Egypt. It is needless to attempt any description of the well-known horrors and insanities of anchoretism, and useless to waste astonishment over this monstrous parasitic growth which threatened the very existence of Christ's religion. The solitary system in course of time proved almost impossible. The cell of every well-known hermit was surrounded by the huts or cells of his adorers; a 'solitary' of Gaza, Hilarion, is said to have had a retinue of nearly three thousand; and ere long an anchoret named Pachomius found it more consonant with the precepts of the Gospel to gather together — perhaps on an island of the Nile — about fourteen hundred of his fellows as 'coenobites' (dwellers together), whom he formed into a monastic establishment — not, of course, a monastic Order, such as Benedict founded later. Monasteries now became very fashionable, and the fashion spread with great rapidity through the whole of Christendom, from the deserts of Syria, Egypt, and Ethiopia27 to the wilds of Gaul and Britain, where the life of the solitary desert recluse was rendered by the climate difficult of imitation, and a more humanized form of asceticism took permanent root.

Antony had gained the friendship of Athanasius (who afterwards wrote his life), and about the year 340 the Alexandrian patriarch introduced to the Pope at the Vatican some of Antony's disciples. The strange and savage appearance of p73these 'Egyptians,' we are told, excited at Rome first horror, then disdain, then enthusiastic imitation. Senators and noble matrons vied with each other in turning their splendid palaces and villas into monasteries, and the Church soon realized that it must adopt and cherish the new movement. In the East St. Basil, himself once a solitary, was a zealous founder of religious houses; St. Martin of Tours, the exterminator of pagan temples, or perhaps his patron St. Hilary of Poitiers, was the founder of the earliest monasteries in Gaul; in Britain, as we have seen, there were in the fifth century, if not earlier, great monastic institutions at Avalon and Bangor (Iscoed).

We have wandered of later rather far from Italy; but a clear realization of the immense strength of some of these religious currents will allow us perhaps to hold on a better course our piccioletta barca.

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The Author's Notes:

1 Possibly in the circular, domed Church of St. George, the most ancient perhaps of all extant pre-Byzantine churches, dating from 400 or a little earlier.

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2 But the young Valentinian was, like his mother, a zealous Arian at this time; so perhaps the 'our' is the imperial plural.

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3 In passing we may note that the first human victim legally done to death on account of his heretical tenets was a Spaniard, Priscillian, executed by order of Maximus, the usurper who for four years lorded it in Britain and Gaul (see p8)

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4 And yet some believe that 'XI. M. V.' in the old record only means 'XI martyr virgins'! And other sceptics reduce the eleven thousand to one virgin martyr named 'Undecimillia'!

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5 St. Augustine, now aged thirty-three, and lately converted by St. Ambrose, was baptized by him at Milan in this very year (387).

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6 Perhaps the decisive battle was fought later on the Drave.

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7 Gibbon, ch xxvii.

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8 See Fig. 4 and explanation.

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9 'The Ambrosian chant, with its more simple and masculine tones, is still preserved in the Church of Milan. In the rest of Italy it was superseded by the richer Roman chant, introduced by Gregory,' (Milman). Among the Milanese of the present day the memory of St. Ambrose is kept green especially by the fact that by his permission they are allowed three extra days of Carnevale before Lent.

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10 Or even only Van Dyck's picture in our National Gallery — a small copy of Rubens' fine picture at Vienna.

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11 Four French cathedrals and many churches are dedicated to these saints.

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12 This letter is extant (Ep. Ambr. 951). We might wish that on this occasion he could have managed without a vision.

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13 This probably took place inside the fine atrium which still (in part at least) exists in front of the narthex (penitents' portico) of the church. Others transfer the scene to the old Basilica Porziana (S. Vittore).

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14 Ambrose is said to have rejected the gifts of Eugenius and to have withdrawn from Milan till the return of Theodosius.

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15 Accounts are given both by Christian and by pagan writers. Even Dean Milman allows the fact.

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16 This army, commanded partly by the famous Stilicho, was also on this occasion largely reinforced by Visigoths (among whom was the young Alaric) and by Orientals, who 'gazed on each other with mutual astonishment.'

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17 Gratian, as we have seen, gave over Italy to Justina and Valentinian. But he seems to have interfered a good deal. See p54.

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18 E.g. the original edifices of the Lateran Baptistery (S. Giovanni in Fonte, where Constantine, as once believed, was baptized by Silvester); S. Clemente (of which the present underground basilica is probably a reconstruction): the old basilica of S. Pietro in Vaticano (in which Charles the Great was crowned in 800), built on the site of the great circus where St. Peter is said to have been crucified; the basilica of S. Paolo fuori le mura, first built on the spot where perhaps St. Paul suffered, near the Via Appia; S. Croce in Gerusalemme, said to have been built by Helena to receive the True Cross, which she had found at Jerusalem (the superscription is still among the many relics preserved in this church!); S. Maria Maggiore, first built by Pope Liberius in 350 and originally called S. Maria ad Nives on account of a legend; S. Pudenziana and S. Prassede, both originally of the second century; S. Maria in Trastevere, first built perhaps c. 250 and afterwards the first church in Rome dedicated to the 'Mother of God,' whose cult was late; S. Lorenzo and S. Agnese, both extra muros and both perhaps built by Constantine. The church of S. Costanza (notable for its ancient mosaics) was at this time the mausoleum of Constantia, daughter of Constantine the Great. It was first dedicated as a church in 1256. Of very early date is S. Maria Antiqua, originally the Library of the Palace of Augustus, and lately excavated.

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19 This probably explains the fact that, although many churches were built on the sites and adorned with the marbles of ruined temples, but few temples in Rome (many, however, in Syria and other provinces) were converted into churches. The Pantheon, now the only complete ancient building in Rome, stood unused for many years. It was given by Phocas to the Pope and was dedicated to all the saints in 609 under the name of S. Maria ad Martyres.

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20 Many splendid columns from ancient temples and many great works of art. One of the most interesting of these was, and still is, the pedestal of the tripod offered by the Greeks to Delphi after the battle of Plataea (see Ancient Greece, in this series, p272). The Athene Parthenos of Pheidias was also taken thither. It was destroyed (1204) by the Latin Crusaders — who proved worse barbarians than the Vandals or Huns had ever been.º

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21 I quote, once for all, a demurrer for what it is worth: 'The popular notion, which ascribes to the early Church the wanton destruction of ancient monuments . . . is very far from being justified . . . Most of the temples were in use in Rome long after the recognition of Christianity . . . and when they were finally closed they were long kept in repair at the expense of the Christian State.' (Lowrie, Christian Art.) Gregorovius, however, a great authority, speaking of Gregory the Great, gives Christian fanatics the chief guilt.

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22 Probably neither was the original library of the Ptolemies. One was burnt by the Arabs in 651.

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23 From Britain proceeded St. Patrick, to whom the conversion of Ireland is mainly accredited. He was born in North Britain; captured by Irish pirates; a slave six years in Ireland; escaped to Gaul, where he was apparently under St. Martin of Tours; returned (c. 432) through Britain, probably via Bangor (Iscoed), to Ireland. Note that neither the ancient Irish nor the British Church can be proved to have been founded by the papal Roman Church. There was probably Christianity in Ireland before St. Patrick's day.

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24 A subject that connects itself with this theme is, of course, the assimilation by the Church of external features of pagan cults and rituals — a matter that will force itself on our attention when we arrive at the unsuccessful attempt to prevent the revival of image-worship. In passing, one may note such revivals of old superstitions as the so‑called coat of St. John, shaken out at the door of the Lateran Church to bring rain in times of drought — perhaps with the same success that attended the lapis manalis of ancient Rome or that nowadays attends the arts of the African rain-doctor.

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25 Even in prehistoric Cretan shrines have been found fetish objects that point towards belief in miraculous cures, such as models of hands, feet, etc. — evidently thank-offerings like those still seen in Roman Catholic churches. In Grecian history we find much of this nature connected with the Orphic and other mysteries. See, too, the stories about the Aeacid idols of Aegina (e.g. Ancient Greece, in this series, p.221).

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26 About 750 (in the pontificates of the brothers Stephen II and Paul I) lone lines of wagons, says Gregorovius, used to bring constantly into Rome from the Campagna and the Catacombs immense quantities of skulls and skeletons, which the Popes sorted, labelled, and sold for exportation. It should be noticed, however, that the spoliation of tombs and the breaking up of bodies into smaller relics for exportation and sale to pilgrims had little vogue at Rome till about the eighth century. Early churches were built over the tombs of martyrs, and great care was taken not to disturb the tomb, which was often visible through a lattice in the high altar — the 'window of confession.' Handkerchiefs, etc., placed in contact with the tomb became charged with the miraculous powers of genuine relics. They were called 'brandea' and used for exportation.

In the greatest book of the early Christian Church, the De Civitate Dei, St. Augustine asserts that innumerable miracles were effected in Africa by such 'brandea from the tomb of St. Stephen, whose body had been discovered (by a vision) near Jerusalem. In his own diocese, he affirms, more than seventy miracles took place by such means, including three resurrections from the dead; also the trade in sacred oil (from the lamps burning before the tombs of saints) was very great. Over seventy little vials (ampullae) of miracle-working oil were secured by Theodelinda for her Monza Cathedral, and some of them are still there. See Fig. 20 and explanation.

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27 Abyssinian monasteries still obey a 'rule' said to be very similar to that of Antony or Pachomius.