Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

the efficient intervention of a present deity to avert from the Delphic fane the Persian and Scythian marauders; and in like manner, during the period before us, Christian Romans and superstitious idolaters were equally willing to recognize the immediate hand of the Lord in the preservation of his unfortunate people. It was the enthusiastic activity of a Christian Bishop, rather than any military prowess of the garrison, which snatched Orleans, the last bulwark of Gaul, as it was destined to be of France, from the grasp of Attila *, and the exulting piety of Augustine+ could trace the especial finger of God in the slaughter of myriads of the followers of Rhadagaisus, while his credulity denied the loss of a single drop of Christian blood, and must have admired in the overthrow of the Gothic monarch a not less signal intervention of Providence than that which annihilated the host of Sennacherib1. Thus the zeal of a religious strife, which in

* See the graphic account given [chiefly from Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. ii. 7] by Gibbon (c. 35) of the prolonged defence of Orleans, maintained by the prayers and exhortations of its Bishop Anianus.

+ De Civitate Dei, lib. v. c. 23.

1

According to Gregory of Tours (De Glor. Mart. i. 13), when the city of Bazas in Aquitaine was being besieged by the Huns, "omni nocte sacerdos qui præerat circuibat psallendo et orabat; nec ab ullo auxilium nisi a Domini misericordia requirebat. Hortabatur omnes orare et non deficere, asserens humiles preces colorum januas penetrare." Meanwhile the barbarian king beheld a white-robed procession, with lights, encompassing the town in vision, and again a ball of fire descend upon it. The inhabitants denying any knowledge of either of these facts, the invader became conscious of their heavenly defenders, and left them. So also at

a less enervated state of society might have rendered the clergy the saviours of the Empire from the Germans, as they afterwards were of the latter from the Saracens through the Crusades, was exerted only on rare and extreme emergencies, and we can already discern the rise of that fanatical cowardice which once and again relied on the protection of St Martin for the safety of his former see, and was reduced to trust in the intercession of St Ebbo to defend Sens against the Mussulman invaders*.

So close and influential was the bond uniting the clergy with those of their flocks who preserved their ancient appellation of Roman citizens; a bond which, if

the siege of Saragossa by Childebert and Clothaire, when the inhabitants marched round the walls bearing the tunic of St Vincent and offering up prayers, the besiegers were panic-stricken and retired (Hist. Franc. iii. 29). According to Frodoard (Hist. Eccl. Rem. lib. i. c. 6. ap. Guizot, Coll. des Mém. v. 16—21, also in Couvenier's ed. of 1617, pp 26—31) the Vandals, while sacking Rheims, were struck with a heaven-sent panic, and left the city unplundered; but they had already massacred the heroic bishop Nicasius and his sister Eutropia. At a later period, according to a poetical annalist of Charlemagne's achievements (Poeta Saxo ap. Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist. Script. t. 1. p. 230), the Saxons attempting to burn a church built by St Boniface at "Fridesklar" were thus repulsed :

"Hoc frustra nisos facinus complere nefandum

Invasit subito terror divinitus ingens,

Atque fuga turpi trepidos repedare coegit

Ad patriam, quos non hostes, non arma fugarunt."

See also the Vita S. Galli ap. Pertz, ii. 19.

* See Sismondi, Hist. des Français, t. 1. p. 220 and t. II. p. 136. [ed. 1821].

we suppose it, as we reasonably may, to have been coexistent with the nominal distinction between Roman and barbarian, must have continued to make itself felt even in those lands where the amalgamation of the several elements of society was most complete*.

But we find traces as satisfactory, though not so clearly defined, of clerical action in the moral condition of each of the newly-established nations. To hope, however, to discern their action on the shapeless jurisprudence of the earliest Frankish and Ostrogothic sovereigns would be in vain, for the primitive codes in use under those monarchs contain not the slightest allusion to what was rapidly becoming the most important member of the state. But if we must not expect direct indications of their influence on legislation in codes which were to apply to the laity alone, we are amply supplied with indirect evidence of the presiding co-operation of men far superior in legal knowledge and moral purity to the rude framers of the unsophisticated Gothic "Bye Lawst." For example,―considering only such laws as attest the early state of the connection between the clergy and laity,—in the preface to the ancient Salic Codet, the Frankish

* Even the Visigothic Code, in a law published by King Receswind, two centuries and a half subsequent to the origin of the monarchy, regulating the intermarriages of Visigoths with other nations, uses the term "Roman citizens." See Leges Visigothorum, III. [tit. i.] c. 1 [ap. Cancian. Leg. Barb. t. iv. p. 88]. See also a Constitution of Clothaire, King of the Franks, ap. Baluz. Cap. Reg. Franc. t. 1. coll. 7-10.

+ Bellagines.

"Gens Francorum inclyta, auctore Deo condita, fortis in

nation, "recently," as the words are, "converted to the Catholic faith," prides itself on its freedom from the taint of Arianism, and on having been specially moved by the Lord to seek the key of knowledge:-phrases which it is most natural to attribute to a clerical pen, and which may at any rate be admitted as evidence that a certain reverence for the forms of Christianity had been diffused through the nation, and that its conversion had speedily been followed by a revision of its old constitution, and the introduction of a stricter morality. Again, we possess stringent letters addressed by King Athalaric (who succeeded his father Theodoric on the throne of the Ostrogoths, A.D. 526) to Pope John II. on the subject of simony*, which we can scarcely believe to be the spontaneous productions of an imbecile sovereign, who was brought to his grave by continued excess at the age of sixteen; nor was it probable that a mere secular adviser would presume to interfere in matters of ecclesiastical discipline: we must rather look upon this as another proof of the early prevalence of the clerical element among the barbarian nations. But the relations of the priesthood to the civil government must be reserved for our future investigation: we are occupied at present in ascertaining their intimate connection with the Teutonic life, as we have done with the Roman life, of the period.

armis, firma pacis fœdere......nuper ad Catholicam fidem conversa, immunis ab hæresi, dum adhuc teneretur barbarie, inspirante Deo inquirens scientiæ clavem" [ap. Canciani Leg. Barb. t. ii. pp. 9, 10]. * Canciani Leges Barb. t. 1. p. 14.

It must not be imagined that, because they stood, as we have represented, at the head of the ancient population, who constituted the mass of the inhabitants in the Western European lands, they were on that account possessed of an insignificant influence over the proprietors of the soil: on the contrary, they held over their new converts a moral sway far more cogent than even the partly political authority exercised by them over their fellow-citizens. Their rude lords could not look with indifference on the ministers of that religion which received them in its embrace at their entry into the world, and deposited their bodies in the grave at the close of their career; which exercised the most unflinching watchfulness over every action of this life, and claimed a yet more awful jurisdiction over the soul in the life to come. The sacred person of the servant of God, who dispensed the deep mysteries of the faith, and was protected by the safeguard of a venerable code hidden from barbarian knowledge, was looked upon with feelings of filial reverence, to which the sophisticated sons of civilization must ever be strangers. The hallowed precincts of the Christian Temple, and the yet more inviolable sanctity of the altar, honoured alone, as they imagined, by the incarnate presence of the Almighty, was surrounded in their eyes with a glory more brilliant than that which had once encircled the mystic sanctuary of Hertha, or had clothed the Treninsule, the Germanic Palladium of their idolatrous progenitors. Indeed the expressions of Tacitus* * De Germania, c. 7.

« AnteriorContinuar »