379-395.] THE ARMS OF AMBROSE. imaginable artifice, every sort of flattery, to 347 induce Ambrose Arians in Milan. to sanction the grant of a Church to the Failing in this, she threatened his life. himself to the House of Prayer, and to the assembled multitude of Christians used the exhortations with which they had been kept patient and loyal during all the Roman Emperors' persecutions. Against arms and soldiers tears and prayers are my arms. Such are the fortifications of a Christian pastor. I neither can nor ought to resist in any other manner. Our Lord JESUS is Almighty; what He commands to be done shall be fulfilled; nor does it become you to resist the Divine sentence.' The prisons were filled with Christians; an immense sum was exacted from them; guards were drawn round the Church, where the bishop had remained in prayer all night, and the people had kept up one constant volume of sacred melody in honour of the TRINITY. The chief courtiers appeared at the Church-door and urged Ambrose to comply with the Emperor's command. Turning to the people Ambrose firmly replied, "The Holy Spirit has spoken in you this day the answer-"Emperor, we intreat, but we do not fight." The Archbishop was asked by the Emperor's notary, whether he intended to usurp the Empire. 'I have an empire,' was his magnanimous reply, it is true, but it lies in weakness, according to that saying of the Apostle, "When I am weak, then am I strong." The arrival in Italy of Theodosius with his iron-clad legions, to defend it from the invasion of the insurgent chieftain Maximus, his subsequent great victory over the enemy, and his manly confession of the Orthodox Faith turned the scale in favour of Ambrose. The young Emperor Valentinian replied to the entreaties of his Arian courtiers that he would confront Ambrose in the Church by the memorable words, His eloquence would compel yourselves to lay me, bound hand and foot before his throne.' Just before his death the young prince sought baptism from Ambrose, with expressions of genuine faith, which rewarded the Archbishop for all his troubles. The death of the Roman bishop Damasus, in the year 384, is an important æra in the history of those times. Jerome was by almost ueanimous consent elected in his room; but the intrigues of Siricius prevailing against his superior claims, he angrily withdrew once more to his cell at Bethlehem; and 'looking on the world from his loop-holes of retreat,' he fulminated ever and anon fresh thunderbolts against Rome, that purple-clad harlot Babylon,' whose priesthood and people become blacker and more inexcusable in his harsher and more unsparing denunciation. But he left the indelible impress of Monachism upon the Roman Church, for its austerity and rigid rule were singularly suited to the Roman spirit-naturally so stern, and stoical-and to that iron discipline which survived in all the glorious traditions of Rome's early days, as the gainer of those victories which made the world tremble at the name of Roman citizen. Jerome's famous version of the Bible into Latin, called the Vulgate, also contributed vastly to the adoption of his Celibate System, not merely by the celebrity which it secured to its learned author; but by its superseding the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and finally establishing Latin as the language of the Western Church, and thus to this day raising the authority of Rome over all nations whose languages have been chiefly formed from the Latin. The secret of the wonderful rise of the Roman bishops was in their keen discernment of the popular opinions of the day, their rapid adoption of them, and an incomparable practical ability in turning them to their own account. Thus Siricius astutely adopted Jerome's popular 'idea,' and his first act 379-395.] FIRST PAPAL DECRETAL. 349 was his celebrated Decretal, or papal letter, enforcing the Celibacy of the Clergy on all Churches in Communion with Rome. This is the first Authentic Decretal, claiming to be a law to Christendom, and it is the true foundation of the Roman Church's vast system of Ecclesiastical Law. Here too we see the old Roman spirit, in its tendency to harden into inflexible Statute law that which was really a matter left free to the dictates of usage, opinion, or feeling. The more this memorable decree is considered the more it will appear a master-stroke of Roman policy. It appeared just as the weight of the Roman Church on the side of orthodoxy-though, as Gieseler observes, only that of an inert mass-obtained for it the grateful confidence of all Christendom, so lately shaken to its foundations in the Arian Controversy, and, consequently, no offence was taken at the proud attitude of dictator to the universal Church assumed by the Roman bishop. It commanded the cordial support of almost all the conflicting parties in the Church. The Judaizing section hailed it as elevating the clergy above the vulgar into a special sacerdotal caste. The eclectic New Platonic section rejoiced at its enforcement of their peculiar badge of 'High Virtue,' so long extravagantly extolled by all the great guides of public opinion. The Roman hostility to marriage which Augustus could not conquer, and to which even Nero was forced to give way, made it also welcome to the mere lovers of ease and of public life-unhappily an increasing party at Rome. The monks, and now their name was legion,' hailed the decree with a jubilant shout that stunned and terrified into silence the married clergy, who, after all, could scarcely object, for Siricius had craftily made some temporary concessions in their favour. Those who confessed that the marriage of the clergy was a fault, and could plead ignorance that celibacy was an established usage of the 6 Church, were exempted from penalties, but could not hope for promotion to a more exalted rank, which was henceforth reserved for the professors of 'High Virtue.' Above all, look at the effects of this decree and acknowledge the unrivalled genius of Rome in the art of government! It thus established a right of command over all the clergy of the Church; and by freeing them from family ties and national interests, it was training them as its own well-disciplined and stern legionaries. By this magic spell, as it were, the Roman Church became petrified into the Roman Empire, aiming at establishing its dominion throughout the world, by a universal code and government-by a hierarchy of skilfully disciplined religious prætors or pro-consuls, and a host of inferior officers, each in strict canonical subordination to those immediately above them, and gradually descending into the lowest rank of society; the whole with the old Roman certain degree of freedom of action, but a constrained and limited freedom, and with an appeal to the bishop of Rome, as the spiritual Cæsar, in the last resort. And yet, as Dean Milman shows, notwithstanding all the pressure brought to bear upon them, the married clergy formed the majority in some places, even near Rome; and, by always electing married bishops, they kept up a formidable successiou. They comforted themselves with Jovinian's use of the Song of Solomon in favour of Christian wedlock, arguing that the holiest of things, the union of CHRIST with His Church, would not be typified by marriage unless that union were a sacred thing. Others less courageous, had recourse to evasions or secret violations of the law, infinitely more dangerous to public morals. Indeed, from the issue of this momentous decretal to the Reformation, it was more or less openly defied, infringed, or eluded. However, as celibacy was proclaimed to be the peculiar badge of 'High Virtue,' there was this astute appeal to the pride of the 379-395.] MASSACRE OF THESSALONICA. 351 clergy, that it set them above the vulgar; and they were also constrained to it by the fear of falling in general estimation below their perpetual rivals the monks. To Siricius, then, belongs the unenviable distinction of having by his ability and authority overthrown one of the choicest means supplied by the Gospel for the civilization of the world, the Christian Family. To Siricius the Roman Church owes the machinery by which she forged the chains of her spiritual despotism. The Dark Ages are approaching. Ambrose, as unwittingly and as effectually as Jerome, contributed to raise the bishops of Rome to supremacy by his famous humiliation of the Emperor Theodosius. Superior as he was to all his predecessors in knowledge of Christianity, in obedience to its precepts, and in zeal for its extension, Theodosius was a true Spaniard, impatient of insult and vehement in retaliation. The unruly rabble of Antioch had mortally offended him by their insults to his statue during a riot, and terrible vengeance would have avenged the dishonour, but for the intercession of the aged bishop of Antioch, Flavianus, who represented how much more heinous would be the destruction of God's image in man by the wholesale execution of the criminals; and who urged that the greater their guilt, the greater would be the magnanimity of the Emperor if he would pardon it, and thus raise his statues, not of perishable materials, in the hearts of all mankind. But when a still worse riot occurred at Thessalonica, in which the imperial officers were wounded or slain, and the Emperor's representative had been insulted, notwithstanding every attempt of the clergy to allay the fury of Theodosius, the counsels of his violent advisers prevailed. Secret orders were issued; the Circus, filled with the whole population of the city, was surrounded with troops, and seven thousand lives were sacrificed in remorseless carnage, to revenge the insult on the imperial dignity! |