History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume II (of 2)

CHAPTER I

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. – It 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.

The geographical boundaries of Latin Christianity. 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.

Forces acting upon it. 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 trying 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 nations 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 insist on a reform in the papacy. 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.

Reappearance of philosophy. Whoever compares the tenth and twelfth centuries together cannot 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.

The three pressures upon Rome. 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 those 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 me, however, to treat of the Northern pressure first, then of that of the West, and on subsequent pages of that of the East.

Foreign influence for reforming the papacy. 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., Vol. I., 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.

Life of Gerbert. 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 to Spain. There he became a proficient in the mathematics, astronomy, and physics of the Mohammedan schools. His Saracen education. 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 laboured 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. His reproaches against the Church. 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." 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.

His ecclesiastical advancement. 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 offence, 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 Saviour 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 beginning of that struggle between Mohammedan learning and morals and Italian ignorance and crime, which was at last to produce such important results for Europe.

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. Gerbert the pope. On the death of Gregory V. he 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.

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. Poisoning of the emperor and pope. 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 and 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. Commencing protest in the Church against its sins. But yet, in the Church itself there were men of irreproachable life, who, like 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 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.

Primitive agreement of philosophy and theology. 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. Their gradual alienation. 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 in the decisions of existing authority required. 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. The mutiny against theology commences among the monks. 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. Persecution of Gotschalk, 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 looked forward to a retreat among the Saracens – a protection from ecclesiastical persecution.

who sets up reason against authority. In the conflict with Gotschalk on the matter of predestination was already 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.

John Erigena falls into Pantheism. 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 absorbed in 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.

The conflict begins on transubstantiation. 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 their assertion that a part of the consecrated elements are voided from the body in the manner customary with other relics of food; a doctrine denounced by the orthodox, who declared that the priest could "make God," and that the eucharistic elements are not liable to digestion.

Opinions of Berengar of Tours. 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 Saviour, Berengar held that, though there is a real presence in them, that presence is of a spiritual nature. These heresies were condemned by repeated councils, Berengar himself being offered the 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. The pope privately adopts them. 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.

Peter Abelard among the insurgents. 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. St. Bernard attacks him. 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. The book "Sic et Non." 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.

Scholastic philosophy, rise of. 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 dispute revived. Nominalism and Realism. Of the Nominalists, Roscelin of Compiègne, 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.