CORNELL UNIVERSITY.. LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 189I BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE ^Ml1iliniiMiiifmi;l?i?B'*^9^ °' '^^ middle age o.n.J ^924 031 220 910 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 924031 22091 STUDIES IN LITERATURE Columfita SBLniijEtattg STUDIES IN LITERATURE A HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM IN THE RENAISSANCE : With Special Reference to the Influence of Italy in the Formation and Development of Modern Classicism. By Joki, EliAS SriNGARN. ROMANCES OF ROGUERY : An Episode in the Development of the Modern Novel. Part I. The Picaresque Novel in Spain. By Frank Wadlkigh Chandler. SPANISH LITERATURE IN ENGLAND UN- DER THE TUDORS. By John Gakrett UNDERHII.L. THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE OF THE MID- DLE AGES. By Henry Osborn Taylor, sometime Lecturer in Literature at Columbia University; author of " Ancient Ideals." *#* Other nwnibera of this series will he issued from iAme to timet containing the results of literary re- search or criticism by the students or officers of Columbia University, or others associated aoith them in study, under the authorisation of the Department of Comparative Literature, Geoboe Edwabd 'Wood- beret, Professor. THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE OF THE MIDDLE AGES BT HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR SOUSTIMB LECTUBBB IN LITEBATUBB AT COLUMBIA UNIVEBSITY AUTHOR OF "ANCIBIIT IDEALS" THE COLUMBIA UNIVEESITY PRESS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Agents 66 Fifth Avenue 1901 AU rights reserved COPTBIOHT, 1901, bt the macmillan company. Nocioootr ]Ptcsi J. S. Cuihing & Co. — Berwick fc Smith Norwaal Mui. U.S.A. o PREFACE The subject of this book is the transition from the Classical to the Mediaeval. It seeks to follow the changes undergone by classic thought, letters, and art, on their way to form part of the intellectual develop- ment of the Middle Ages, and to show how pagan tastes and ideals gave place to the ideals of Chris- tianity and to Christian sentiments. The argument reaches backward to classic Greece and Eome and forward into the Middle Ages; but the discussion centres in the period extending from the fourth to the seventh century. This period was strikingly transitional in Italy and the western provinces of the Boman Empire ; before it had passed, the various elements of classic culture had assumed the forms in which they were to make part of the intellectual life of the Middle Ages, and Christianity had taken on a mediaeval character. In considering the antecedents of the transition period it is necessary to look to Greek as well as fioman sources, to the East as well as to the West. But the West of Europe is the province of this book, and the discussion tends always to turn from the Vlll PREFACE Hellenic East to the "Western and Latin phenomena of the transition period. These have a personal inter- est for us, making part of our own past. They have also the interest of that which lived and was to grow in life. Find what interest one may in mediaeval Byzantium, — and it is full of instruction, — still it is a tale of what had reached its zenith, of what was past its best strength, a tale of decadence postponed with skill and energy, and yet only postponed. H. O. TAYLOR. New York, January 19, 1901. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE iNTBODnCTIOM 1 CHAPTER n THE PASSING OF TKE ANTIQUE MAN Contrast between the classic and the mediseval character . 18 Distinctive Greek and Roman traits 19 Influence of Greece on Rome 22 The Greek-enlightened Roman 24 Later Greek types 26 Growth of emotion : Homer, the lyric and tragic poets, the Alexandrians, Virgil 27 The new pagan religiousness 29 Neo-platonism 30 The pagan climacteric 31 CHAPTER in PEASES OF PAGAN DECADENCE General decay and literary decline 33 Oratory, rhetoric, and grammar 34 Debased uses of Virgil 37 The romance of Alexander 38 The tale of Troy 40 The Greek love-romances . . • : ■ • • .41 ix X CONTENTS CHAPTEE rV THE ANTIQUE CULTURE I. The Tkansmission op Letters PAGB Latin and Greek in the West 44 The preservation of classic works 45 Mediaeval education 47 ~ Summaries of the liberal arts : Martianus Capella . . 49 Summaries of philosophy : Boethius 51 II. Transmission of the Roman Law Imperial codes . . 56 Barbarian codes of Roman law 59 Roman law and the Church ; canon law .... 61 Roman law in the early Middle Ages .... 64 The Bologna school and the new knowledge of the Roman law in France, England, and Germany ... 66 CHAPTER V PAGAN ELEMENTS CHRISTIANIZED IN TRANSMISSION I. Ethics Pagan and Christian ethics 71 Ambrose's De Officiis Ministrorum 74 Augustine ... 77 II. Stnesius or Ctkene 78 III. The Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies OP the Counterfeit Diontsius the Areopagite 82 IV. Mysteries, Symbolism, Allegort "Mysteries," symbolism, and allegorical interpretation . 90 Pagan and Christian mysteries 93 CONTENTS XI rAoz Allegorical interpretation with Greeks, Jews, and Chris- tians 97 Effect on medisBval literature and art .... 106 CHAPTER VI IDEALS OF KNOWLEDGE, BEAUTT, LOVE I. Philosophy and Doqma The Greek and Christian ideal of knowledge . . . 107 Christian views of pagan literature 108 The Christian attitude toward philosophy .... 109 The dogmatic formulation of Christianity ; Greek philoso- phy and Roman law 116 Greek philosophy in mediseval scholasticism . . . 122 n. Beautt and Love Christian conceptions of beauty : Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa 123 Augustine's thoughts of love 128 The Christian attitude toward emotion in general . . 131 CHAPTER Vn ABANDONMENT OF PAGAN PRINCIPLES IN A CHRISTIAN SYSTEM OF LIFE [_ I. Obigins of Monasticism The ascetic act 136 Greek, Egyptian, Indian, and Jewish antecedents of monasticism 138 The conflict between Christ and the world . . . 142 Christian disparagement of marriage .... 143 Beginnings of monasticism 146 Xll CONTENTS PAGE Labor and obedience 148 Causes of the rapid spread of monasticism . . .150 The Christian contemplative life 153 II. Westerk Monasticism Eastern and Western monasticism ... . 155 Influence of the four Latin Fathers ... . 158 Cassian's Institutes and Conlationes ; monastic vices and their remedies 160 The Benedictine regula ... ... 164 III. The Monastic Character General traits 178 Western examples from the transition centuries : Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Benedict of Nursia, Gregory the Great 183 CHAPTER VIII CHRISTIAN PROSE I. Chkistianization op Style Contrasts between classical and primitive Christian writings 198 Formlessness of the latter 200 Effect of the new religion upon literary Latin . . . 202 Tertullian and the Sermo Pleheius 203 The new Christian vocabulary 204 II. The First Four Centuries op Christian Prose Letters : Paul, Ignatius, Cyprian, Augustine, Jerome . 207 Apologies, Greek and Latin 213 The Civitas Dei 217 Apologetic History ; Orosius ...... 219 Polemics; sermons 223 CONTENTS xili PAGE Apocryphal Gospels and Acts 225 Their influence in the Middle Ages 230 IIL Medi^valizing op Latin Pbose and Forms op Composition 231 CHAPTER IX CHRISTIAN POETRY I. Classic Metre and Christian Emotion Metrical qualities of Greek verse 235 Characteristics of Greek emotion 236 Hexameter and elegiac 237 Lyric metres ; the dramatists 240 Metrical decadence 242 Metre and emotion with the classic Latin poets . . 243 Christian emotion unsuited to classic metres . . . 244 The medisetal hymn 246 II. Greek Christian Poetry The first Christian songs 247 The Oracula Sibyllina 250 The hymn ascribed to Clement of Alexandria . . . 253 The hymn of Methodius 255 Metrical hymns of Synesius and Gregory Nazianzen . . 256 The origin and rise of Greek accentual hymns . . . 257 Eomanos 260 m. Early Latin Christian Poetry Relations to the Greek . .... The change from quantity to accent in Latin hymns Prudentius and the martyr-ballad . . . . Paulinus of Nola and the Christian elegy . Didactic or polemic poems . . . . The Psychomachia . 262 263 269 272 276 278 XIV CONTENTS PASS Narrative poems 280 Avitus' "Paradise Lost" 282 rV. The Transition to Mediaeval Latin Pobtbt Development of accentual and rhymed verse . . . 284 Epic and other antique forms of poetry .... 287 Classic phrase and pagan commonplace .... 291 Fortunatus and the passing of the antique spirit . . 293 French, Irish, Anglo-Saxon, and German traits in Latin poetry 297 CHAPTER X CHRISTIAN ART L The Transition prom Antique to Hedisivai. Architecture The classic orders 302 The Christian basilica 303 The Byzantine dome 305 Through Bomanesque to Gothic 308 Gothic and classic 313 IL Antique Christian Painting and Sculpture Gradually distinguishable from pagan .... 316 The subjects and interpretation of catacomb painting . 318 Antique Christian sculpture 324 The Christian revival of art in the fourth and fifth cen- turies; mosaics 325 III. Byzantine Painting Progress to the Byzantine style in Italy .... 332 Bavenna . . 336 Mosaics . . 337 Characteristics of Byzantine art 340 CONTENTS XV PAeB Ita covirse and decline 242 Art in Italy becomes Italian 345 IV, The Antique in Medlstal Abt The antique art and the Northern races .... 348 Carolingian art . . . .... 350 Modes of antique surrival 363 The transfoimation of the antique in the evolution of mediaeval art 355 BlBLIOOBAPEICAL APFBNSIX 359 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE OF THE MIDDLE AGES CHAPTER I INTEODUCTIOH' No date marks the passing of tlie ancient world and tlie iDeginning of the Middle Ages. The transition from one to the other was a process of spiritual change, during which antique characteristics gradu- ally ceased and were replaced by much that was ineipi- ently mediaeval. There no longer existed men whose education and intellectual traits, whose moods, tastes, sentiments,, and views of life were those of the time of Augustus, or Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius. The older possessors of antique culture in Italy and the provinces were transformed ; within and without the Empire new races had come upon the stage ; through decade and century went on a ceaseless blending of the new, the old, and the transitional. Paganism and Christianity existed side by side in the Grseco-Roman world of the fourth and fifth centu- ries, the one with its great steadying traditions, and the other with its power of new-found faith and its fresh moral stimulus. Christians had pagan edu- cations, and pagans, like the emperor Julian and his B 1 2 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. friend Libanius, derived suggestions from the religion they despised. In these obviously transitional centu- ries, both pagan and Christian men arose who were not quite antique.^ Some of them eclectically refashioned pagan ethics, some made useful if vapid compendiums of antique culture, some turned epics into grammars ; others unconsciously remoulded primitive Christianity or produced strange creations, compounds of Chris- tianity and paganism. Together they form the link between the earlier pagan and Christian types and the more mediaeval men of the sixth and seventh centuries. The modification of antique pagan and Christian types is one side of the change. Another is repre- sented by the barbarian races who, often with destruc- tive violence, were pressing into the Empire and coming under the influence of whatever existed there. They were affected by intercourse with Italians and provincials, and soon began to absorb knowledge. As their intelligence increased, through their contact with a higher civilization, they drew from the antique according to their understandings and appreciations. The old matters thus absorbed into new natures were transformed, and sometimes gained fresh life. But these barbarian men were not metamorphosed into an- tique persons, nor even into those pagan or Christian semi-antique types which made the Grseco-Eoman world of the fourth and fifth centuries. From the I The word " classical " refers to the characteristics of Greek art and Greek or Boman literature at their best; "antique" refers more generally to the characteristics of Greek and Roman civiliza- tion, without special reference to period or quality; "pagan" means the same, hut with the added idea of opposition to Christian tboaght. i] INTRODUCTION 3 beginning of the sixth century, however, the barbarians are not to be sharply set over against Eomans and provincials ; they represent all stages of civilization, from barbarism to the best culture afforded by the time. These processes of overthrow, progress, and change were complex. But it is noticeable that each succeed- ing generation of the mingled denizens of the Empire is further removed from the antique type and nearer to the mediseval. The Empire remained geographi- cally the source of religion and culture for peoples within it and without; and Christianity, as well as much from the pagan classic past, was passing to the new peoples in forms continually modified and ever nearer to the level of the early mediseval centuries. Eor example, Augustine was a Roman Christian; he was not mediaeval. One hundred and fifty years after him comes Gregory the Great, who is partly Roman still, yet is touched with the new ignorance, the new barbarism. He is, however, close enough to Augustine to appropriate his doctrines and hand them on in modes nearer the level of the seventh and eighth centuries. This is an example of the Christian side of the matter. On the other hand, the classic spirit was dead before Gregory was born, and classic literature was degraded by the way in which it was understood. Virgil, for instance, was no longer Virgil, but incarnate grammar and authoritative history. Antique culture was also undergoing desiccation in compositions of the tran- sition centuries, whose authors took what was spiritu- ally closest to them and made it over in accordance with their own intelligence and character. 4 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. From the third to the fifth century the Grseco- Roman world presents conditions of decadence. Mili- tary courage, civic devotion, intellectual energy, are declining. Decay shows itself in literature and art. The phenomena of this pagan decadence present anal- ogies in the various provinces of philosophy, ethics, law, rhetoric, and grammar, as well as in art and poetry. Philosophy and ethics are eclectic : organic princi- ples which give consistency are frequently ignored, while inconsistent sources are drawn from, and there is a tendency to summarize. In law the tendency is to conserve and compile, then to epitomize ; the crea- tive energy to make an organic system is lacking. In rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, there is merely an arranging of the old and trite examples and a sum- marizing. Consequently resemblances will appear throughout the decadent forms in which these vari- ous branches of culture pass over into the Middle Ages. In poetry and art there was not the same palpable summarizing of previous works ; yet the failure of cre- ative faculty appears in the mediocrity of poetic com- positions, in their lack of freshness, their insipid use of borrowed phrase and trite image. The openly pagan poetry of the fourth and fifth centuries was not as cur- rent in the Middle Ages as the semi-pagan verse written by Christians. In this there was some modification of pagan elements, and it may be said generally, as to the paganism carried over into the Middle Ages in Christian writings, that the Christian spirit altered whatever it drew from paganism ; and Christian modi- fications of borrowed pagan elements show analogies among themselves, whether the pagan element happens i] INTRODUCTION 5 to be carried over in theological, ethical, or historical writings or in more strictly literary compositions. For example, the pagan matter is apt to be allegorized or treated mystically or symbolically, and novel and more spiritual meaning is given to what is taken.^ More- over, the later and partially decadent pagan sources are usually employed. The fifth century concludes the course of the deca- dence of independent self-existent paganism. Al- ready Christianity was showing itself a new power and inspiration in thought, letters, and art. Yet its spirit and its principles differed so essentially from those of the classical antique that some of its elements of strength corresponded with what were defects accord- ing to classical standards. Self-control, measure, limit, proportion, clarity, and definiteness were principles of the antique ; the Christian spirit broke through them all. Its profound spirituality, often turning to mysti- cism, had not the clarity of classic limitation. It did not recognize limit. Its reach was infinite, and there- fore its expressions were often affected with indefinite- ness. Classic self-control meant measure, nothing in excess. Christian self-control soon came to mean the exclusion of a part of life ; it knew no measure ; of what it condemned it could not have too little, of what it approved it could not have enough. The higher paganism sought to weigh and proportion the elements of mortal life according to their intrinsic values and their relations to the economy of human happiness. Christianity scarcely regarded these mortal balancings. It had its own universal principle of proportionment, 1 The myth of the Phoenix is an example, see post, p. 279. 6 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. — that love of God which comprehended love for all men and for self in conformity with God's love of His creatures. Inspired by so different a spirit the creations of Chris- tian thought and feeling could not be like the classic, and their excellence could not be the classic excellence. Classic principles of literary and artistic form and defi- nite unity of composition could never become organic with the spirit of Christianity which overleaped the finite and the mortal."- Consequently the art and lit- erature of the transition centuries present a conflict, of which the Christian artists and authors are not always 1 The contrast between the (late) classical and the Christian spirit may be seen in the lines on Hope attributed to Seneca : " De- ceitful hope, hope sweet evil, the one solace of ills for wretched men, whereby they bear their lots. Silly thing, which no turn of fortune can put to flight, hope stays, anxious to please to the last gasp," etc. This pagan conception of spes is definite and unspir- itualized, quite wingless, pessimistic, and void of high assurance. It lacks all that animates Christian hope and gives it wings to bear it up to God. ' Spes fallax, spes dulce malum, spes una malorum Solamen miseris, qua sua fata trahunt. Credula res, quam nulla potest fortuna fugare, Spes Stat in extremis officiosa mails. Spes vetat aeterno mortis requiescere portu Et curas ferro rumpere soUicitas. Spes nescit vinci, spes pendet tota futuris; Mentitur, credi vult tamen ilia (sibi) . Sola tenet miseros in vita, sola moratur, Sola perit numquam, sed venit atque redit. . . . — Baehbens, Poetae Latini Minores, Vol. IV, p. 65. Compare also the Pervigilium Veneris, that last soft note of pagan sexual love, with Augustine's conception of the love of God {post, p. 129) and with the mystical love of Christ which was spring- ing up within monasticism {post, p. 153). I] INTEODUCTION 7 conscious, — a conflict between the new spirit of Chris- tianity, with its inspirations, its infinite reaches and its requirements of expression, and the antique culture, its tastes and aversions, and its definite literary and artistic rules and forms. In the fourth and fifth centuries great works of Christian theology and polemics were produced, as well as writings more properly literary, both poetry and prose, and also works of art. The Christian authors had renounced the pagan religion, they condemned its idolatry, some of them disapproved pagan literature. But one and all were educated in standards of artistic taste and principles of literary composition which were the fruit of pagan culture. They knew no other can- ons to follow when they tried for literary excellence. Therefore they could not but endeavor to give their Christian writings the excellences which had distin- guished the antique pagan literature and art. But these classic rules were profoundly irreconcilable with the spirit and demands of the new Christian matter, as may be readily seen in Christian poetry ; antique form and metre were not suited to Christian feeling, and the Christian soul did not reach full poetic expres- sion until it abandoned classic forms and created new ones. As for Christian art, the technical skill and principles of composition inherited from the antique were its foundations and its first source of excellence ; these aided vastly more than they retarded. Never- theless in architecture, sculpture, and painting, the Christian spirit reaches its full expression only in the Middle Ages when the classic heritage has been for- gotten or abandoned. 8 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. In other respects classic knowledge deflected or em- barrassed the development of Christian thought. In- consistent elements from pagan metaphysics entered Christian theology. And pagan ethics for a time held Christian ethics from their true principles. This ap- pears, for instance, in the ethical writings of so pro- found a Christian as Ambrose. On the other hand, the works of his younger contemporary, Augustine, show the casting aside of pagan ethical reasoning and the creation of a veritable Christian scheme. If pagan form and substance thus hampered the Christian development, it may be inferred that Chris- tian productions were ill suited to the preservation of antique elements unchanged and uncorrupted. ■ An- tique form is soon distorted in Christian literature, while the substantial elements of antique ethics and philosophy are often changed by the mixture of what is foreign to them, or are distorted through their appli- cation in schemes and to purposes alien to their nature. The larger Christian Latin poems from the time of Commodian afford examples of the distortion of an- tique form. Many of them, whatever may be their purpose or their topic, make an indiscriminate use of the hexameter or the elegiac metre, and disregard literary unity and pertinency at will. Examples of the misapplication of pagan substance may be found in the use of Stoical methods of reasoning as a frame for Christian ethics ; also in the use of Greek philoso- phy for the formulation of Christian dogma, or in the manner of employing certain parts of Aristotle in the early Middle Ages. And yet the somewhat distorted manner in which classical elements were used in Chris- i] INTRODUCTION 9 tian literature represents mucli besides decay. For the genius of Christianity could make use of antique pagan elements only by altering and breaking them, or by misapplying them, and all this in ways that were sheer debasement, judged by any classical standard. It was through their distortion that pagan elements became part of the new growth of the human spirit coming with Christianity. There were several ways in which the antique elements of culture passed over to the Middle Ages, or were superseded by Christian ideals. There was, of course, intercourse between the citizens of the Empire and the barbarians. One result of this may be ob- served in the bits of anonymous pagan opinion sub- sisting scattered and impersonal through the Middle Ages, and another in the magic of the great name of Rome and the deathless thought of the Roman Em- pire. These ideas lived in the consciousness of the people, though they were also fostered by literature. The same may be said of the Roman Law. Some popular knowledge of it survived among the inhabit- ants of Italy and Gaul, where it was also preserved in codes and abridgments. In England and Germany, save as an element of Canon Law, the influence of Roman Law was slight until after the rise of the Bologna school. As to the currents of literary influence, the writings of classical Latin authors still survived and were read. Antique culture was also summarized or otherwise remodelled in pagan works of the transi- tion centuries, and so passed on in forms suited to the comprehension of the Middle Ages. Chief examples of this are the De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of 10 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. Martianus Capella and the De Consolatione of Boe- tMus. These pagan refashionings of the antique were not complicated by the introduction of anything foreign to paganism. But a great mass of pagan culture and philosophy passed over into the Middle Ages modified or transformed in the works of Christians of the tran- sition centuries. In these Christian writings pagan and Christian thoughts sometimes are crudely mingled, as in the poems of Synesius. Again, the pagan and Christian elements are more closely united; instead of a mechanical mixture, as it were, there is a chemi- cal compound, the ingredients of which are altered by their union. The writings of Pseudo-Dionysius are an example : although their inspiration was Christian, their constructive principles were drawn from Neo- platonism. Greek philosophy likewise supplied the principles for the formulation of Christian dogma, and thus passed into Christianity and on into the Middle Ages. It was afterward to have a new career, when in scholasticism it was applied to prove and systematize dogmatic Christianity. Pagan philosophy was the mediaeval storehouse of reason. Finally, ele- ments of paganism survive, sometimes as vague and sometimes as definite influences in predominantly Christian works ; as, for example, the writings of the Church Fathers. Pagan literary form survived in early Christian prose literature; but here again the transition from pagan to Christian and mediaeval form is noticeable. Equally interesting is the passage of the antique forms from pagan into Christian poetry ; and then most strik- r] INTRODUCTION 11 ing is their disappeaxance and the evolution of new Christian forms of verse as the genius of Christianity masters the art of poetry so as to express itself and the emotions of the Christian soul through this me- dium. Likewise in art : the genius of Christianity long follows its antique lessons, yet conquers them at last and evolves its own artistic forms in painting, sculpture, and architecture. Form is as important as substance in considering poetry and the fine arts in their transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Christianity itself was changed in its passage from apostolic times to the Middle Ages. Changes sprang from the introduction of pagan elements, and other changes from its imperial triumph in becoming the religion of state. But monasticism is the great in- stance of the recasting of primitive Christianity by the transition centuries in the form which was to be the mediaeval ideal of the Christian life. In these same centuries the primitive Christian records were superseded or changed, actually or through the way in which they were understood. Here again, as monas- ticism came to be the ideal Christian life, it became a factor in the transformation of the narratives of the Old and New Testaments. Under its influence Elijah and Elisha become monks, and Joseph is made a mar- ried celibate.^ Besides the Scriptures, early Christian 1 See, e.g., Cassian, Inst. I, 1. Ou the other hand, the lives of the heroes ol monasticism were refacimenti of the lives of scrip- tural characters, including Jesus. The scriptural characters were first refashioned to the understanding and views of the transition and mediaeval centuries, as, for example, by making monks of them. The imitation of these mediaevally conceived scriptural personages was then a twofold process, actual and imaginative. It was actual 12 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. writings, both G-reek and Latin, needed the recasting of the transition period to adapt them to mediaeval compre- hension. Justin Martyr, Minucius Felix, and the great Tertullian were not to the mediaeval taste. The works of the Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, never became intelligible to the Eoman-minded West. Greek Chris- tian writers of the fourth century drew largely from in so far as the saint imitated the Biblical characters, and repro- duced in his own life features of their careers ; it was imaginative as his " legend " went beyond the fact in likening his life to theirs. The imaginative side of the process was largely occupied with the miracles which faithful tradition readily ascribed to its hero in mailing his life like that of Biblical persons. Otherwise, in this conformation of lives of saints to the prevalent conceptions of ancient types, it is difficult to distinguish the actual from the imaginative. The great mediseval instance is the life of Francis of Assisi, which that sweetest of saints conformed so closely to the life of his master Christ, report and tradition adding further points of likeness. Similarly, Benedict fulfilled the precepts of Scripture, and conformed his life to his understanding of Biblical examples. Tradition carries out his endeavor for him, till the writer of his legend, Gregory, consciously finds in his hero's career a catholic inclusion of the deeds of scriptural saints. In the Dialogues, after Gregory has been telling the marvellous deeds of Benedict, his in- terlocutor, the Deacon Peter, answers and exclaims: "Wonderful and astonishing is what you relate. For in the water brought forth from the rock (i.e. by Benedict) I see Moses, in the iron which returned from the bottom of the lake I see Elisha (2 Kings vi. 7), in the running upon the water I see Peter, in the obedience of the raven I see Elijah (1 Kings xvii. 6) , and in his grief for his dead enemy I see David (1 Kings i. 11). That man, as I consider him, was full of the spirit of all the just " (Gregorius Magnus, Dialogi, II, 8). The preceding chapters tell these miracles of Benedict. The rest of the second book contains other miracles like those told in the Bible. The life of a later saint may also follow earlier mo- nastic types. Francis kisses the wounds of lepers, as Martin of Tours had done. See Sulpicius Severus, Vita S. Martini. I] INTEODUCTION 13 them. By that time Greek -was no longer generally understood in Italy and the Latin-speaking provinces of the Empire, and many Greek Christian ■writings ■were translated into Latin, and usually were abridged or otherwise modified. Translations thus overcame the barrier of language. Other reasons were to keep early Latin as well as Greek Christian authors from being read in the Middle Ages, to wit, their antique tone, and because the circumstances under which they lived and wrote were different from any situation that the Middle Ages were to experience or could understand. Non licet esse vos was substantially what the pagan govern- ment said to the Christians.^ What could a later time really know of this condition of the Church, illicit, legally unrecognized, forbidden to exist? So the Middle Ages, with all their cult of martyrs, did not read the writings of a time when there was need to defend Christianity before the pagan government or to justify it in the eyes of the pagan people. Another goodly part of these early writings was directed against pagan-Christian heresies (Gnosti- cism) of which the Middle Ages knew nothing. One notes with interest that Lactantius, who "writes just 1 "You are not permitted to exist" (Tertullian, Apologeticus) . Tertullian's writings are so difficult, his use of words is so individ- ual, that the Middle Ages could hardly have understood him. But his phrases seared themselves into Latin Christendom in the third and fourth centuries, and passed into the language of dogma, and his writings were a store for later Apologists. He also was an influence ■with the important poet Prudentius (Ebert, Allge. Ges. der Lit. des Mittelalters, 2d ed., I, pp. 51, 276, 287). Through these media he is indirectly influential in the later periods, when his works were no longer read. 14 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. as the pagan empire closes and Oonstantine comes to the throne, is the earliest Christian author who has any mediaeval vogue. Yet he was not influential. The great Latin Christian personalities of the fourth and fifth centuries were most potent in moulding or rather in creating mediaeval thought. Ambrose, Je- rome, Augustine, Hilary of Poictiers, these founders of Latin Christianity, recast the Christian thought of the first centuries; and it is through these mighty powers — through Augustine, the giant of them all — that early Christian writings indirectly affect the Middle Ages. Mention has been made of certain analogies notice- able among the various forms of decadence and change. Beyond these, there will be seen, throughout the fol- lowing chapters, the freeing of the human spirit — both its intellect and its passion — from the limita- tions of the antique temperament and modes of thought. More especially this will characterize the transition from pagan to Christian. True, the Middle Ages will manifest less self-reliant human freedom than antiquity, and will even take on new spiritual bondage in fear of God and the fate of man's immortal soul. But they will know no bondage to any restrict- ing principles of human finitude or to any philosophic weighings of the good and ill or even the rights and wrongs of mortal life. The spiritual liberation, distinguishing the transi- tion through which the antique ceased and the mediae- val began, was a liberation from the inherent limits of self-reliance, and consequently from the limitations of that freedom which is established in human i] INTRODUCTION 16 strength, and the rational balancing of mortal consid- erations. It was a liberation resting upon the power of God. The human spirit, responding to the new Christ-awakened sense of the infinite and awful power of God's love, became conscious of the measureless readies of the soul created for eternal life by an infinite and eternally loving God. The soul was lifted out of its finitude to the infinite which is its nature and its home. This freeing of the human spirit will first appear in the modifications of the antique character and the disappearance of classic traits: the genius of Neo- platonism was beating against barriers which were burst through only by th.e Christian faith. Then this liberation will appear in the forms of decadence shown by pagan productions of the transition and pre-transi- tion periods; it not only accompanies but it will seem part of the decay suffered by the strong and noble qualities of classic antiquity. It will likewise appear, often grotesquely and irrationally, in the loos- ing of antique pagan thoughts from their rational form and definite application when taken over into Christian compositions. Protagoras, in saying that man was the measure of all things, enunciated what had been a tacit assumption in Greek life and reflec- tion since the time when Homer made the gods so human. Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, had seen principles of human nature reflected in the laws of the universe, and Greek metaphysics never ceased to entertain thoughts of a cosmic harmony having its microcosmie pattern in the temperance and proportion that made the ideal of human conduct. Manifestly, 16 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. Greek ethical reasoning could not remain undistorted when forced to hold Christian precepts; nor could Greek metaphysics escape perversion when used by the Church Fathers in the formulation of Christian dogma. A God-created world, with men God-created, God-beloved, and God-redeemed, could not be held in the categories of Greek philosophy. Beyond the region of dogma and metaphysics, the new freedom of the human spirit will show itself with power in the freeing of the Christian ideal of love from thoughts of measure and mortality. It will show itself in the monk's dismissal of pagan proportion and comprehensiveness from his principles of life. He no longer weighs the goods and ills of earth, or seeks to make his life humanly complete. He has broken with the mortal and the finite. He knows that his soul is immortal, and can be blessed only in the everlasting love of God. The passion of this infinite love is his joy, and its measurelessness is the measure of his freedom. Finally, very interesting is this freeing of the spirit — again often accompanied by the destruction of what had been great — in the spheres of literature and art. It is seen in the disintegration of the balanced periods of classic prose, and in the growth of new kinds of prose compositions having scant relationship with classic forms. In poetry, with emotional impulses creative in their strength, it displays itself in the abandonment of classic metres and the devising of freer forms of verse, which shall be capable of voicing the Christian soul. But sometimes it shows itself barbarously in the misapplication and abuse of those narrative and i] INTEODUCTION 17 lyric forms of poetry wMch the classic spirit, with sure discrimiuation, had devised to meet the several requirements of its different moods. More slowly and, at first, less articulately than in poetry, this same freeing of the spirit will show itself in architecture, sculpture, and painting: in architecture, as, after the creation of the Byzantine dome and the tentative progress of the Eomanesque, the Gothic finally at- tains, and the vast church lifts the worshipper to the freedom of God's infinite heaven; in sculpture, as the carver learns to cover the cathedral with the illimitable story of creation, of man's Fall and his Re- demption, of human life and its devilish besettings, and of the final Judgment unto heaven or hell ; in painting, as the artist learns to tell in color this boundless Christian tale and at last to depict with subtUty the beatitudes and sorrows of the Christian soul. CHAPTEE II THE PASSING OF THE ANTIQUE MAN With all the individual and racial differences among the men of the Middle Ages there were also common characteristics. The mediasval man was not spiritu- ally self-reliant, his character was not consciously wrought by its own strength of mind and purpose. He was neither rationally self-controlled nor rationally free. Subject to bursts of unrestraint, he yet showed no intelligent desire for liberty. He relied on God or, more commonly, upon the supernatural. He also looked up to what he imagined the past to have been, and was prone to accept its authority.^ He was crushed in the dust with a sense of sin ; he was ascetic in his deeper thought. He was also emotional, and with heights and depths of emotion undreamed of by antiquity. He had no clear-eyed perception of the visible world. What he saw he looked upon as a symbol ; what he heard he understood as an allegory. For him reality lay behind and beyond, in that which the symbol symbolized and the allegory veiled. The contrast between the mediaeval and the classic Greek and Eoman types seems absolute. Yet it is possible to follow the change from the classic to the 1 On the great fame of Rome in the Middle Ages, see Graf, Soma nella memoria e nelle imaginazioni del Medio Evo, Cap. I. 18 CHAP, n] THE PASSING OF THE ANTIQUE MAN 19 semi-antique or transitional types of the fourtli and fifth centuries. These pass into the mediseval through gradual modifications arising from the mingled prog- ress and decay of the succeeding centuries, during which the barbarian peoples are wrought upon and changed by the authoritative Christian religion and the awe-inspiring spectacle of the Empire. The pres- ent chapter will be devoted to the change from the classic to the transitional pagan types of the fourth century. The Greek, as well as the Eoman, was self-reliant ; he looked to himself for his own strength. The gods might provide opportunity, or they might thwart men or enmesh the self-reliant doer in nets of fate. But the man himself and the quality of his accomplishment were the work of his own strength — of his Aper^ (virtus) and inwTi^ (prudentia), his valiant energies and the mind which informed and guided them. Re- specting this quality of self-reliance, and the fears which come to shake it, the Greek was loftily and constructively imaginative ; the Eoman was practi- cally apprehensive, and cautious with utmost forti- tude. The Greek reasoned upon human limitations and man's position in the world. He coordinated these limitations in philosophies, and drew broad de- ductions as to Fate and the gods, conceived as favora- ble or untoward powers outside of man. Also the Greek imagines with his entire nature — heart and mind; from out of life's limitations he visualizes mor- tality, and creates epic and dramatic instances of its types or carves them in statues, and shows man's spiritual greatness in spite of Fate. The Eoman has 20 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. neither artistic imagination nor the gift of abstract philosophic reason ; his mind is not filled with lofty- deductions, it does not create philosophies ; it guides the feet and hands of Romans on, not to the empire of the spirit, but to the empire of the world. The Ro- man realizes life's circumstantial difiBiculties ; he knows that weaker power cannot withstand the stronger, and he sees the practical dangers of battle and disease. He will take all the precautions of prudence against these, and will propitiate the gods most carefully. The Greek, as well as the Roman, was self-con- trolled. This with the Greek meant a self-proportion- ment akin to his artistic love of beauty in the visible world and in the world of spirit. His life should be fair and good, beautifully proportioned, each element cherished at its due worth. He would seek nothing excessively, nor anything excessive (fi-qSkv ayav), he would observe the glorious and beauty-giving prin- ciples of atSuis, shame at all things shameful, reverence for all things to be revered ; thus rightly distinguish- ing between what to fear and what not to fear. So might his life and his life's close be beautified by fame. Intimately connected with the principles guiding Greek conduct were those defining the objects of Greek desire : beauty in all things, broad and lofty knowledge not sought merely as a guide of conduct, but desired as an element of human life. There was har- mony and union between the love of beauty and the love of knowledge. Due proportionment, right relar tion of part to whole, and of the whole to other things — this was fundamental to the thought of beauty. :i] THE PASSING OF THE ANTIQUE MAN 21 Knowledge should be beautiful as well; it should pertain to noblest matters, and thus preserve the principle of proportionment in seeking the best most strenuously. Yet the love of beauty entered life's small details and trivialities ; and the love of knowl- edge was not academic, for the Hellene had universal curiosity. Thus gifted with clear perception, and with reason and imagination which might build systems of philos- ophy or present life's truths in poetry and sculpture, the Greek was a consummate artist ; he could create whatever he loved. His was a happy nature, and with great faculty of joy. To him life was joyous, although mortal, and its prizes, which his intellect approved, were to be desired passionately. Artist as he was, his was the passion as well as the thought of beauty. Men who thus keenly sought whatever they desired, and who sought ever to know better what to seek, desired liberty to direct their lives to the goal of their desire. The thoughtful, eager Greek was individual- istic, seeking the complete fulfilment of his many- sided nature. Philosophers might point out that the State was the greater man, the all-embracing consum- mation of its citizens. And in great Greek days, citizens made this real in beautiful devotion to the city. Nevertheless, the Greek tended always to re- vert to the living of his own life in its most perfect fulfilment. The Roman was undisturbed by a multiplicity of loves. Self-control was a simpler quality with him than with the Greek. It rose from practical judgment, 22 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. not from an ideal attempt toward the universal pro- portionment of life's contents. It was also grounded in a sense of personal dignity. To give way to passion was beneath a Eoman. In affairs within the city, self-control was utmost political common sense; as to external military politics, self-control lay in daring what might be dared, in fearing what should be feared, and in abiding with unshakeable fortitude in whatever was resolved. The Greeks disapproved what was un- limited or unrestrained, and conceived the principle of this disapproval as the Eomans did not. Never- theless, actua,lly, Eoman life was limited more nar- rowly. Its object and scope were the honor and aggrandizement of the State, the honor and enrichment of the family. Without imagination, withou.t broad desire for knowledge, with little love of beauty, with no stinging capacity for joy, undistracted from the practical task in hand, the Eoman was from earliest times the grown-up man of affairs. Through his lack of individualism, his abundant caution and conservor tism, he preserved and perfected fixed types of civic life ; he was the paterfamilias, he was the citizen, he was the citizen-soldier, he was the magistrate, and ful- filled all these functions excellently well, pursuing whatever lay within their scope with unexampled pertinacity and fortitude. In the history of human development few matters are so important as the contact between the Eoman and the Greek. Eome subjugated Greece, but the effect of the Eoman on the Greek is of slight interest. It is the influence of Greece upon Eome, and upon Italy unified under Eoman dominance, that is of n] THE PASSING OF THE ANTIQUE MAN 23 supreme moment. An adequate presentation of this influence would embrace the history of ancient Italian culture and specifically the history of philosophy and all enlightened thought at Eome, of Roman art and Latin literature. This large and variously told story is beyond the present purpose. Yet only a knowledge of the great extent and many phases of Greek influence upon Italy will yield an understand- ing of the general fact that by the time of Augustus the men of Eome, while still possessing many Roman traits of character, were Greek to the full extent of their capacities for Hellenization. Their Hellenism, however, is not pure Greek, and the Eoman traits are also modified. Much of the Eoman fortitude abides, and Eoman dignity, likewise Eoman energy, although the Empire closed many of the political needs and opportunities which had made the lives of the men of the Eepublic. The Roman is still a practical man of affairs, though the better regulation of imperial taxation no longer permits stupendous private enrich- ment out of the subject provincials. The great matter is that he has tasted the tree of knowledge of good and evU, and is enlightened for better and for worse. His practical intelligence, energy, and valor have given him the mastery of the Mediterranean world. His Greek enlightenment has enabled him to realize that this wide power is Empire, and the consciousness of this fact widens and clears his vision. While the work of diplomacy and conquest went on, the Eoman was absorbed in deeds. "Now the Empire is fixed; Deus Terminus will advance no further, but the god's strength not to recede is ample. The civil wars are 24 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. over. There is now more leisure to consider all things and contemplate man. But the manner of this con- templation is still shaped by Eoman traits. There is no disinterested quest of knowledge, no full philoso- phy. Since Aristotle, that had hardly thriven even with the Greeks. Philosophy had tended to narrow to a guide of life. The Eoman had never any com- pleter thought of it. He had asked always from his Greek tutors for its practical teachings, by which to conduct his life more satisfactorily. He desired to know for that purpose. Yet in these great imperial times, he wished to know life's full enlightenment in order to conduct it well, if, indeed, not beautifully. He would have the ayadov, though he never quite felt or knew the Kakov. Life still presented itself to the Eoman in modes of doing rather than in modes of being. The Greek-enlightened Eoman was still self-reliant and self-controlled. But now these qualities were as much the result of philosophic consideration as of native strength of character. He was now self-reliant because his philosophy taught him that the human soul must rely on its own strength. He had not yet conceived that there might be an inner spiritual aid which was not the man himself. He was now self- controlled because philosophy taught him the misery entailed by any other state. He was rational and still relied on reason. Yet incidentally he was superstitious, and reverent still with great force of conservatism. To the close of the Eepublic the Eomans were provincials. In Cicero's time their stiff provincial dignity turned to dignified urbanity, as was natural II] THE PASSING OF THE ANTIQUE MAN 25 with those who dwelt in a city which was becoming the world's centre of artistic and literary life, besides being the fountain-head of political power. Rome set the fashion for at least the Latin world, and men of Africa and Spain and Gaul were influenced by the urbane character of Romans whose power held the world, and whose speech and literature were becoming the speech and literature of the world's western half. And all these peoples who affected Roman fashions, read Latin literature, and used the Latin tongue, were becoming Roman-minded, stamped with the genius of Rome; their natures took the impress of Rome's chief intellectual attainments, especially of her oratory and her law. The Roman Law, that most distinctive origi- nal creation of the Roman people, was an ever working influence upon the personalities of its creators. The Roman was always a legal-minded man, one whose conceptions naturally framed themselves in categories of the law. The quality of legal-mindedness passes into the entire Latin world, just as much as the rhet- orical study of Latin literature. It will show itself in the works of Christian Fathers as markedly as in pagan writings. Thus, despite the influence of Hellenism, many dis- tinctive traits of Roman character remained; its dig- nity, its stanchness, and its legal-miadedness, its love of order, of civic Concordia which was the true Roman analogue of the more philosophic Greek conception of ap/j.ona. The Greeks themselves were also undergoing change. The classic strenuousness had gradually passed from the Greek intellect and character. The great qualities 26 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. of intellect and temper which had made Greeks Greeks, and had given the distinctive and preeminent quali- ties to the creations of the Greek genius, were waning among the people, and were not strenuously adhered to and insisted upon in literature or philosophy. These Greek qualities had, for instance, shown themselves clearly in form, the perfect way in which the veritable subject matter was presented, without impertinences or distractions, as in the tragic drama, or Phidian sculpture. From the Alexandrian times, distractions and impertinences were admitted readily ; the forms of literary productions lost their purity ; the matter was less noble, and less strictly presented. Likewise the subjects of sculpture were less nobly treated, and that art declined from its classic purity, for instance, borrowing picturesque elements from painting. Phi- losophy ceased to hold the grand unity of life, where- in knowledge was a noble element. It became mere ethics, yet first with strenuous reason, as among early Stoics and Epicureans ; then that too relaxed, till with Plutarch there comes a hospitable harboring of popu- lar superstitions and a genial attempt to justify and systematize them. The fact that the Greeks in the fourth century be- fore Christ were ceasing to be themselves as greatly as they had been, made the career of Philip possible. Thereupon, the career of Alexander made Greek civic freedom a thing of past reality, and abolished barriers, if not distinctions, between Hellas and the East. The life of a pliant cosmopolitan was now open to the Greek. As the cleverest man of all the Mediterranean and Asiatic world, he could use whatever circumstances n] THE PASSING OF THE ANTIQUE MAN 27 he found himself in. And as his strenuous insistence on his own great distinctive qualities and loves was passing from him, there was no reason why he should not adapt himself to circumstances, and also adopt whatever element or view of life seemed agreeable or expedient. His mind was open to novelty, his taste was less exclusive, his reason less exacting. So he accepted the East — many of its ways of thought or foolishness, and whatever of its emotion and ecstasy he could bring himself to feel or imagine. He amused himself with hoary dreams in Egypt, with more luxu- rious emotion in Syria, and with Phrygian orgies All this told upon Greek character ; and was to give an oriental color to Greek thought of the coming centu- ries. It naturally affected the Greek influence on B,ome, whose expanding rule was also bringing many Greek-enlightened Romans to the East. The modifications of the Greek and Roman char- acters already mentioned appear as distinctly intel- lectual. But during the last centuries before Christ another change had been going on, first among Greeks and then with greater fulness of promise among the Romans. This was the development of the emotional side of the human spirit. The Greeks of Homer had ready emotions, and of many kinds, — a full and fair foundation for a catholic growth of the human soul. Emotions intensify with the lyric poets ; each lyrist represents some form of feeling more intensely, or at least in clearer consciousness, than in the Epics. Arehiloehus' poems most consciously breathe hatred ; those of Alcaeus, the ardor of high-born defiance of the crowd ; Mimnermus and Theognis are filled with 28 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. bitter or sad feeling ; Pindar feels fame ; and Sappho pours forth, the passion of the vision of beauty. The emotions expressed by these poets are direct and per- sonal, springing from their own desires and relating primarily to the immediate satisfying of them. They are not broad or altruistic ; they do not rise from souls touched by the sadness of others' lives. The intellect predominates in Greek tragedy. With .iEschylus and Sophocles the feeling -which is expressed is intellectually related to life's ethical proportion- ment. The inheritor of their fame, the supplanter of their popularity, Euripides, certainly understands and perhaps feels human emotion in its varied range and bitterness. After the great period of tragedy, those men whose names make up the roll of Alexandrian literature had personalities too petty for broad feeling, though some of them could express personal passion. The dominance of the intellect is no longer impressive, as with ^schylus and Sophocles, yet no dominance of great emotion succeeds it, but only an uncompensated decline from the power and loftiness of earlier Greek poetry. The story of Sculpture is analogous. Formal strength predominates with Polycletus, the living power of animal life with Miron, intellectuality with Phidias, and all things physical in harmony therewith. The later artists, Scopas and Praxiteles, and many lesser sculptors after them, express more clearly life's subtile passions. But it was not theirs to realize the breadth of life. The development of human capacity for emotion was continuing; but a greater age was needed, with greater men ; an age which should hold n] THE PASSING OF THE ANTIQUE MAN 29 the sum of its spiritual antecedents, and whose sons should greatly show the heart's growth of which they were the last result. Such an age could not come to Greece, irrevocably declining; but, through Greece, such an age was to come to Eome in the fulness of her spiritual strength. And it was a Latin that should voice the saddened grandeur of the pagan heart. Virgil had Eoman forerunners. Catullus' nature quivered at near pain ; and perhaps no Greek had felt the round of human woe as deeply as Lucretius. The emotional capacities of these two were modulated and beautified as well as coordinated with life's aspirations, in Virgil. His nature held pity for life's pitifulness, sympathy for its sadness, love for its loveliness, and proud hope for all the happiness and power that the imperial era had in store. During the later centuries of the Empire, further elements were to enter the antique personality. They may have been elements of weakness, due to the senescence of the Greek and Latin races. They were at all events to prove elements of disintegration, because of their inconsistency with the rational self-reliance and control which constituted the strength of the antique man whether Eoman or Greek. Eeading Horace, one is impressed with the sadness that Epicureanism was resulting in ; and the reader notices that Horace seeks to strengthen his latter years with the teachings of the Porch. Yet still this self- poised man looks to his own strength for peace ; Jove may furnish opportunity ; he possesses in him- self the strength of will to use it or to let it pass. When Horace was no more, the hesitating thought of 30 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. seeking spiritual aid through prayer came to the last great representatives of Stoicism — to Epictetus and to Marcus; perhaps God or the gods may help the soul to resolve more firmly. Stoicism, however, was losing its power to cheer ; with many, the system was becoming a matter of devitalized phrases. True Stoics needed self-reliance and self-sufficiency, qualities which were ceasing to be general. Humanity was a little weary of its self-poised rationalism. In the second century, there sprang up a new spirit of religiousness, showing itself in a craving to learn the future from the supernatural powers and to gain their aid through prayers or sacrifices or magic rites. This was not a crude, strong mode of religion, capable of purification. Eather it represented the weakness of men consciously turning from their best strength and highest thoughts to seek aid or stupefaction by means which those best thoughts had not approved. A loftier phase of the new religiousness lay in a yearning for communion with the divine. The soul, its self-reliance outworn, its reason found empty, was seeking to renew its life through ecstatic union with God. This yearning was to create philosophies or at least remould old thoughts. The greatest of these new forms of philosophy was Neo-platonism, a system which sought in dialectic mode to outsoar reason and attain the super-rational. Its goal was that ecstatic vision in which sense as well as reason falls away, leaving the soul enraptured with the immediacy of God. Neo-platonism was Hellenic in structure, but touched with oriental influences which entered through the eclectic moods of the Hellenic temperament of the n] THE PASSING OF THE ANTIQUE MAN 31 third centiiry. It passed to Rome, and found many natures open to it among Hellenized Romans. The goal of Neo-platonism, like the yearning whence it sprang, was a state of metaphysical ultraremotionalism. Might not this philosophy complement the human feelings which Virgil voiced and which touched Juvenal with a sense of tears ? Would not such a union make a great and complete personality? It was impossible. That final Virgilian compass of feel- ing was real love and pity. Neo-platonic ecstasy was dialectic mysticism, which had uncertain share in the heart's realities. Its higher modes scorned them, its low modes debased them. Virgilian feeling could not unite with such phantasy or such debasement. Virgil's tenderness for all life might have made part with the Christian love of God. But, unhappily for this con- summation, the later pagan philosophy devitalized and mystified such love of God as paganism seemed to touch. And, on the other hand, there had come on Christianity a monastic asceticism which set on one side the love of God and against it, as a devil's snare, the love of all things human. The round of noble human feeling could not include itself under such love of God, any more than it could unite with the Neo- platonic ecstasy. The apparent portentous fact was this : with the Augustan era the final catholic development of the Hellenized Latin man was reached. The elements of the pagan personality might severally make some special advance. There might be a weary, but com- plete, reliance on reason in Marcus Aurelius, a con- scious sense of pity in Juvenal, a general kindliness 32 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap, n in the younger Pliny, a comprehensive stately view of human affairs in Tacitus ; and the Coptic Greek Plotinus might create a final dialectic structure, the rational foundations of which were crowned with a super-rational ecstasy. But there was not sufficient strength in latter-day paganism to make a living unity out of these elements. CHAPTER III PHASES OF PAGAN DECADENCE The fact that Christianity drew into its currents much of the intellectual strength of the fourth cen- tury may have checked any distinctive pagan progress. On the other hand, the Greek and Latin races, apart from the Christian inspiration which was about to touch them, were in a state of decadence. Evidence of this appears on every hand. For instance, it was necessary continually to recruit the Roman army with new barbarian strength. At the fall of the Western Empire (476) the army had become so completely barbarian that its revolt appears as a barbarian in- vasion. Odoakar was but the chief barbarian in the Roman army, till he chose to have no more imperial shadows in Ravenna or Rome. Further symptoms of decay may be seen in the gradual extinction of civic life in the cities, untU municipal organization becomes mere apparatus for assessment, and civic honors become burdens from which there is no escape. Still more con- clusive evidence is afforded by the diminishing popu- lation of Italy and the older provinces. Very striking also is the decay of art ; and, lastly, the decadence of the Greek and Latin pagan personality appears in the decline of literary faculty and literary taste. In general this literary decline was a decline from D 33 34 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. relevancy of treatment of subjects having real interest to irrelevancy of treatment of subjects having no real interest ; from setting forth veritable features of human life to devising preposterous fictions; from large de- lineation of human character to the absence of any veritable and distinctive characterization of persons real or imaginary ; from setting forth the course of human life according to its most truly considered laws to setting it forth in ways of happening and accident, which bear no true relation to character and situation. These decadent traits do not all appear in any one class of compositions ; but those writ- ings which exhibit them most strikingly are those which also show characteristics of mediaeval litera- ture. Among these are works which continued in vogue through the Middle Ages, or served as the originals from which by translation and adaptation were constructed some of the most popular medieeval compositions. Thus these latter-day Grseco-Eoman writings illustrate how the classical, or rather the Graeco-Eomau, or Hellenized Eoman personality, was intellectually declining to the level of the men of the early mediaeval times, whether barbarians by birth or native denizens of the Empire. Rhetorical studies, and compositions of a rhetorical character, illustrate the indiscriminate use of subjects void of real interest, as well as the irrelevancy of treatment even of the subject chosen. Eoman rheto- ric had been a great civilizer and Romanizer of con- quered provinces. The rhetorician followed hard on the army to teach the new provincials the Roman Latin literature, and in a way which fostered oratory ra] PHASES OF PAGAN DECADE>fCE 35 and tlie faculty of turning off rhetorically proper Latin phrases. But under the Empire, oratory, whether prac- tised at Rome or in the provinces, was emptied of its genuine purpose, which is to express opinions held upon public matters in order to influence the action of free fellow-citizens. Outside the business of the law, oratory became empty and insincere. It had its apt preparation in the schools of rhetoric, where the rounding of gram- matical periods in prose or verse was everything, while pertinency to anything real in life was nothing. Sub- jects of study and discourse rhetorically selected in order to cultivate cleverness of expression, do not bind the writer or speaker to pertinency to the matter in hand. Education by such means may become an education in irrelevancy for the youth of a society which is becoming more and more dilettante as it loses power to shape its destinies. The result of this rhetorical fostering of irrelevancy is seen in compositions written for an occasion, as a panegyric on an emperor. These are flatteries, if not lies. They may, however, be pertinent. But in de- clining times the deeds of the great man dwiadle, and the orator is tempted to fill out his speech with pretty matters not quite pertinent. At last these panegyrics became models of irrelevancy. The man praised is fulsomely addressed and flattered, and great deeds are heaped on him. Then the orator may pass to regions of mythology — safe topic ! — nor return. This is one mark of iutellectual decline ; for pertinency of treat- ment is as Ludicative of iatellect as is the character of the subject treated and the reality of its relationship to life. It marks one phase of Roman decline that 36 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. great numbers of sucli panegyrics were composed, delivered, and immensely admired. They gave Sym- mactus his reputation ; and Sidonius ApoUinaris was made proefectus urbi as a reward for one addressed to the shadow emperor Anthemius.* In the antique world a large part of education was education in literary taste. This was so even in the times of the great Greek lyric and dramatic poetry, when form corresponded perfectly to substance. In the Augustan period, and previously, the Latins sedu- lously studied the form and metres of approved Greek compositions. Their best writers — Catullus, Lucre- tius, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid — are learned. Nevertheless, in the good literary periods there was noble substance to express, and the study of form 1 468 A.D. A like emptiness had before this characterized Greek rhetoric, or sophistic, as it came to be called. It, likewise, had no practical purpose to subserve ; it ceased, even in form, to be foren- sic ; it became a matter of glittering discourse on any literary sub- ject likely to interest an audience. Then it drew from ethics and philosophy, and its discourses became beautiful pagan sermons. Some sophists had great reputations, and their discourses brought them riches and honor. See C. Martha, "La predication morale populaire," in Les moralistes sous I'empire romain; Hatch, Hib- bert Lectures, 1888, pp. 86-104; Croiset, Sist. de la literature Grecque, Vol. V, 466 et seq. The best of them was Dio, a native of Prusa in Bithyuia (H. von Arnim, Leben und Werke des Dio von Prusd) . Throughout the Hellenic East, as well as the Latin West, people delighted in such setting together of brilliant phrases in beautiful form. They were thought admirable literary creations, though there were not' lacking sincere protests (Epictetus, Dis- courses, III, 23) against the vain and mercenary character of the men and the shallowness of their discourses. Rhetoric also infected the Greek romances, and produced such a rhetorician's biographical romance as the Life of ApoUonius of Tyana, by Philostratus. m] PHASES OF PAGAN DECADENCE 37 occupied its proper secondary place as a study of lio-w most fittingly to express the substance. After the death of Juvenal and Tacitus, the Latin power of literary creation waned rapidly, just as sub- stance and sincerity passed from oratory. Yet there was increased ardor for grammar which taught cor- rectness of expression, and for rhetoric which sought to teach the higher virtues of style. So, both in prose and verse, the study of form went on while substance diminished. Latin education became more and more education in literary form. But form deteriorates when cultivated exclusively, since it can be good only in relation to the substance which it should express. And as the substance dwindles, the tendency develops to treat it in lofty language. Thus poetry and oratory became rhetorical and in the end bombastic. The latter-day pagan world illustrates the common rule, that literary taste, cultivated for its own sake in a period of waning creative power, becomes vapid ; and bad taste arising in this way is an evidence of general decline — of decadent humanity. An interesting illustration of this is the decline in the literary appreciation of the greatest work of Rome's greatest poet. As decade followed decade, and century followed century, there was no falling off in the study of the Mneid. Virgil's fame towered, his authority became absolute. But how ? In what respect ? As a supreme master of grammatical cor- rectness and rhetorical excellence and of all learning. With increasing emptiness of soul, the grammarians — the "Virgils" — of the succeeding centuries put the great poet to ever baser uses. Here the decadent 38 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. Imperial period joins hands with the Middle Ages. Even before the fifth century, Virgil was regarded with superstitious veneration. As early as Hadrian's time the habit had arisen of finding one's future lot indi- cated in a line of Virgil chosen at random — the "sortes Virgilianae." His commentator Macrobius, a contemporary of Jerome and Augustine, holds him to be infallible in every branch of learning. Hence, he is an authority respecting everything as to which an opinion can be elicited from the real or imagined mean- ing of his language. This is a point of joinder with the Middle Ages ; for the mediaeval man who read old Latin authors regarded them primarily as authori- ties upon whatever branch of fact they seemed to treat; their statements were accepted as true. When Latin poetry culminated in Virgil, there was no greatness left in Greek literature, which, however, was still to show some small excellences from time to time. Plutarch, for example, catches the illustrative pertinence of the incidents he tells. His narratives bring out the characters of his worthies ; and he sees a relation between a man's character and his fortunes. But even in Plutarch's time writings were coming into vogue which had lost all sense of ordered causal sequence of events, as well as of anecdotical pertinence ; and, lacking all perception of character, they failed to preserve any proper relation of fortune to the person- ality of the hero, or rather to the personality of him to whom the incidents of the story happen. A typical example is the Life and Deeds of Alex- ander the Great, by the pseudo-Callisthenes. This work probably was written in Egypt not later than m] PHASES OF PAGAN DECADENCE 39 the year 100 a.d.^ Its most apparent motive was to give an Egyptian parentage to the great conqueror. Though the narrative is utterly unhistorical, it is not an original romance invented by its author; for it appears to have been put together from popu- lar G-rseco-oriental myths respecting the conqueror's career. Some of these stories originally may have had no connection with Alexander, but were gradually attached to him, just as the French chansons de geste ascribe to Charlemagne and his peers many deeds of former heroes whose fame was absorbed in the epic effulgence of the greatest of mediaeval em- perors. But whatever its source, this collection of fantastic, impossible stories exhibits all manner of literary decline. In place of deeds which some hero might have done, there is a succession of preposterous occurrences having no related sequence; nothiag of real human significance takes place ; there is no rela- tion of fortune to character; and no character to which one lot rather than another might properly have fallen. Adaptations of this work — in some of them Alex- ander is a propagator of the Christian faith — in many languages filled the East; it was turned into Latin, and Latin versions of it in the West were the chief source of that vast company of versified vernacular romances which, while they fed the mediaeval passion for the remote and marvellous, also satisfied the his- toric and literary sense of the Middle Ages with 1 It is interesting to note that it is not later tlian the time of Arrian, who wrote the most sober historical account of Alexander that we possess. 40 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. respect to the great conqueror. Perhaps no other work so illustrates the juncture of the Middle Ages with antiquity on a common level of degeneracy and barbarism — unless it be the Tale of Troy. This ap- pears to pass over into the popular literature of the Middle Ages through the medium of writings pseu- donymously ascribed to "Dares the Phrygian" and "Dictys the Cretan." The extant "Dares" is in Latin, and evidently is neither an original composition nor a proper translation. Its date is hardly prior to the sixth century. It is an epitome of some other work, and thus bears analogy to the forms in which so much of classic culture passed over to the Middle Ages. The sources of "Dares" are lost. Probably there was a Greek original, written by some one well acquainted with the old cyclic and tragic poets. This would seem to have been turned into Latin, and from this Latin version our extant "Dares" was compiled by some degenerate. It lacks style and form, and is utterly wanting in proportion ; vital events are told in a few bald sentences, while matters antecedent and irrele- vant are retained and given at considerable length. Its mechanical monotony precludes the possibility of its being an original composition — the maker of such a work could not have invented anything. We also notice that it foreshadows the mediaeval epic way of prefacing the main story with the fortunes of the ancestors or typical forerunners of the heroes.* The extant "Dictys" is a similar though less miserable composition. It is fairly written, and the narrative 1 As in the Kudrun, in Gotfried's Tristan, or Wolfram's Par- zival. in] PHASES OF PAGAN DECADENCE 41 has some proportion. It seems to have been trans- lated from a Greek original.' In the twelfth century the Tale of Troy received its grandiose mediaeval telling, in thirty thousand lines, by Benoit de Sainte-More. He gives the story as its threads exist in the extant "Dares" and "Dictys," and appears to observe the authority of the former to line 24301, and then the story of " Dictys " to the end. But probably Benoit followed a lengthier Latin ver- sion than the extant " Dares," possibly the very one of which that is the epitome. He may also have been acquainted with a lengthier " Dictys " version. Further illustration of the degeneracy of Greek literature is afforded by the Greek love-romances, as, for example, the Ethiopica of Heliodorus and the Leu- cippe and Clitiphon of Achilles Tatius, both of whom lived in the third or fourth century after Christ. Their delineation of character is poor, and there is scant relation of character and fortune. They elabo- rate themes which first became prominent literary motives in Alexandrian literature. They are stories of pairs of lovers, to whom all kinds of unexpected ill-chance happen. The man's life and the girl's life and chastity are preserved through it all, and a happy marriage ends the tale. The gods often interpose to avert death or ruin; but their interpositions and all the ups and downs of fortune coming to the lovers show that the only real power in these romances is 1 See E. Patzig, "Dictys Cretensis," Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 1892, pp. 131-152, also p. 590. The Greek versions of Trojan legends in the Heroicos of Philostratus (author of the Life of ApoUonivs of Tyand) of the second century may be compared with the Dares and Dictys narratives. 42 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. chance — Tvxn- Chance, stringing itself out in a succession of unexpected happenings, cannot make a plot to satisfy an intelligent person. Such a plot would have been abominable to ^schylus or Sopho- cles or Aristotle or to Homer; for the adventures which befall Odysseus in the Odyssey serve to bring out that hero's greatness of character, and are accom- plished by him as only he could have accomplished them. But the hero and heroine in these Greek romances are characterless puppets, to whom nothing happens in accordance with any law of life or fate. Yet we may bear in mind that in the Greek romances fantasy is dominant, and hence there is no rationally constructed sequence of occvirrences ; and also that in the Old Com- edy the plot was far less rigorous than in tragedy. But Aristophanes was a wilful giant, rollicking in imagin- ings which no chains of reason could hold. He could also revere the greatness of iEschylus. The imagination of the Greek romances consists mostly in failure to ap- preciate causality in fiction, and to grasp the laws of life. These stories also are rhetorical, the writers lov- ing their polished, conventional, and often borrowed phrases. There are lengthy descriptions of the coun- tries to which the lovers come, and the customs of the people. The poems of the Alexandrian poets, The- ocritus and Moschus, were pictorial, and contained charming pictures of the deeds or situations of their heroes. Achilles Tatius seeks to outdo these real poets with elaborate descriptions of actual paintings which his lovers' eyes chance to rest on.^ 1 The Leueippe and Clitiphon opens with a long description of a picture of Europa and the Bull, seen by Clitiphon in a, temple at m] PHASES OF PAGAN DECADENCE 43 These romances have another unmistakable trait of decadence. Although love stories, they express lu- bricity rather than passion. The passion of love had been sung by Sappho ; it had been made pastoral by Theocritus. Again, utter coarseness, life unveiled amid loud laughter, wanton animal exuberance, had also existed in literature, as with Aristophanes; yet these traits did not indicate a polluted mind. The interest lay in the fun, which might seize on any sub- ject, and quite readily on what was obscene. But the Greek romances, like their forerunner, Lucian's Ass, contain neither overmastering passion nor the indis- criminate laughter which may take one subject as readily as another. They contain much that touches only sexual desire, w^hich they seem intended to arouse. Sometimes shameless details are told, showing what the author and his public really cared for. Passion has been always part of human strength. But there is no surer sign of decadence than the dwelling of the mind on such matters as are prominent in the Greek romances. Sidon. In Book III pictures of Andromeda and of Prometheus are described, and near the beginning of Book V a picture of Philomela and Tereus. CHAPTEE IV THE ANTIQUE CULTTJEE I. The Transmission of Letters The influence of Greek models upon the develop- ment of Latin literature under the Eepublic and during the first years of the Empire was quite dif- ferent from the Greek literary fashions, which after- ward set in at Rome and reached their height when a Eoman emperor wrote his Thoughts in Greek. A blank literary period followed, and then Latin litera- ture reasserted itself, and even spread geographically. From the fourth century the Greek tongue and litera- ture were no longer at home in Italy, while the knowl- edge of Greek became more and more scanty in those lands which had been, or still were, the western prov- inces of the Empire. In the sixth and seventh cen- turies the Irish were well nigh the only western Greek scholars. Ireland had been spared the torrential bar- barian invasions, and now its scholars spread culture in Gaul and northern Italy, and kept the knowledge of Greek from extinction. Nevertheless Greek works almost ceased to be read. Latin had become universal in the West, and was to be for centuries the common speech of educated men and serve as their literary vehicle. The Latin 44 CHAP. IV] THE TRANSMISSION OF LETTERS 45 literature passed over into the Middle Ages in its classic writings, and also in the summarizing and remodelling works of the transition centuries. For the preservation of the classics in the period of barbarian wars, no man deserves equal glory with Cassiodorus, the Eoman-minded minister of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. As an old man, in the year 540, he founded the cloister of Vivarium in the extreme south of Italy. There he first incited monks to study the classics and copy the manuscripts. The example was followed in the rapidly increasing monasteries of the Benedictines. Of great importance also were the labors of the Irish, of Columbanus above all, who, in 615, founded that home of letters, the cloister of Bobbio, in the north of Italy. Then the Anglo- Saxons, eagerly learning from the Irish, take up the good work, — and the famous names are Aldhelm (d. 709), Bede (d. 735), Bonifacius-Winfried (d. 755), and Alcuin, Charlemagne's minister of education.* These men were monks, and to monks, generally speaking, was due the preservation of the classics. Not that they had any special love for the classics,^ which they often erased in order to write the lives of saints on the profane parchment. Nor was the church altogether friendly to pagan literature. The 1 See Ebert, op. eit., under these names : Norden, Antike Kunst- prosa, pp. 665-669; Ozanam, Civ. Ghrit. chez les Francs, Chaps. IV, V, and IX. 2 The rules of Isidore of Seville and of some other monastic legis- lators forbade the reading of pagan writings without special per- mission. See Comparettl, Virgil in the Middle Ages, p. 85 ; Graf, Roma nella memoria e nelle imaginazioni del Medio Evo, II, p. 161 ; Specht, Oesehichte des Unterrichtswesens in Deuischland, pp. 40-57. 46 THE CLASSICAL HEEITAGK [chap. classics could be preserved only by men who could write, and such men lived in cloisters, which also afforded leisure for the labor and safekeeping for its result. Thus classic literature reached the Middle Ages through the same agents that brought the authori- tative Eoman-Christian religion. The classic writ- ings were received as the works of a greater time; they were accepted as authorities upon whatever topic they treated or could be interpreted into treating.^ There was little literary appreciation of them, and scanty severing of legend and fiction from history and science. The utmost human knowledge was ascribed to the authors. It also fell in with the temper of the Middle Ages to interpret the classics, like the Scrip- tures, allegorically. As Virgil was the supreme Latin author, the strangest examples of allegorical interpre- tation are connected with his writings.^ Finally, the 1 It is characteristic of the medieval use of ancient literature that it is taken as authoritative. What was a work of art or fan- ciful literature may he taken as praecepta, e.g., Praecepta Ovidii doctoris egregii, as in the heginning of the Romaricimontis Con- cilius of the early twelfth (or eleventh) century. See Langlois, Sources de la Roman de la Rose (Vol. 57 Ilicole Francjais of Rome, p. 7, etc.). The manner in which the Middle Ages accept matters on authority is still shown in Dante. In Conv. Ill, 5, he says that Aristotle — "that glorious philosopher to whom above all others Nature disclosed her secrets " — has proved that the earth is immov- able ; he adds that he will not repeat Aristotle's arguments because " it is enough for all people that I address to know per la sua grande autorita," that this earth Is fixed and does not revolve. Cf . Moore, Scripture and Classics in Dante, p. 9. 2 An extraordinary example is the De Continentia Vergiliana of Pulgentius, written not later than the sixth century. See Compa^ retti, op. cit., Chap. VIII, Ebert, op. cit., I, p. 480. iv] THE TRANSMISSION OF LETTERS 47 ignorance and fantastic spirit of the Middle Ages ascribed magic powers and marvellous careers to the classic authors. Many monks regarded the classics as a source of sinful pleasure, save when used for some educational purpose according with the views of the times. If that purpose could be attained in a shorter way, why read the classic authors? Mediaeval education was comprised in the trivium and quadrivium, the seven liberal arts of Grammar, Dialectic, Ehetoric, G-eome- try, Arithnietic, Astronomy, and Music. These had been held by the ancients to be preparatory to the study of philosophy. The Christian Alexandrians, Clement and Origen, accepted this view and went a step farther. For they held that philosophy and all its preparatory studies were preparation for an understanding of Christian theology. In a narrower and barbaric way the Middle Ages held that liberal studies were the handmaids of theology.'- The seven arts included all that was necessary as a preparation for theology, and could most conveniently be studied in compendia. Hence it seemed useless to read the authors themselves. This view tended to discourage 1 See Norden, Antike Kunstprosa, pp. 680 et seq., where passages are collected and quoted bearing on this subject; i.e. Ennodius, ep. IX, 9; Carolus Magnus, Epist. de Uteris colendis, Mon. Germ, leg. sect. II, torn. I, p. 79 ; Alouinus, Grammatica, Migne, Patr. Lat., Vol. 101, col. 853; Notker Labeo, in a letter, ed. by P. Piper, Die Schriften Notker's, pp. 859 ff. ; Honorius Augustoduneusis, de artibus, ed. Pez, Thes. anec. noviss., II (1721) , 227 ff. ; Abelard, Introductio ad theologiam, opera ed. Cousin, Vol. II, pp. 67 ff. ; Hugo de St. Victor, Erudit. didasc, 1, III, c. 3 (Migne, torn. 176, col. 768) ; John of Salisbury, Entheticus, V, 373 1. (Vol. V, p. 250, ed. Giles). 48 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. the reading of the classics ; but there was great diver- sity of individual taste and opinion and practice. The general statement may be made that, as century after century men grew in humanity, there came a deeper literary appreciation of the classics, forming a transi- tion to the poetic and literary reverence in which they were to be held by Boccaccio and Petrarch. Men use what they have need of and appreciate what is nearest to their temper and intellectual level. The works of the Latin commentators and gramma- rians — Servius, Donatus, Macrobius, Prisciauus — were needed when they were written, as well as after- wards, in order to preserve some knowledge of the structure of the Latin language. They were funda- mental in the studies prosecuted in the schools of mediaeval education.^ Besides these grammarians, there were other men of the transition centuries who wrote compendia of the seven liberal arts, and still others who summarized pagan ethics or philosophy. Such transition works remained widely popular ; some of them became standard text-books in the schools; and through them the men of the Middle Ages re- ceived their profane education and the larger part of their classical knowledge. They were true works of the transition period, gathering and selecting from the classic past, recasting and presenting the antique substance in forms suited to the tastes and capacities of their own and the following centuries. We may 1 See as to these works, which were mainly tased on VivgU, Comparetti, op. cit., Chap. V; Teuffel-Schwabe, GescMchte der Rom. Lit., II, §§ 409, 431, 444, 481. How much Priscianus (sixth century) was used may be inferred from the fact that there are extant nearly a thousand manuscripts of his grammar, Teuffel, op. cit., II, § 481. IV] THE TRANSMISSION OF LETTERS 49 outline the contents of the two most famous of them, the one a compendium of the seven liberal arts, the other a final presentation of the ethics of pagan philosophy. Perhaps the most widely used school book of the Middle Ages was the De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii by Martianus Capella, an African Neo-platonist, who wrote in the first part of the fifth century.^ It is a work in nine books. The first two are devoted to the allegorical narrative of the marriage of Mercury with the polymath virgin Philology. Mercury^ seeks a bride ; he cannot have Sophia or Mantice or Psyche ; Virtus counsels him to ask Apollo's advice, and Apollo advises him to wed Philology. Under the joyful convoy of the Muses and enzephyred by the music of the spheres, Virtus, Apollo, and the bridegroom fly to Jove's palace to ask his consent. A council of the gods is summoned ; a favorable decision is reached ; the bride shall be raised to divine rank. With the second book she appears, desiring the marriage, but fearful at the greatness of the honor. Her mother, Phronesis, adorns her for the wedding ; four noble matrons, the cardinal virtues, greet her, and the Graces, with three mystic kisses, give her courage. Athanasia, daughter of Apotheosis, comes to lead her to Heaven, but first commands her to deliver that with which her bosom is seen to swell ; at this she vomits forth many rolls 1 On the date of Capella, see H. Parker, "The Seven Liberal Arts," English Historical Review, 1890. 2 Mercury — or Hermes — is, according to Plotinus, the \6yot; hence the propriety of his marriage with Philology {'i>i\eiv-\iyov) . Zeller, Phil, der Griechen, HI, 2, p. 561; Ebert, op. cit., I, p. 483, note. s 60 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. of papyrus and of linen, which are gathered up by the Virgin Artes and Disciplinae, Urania and Calliope helping. The bride now drains the goblet of immor- tality, and rises to heaven, where Juno Pronuba meets her with offerings. Under the guidance of Juno, she traverses the circles of the planets and reaches the Milky Way, where Jove's palace is. There all the gods and beings known to Latin mythology assemble, with here and there a deity from Egypt, besides the guards of the elements (elementorum praesides) and a most beauteous company of the angelic folk and souls of blessed ancients. Now the bride's prudent mother demands a reading of the tables of dower and the lex Papia Poppaeaque, regarding the property rights of married women. Thereupon Phoebus rises and leads forward, to place with the bridal gifts, seven maid-servants from his brother's household; these are the seven Artes — Ars Grammatica; Ars Dia- lectica, " a little paler ; " Ehetorica ; Geometria ; ^ Arithmetica; Astronomia; Harmonia. Each one, as Phoebus leads her forward, tells her parentage, and then expounds the substance of her art, most dryly, all virginal allegory laid aside. They have a book apiece, and make up the tale of the nine books of Capella. This work became the " standard " school book of the Middle Ages. Its form and character anticipates mediaeval taste, upon which it was to be so influential. It is written in prose and verse, the chantefable form ; ^ 1 Which includes geography. 2 As with Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae. Properly speaking, the origin of this is the Eoman Satura Menippea. IV] THE TRANSMISSION OF LETTERS 51 thougli the song-element is unimportant in the last seven books. These are strictly instructive, and sapless as the rods of medieeval schoolmasters. The allegory of the first two books is pleasingly pedan- tic and the whole work presents the sterile union of fantasy with pedantry, so dear to the closing years of pagan scholarship, when the old straw was thrashed, re-tied in queer-shaped bundles, and then thrashed again. The process produced pabulum for coming generations.^ The De Nuptiis Philologiae shows its aiithor to have been a desiccated person, one who in his leisure might have enjoyed the romances of Achilles Tatius. We have a more living phenomenon in the personality of Anicius Boethius, who summarized pagan logic and ethics for the Middle Ages, as Capella summarized other sides of pagan culture. In somewhat adaptive mode Boethius translated Aristotle's Categories, with more elaboration, he translated and commented upon the philosopher's wept ipfurjvcCa?, De interpretatione. He composed two versions of the latter work, one for 1 St. Isidor of Seville, who wrote in the latter part of the sixth century, was an important personage of the transition, handing down not only Christian doctrine, but pagan learning also. In his Etymologies (jEtymologiarum libri XX) he includes the whole range of knowledge constituting early mediseval culture. The first book is entitled " De Grammatica " ; the second, " De Rhetorica et Dialeotica " ; the third, " De quatuor disciplinis mathematicis, arith- metica, geometria, musica, astronomia"; the fourth, "De medi- cina " ; the fifth, " De legibus et temporibus." The dryness of this work and its poverty of thought are outdone only by the absurdity of its etymologies. Another work, kin in its saplessness, is the Mythologiarum libri of Fulgentius (480-550 a.d.), for which see Teufeel-Schwabe, op. cit., 11, § 480; Ebert, op. dt., I, 476-480; also cf. Comparetti, op. cit., Chap. VIII. 52 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. beginners, the other for advanced students. He trans- lated and commented on Porphyry's 'Eio-aycoy?;, or Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle. This work is likewise executed in two editions, one com- prising two dialogues, the other, iive books of greater length. These works are the foundation of mediaeval logic, and lie at the basis of mediaeval scholastic dis- putations as to realism and nominalism.-' They were scholastic interpretations of another's thought. The writer was himself interested in the question of the real existence of universals. His methods of exposi- tion even in his more constructive works point to the methods of scholasticism, as may be observed by glanc- ing through his treatises on arithmetic and music.^ His influence was very weighty in establishing the trivium and quadrivium. So far the writings of Boethius appear merely learned and impersonal. It is otherwise with his De Consolatione PMlosophiae. This final work of pagan eclecticism discloses an extraordinary situation. The author, a man of noble birth, apparently lofty char- acter, wide learning, and enlightened thought, occupy- ing a preeminent official position, is in prison under condemnation of death on a charge of treasonable conduct. And the monarch who has permitted or commanded this, and will permit or command the execution of this noble philosopher, is the most just and enlightened ruler as yet arisen from the Teutonic 1 Cf. Haureau, Hist, de la philosophie scholastique, Vol. I, Chap. IV and VI. They were superseded by the complete translations of Aristotle's works in the twelfth and thirteenth century. 2 Migne, Pair. Lat., Vol. 63. Cf . Maurice, Mediseval Philosophy, pp. 4-14. rv] THE TRANSMISSION OF LETTERS 63 races, a king indeed, the Ostrogoth Theodoric. This king is great in reality, and is to have in minstrel story a fabled name * and fame equal to the philos- opher's repute of him who was once his trusted friend, but is now his condemned prisoner. The wherefore of all this may never be known. We do not know what may have led Boethius to con- template or feebly attempt the impracticable. It is not certain that he was connected with any scheme prejudicial to the king.^ That open-minded monarch was sometimes a barbarian. He was an old man now, and perhaps had become suspicious. Probably the doc- trinaire philosopher had laid himself open to suspi- cion. With less real cause, though perhaps with more irritating provocation, Vespasian put to death Hel- vidius. The deaths of Boethius and Symmachus, his noble father-in-law, blot Theodoric's fame; but for the philosopher, the evil condemnation was to be posthumous good. It led him to compose a book which was to be read and prized by great and noble men. No pagan-minded scholar whose manhood saw the year five hundred could be other than a transmitter of the greater past. Not only would his thoughts have come to him from the past, his character also would be moulded by his mighty heritage. So it was with Boethius. The contents of his mind came from the past, which also largely made his personality. 1 Dietrich of Berne (Verona) . 2 Boethius, De Con. Phil., I, prosa 4, says that he was accused of hindering an informer from producing evidence to prove the Senate guilty of treason. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, Vol. in. Bk. IV, Chap. 12, discusses the whole matter. 64 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. He himself, the man Boethius, was mostly the product of antecedent pagan thought. But he was also a man of rhetorically ardent feeling and literary gifts ; and when in final sorrow he sought the solace of his life- long studies, his thoughts and character fused them- selves into a veritable literary creation. In the manner of that decadent time, the work summarized much ethical pagan thought, and presented it with surface consistency. But the book was more than a summary. Having a unity of feeling inspired by the situation, it offers its contents and its writer in a most appealing way, and speaks to the reader as the author's self. The Consolation of Philosophy is not a Christian work.' But its author undoubtedly conformed to Christian worship, and was not unlearned in Christian teachings.^ He presents Pagan ethics from the stand- point of one impressed by the problems which Chris- tianity had made prominent, for instance, that of the compatibility of human free will and God's foreknowl- edge. The allegorical opening — Philosophy appearing in a garb adorned with symbols — suited the taste of the time and of the Middle Ages. The romantic pathos of the author's situation proved most appealing to all men touched by life's vicissitudes ; ' and this prison- writing is optimistic in its teaching, seeing only good 1 See Das System des Boethius, by Nitzsch, pp. 42-92; also the work itself. 2 He probably was the author of the Christian Theological Tracts attributed to him. See Hildebrand, Boethius und seine Stellung zum Christenthum ; also Boethius, an Essay, by H. F. Stewart. 8 As, e.g., Alfred the Great, one of the many translators of the work. IV] THE TRANSMISSION OF LETTERS 55 in ill : so it might be an encouragement to all unfor- tunates. In easy, attractive modes of statement, tlie Conso- lation of Philosophy sets forth ordinary, universally valid thoughts upon the uncertainty of fortune and the emptiness of its favors. Any man can think in its words. Moreover, there was in it much that Christians could interpret in a Christian way. For example, the amor of which the author speaks is not in reality Christian love, but the great concordant energy of the universe inspired by the Creator, making for harmony and perfection. This coelo imperitans amor, this bond of all nature's concords, is the physico-philosophic conception coming down from Empedocles : — O felix hominum genus Si vestros animos amor, Quo ooelum regitur, regat ! i Its proper yet transformed self reappears in Dante's Ii'amor clie move il sole e I'altre stelle. Christian conceptions could be read into it. In the beautiful metre nine of Liber III, which was in fact an adaptation of a passage from Plato's Timaeus, the Christian heart could find echo: — te cernere finis, Princlpium, vector, dux, semita, terminus idem. Here the Christian might see the " I am the way, the truth, and the life." Again, with what responsive feelings might Christians read of the happy region where the dominus regum holds the sceptre, from 1 Con. Phil., Lib, II, metre 8. 56 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. which tyrants are exiles — haec patria est mihi ! • And, finally, the writer argues that blessedness and God are the summum bonum and are one and the same ; man gets blessedness by gaining divinitas. A Chris- tian heart might feel in this the emotion of the open- ing of Augustine's Confessions : " Thou hast made us towards thee, and unquiet are our hearts till they find rest in thee." All of these reasons conduced to give the Consola- tion its great future. It presented the spirit of pagan ethics to the Middle Ages : and its office may be com- pared with that of the Imitatio Christi. That work also, in more beautiful and simple language, was a com- pendium, and likewise had its unity, its selfhood, in the author's intense feeling, which fused the thoughts and emotions of the saintly past into a devotional outpour of one Christian soul. II. Transmission of the Roman Law The passage of the Eoman law over into the Mid- dle Ages, the modifications and corruptions suffered by it, and the manner of its appropriation by the Cel- tic and Germanic peoples, present analogies with the fortunes of other elements of classic culture. These races came in touch with Eoman law when the great periods of its development were past. In the provinces 1 Lib. IV, metre 1. Lib. Ill, metre 12, sings the lyrio tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, to teach that he ivho once sees the brig:ht fount {fontem lucidum) and looks back, is lost, — a pagan story, but having its analogy with him who, putting his hand to the plough and looking back, is not fit for the kingdom of heaven. IV] TRANSMISSION OF THE ROMAN LAW 57 it was adapting itself to the needs of imperfectly- Romanized provincials ; at the centres of Roman gov- ernment and affairs it was entering upon a stage of codification. The changes which the law was under- going in Spain and Gaul were corruptions, in that they represented the adaptation of a developed and intellectual system to the demands of peoples whose mental vision was not broadened to the range of metropolitan life. Yet they were also links in the chain of eventual progress ; for they represented the process of appropriation of the Roman law by races who were to develop these modified legal rules as their own law. The result might be, as in the south of France, a Romanesque law presenting in its growth an analogy to the development of the Romance tongues and literatures out of the Vulgar Latin speech. The people of the provinces had some acquaintance with this provincialized law; but only lawyers or officials were likely to have the larger knowledge of the Roman law as it then existed in imperial codifica- tions and collections. For the emperors were group- ing their edicts into codes and were endeavoring to preserve and protect with their authority the legal attainment of the past. The legislation of Theodosius and Justinian did not arrest the development of Roman law ; rather it preserved the law in a form suited to the understanding of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centu- ries. It cannot even be said that Valentinian's famous " Law of Citations " ^ or Justinian's prohibition of 1 Theod. Cod., I, rV, 426 a.d. See Mulrhead, Sist. Introd. to the Law of Rome, § 78, for a translation of this enactment, which ac- corded equal authority to the writings of Papinian, Paulus, Gains, 58 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. interpretation^ had the effect of checking the develop- ment of the law. The first was a declaration that the legal principles and rules evolved by the past should be accepted without question ; it tended to prevent , their loss or corruption. It was anticipatory of the general attitude of deference of the mediaeval cen- turies toward what had come down from antiquity. The men who labored at the command of Theodosius or Justinian could not add to the legal science of Paulus and Papinian any more than Capella could add to the contents of the seven liberal arts, of which his De Nuptiis Pliilologiae et Mercuni afforded a compen- dium. Codes did not impede the development of a law which the men of the time had not the faculty to advance ; rather they tended to preserve the law from corruption and oblivion.^ The Theodosian code and Ulpian, and Modestinus, and provided that in case of divergent dicta the party having the greater number on his side should pre- vail, save where the authorities Tvere equally divided, and then he having Papinian on his side should prevail. 1 L. 12 Cod. de leg., I, 14. See Windscheid, Pandektenrecht, Bd. I, § 25. * The principal collections or codifications of Eoman law within the Koman Empire were : The Codes of Gregorianus and Hermoge- nianus, made at the end of the third century ; these were collec- tions of imperial rescripts and were the work of private persons, but they received statutory recognition from Theodosius and Valen- tinian. The Codex Theodosianus and the novellae constitutiones, published subsequently by Theodosius and by his successors. This emperor's plan was to enact a single comprehensive code drawn from writings of the jurists, from the Gregorian and Hermogenian collections of rescripts, and from the edicts of prior emperors. The Codex was first published at Constantinople in the year 438, and the next year went into force in the West. Legislation of Justinian : The Codex (529 a.d.), a collection of statutes, intended to be the sole repertory of statutory law ; the Digesta or Pandectae (533 a.d.) , iv] TRANSMISSION OF THE ROMAN LAW 69 other legislation before Justinian formed the chief sources of the codes of Eoman law enacted by barba- rian kings.^ The old Germanic principle, that a people carries its own law with it, was a principle natural to peoples potentially or actually migratory, for whom blood, rather than territory, constituted the test of racehood and tribal unity. The ready recognition by the Ger- an authoritative compilation of jurisprudential law in fifty books, drawn from the writings of jurists whose authority had been recog- nized by Justinian's imperial predecessors ; the Institutes (533 a.d.), based on the Institutes of Gains, a well-known school text-book ; the Novels, the novellae constitutiones post codicem, published from time to time during Justinian's reign. 1 These comprised the following : Edictum Theodorici, promul- gated by the great king of the Ostrogoths. It constituted a code of , law for both Goths and Romans — Barbari Romanique. Its sources were not Gothic law, but Eoman law, statutory (leges) and juris- prudential (jus") ; to wit, the Code and Novels of Theodosius, the Codes of Gregorianus and Hermogenianus, the writings of Paulus and XJlpian. The incapacity of its authors to enunciate clearly prin- ciples of law appears in the unskilful use they made of their sources. Lex Romana Visigothorum, or Breviarium Alaricianum, com- monly called the Breviarium, compiled at the command of Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, shortly before the year 507, when the Visi- goths were driven from the northern parts of their dominion by the Franks. The compilers selected their material, leges and jus, without altering the text save by omissions, and in some instances by qualifying or limiting it by their accompanying interpretatio. The sources were practically the same as those of Theodoric's Edict. This Code, which regulated the rights of Roman subjects of the Visigothic king, became the most widely used source of Eoman law in the west of Europe. Lex Romana Burgundionum (oir. 510 a.d.) , called " Papianus," an edict for the Roman subjects in the kingdom of the Burgundians. Its sources of Eoman law were substantially the same as those of the Breviarium. It was not free from the in- fluence of the popular provincial Eoman law, and contains traces of the influence of the Burgundian code for Burgundians. 60 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. manic kingdoms of the Roman law as valid for their new subjects was incidental to what they esteemed of far greater importance, the preservation of their own Germanic law for themselves. As in the Visigothic and Burgundian kingdoms, so in the kingdom of the Franks the Roman provincials retained their own pri- vate law. But the Franks found the Breviarium of Alaric in force and had no need to issue another code for Roman provincials. So, at a later period, the Lom- bards did not need to issue a code for their Roman subjects in Italy where they found the Justinian legis- lation in force. Before the fifth century, the Roman law as applied among provincials, in Gaul for example, had to some extent recognized local custom. It is also to be borne in mind how pronounced, not to say dominant, the Germanic element in the Roman army and government became in this, the last century of the Western Em- pire. In the next century Germanic ideas and in- stitutions obviously affected the law of the Roman population of Burgundy, France, and Lombardy. For example, in the Visigothic Breviarium, the interpretor tiones accompanying the selected texts show traces of Germanic influence. Conversely, the Roman law affected the codes formu- lated under the direction of Germanic kings for their own peoples, and some effect of Roman culture may also be observed. In the first place, it was the exam- ple of the Romans that led to the formulation of these barbarian codes as codes. The attempt to state and to group laws together in a written code marks a stage in the history of barbaric law. Secondly, the Germanic IV] TRANSMISSION OF THE ROMAN LAW 61 codes were ■written in Latin, ■which could not fail to affect their substance. Besides these marks of Roman influence, even the Lex Salica, the earliest and purest of the Germanic codes, sho^ws some slight traces of Roman la^w.^ The same is true of the Lex Rihuaria, ■which ■was in large part a ■working-over of the Lex Salica. In the Lex Burgundionum of Gondobada, the king of the Burgun- dians, and in the Visigothic codes, the influence of Ro- man pro'vincial law is still more obvious. In revisions of the Visigothic codes references to eloquence and philosophy show the effect of Roman culture, and the participation of the Roman clergy in their composition is also apparent. The Lombards appear to have kept their early codes the freest from Roman legal notions.^ There was still another great current by ■which Ro- man la^w -was transmitted to the Middle Ages. After the establishment of Germanic kingdoms the clergy continued to live under Roman la^w as their personal la^w,^ in France using mainly the Breviarium, and in Italy portions of the legislation of Justinian. The principle that the clergy should be judged by a per- sonal la'w of their own endured long after the law of the person as applied to other men had made way for the principle of the law of the land. This law of the person for the clergy became the Canon la-w. 1 The first redaction of the Salic la'w was made in the reign of Clovis, before his conversion (496 a.d.). 2 These are the Codes of Rothari (643 a.d.) and of Luitprand (713A.D.). See Savigny, Gesck., I, pp. 123, 124, 129; II, p. 219; Brunner, Deutsche Rges., Bd. I, § 53. Cf. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, Vol. VI, Bk. VII, Chaps. 5 and 10. * Ecclesia vi'vit lege Romaua, Lex Ribuaria, 68. 62 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. The Western Church had grown, lived, and expanded in Eoman or Eomanized lands and under the rules of Eoman law. Naturally, when the administration of its affairs, temporal and spiritual, had been fully ac- corded to it under the Christian emperors, it drew upon the Eoman law for the rules under which its members should live and its property and their prop- erty be governed. Though the Church may never have formally admitted that the Eoman law formed part of its law {i.e. of the Canon law), such always has been the fact, a fact, however, which has undergone modifi- cations according to the varying political and ecclesi- astical conditions of the different centuries of the Church's existence. For example, the Constitutions of the Eoman emperors from Constantine's time, so far as they affected the Church, formed an integral part of its law down to the destruction of the Western Eoman Empire. In other periods the Church drew from such sources of Eoman law as were in use at the time.^ It may be remembered that Gratianus, whose work for the Canon law was epoch-making, as the work of the Bologna school was for the Eoman, lived in the twelfth century while the Bologna school was flourish- ing, and was himself a monk at the convent of St. Felix in Bologna. Jealousy of Eoman law — of the law that regarded emperors rather than popes as om- 1 See Conrat (Cohn), op. cit., pp. 5-30, for references by the clergy to the Roman law, or passages showing a knowledge of it, from the sixth to the eleventh century, as, e.g., in the letters, of Gregory I (590-604). Also, for compilations of Eoman law for ecclesiastical use in Italy (Lex Romana canonice compta, etc.), see Courat, pp. cit., pp. 205-218, and in France, ib., pp. 252 et seq. IV] TRANSMISSION OF THE ROMAN LAW 63 nipotent — first awoke during the struggle between the Empire and the Papacy. Eules drawn from a system of law developed un- der paganism were not likely to remain unmodified when applied by the Church. But the effect of Chris- tianity on the development of Eoman law does not become apparent before Constantine. Prom his time enactments begin in favor of the Church and its prop- erty and its privileges as legatee, as well as enactments conferring the supervision of charities upon the bishops and a power of interference in guardianships, and others recognizing the validity of acts done in the presence of priests, and imposing certain disabilities upon heretics. Of still greater importance was the institution of the bishop's court, ^ the penalties imposed upon divorce, and the repeal of the lex Papia Poppaeaque discour- aging celibacy. These enactments show the opposition between the Christian ideal and the Eoman. The bishop's court was the realization of the desire of the early Church to rule itself and its members and to keep free from secular trammels ; pagan Eome had known nothing analogous. In the restrictions on divorce, the Chris- tian ideal of the sanctity of marriage struggles to assert itself. The provisions of the Eoman law en- couraging fruitful marriages and imposing penalties on celibacy fell prostrate before monasticism, which was coming to be recognized as the perfect Christian life. The emperors, with a view to civic order, endeavored to control the conduct of the hordes of monks.^ But 1 E.g., Novellae Valentinian III, Tit. XXXV. 2 See, e.g., God. Theod., Lib. XVI, Tit. m. 64 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. never did a Christian emperor enact a law contravening the universal recognition of the Christian Church that the virgin state was the state of preeminent Christian merit and holiness. These novel Christian views em- bodied in imperial edicts did not touch the principles of the Eoman law ; its mode of reasoning, its legal conceptions, and the general rules of contract law were not affected. As has been seen, the pre-Justinian codes with bits of the old jurisprudential law were the sources of the barbarian codes of Roman law current to the north and west of Italy. In Italy, however, the Eoman law as applied was drawn from the legislation of Justin- ian, and indeed from his legislation proper — Codex, Novels, Institutes — rather than from his compilation of jurisprudential law, the Digest. Some knowledge of Eoman law always existed in Italy and other parts of Western Europe ; and to some extent Eoman law continued to be applied in the courts of the Eomance countries. But from the seventh to the end of the eleventh century the Eoman law as a whole was not known and understood in a scientific and intelligent manner. During this period there appear to have been no schools of law, properly speaking, nor any original writing upon jurisprudence.^ iThis 18 substantially the view of Savigny, Gesch., I, Cap. VI, and Bd. Ill, p. 8.S, and of Flach, Etudes Critiques, etc. See, also, Conrat, op. cit., pp. 96 et seq. ; Muirhead, op. cit., § 90; S. Amos, Civil Law of Rome, p. 414, etc. It is opposed by Fitting, who maintains that Eoman law was taught at all times in the Middle Ages in schools of law, mostly connected with the Church ; that it was also taught in connection with the Trivium ; that at all periods there was a juristic literature, and law was treated scientifically. rv] TRANSMISSION OF THE ROMAN LAW 66 The decadent or barbaric use of a highly developed system of law seems to be marked by the composition and use of epitomes and compilations of extracts. This is analogous to the way in which decadent and barbaric periods adapt to their use the culture of the past. The Theodosian code and the legislation of Justinian compiled and codified the existing law, which the fifth and sixth centuries found difficulty in understanding and applying.^ It is noteworthy how these compilations were used by the barbari- ans and in the succeeding semi-barbarous centuries. The Breviarium of Alaric II was practically an epit- ome or compilation of excerpts from the Theodosian code. But the Breviarium was itself the code which maintained its preeminence as the vehicle of Roman law in France and elsewhere. It likewise was abridged and was used in epitomes more than in its original form.^ The legislation of Justinian was also chiefly used, from the seventh to the eleventh centuries, through epitomes and compilations of extracts. In France, where it was never promulgated, and where it therefore re- mained foreign law, it was well-nigh exclusively known and used in these abbreviated forms, and even in Italy the use of such works was more general than the use of the original texts.* 1 Of course, this is the usual function of codification. The spirit and ability with which the particular codification is accomplished determines whether it is to be regarded as a work of decadence from the standard of previous legal attainment. A code may in itself be an advance. 2 See for these epitomes, Conrat (Cohn), op. cit., pp. 222-240. * Among these compilations and epitomes, the Summa Perusina, the Brachylogus, and the Petri exceptiones legum Eomanorum may be mentioned as in use in both France and Italy. F 66 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. The fresh and springing life of the Lombard cities at the beginning of the twelfth century stimulated the more thorough and scientific study of Roman law which a better stage of intelligence rendered possible, and which, in fact, had begun at Bologna under Irnerius and others of the Bologna school. There resulted a practical re-discovery and revival of Jus- tinian's Digest, that great collection of jurispruden- tial law which had been beyond the needs and the comprehension of the preceding centuries. And it was from Bologna that currents of the new and larger knowledge of Roman law went forth through France, England, and Germany. In France in the course of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries the old Germanic principle of the personality of the law, that is, of law as applicable to persons according to their race, had given way to the principle of territoriality, that is, of law as valid within a certain country. The application of the principle of- personality had become impracticable ; it would have been necessary to determine the race of the defendant, and then to know the text of the lex or capitulary applying to him and to the case. But the races were mingling, and an increasing illiteracy made it difficult to understand the written law. The principle of personality had to be abandoned, and often the text of the lex was ignored. Ii; each prov- ince a customary law applying to all inhabitants was forming, its rules being usually drawn from the older lex applicable to the race there dominant ; but that older lex was no longer actually applied. The full change therefore was from lex applied according to IT] TRANSMISSION OF THE ROMAN LAW 67 the racehood of the parties, to customary law valid for all within a certain territory. In the eleventh century the last traces of the former system disap- peared. The renewal of the study of the Eoman law in the twelfth century was fruitful of results through France. That law could now serve as a model for jurists. In some provinces it was accepted as actual law, written and authoritative. Accordingly, in the south of France, where the people lived under a cus- tomary law derived from Eoman law, the Eoman law proper now regained validity. In the middle and north of France, where there was less Eoman law in the customary law, Eoman law was not accepted in bulk or as authoritative in itself; but it influenced the customary law. Thus a line was drawn between the pays de coutumes and the pays de droit ecrit, and this division endured from the thirteenth century to the French Eevolution ; roughly, it was the same line that separated the pays de langue d'oc from the pays de langue d'oil. The law prevailing in England before the Norman conquest was in the main pure Germanic law, which came with the English conquests of Britain. A dis- tinct Scandinavian strain entered with the Danish invasion ; and the Norman law of William the Con- queror may have included Scandinavian elements ; but it brought a far more important contribution of Frankish ideas and customs. Possibly some appar- ently English institutions may be related, through the customs of Normandy, with some of the institutions of the last centuries of the Eoman government. But the new, direct, and certain influence of Eoman law 68 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. begins ■with Lanfranc as William tlie Conqueror's adviser, and in the twelfth century the full current sets in from Bologna. Evidently, this was not a sur- vival of Roman or Romanic law in institutions and customs, but a revival of the Law of Justinian. In the twelfth century a close relation existed between Roman and Canon law in England, the Canonist frequently citing the leges. The Roman and Canon laws entered England together. In ecclesias- tical courts the latter gained wide jurisdiction. But the Roman law proper was without a court and was chiefly used by the Canonists in the practice of Canon law. Some knowledge of it appears to have endured. The author of the Tractatus de legibus, attributed to Glanville, Henry IPs Chief Justiciar, is versed in it; and at least the opening chapters of Justinian's Institutes were well known in the time of Henry III. Bracton's Note Book, written between 1250 and 1258, has been styled "Romanesque in form, English in substance." He absorbed much from the Corpus Juris Civilis, and may represent the climax of the study of Roman law in mediaeval England, which again appears to wane in the reign of Edward I. But all lawyers know the great debt which the Eng- lish law in its later development owes to the juris- prudential law of Rome, to which in the main it owes its Equity Jurisprudence, its Law of Admiralty, and much of its Law Merchant. In Germany, as in France, from the close of the ninth century the personal law gives way to the terri- torial. And in the establishment of a territorial law, a landesrecM proper, one strain of Germanic law tri- nr] TRANSMISSION OF THE ROMAN LAW 69 Timplis over its kindred and for the time over Eoman la-w as well. This was the Prankish law, the Lex Satlica as supplemented by the Capitularies of the Frankish monarchs.* But in Germany the Roman law was to reassert itself with power, and that, too, the Eoman law as known and reestablished in its higher forms by the labors of the Bologna school. A portion of this knowledge may have reached Germany in the twelfth century from the law schools of Italy. But the practical " reception " of the Eoman law, that is, its application in the courts, begins with the fifteenth century. Clearly the appropriation of Eoman law in Ger- many, England, and France, under the inspiration of Bologna, was essentially different from the survival of Eoman law in Italy and the early Germanic kingdoms. Through the sixth and immediately following centu- ries, the Eoman law, modified, barbarized, dispersed in scattered influences upon Germanic codes, belittled and debased by unreasoning abstracts and epitomes, was understood and applied as a decadent and semi- barbaric period would naturally understand and apply it. The centuries went on. The races of Western Europe grew in all the elements of humanity. They became capable of a better understanding of the Eoman law, while the exigencies of an increasing 1 See Sohm, " Frankisches Reeht und Romisches Recht," Zeit- schriftfilr B. gesch. Savigny-Sti/t., Bd. I (1880), pp. 1-84. Or, perhaps, one should say that it was the Prankish Lex Ribuaria; recognizing, however, that the latter was derived from the Lex Salica. Brunner, op. eit., § 33 (Bd. X, pp. 257-258) ; Schroder, op. cit., 52, andib., "Die Franken und ihr Recht," Zeifschri/t fiir B. gesch. Savigny-Stift., Bd. II (1881), Germ. Abtheilung, pp. 1-82. 70 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap, rr commerce demanded the application of legal princi- ples such as only the Eoman law contained. So a more thorough and intelligent study began in Bologna and the cities of Lombardy, which were centres of the new growth of trade and had preserved the strongest traditions of Eoman law. A new stage in the knowl- edge of Eoman law was reached, and this higher knowledge crossed the Alps to France, England, and Germany. In those countries there were men fit to receive the gift, and the Eoman law henceforth was appropriated and applied in the new spirit of a larger time, a spirit which in its rationality and compre- hensiveness drew nearer to the spirit of the classic jurists. (5HAPTEE V PAGAN ELEMENTS CHRISTIANIZED IN THEIR TRANSMISSION The Life and Deeds of Alexander, the Trojan His- tory, and the Greek Romances afford illustrations of the manner in which classical narrative and imagi- nation sank to the level of medieeval taste. The works of Capella and Boethius show the forms in which classical culture and philosophy were rendered con- genial to the coming centuries. The barbarized abridgments of the Eoman Law show how that was brought within the comprehension and adapted to the circumstances of the transitional and early mediaeval periods, while the codification of Justinian remained above the needs and understanding of men until a later time. So far the antique elements remained clearly pagan. Quite as important were those which in the medium of their transmission were clothed in Christian phrase, or were more deeply altered in their combination with Christian thought or feeling. Cer- tain writings of Ambrose illustrate the use of stoical reasoning as a basis of Christian ethics. Synesius of Cyrene is an example of a man in whose mental composition pagan and Christian elements are mixed together yet do not unite ; in his writings Neo-plato- nism has scarcely donned Christianity. Dionysius the 71 72 THE CLASSICAL HEEITAGE [chap. Areopagite shows the more organic uaion of Chris- tianity and Neo-platonism. I. Ethics Generally speaking, excellence and right in every school of pagan ethics was a matter of the rational and strenuous endeavor of the enlightened man. When he acted wrongly, he had his passion or igno- rance to blame ; when he acted aright, he might con- gratulate himself. A pagan is neither tempted of the devil, nor very definitely helped by God. Eight con- duct, that is, conduct most conducive to the actor's welfare, is whatever human experience and reason have approved. Approval by the best human reason based on the widest human knowledge was the standard. There was no thought of divinely revealed righteous- ness, nor any clear conception of a God whose ways with men and whose commands set the standard for man's conduct. God was not the pattern of human righteousness in Greece and Eome, although divini- ties might be conceived in accordance with ideals which men could reach wherever mortality was not a bar. But the principles of Christian ethics trace their descent from the spirit of the Old Testament, — from the great note of the Pentateuch, " And Abraham be- lieved God, and it was accounted unto him for right- eousness ; " from the psalmist's cry, " Against thee only have I sinned " — " In thy sight shall no man be justified ; " from the note of Proverbs, " The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom," — to love what' V] ETHICS 73 Jehovah loves, to hate what He hates and as He loves and hates, is righteousness, is wisdom, is long life and length of days. In the Old Testament the ethical and religious standard was God's power and love; the means to righteousness was His aid and comfort given to those who seek His ways ; and the unapproachable pattern of all human righteousness was God Himself, and His ways with men. " Good Master ! Why callest thou me good ? There is none good but God " — " Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect " — " Thy faith hath saved thee " — " If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments." All these words of Christ accord with Old Testament thought, develop it, fulfil it. And Christianity in progressive development of the religious ethics of the Old Testament, was faith in God, and prayer, and love of Him ; a turning always unto Him for guidance and strength ; an utter hum- bling of self, a sense of insurmountable sinfulness, of failure to be like Christ ; a sense of righteousness never reached, but always to be striven for in the love and grace of God. This seeking unto righteous- ness and the love of God through the aid of un- merited Grace, was to be the holiest inspiration of mediaeval Christianity. But it did not come alto- gether nor at once to Greek and Eoman Christians, though all devoted followers of Christ were touched by it. After Paul, hardly a man is found completely possessed of these principles and held by them, until Augustine. That father of mediaeval Christianity, in his warfare with Pelagianism, was combating a sur- vival in Christianity of the general spirit of pagan 72 THE CLASSICAL HEEITAGE [chap. Areopagite shows the more orgariic union of Chris- tianity and Neo-platonism. I. Ethics Generally speaking, excellence and right in every school of pagan ethics was a matter of the rational and strenuous endeavor of the enlightened man. When he acted wrongly, he had his passion or igno- rance to blame ; when he acted aright, he might con- gratulate himself. A pagan is neither tempted of the devil, nor very definitely helped by God. Eight con- duct, that is, conduct most conducive to the actor's welfare, is whatever human experience and reason have approved. Approval by the best human reason based on the widest human knowledge was the standard. There was no thought of divinely revealed righteous- ness, nor any clear conception of a God whose ways with men and whose commands set the standard for man's conduct. God was not the pattern of human righteousness in Greece and Eome, although divini- ties might be conceived in accordance with ideals which men could reach wherever mortality was not a bar. But the principles of Christian ethics trace their descent from the spirit of the Old Testament, — from the great note of the Pentateuch, " And Abraham be- lieved God, and it was accounted unto him for right- eousness ; " from the psalmist's cry, " Against thee only have I sinned " — " In thy sight shall no man be justified;" from the note of Proverbs, "The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom," — to love what V] ETHICS 73 Jehovah loves, to hate what He hates and as He loves and hates, is righteousness, is wisdom, is long life and length of days. In the Old Testament the ethical and religious standard was God's power and love; the means to righteousness was His aid and comfort given to those who seek His ways ; and the unapproachable pattern of all human righteousness was God Himself, and His ways with men. " Good Master ! Why callest thou me good ? There is none good but God " — " Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" — "Thy faith hath saved thee " — " If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments." All these words of Christ accord with Old Testament thought, develop it, fulfil it. And Christianity in progressive development of the religious ethics of the Old Testament, was faith in God, and prayer, and love of Him ; a turning always unto Him for guidance and strength ; an utter hum- bling of self, a sense of insurmountable sinfulness, of failure to be like Christ ; a sense of righteousness never reached, but always to be striven for in the love and grace of God. This seeking unto righteous- ness and the love of God through the aid of un- merited Grace, was to be the holiest inspiration of mediaeval Christianity. But it did not come alto- gether nor at once to Greek and Koman Christians, though all devoted followers of Christ were touched by it. After Paul, hardly a man is found completely possessed of these principles and held by them, until Augustine. That father of mediaeval Christianity, in his warfare with Pelagianism, was combating a sur- vival in Christianity of the general spirit of pagan 74 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. ethics, self-reliant, unappreciatiye of the absolute need of God. The ethics of Ambrose may be contrasted with those of Augustine. The great archbishop was a Christian, a father of Christian song and chant, an exponent of Christian feeling. But the reasoning of his De Officiis Ministrorum is pagan. In plan the work follows Cicero's De Officiis. Cicero addressed his work to his son, and began with remarks on the propriety of writing for him a treatise on duties. So Ambrose declares that he will write to inform his sons (the clergy), since grace as well as nature impels to love (I, 24) ; and he justifies himself as a bishop in speaking on the subject. He then says (I, 27) that philosophers thought that officia were derived from the good (honestum) and useful (utile), and he repeats Cicero's statement of the matter {De Off., I, iii, sec. 9 and 10). But, continues Ambrose (I, 28), we regard only the good, and that with respect to the future life, and we deem useful only what helps thereto. They reckon (I, 29) secular advantages among goods (in bonis), we hold them the contrary. Ambrose (I, 30) refers to what Cicero says as to the seemly (decorum, De Off., I, xxvii, sec. 93) ; and then follows him (I, 36) in saying that every officium is either medium or perfectum (De Off., I, iii, sec. 8). Nothing escapes God's notice ; He rewards and pun- ishes ; the account is made up in the life to come; in the blessedness of that life lies the sanction of right- eousness. Ambrose then speaks of the duties to be observed throughout life (I, 66 ; Cic. De Off., I, xxxiv, sec. 122); and lengthily inculcates modesty V] ETHICS 75 (verecundid) and warns against anger (iracundia). Through all of this, Cicero's treatise is in his mind and often quoted. Again, Ambrose (1, 106, following De Off., I, xxix, 141) shows how his mode of regarding virtue is some- times the Ciceronian, i.e. the pagan stoico-eclectic. In acting, says Cicero, and Ambrose after him, three things are to be considered ; first, that appetitus should obey reason ; secondly, that we should bestow pains in proportion to the weight of the matter ; and, thirdly, that we should observe the fitness of times and places. Ambrose agrees with Cicero that the first is the most important. These were the principles of pagan ethics. Ambrose might apply them somewhat differently from Cicero, and nevertheless be reasoning in a pagan way. A man who regarded the future life as all-important would apply these principles differently from one to whom the present life was the main matter. Ambrose continues, pointing out (I, 107-114) how Abraham and Jacob and Joseph observed these principles ; and then argues that their conduct exhibited the four car- dinal virtues, prudentia, justitia, fortitudo, and tempe- rantia. He discusses these virtues as constituent parts of good conduct. Primus officii fons prudentia est, says Ambrose, a phrase which hardly represents a Christian point of view (I, 126 ; cf. De Off., I, v, sec. 15). The discussion of the virtue of fortitudo, which follows (1, 175, et seq.), is stoical in tone. Likewise Ambrose follows Cicero closely in the treat- ment of the seemly, decorum (I, 221, et seq., De Off., I, xxvii, 96-98), even to the point of saying, — what is sheer stoicism, — decorum est secundum naturam vivere 78 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. finds voice in Augustine. Despite all the antique ele- ments of Ms personality, "wMch made him still a Eoman man of the transition epoch, these Christian sentiments proclaim him the true continuer of the spirit of the Old Testament through Christ, and make him the most completely Christian man since the Apostolic time, and the great father of mediaeval Christianity. II. Synesius of Cyrene Synesius, a native of Cyrene, an ancient but de- cayed Greek city of the Libyan Pentapolis, was a live Hellenic personality of the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. His writings were not to be of great influence in Western Europe, but they show the mingling of Hellenic-pagan and Chris- tian elements in a man of the transition epoch. He was honest, brave, lovable. Before his adoption of Christianity he was a Neo-platonist, and a devoted admirer of Hypatia, the Neo-platonist woman-philoso- pher of Alexandria, where Synesius spent some happy years. He loved study and cultured ease, as well as hunting and the agricultural occupations of a country gentleman. He hated public affairs ; but the misfor- tunes of his province forced military and then epis- copal leadership upon him, as he was the only man brave enough to quell marauding Libyans and oppose tyrannous of&cials. His countrymen compelled him to be ordained Bishop of Ptolemais ; and a troubled epis- copal career brought him prematurely to his grave. Hellenic Africa had its woes when Eome fell before v] SYNESIUS OF CYEENE 79 Alaric. Synesius was made bishop in the year of that catastrophe (a.d. 410), and died four years after- wards. When Synesius has something important to com- municate, he can say it bravely and directly, whether in a speech ^ or in letters. Otherwise, his letters show the affectations of fourth-century pagan epistolary literature. He can also amuse himself by composing elaborate rhetorical trifles, like his Eulogy on Bald- ness, in which he sought to rival Dio's discourse upon Long Hair. He mentions a curious habit of his, when reading, of closing the book, and then devising an end- ing for the work, in order to compare his ending with the writer's. Just as he wrote poems in imitation of any author that struck his fancy, so he was utterly eclectic in his thinking. Naturally, like all antiquity, Synesius believed in divination and dreams. But it was characteristic of the academically superstitious age in which he lived, that he wrote a work on Dreams, and advised keeping a systematic record of them, that their significance and warnings might be compared. Synesius' Neo-platonism shows Christian influence. For instance, the so-called Neo-platonic trinity of the One, the Nous — perfected universal Mind — and the Soul, has become in his hymns Father, Spirit, Son. These hymns also draw near to Christian feeling. Christianity was in the air, and Synesius breathed it. His gentle conversion suggests no spiritual con- 1 As in his famous address to Arcadius, on the duties of kings, when he had been sent to plead his city's cause before the court at Constantinople. 80 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. flict. While still a pagan, he -wrote a hymn referring to the time of his stay in Constantinople : " To all Thy temples, Lord, built for Thy holy rites, I went, and falling headlong as a suppliant bathed the pave- ment with my tears. That my journey might not be in vain, I prayed to all the gods, Thy ministers, who rule the fertile plain of Thrace, and those who on the opposite continent protect the lands of Chalcedon, whom Thou hast crowned with angelic rays, Thy holy servants. They, the blessed ones, helped me ia my prayers ; they helped me to bear the burden of many troubles." These " temples " were Christian churches ; ' and this hymn shows how the syncretistic religious philosophy of Synesius could embrace the Christian cult. The hymn indicates that yearning for inner divine aid and comfort, which no pagan cult could more than tantalize. In the troubles of his life, Synesius' mood gradually becomes Christian. As a pagan, he had prayed fruitlessly for freedom from cares ; next he begins to feel their pertinency to the soul's progress ; and at last the Incarnation, that great stumbling-block to pagan thoughts of the divine dig- nity, presents itself as the dearest comfort to his much-tried soul. The hymn marking his adoption of Christianity is addressed to Christ as the son of the Holy Virgin. Christ's attributes are described in nearly the same terms as those which characterize the " Son " in Synesius' Neo-platonic hymns. A hymn on the Descent into Hell shows some of the pagan ideas which mingled with Synesius' acceptance of Christianity : " Thou wentest down to Tartarus, 1 There were no heathen temples in Constantinople. V] SYNESIUS OF CYRENE 81 ■where death held the countless races of mankind. The old man Hades feared Thee, the devouring dog (Cerberus) fled from the portal ; but, having released the souls of the righteous from suffering, Thou didst offer, mth a holy worship, hymns of thanksgiving to the Father. As Thou wentest up on high, the daemons, po-wers of the air, were affrighted. But .(Ether, wise parent of harmony, sang with joy to his sevenfold lyre a hymn of triumph. The morning star, day's harbinger, and the golden star of evening, the planet Venus, smiled on Thee. Before Thee went the horned moon, decked with fresh light, leading the gods of night. Beneath Thy feet. Titan spread his flowing locks of light. He recognized the Son of God, the creative intelligence, the source of his own flames. But Thou didst fly on outstretched wings beyond the vaulted sky, alighting on the spheres of pure intelli- gence, where is the fountain of goodness, the heaven enveloped in silence. There time, deep-flowing and unwearied time, is not ; there disease, the reckless and prolific offspring of matter, is not. But eternity, ever young and ever old, rules the abiding habitation of the gods." Such was Synesius, the guardian bishop of his peo- ple, whose manhood would excommunicate the tyrant governor, but would not give up that wife given him by " God and the law and the sacred hand of The- ophilus."^ When a pagan, he was not averse to Christianity; when a bishop, he did not give up 1 Patriarch of Alexandria. The celibacy of the clergy was an issue in Synesius' time. There is no evidence that Synesius lived with his wife after he became bishop. o 82 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. !N"eo-platonism. His last letter was one of respectful devotion to Hypatia ; his last prayer was to Christ ; " Christ, Son of Grod most high, have mercy on Thy servant, a miserable sinner who wrote these hymns. Eelease me from the sins which have grown up in my heart, which are implanted in my polluted soul. Saviour Jesus, grant that hereafter I may behold Thy divine glory." The man's hope flickers upward toward the last and most adorable figure of his pantheon. III. Dionysius the Areopagite The thought and opinions, even the moods of Syne^ sius show a crude mixture of Christianity and the higher paganism. The pagan elements were scarcely modified by their new association. But in the writ- ings of Pseudo-Dionysius,' there is a union of Chris- tian and pagan, Greek, oriental and Jewish, a union wherein the nature of each ingredient is changed. Theological philosophic fantasy has never built up anything more remarkable. It was a very proper product of its time; a construction lofty and sys- tematized, apparently complete, comparable to the 1 It would require a volume to tell the history of the controversy regarding the authorship of the famous Celestial Hierarchy and other writings purporting to be the works of Dionysius the Are- opagite, who heard Paul preach (Acts xvii. 34) . That contention is, of course, untenable. These writings were probably the product of Grseco-oriental Christianity of the fourth or fifth century. See, for a statement of the present status of the Pseudo-Dionysius or Pseudo-Areopagite question, the article on Dionysius in the Dic- tionary of Christian Biography , and Hamack's Dogmengeschichie, Vol. II, p. 426, note. v] DIONYSIUS THE AEEOPAGITE 83 Enneads of Plotinus which formed part of its mate- rials. Indeed, materials for it abounded in the minds and temperaments of the mystic, yet still dialectically constructive, Syro-Judaic, Hellenic, Christianized per- sonalities of Alexandria. They offered themselves temptingly to the hand strong enough to build with them. There was all that had entered into Neo- platonism, both in its more severely dialectic modes as established by Plotinus, and in its magic-mystic pagan foolishness as left by lamblichus. There was the Jewish angel lore, and the encroaching Eastern mood and fancy mingling with it, and there was Chris- tianity, — what did not that include as understood or felt by high and low, by shouting rabble or angry dogmatist, by the semi-pagan or by him who was all turned to Christ; by men and women, by dreamers, mystics, rhetoricians, soldiers, sycophants, and tyrants, Greeks, Syrians, Copts, hot-hearted African Latins, Italians, Romans, and all the sheer or semi-Hellenized or Romanized barbarians who thronged the Empire ? There had been and still were great builders who had taken their materials from this mass of " Christian " beliefs. From it materials were drawn for formula and creed ; also the principles of liturgic and sacramental doctrine and corresponding sacerdotal function. A great man like Augustine, his heart filled, not with vapors, but with real love of God, and having a mind of universal power, might from out of this same mass mould vital truths of Christ to a juristic scheme of sin and grace. But other portions made a potent part of faith for more men than would understand Augus- tine. These included the popular beliefs regarding 84 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. the intermediate superhuman beings who seemed nearer to men than any member of the Trinity. Such beliefs, held not only by the driven crowd, but by its guides and drivers, demanded systematiz- ing, that they might be tabulated as a part of the hierarchically authorized religion. By what means could this be accomplished ? The materials were everywhere, huge, unformed, wavering. Whence should come the schematic principle ? Was it to be juristic, like the Eoman, Pauline, legalistic work of Augustine? That was too austere and intol- erant. Latin Christianity had already taken its meta- physics from the Hellenic East. In the sphere of transcendental reason and fantasy, Hellenism always held adaptable constructive principles. Its last great creation, Neo-platonism, was potent to gather and arrange within itself the manifold elements of latter- day paganism. The Neo-platonic categories might be altered in name and import, and yet the scheme remain a scheme. And its constructive principle of the transmission of life and power from the ultimate divine Source downward through orders of mediating beings unto men, might readily be adapted to the Chris- tian God and His ministering angels. The dogmatic formulation of Christianity set God and the Mediator, Christ, beyond the reach of man's imagination and man's heart, both of which needed intermediate con- ceptions, as of angelic and saintly mediators. God's removal was so great there must even be a series of these. The needed scheme would naturally spring from Hellenism in its latest and most readily adap- tive system, which was also nearest to the moods of v] DIONYSIUS THE AKEOPAGITE 85 the time. And a schematic principle drawn from the most all-embracing syncretistic pagan system would not narrowly exclude matters lying beyond the sacred writings or the decrees of councils. Finally, was not the prevailing allegorism there, to alter whatever in literal sense was stubborn, and to adorn the structure ? There was thus abundance of material and a tool of marvellous constructive potency. There was also a man, whoever he was, who could use the tool. " Dionysius," our great pseudonymous imknown, was a transcendental mystic pantheist. These terms, if contradictory, are at least inclusive. He had a grand conception, sprung from Neo-platonic and Christian metaphysics, of the sublime transcendence of the ulti- mate divine Source. This Source, however, was not severed, remote, inert; but a veritable Source from which abundant life should stream to all lower orders; in part directly into all beings, in part indirectly, as power and guidance, through the higher orders to the lower. With Plotinus, the One overflows into the Nous, the perfected universal Mind, and that into the World-Soul and the souls of men. With Diony- sius, life, creation, every good gift, is from God directly; but His flaming ministers also intervene, and guide and aid the life of man, which comes not from them ; and the life, which, through love, floods forth from God, thereby creating the beings in which it manifests itself, has its mighty counterflow whereby it draws its own creations to itself. God is at once absolutely transcendent and universally immanent. To live is to be united with God; evil is the non- existent, that is, severance from God. All that is, is 86 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. part of the forth-flowing divine life, part of the crear tive saving process, which ever purifies, enlightens, and perfects, and so draws back unto the Source. Such is the inner principle of Dionysius' scheme. It was, however, the mode of carrying out the scheme, which was to hold the imagination if not the faith of men to our own day. The transcendent Source, as well as the Universal Immanence, is the Tri-une God. Between that and men are ranged the three triads of the Celestial Hierarchy: the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones ; the Dominations, Virtues, Powers ; the Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Collectively, their general office is to raise mankind to God through puri- fication, illumination, and perfection; and to all of them the term angel may be applied. More particu- larly the highest triad, which is nearest God, contem- plates the divine effulgence and reflects it onward to the second; while the third, the more specifically angelic triad, immediately ministers to men. The sources of these names are evident; Seraphim and Cherubim are vague but mighty forms in the Old Testament; later Jewish writings, possibly under Persian influence, gave names and classification to archangels and angels,^ who also fill important func- tions in the New Testament. The other names were well derived from two great mystic passages in Paul's Epistles ; ^ but neither in the writings of the Areopa- gite nor in the mediaeval centuries, did they acquire definite attribute and personality. Eather, Seraph and Cherub, Angel and Archangel, with sometimes inter- 1 See, e.g., Daniel vlii. 16; ix. 21; x. 21; xli. 1; Enoch ix. 1; Tobit xii. 15. " Eph. i. 21 ; Col. i. IB. v] DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE 87 changeable but always Yivid personalities, were to form tlie flaming host of divine ministrants and guar- dians of men. The works of the Areopagite may not have been widely read in the West before they were translated in the ninth century by Erigena. But from that time the Celestial Hierarchy constituted the canon of angelic lore, authoritative for the religion and religious art of the Middle Ages.^ Its closing fifteenth chapter was more especially the canon of angelic symbolism for literature and art. There the author explains in what respect theology attributes to angels the qualities of fire, why the Thrones are said to be fiery (Trvplvovi) ; why the quality of fire is attributed to the Seraphim, who are burning (ifi.'rrprjcrTdi), as their name signifies. "It is the fiery form which signifies, with Celestial Intelligences, likeness to God ; " and then he speaks of fire's marvellous subtile qualities. Again, he ex- plains the significance of the human form, — erect, rational, contemplative of the heavens — and of the parts of the human body, when ascribed to celestial beings; for example, feet are ascribed to angels to denote their unceasing movement on the divine busi- ness ; and theology declares that their feet are winged (wroirTcpovs) to denote their celerity.^ Further, he 1 Of course, there is plenty of mention of angels among the Latin fathers; e.g., Augustine, Civ. Dei, VIII, 24, speaks of angels, whether they be Sedes, Dominationes, Principatus sive Potestates. In Civ. Dei, XI, 29 sqq., he discusses the knowledge of God possessed by the angels, and says that the angels, also, have the joy of rest, — requiescendi feliaitatio. 2 This seems to be a bit of symbolism taken direct from the pagan form of Hermes. 88 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. explains the symbolism of the garments and attri- butes, such as wands and axes, which are given them, and why angels are called winds,' and are given the appearance of clouds; then the significance of brass and gold and of many-colored stones, when joined to celestial beings ; and then the symbolic significance of the forms of lion, ox, eagle, and horse ; and what is denoted by rivers, wheels, or by a chariot, when such are furnished to celestials.'' In the works of the Areopagite, the Celestial Hier- archy is followed by the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, its counterpart on earth. What the primal tri-une Godhead is to the former, Jesus is to the latter. The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy is likewise composed of three triads. The first includes the great symbolic sacraments : Baptism, Communion, Consecration of the Holy Chrism, which last most directly represents Christ, the Anointed One. Baptism signifies purifi- cation; Communion signifies enlightening; and the Holy Chrism signifies perfecting. The second triad is made up of the three orders of Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons ; or rather, to use the Areopagite's mys- 1 Much of this symbolism is drawn from Biblical phrases : e.g., as to the symbol of winds, see Daniel vii. 2 and passim that chap- ter ; also Psalm xviii. 10 ; and the Areopagite, Chap. XV, § 6, quotes John iii. 8: "Thou canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth." 2 With Chap. XV of Celestial Hierarchy compare Epistle IX of the Areopagite to Titus, " The order of the visible universe sets forth the invisible things of Almighty God, as says Paul and the infallible "Word " (§ 2) . See also Epist. VIII, § 6, of the Areopagite on a vision of the mouth of Hell. Also compare the opening of the Byzantine Manual of Painting (on which see post, p. 344) , for its reference to Dionysius. V] DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE 89 tic terms: Hierarclis (Upd.px