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Columbia (initJer^^ttp 
 
 THE LIBRARIES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 NELSON GLENN McCREA 
 
SAINTS AND HEROES 
 
 To the End of the Middle Ages 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE HODGES 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 '.-'^•NEW VCRK'"' ' 
 HENRY HOLT AN^E? :(j;OMPANY 
 
 1911 
 
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 Copyright, 191 i, 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 Published December, 1911 
 
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 •' V : ;• ; •... 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Cyprian, 200-258 . 
 Athanasius, 296-373 
 Ambrose, 340-397 . 
 Chrysostom, 347-407 
 Jerome, 340-420 . 
 Augustine, 354-430 
 Benedict, 480-543 . 
 Gregory the Great, 540-604 
 CoLUMBA, 521-597 . 
 Charlemagne, 742-814 
 Hildebrand, 1 020- 1 08 5 
 Anselm, 1 033- II 09 
 Bernard, 1091-1153 
 Becket, II 1 8- 1 170 
 Langton, 1 170-1228 
 Dominic, ii 70-1 221 
 Francis, 1182-1226 
 Wycliffe, 1320-1384 
 Hus, 1373-1415 . 
 Savonarola, 145 2- 149 8 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3 
 15 
 27 
 
 41 
 
 56 
 68 
 
 87 
 
 99 
 
 113 
 126 
 
 138 
 
 151 
 166 
 
 182 
 
 199 
 
 209 
 
 219 
 
 234 
 248 
 
 258 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 St. Francis of Assisi Preaching to 
 
 THE Birds . . Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 27 
 
 41 
 56 
 
 68 
 
 87 
 
 99 
 
 113 
 126 
 
 151 
 166 
 
 182 
 
 199 
 
 209 
 
 234 
 248 
 
 258 
 
 St. Ambrose .... 
 St. Chrysostom and Other Saints 
 St. Jerome .... 
 St. Augustine, with His Mother 
 St. John and St. Benedict 
 Gregory the Great 
 
 COLUMBA 
 
 Charlemagne 
 
 Anselm 
 
 Virgin and St. Bernard 
 
 Becket . 
 
 Langton 
 
 St. Dominic . 
 
 Wycliffe 
 
 John Hus 
 
 Savonarola . 
 
SAINTS AND HEROES 
 
 TO THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
CYPRIAN 
 
 200-258 
 
 Just about the time when Cyprian was 
 born in Carthage, Perpetua and Felicitas 
 amazed the people. Everybody was talk- 
 ing about it. 
 
 Perpetua was twenty-two years old. 
 Cyprian's father and mother must have 
 known her very well. The two families 
 belonged to the same high-born and 
 wealthy society. They were all pagans 
 together. But Perpetua had become a 
 Christian. It was as if, in Russia, the 
 daughter of a noble family should become 
 an anarchist. 
 
 She joined the Christians. Then spies 
 broke in upon a secret meeting. She and 
 her companions were brought before the 
 court; and they were all sentenced to be 
 tortured till they changed their minds, or 
 
 3 
 
4 CYPRIAN 
 
 died. Felicitas, one of the company, was 
 a slave girl. Many of the Christians 
 belonged to the slave class. The new 
 religion was largely recruited from the 
 poorest people. The fact made Perpetua's 
 association with them so much the more 
 monstrous. Perpetua's family and friends 
 implored her to renounce her Christian 
 faith. They brought her little baby and 
 begged her, for the child's sake, to sacrifice 
 to the gods, and come home. But she re- 
 fused. The young men who were arrested 
 with her were thrown to the lions. Per- 
 petua and Felicitas were tossed by a wild 
 cow, and finally killed by the gladiators. 
 Amidst such scenes, Cyprian was born 
 in Carthage. In his childhood, the Chris- 
 tians were still in constant peril. They 
 were daily liable to insult, hooting, and 
 stoning in the streets. The emperor 
 Septimius Severus made it a crime under 
 the law to invite anybody to join the 
 Christian society. . There was even a 
 
CYPRIAN S 
 
 proposition to deny to the Christians the 
 right of decent burial. 
 
 Then the emperors became too busy 
 with other matters to pay much further 
 attention to the spread of Christianity. 
 Some of them were occupied with vicious 
 pleasures, some with civil strife, some with 
 the increasing dangers of barbarian in- 
 vasion. There was a long peace. Maxi- 
 min, indeed, broke it in 235; but other- 
 wise it extended from the beginning of the 
 young manhood of Cyprian till he was 
 of an age of between fifty-five and sixty 
 years. 
 
 When the persecution began again, in 
 249, in the reign of Decius, Cyprian him- 
 self had become a Christian. 
 
 He had first chosen the profession of 
 the law, and attained a wide reputation 
 for his eloquence, and had become a sena- 
 tor. He was rich both by his own efforts 
 and by his family inheritance and lived 
 handsomely in a great house, in the midst 
 
6 CYPRIAN 
 
 of extensive grounds. He had the esteem 
 of his fellow citizens. He seemed to be 
 in possession of all that makes life pleas- 
 ant. He had reached the age of forty-five, 
 v^^hen one is easily contented with a com- 
 fortable estate, and indisposed to change. 
 
 About that time he wrote a letter to 
 his friend Donatus. " Donatus," — he said, 
 in efifect, — " this is a cheerful world in- 
 deed as I see it from my fair garden, under 
 the shadow of my vines. But if I could as- 
 cend some high mountain, and look out over 
 the wide lands, you know very well what 
 I should see: brigands on the highways, 
 pirates on the seas, armies fighting, cities 
 burning, in the amphitheaters men mur- 
 dered to please applauding crowds, selfish- 
 ness and cruelty and misery and despair 
 under all roofs. It is a bad world, Dona- 
 tus, an incredibly bad world. But I have 
 discovered in the midst of it a company of 
 quiet and holy people who have learned a 
 great secret. They have found a joy which 
 
CYPRIAN 7 
 
 is a thousand times better than any of the 
 pleasures of our sinful life. They are 
 despised and persecuted, but they care not: 
 they are masters of their souls. They have 
 overcome the world. These people, Dona- 
 tus, are the Christians, — and I am one of 
 them." 
 
 Cyprian was baptized. Within a year, 
 he was ordained. Within another year, 
 the bishop of Carthage died, and Cyprian 
 was chosen in his place. The choice was 
 made by the Christian people. They de- 
 manded Cyprian. They besieged his 
 house, shouting his name. They gave 
 him no peace till he consented. Thus he 
 became, as the title ran, the Pope of 
 Carthage. 
 
 Then arose the Decian persecution. 
 
 The thousandth year of the history of 
 Rome had been celebrated with triumphal 
 games, and the emperor Decius was re- 
 solved to make the empire great again as 
 it had been of old. But two things were 
 
8 CYPRIAN 
 
 necessary: one was the favor of the gods, 
 the other was the unity of the people. 
 And both of these were contradicted by the 
 Christians. They not only refused to 
 worship the gods, but daily reviled them; 
 and they were a mysterious society, having 
 their own purposes, keeping themselves 
 apart from their neighbors. Plainly the 
 first step toward a renewal of the old 
 strength and glory of Rome was to put 
 an end to the Christians. 
 
 Thus began the first general persecution. 
 For almost a hundred years the Christians 
 had lived in peril of their lives. Now in 
 this city and now in that, they had been 
 chased through the streets by mobs, and 
 flung to lions and fire in the arena. But, at 
 the command of Decius, the whole might 
 of the Roman Empire was arrayed against 
 them. In all places. Christians were thrust 
 into prisons, scourged, starved, beaten 
 with forks of iron, driven into the moun- 
 tains and the deserts. In Rome, in Jeru- 
 
CYPRIAN 9 
 
 salem, in Antioch, the bishop died a 
 martyr. 
 
 The persecution made two significant 
 disclosures. 
 
 It showed, on the one side, how great a 
 place the Christian religion had come to 
 hold in the lives of the people. For the 
 sake of it, they despised death. They 
 withstood the whole force of the imperial 
 power. They declared that they were 
 Christians, and no torture could make 
 them deny their faith. The storm raged 
 for more than a year, and when, in 251, 
 Decius fell in battle fighting against the 
 Goths, and the persecution ceased, the 
 Christians were not defeated. They had 
 suffered untold distresses, but the endeavor 
 to destroy them had failed. 
 
 On the other side, the persecution dis- 
 closed an unexpected weakness. The long 
 peace which preceded it had brought 
 into the Church a great number of per- 
 sons who had brought their sins along 
 
lo CYPRIAN 
 
 with them. That quiet and holy company 
 which Cyprian had described to Donatus 
 had come to contain men and women with- 
 out any real understanding of religion, led 
 astray by avarice and evil temper and 
 offenses of the flesh, and ministered to by 
 priests and even by bishops who were 
 neglectful of their duties, and examples 
 of evil rather than of good. When the 
 persecution fell, these bad Christians, and 
 a still greater crowd of weak ones, ap- 
 peared immediately. They renounced 
 their religion. They sacrificed to idols. 
 The pagan altars were crowded with 
 throngs of Christians in desperate haste to 
 forsake Christ. 
 
 When the persecution was over the 
 Church was confronted with two serious 
 problems. 
 
 The first problem concerned the proper 
 treatment of those who had denied the faith. 
 A great number of these weak and fright- 
 ened people who had deserted their reli- 
 
CYPRIAN II 
 
 gion desired to return. What should be done 
 about them? Some proposed to meet them 
 with charity, and welcome such as were 
 really ashamed and sorry, with all loving 
 kindness. Others proposed to meet them 
 with severity, and were reluctant to take 
 them back on any terms whatever. Let 
 them wait for the everlasting verdict of 
 God. 
 
 The second problem arose from the in- 
 creasing bitterness with which this debate 
 was carried on. The advocates of severity 
 refused to yield anything to the advocates 
 of charity. And when the charitable peo- 
 ple won the day in the decisions of Chris- 
 tian assemblies, the severe people declared 
 that they would not belong to a church 
 which could deal with mortal sin so lightly. 
 They went apart by themselves, and chose 
 their own bishops and made their own 
 laws. Thus to the question, What shall 
 we do with those who have denied the 
 faith? was added the question, What shall 
 
12 CYPRIAN 
 
 we do with those who have separated from 
 the Church? 
 
 Cyprian came back from the safe place 
 which had sheltered him during the storm 
 of persecution and met these difficult 
 problems. To his clear, legal mind, 
 trained in the conduct of Roman adminis- 
 tration, the need of the moment was a 
 strong, central authority. As regarded the 
 lapsed, he was on the side of charity. How 
 could he be otherwise who, in fear or in 
 prudence, had concealed himself from the 
 perils of martyrdom? But as regarded 
 the separatists, he took the position to 
 which his experience as a Roman lawyer 
 inclined him. He maintained the author- 
 ity of the Church. There is only one 
 church, he said, and outside of it is no 
 salvation. " Whoever he is and wherever 
 he is, he is not a Christian who is not in 
 the Church of Christ." And the Church, 
 he said, consists of those who obey the 
 regularly appointed bishop. " The bishop 
 
CYPRIAN 13 
 
 is in the Church, and the Church is in the 
 bishop, and if any one is not with the 
 bishop, he is not with the Church." The 
 statements are important, because they are 
 the first clear utterances of a new era. 
 They mark the definite beginning of the 
 Church as a factor of essential importance 
 in the Christian religion. 
 
 Then the persecution under Decius was 
 followed by a persecution under Valerian. 
 
 The attack of Decius had been directed 
 against all Christians; the attack of Vale- 
 rian was directed mainly against the clergy. 
 The idea was that if the leaders were taken 
 away the Christian societies would fall 
 into confusion. Thus, in Carthage, the 
 storm fell on Cyprian. He made no at- 
 tempt to escape. He was arrested, and 
 brought to the court through streets lined 
 with people. Christian and pagan. " Your 
 name is Cyprian?" asked the proconsul. 
 " It is," " You are the pope of a sacri- 
 legious sect? " " I am." " The emperors 
 
14 CYPRIAN 
 
 require you to offer sacrifice." " I refuse 
 to do so." 
 
 Thereupon the inevitable sentence was 
 pronounced. "Thanks be to God!" said 
 Cyprian. 
 
 He was led to the place of execution, 
 the whole city attending. There was no 
 pagan shouting. The man of blameless 
 life and devotion to the good of others 
 had won the esteem and affection of his 
 neighbors. He took off his red cloak, and 
 knelt in prayer. He directed that twenty- 
 five pieces of gold should be given to the 
 executioner. Then he bowed his head, 
 and the ax descended. 
 
ATHANASIUS 
 
 296-373 
 One day, in Alexandria, a bishop was 
 standing by a window in his house, which 
 looked out over the sea. He had invited 
 some people to dinner, and they were late 
 in coming, and he was waiting. When 
 they came they found the bishop so in- 
 terested in what he saw out of the window 
 that they looked also. On the shore of the 
 sea a little group of boys were " playing 
 church." One was the minister, the others 
 were the congregation. The boy who was 
 the minister called up the others one by 
 one and baptized them in the sea; and 
 this he did just as it was done in church, 
 saying the right words and doing the 
 right acts; The bishop beckoned to the 
 boy. "What is your name?" he said. 
 And the boy answered, " Athanasius." 
 
 15 
 
1 6 ATHANASIUS 
 
 Some years after, when Athanasius had 
 come to the last year of school, the bishop 
 took him into his own house, and he be- 
 came his secretary, and the bishop loved 
 him as a son. The lad desired to be a 
 minister in earnest, and the bishop taught 
 him, and at last ordained him. 
 
 Now the minister of the largest church 
 in Alexandria was named Arius. He was 
 a tall, pale man, careless in his dress, and 
 with his hair tumbling about his head, but 
 kind and pleasant to everybody whom he 
 met, and a great preacher. His church was 
 always crowded, and he was much admired 
 for his goodness and his eloquence. But 
 Arius and the bishop did not agree. And 
 one time, in the presence of a large num- 
 ber of ministers, at a convention, Arius 
 said aloud and publicly that the bishop 
 was not a good teacher of religion. The 
 bishop, he said, was seriously mistaken. 
 
 Alexandria, at that time, was much like 
 Athens when it was visited by St. Paul. 
 
ATHANASIUS 17 
 
 It was a place where the people loved to 
 argue and debate. 
 
 Now, there are two quite different things 
 about which men may argue. They may 
 debate matters which can be decided by 
 weights or measures; as, for example, the 
 height of a house. And they may come to 
 a speedy decision about which there is no 
 further doubt. Or they may debate matters 
 which nobody understands or can ever 
 understand completely; as, for example, the 
 question whether human beings have any 
 existence before they are born. Here one 
 may say, " Yes, the soul of each man has 
 always been in the world, now in a tree, 
 now in a lion, and, at last, in the man"; 
 while another may say, " No, the soul and 
 the body come into being at the same time." 
 And such a question they may go on de- 
 bating forever, because neither can prove 
 his position. The Alexandrians were fond 
 of discussing these hard problems. They 
 were, therefore, greatly interested in the 
 
i8 ATHANASIUS 
 
 debate between Arius and the bishop, and 
 everybody took part in it, on one side or 
 on the other. 
 
 Arius said to the bishop, " You teach 
 that Christ is only another name for God, 
 and that there is no difference. How can 
 that be, when God is the Father and Christ 
 is the Son? Is not the Son different from 
 the Father? Is He not, indeed, inferior 
 to the Father? There must have been a 
 time in the far spaces of eternity when 
 the Son began to be, when He was created 
 like the rest of us. He is, of course, 
 divine but in an inferior position." At 
 this the bishop was filled with horror and 
 declared that Arius was either making 
 Christ a creature like man, or at least was 
 robbing Him of so much of His greatness 
 that He was not truly divine, or was setting 
 such a difference between Him and God 
 that there were two gods according to his 
 teaching, two distinct Gods. 
 
 This is not the place in which to discuss 
 
ATHANASIUS 19 
 
 this difficult matter, as they discussed it in 
 Alexandria. This much, however, may be 
 said, that Arius in taking the names 
 *' Father " and " Son " literally, and 
 making such inferences from them, was 
 putting Christianity in danger of a pagan 
 invasion. For if there may be two dis- 
 tinct gods, the Father and the Son, why 
 not twenty, why not two hundred? We 
 have to remember that a great part of all 
 the people of Alexandria and everywhere 
 else were pagans, and believed in many 
 gods. Out of this the Christians had been 
 saved. They had daily evidence of the 
 confusion and doubt and evil living into 
 which that belief brought men. Thus 
 the doctrine of Arius, while to some it 
 seemed reasonable enough, to others was 
 an attack upon the very central meaning 
 of religion. 
 
 The emperor of the Roman world, at 
 that moment, was a Christian. Constan- 
 tine was the first Christian emperor. One 
 
20 ATHANASIUS 
 
 day, as he was crossing the Alps at the 
 head of an army, on his way to fight 
 for that Roman throne which he presently 
 won, he saw a bright light in the sky, 
 like a blazing cross. And that night, in a 
 dream, he saw Christ coming to him and 
 telling him to go to battle with the cross 
 upon his banner. Then when he was 
 victorious, and was made at last sole ruler 
 of the world, he took the side of Chris- 
 tianity. He stopped the long series of 
 bitter persecutions. He put an end to the 
 effort which had been made by emperor 
 after emperor to destroy the Church. He 
 became, in a way, a Christian; though not 
 a particularly good one. 
 
 So when the debate which Arius began 
 spread from Alexandria to other cities 
 and threatened to divide the Christians 
 into contending armies, Constantine inter- 
 fered. One of his great hopes in siding 
 with the Christians was thereby to bring 
 about the unity of the people; and here 
 
ATHANASIUS 21 
 
 were the Christians themselves divided. 
 He determined to stop it by calling a 
 great Christian council to decide the 
 question. 
 
 The appointed place was Nicaea, near 
 to where Constantine soon founded the 
 city of Constantinople. To Nicaea, then, 
 came bishops from all parts of the empire, 
 from Carthage and Italy and Spain in the 
 West, from India and Persia in the East. 
 Some were lame and some were blind 
 after the tortures of the persecutions. 
 The president for the eastern churches 
 was Eusebius of Nicomedia, the president 
 for the western churches was Hosius of 
 Cordova. All Christendom was repre- 
 sented. With the bishop of Alexandria 
 came Athanasius. 
 
 The purpose of the council was to 
 present to the world a statement of the 
 true belief of Christians concerning the 
 nature of Christ. This they did in terms 
 which were afterwards used in what is 
 
22 ATHANASIUS 
 
 called the Nicene Creed. Arius refused 
 to sign it, and a few others agreed with 
 him. They were expelled from the 
 Church. Then the council was disbanded, 
 and Constantine and everybody else 
 thought that the trouble was happily 
 ended. As a matter of fact, it was only 
 begun. 
 
 No sooner had the bishops returned to 
 their homes than the contention arose 
 anew. Some liked the Nicene decision; 
 others, as they considered it further, were 
 not satisfied. And the unsatisfied ones 
 were influential at the court. One was 
 the chaplain of the emperor. Constantine 
 was thus persuaded that Arius was right, 
 after all. And what Constantine thought 
 was the immediate opinion of many who 
 knew little about it but were very anxious 
 to stand well with Constantine. Against 
 these Arians was Athanasius. Old Bishop 
 Alexander had now died, and Athanasius 
 had been made bishop in his place. 
 
ATHANASIUS 23 
 
 The dispute became a struggle between 
 Alexandria and Constantinople, between 
 Athanasius and Constantine. Arius him- 
 self presently died. He had been received 
 by the emperor, and an order was issued 
 that he should be restored to the commun- 
 ion of the Church. The old man was 
 actually on his way to the service when 
 he was seized with a bitter pain, so that 
 he stopped in the street and sought refuge 
 in the nearest house. The triumphal pro- 
 cession waited for him at the door. At 
 last a man came out and said that Arius 
 was dead. Constantine too came to the 
 end of his great life, but his sons 
 who succeeded him were on the Arian 
 side. 
 
 Athanasius was banished from his city, 
 and came back only to be banished again. 
 Once on his return the rejoicings were 
 so great that in after years, when the 
 youth of Alexandria praised the splen- 
 dor of any festival, the old men said, 
 
24 ATHANASIUS 
 
 *' Yes, but you should have been here on 
 the day when Pope Athanasius came 
 home." 
 
 Troops were sent to Alexandria. 
 Athanasius was besieged in the church 
 where he was holding service. It was in 
 the night, and the great church, crowded 
 with worshipers, was dimly lighted with 
 lamps. The soldiers broke down the 
 doors, and with drawn swords made their 
 way through the congregation, in the 
 midst of wild disorder, to the chancel. 
 Athanasius was rescued by his friends 
 after being nearly torn in pieces. He 
 escaped to the desert. 
 
 One time he was pursued by his enemies 
 on the Nile. As he rounded a bend of the 
 river, in the dusk, he ordered his rowers to 
 turn back. His pursuers came on with 
 all haste and in the dusk of the late after- 
 noon the two boats met. " Have you seen 
 Athanasius?" the soldiers called across 
 the water. " Yes," replied the bishop, 
 
ATHANASIUS 25 
 
 "he is not far away!" Thus he escaped 
 again. 
 
 This life of hardship and danger 
 Athanasius lived because he was not will- 
 ing to deny what he held to be the faith. 
 The whole Church seemed to be against 
 him. Council after council was called by 
 the emperors, attended by hundreds of 
 bishops, making Arian creeds. The whole 
 empire was thrown into confusion. 
 Athanasius, on the other side, was preach- 
 ing sermons and writing books and letters. 
 The one man defied the Church. And he 
 gained the victory! Year by year, it 
 became plain that the theology of Arius 
 was filled with confusion. People were 
 perplexed by a long series of different 
 Arian statements of belief. Athanasius 
 maintained the divinity of Christ, in 
 whom God dwelt among men. People 
 were dismayed at the energy with which 
 the Arian court used the sw^ords of soldiers 
 to maintain its side. The Church grew 
 
26 ATHANASIUS 
 
 weary of the fierce debate. Then the 
 last of the Arian emperors fell in battle 
 with the Goths, and the war was ended. 
 Theodosius, who followed him, was of 
 the faith of Athanasius, 
 
ST. AMBROSE 
 
 From a mural painting, Castle of Karlstein, Bohemia 
 
AMBROSE 
 
 3+0-397 
 
 The experience of Athanasius showed 
 plainly that while a pagan emperor might 
 be a dangerous enemy to the Church, a 
 Christian emperor might be a very in- 
 convenient friend. 
 
 Not many of the rulers of Rome de- 
 clared so bluntly as Constantius that they 
 meant to rule the Church, but that was 
 the intention of most of them. They 
 wished to use the Church as a general 
 uses an army, and the first necessity was 
 obedience. It took hundreds of years to 
 work out the idea, under which we live, 
 that the state is to attend to matters politi- 
 cal, and the Church to matters religious. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Church and the State 
 fought for the mastery. The beginning 
 of that long struggle, in which the Church 
 
 ay 
 
28 AMBROSE 
 
 was defeated in the East and the State was 
 defeated in the West, appears in the lives 
 of Chrysostom and Ambrose. 
 
 In the city of Milan, they were electing 
 a bishop. Some of the Christians were 
 Arians, some were Athanasians, and there 
 was much excitement. The great church 
 was crowded with people, shouting the 
 names of their favorite candidates. In the 
 high seat where the bishop was accus- 
 tomed to sit, sat the Roman governor Am- 
 brose, presiding over the assembly to keep 
 order. Back in the church, a man had 
 lifted his small child to his shoulder to 
 give him a good look over the crowd, and 
 the child saw Ambrose, in his robes of 
 office, in the bishop's chair. In his sur- 
 prise, he called out in his shrill voice, 
 over all the noise, "Ambrose is bishop!" 
 Immediately the words were taken up, 
 and in a moment all the other names were 
 set aside, and everybody was shouting: 
 "Ambrose is bishop! Ambrose is bishop!" 
 
AMBROSE 29 
 
 Nothing was further from the plans of 
 Ambrose. He was a great Roman noble. 
 His father, as Prefect of Gaul, had been 
 ruler over the greater part of Europe, 
 and Ambrose was following in his steps. 
 He was interested, indeed, in the Christian 
 religion; but he had never been baptized. 
 He had never even thought of the possi- 
 bility of entering into the work of the 
 Christian ministry. He was both astonished 
 and displeased. He refused to consent to 
 the demand of the people. Still the crowd 
 shouted, and, though the governor dis- 
 missed the assembly, and sent them home, 
 they besieged him as the Christians of 
 Carthage had besieged Cyprian. Finally, 
 much against his will, he agreed to do as 
 they desired. He was baptized, confirmed, 
 admitted to the Holy Communion, or- 
 dained deacon, ordained priest, and con- 
 secrated bishop of Milan, all in one week. 
 
 Ambrose found that, as bishop of Milan, 
 he was in a place of as much public im- 
 
V 
 
 30 AMBROSE 
 
 portance as had been held by his father 
 who ruled Europe. He took a great part 
 in three notable contentions of his time: 
 against paganism, against Arianism, and 
 against the emperor. 
 
 Ambrose saw the end of paganism. He 
 was himself concerned in one of its last 
 defeats, and the others occurred during 
 his lifetime. His own fight against the 
 old gods was over the Altar of Victory. 
 In the senate house at Rome had stood 
 from times immemorial an Altar of Vic- 
 tory. Above it was a winged figure with 
 hands uplifted, standing on a globe, — 
 Victory herself, the goddess of the Good 
 Luck of Rome, in shining gold. This 
 altar a Christian emperor had taken away, 
 and the statue with it. 
 
 But the senate was still, for the most 
 part, pagan. The great and ancient Ro- 
 men families were pagan. However much 
 or little they still cared for the old reli- 
 gion, they cared greatly for the old ways 
 
AMBROSE 31 
 
 of their ancestors. They loved the cus- 
 toms which were glorified in the literature 
 and sculpture of old Rome. They felt 
 toward the Christians as people of long 
 descent and gentle breeding are tempted 
 to feel to-day toward new neighbors, rich 
 but ill-educated, with new ways. 
 
 The senate, therefore, petitioned for 
 the return of the Altar of Victory. The 
 humble terms of their request showed how 
 completely the old era of pagan power 
 had passed. They asked only for permis- 
 sion to keep a few of the ancient cere- 
 monies and to say their own prayers in 
 their own way. " Let us have one altar 
 out of the destruction of the old religion. 
 Pestilence and famine are abroad, and 
 the barbarians are pressing down across the 
 Danube and the Rhine; let us who are 
 still of the old faith implore the protec- 
 tion of the gods who in the ancient days 
 saved Rome when the Goths besieged 
 it." 
 
32 AMBROSE 
 
 Against this petition Ambrose protested. 
 The gods, he said, had nothing to do with 
 the saving of old Rome; it was the geese 
 whose cackling waked the guard. And the 
 altar was not replaced. 
 
 But the conflict was not over. In Alexan- 
 dria, the Christians and the pagans fell to 
 fighting, as they fought in the days of the 
 persecutions; but now the pagans were on 
 the defensive. The Christians attacked the 
 mighty pagan temple, the Serapium, high 
 on vast stone terraces in the midst of the 
 city, approached by an ascent of a hundred 
 steps. In the shrine stood the great image 
 of Serapis, at whose fall, men said, the 
 world itself would fall. Up went the vic- 
 torious Christians, clambering with clubs 
 and axes over the hundred steps, and break- 
 ing at last into the splendid shrine. Here 
 they stopped, and for a little space nobody 
 dared to proceed further. What if the 
 ancient legend should prove true, and 
 Serapis should avenge the insult to his 
 
AMBROSE 33 
 
 image by earthquake, and lightning, and 
 destruction! At last a soldier raised his 
 ax and struck the idol full in the face. 
 The cheek of Serapis was broken, and 
 out swarmed a troop of frightened mice 
 whose nest in the idol's head had been 
 thus invaded. Then the silence of the 
 destroyers changed to great laughter and 
 shouts of derision; the image was pulled 
 down and dragged about the streets. And 
 there was no more public paganism in 
 Alexandria. 
 
 In the West, the conflict came to an end 
 in a mountain battle beside the Frigidus. ^ 
 The pagans had chosen a pagan emperor, 
 and he went out at the head of an army to 
 fight with Theodosius, not only for his 
 throne, but for his religion. As they 
 passed Milan, the pagans promised that 
 when they returned they would stable their 
 horses in the church of Ambrose. Thus 
 the battle was joined; a fierce storm of 
 snow beat in the faces of the pagan army, 
 
34 AMBROSE 
 
 and they fled in hopeless defeat. It was 
 the last stand of the old religion. 
 ^ Meanwhile, Ambrose was contending 
 with the Arians. There were not many of 
 them in Milan, and they were discouraged 
 by the gradual and general failure of their 
 cause; but they had the Empress Justina 
 on their side. She was the mother of 
 the young emperor of whose domains, in 
 the division of the empire, Milan was the 
 capital. The Arians had been turned out 
 of their churches, as the pagans had been 
 turned out of their temples. But Justina 
 was an Arian still. She asked the per- 
 mission of Ambrose to have for herself 
 and those who were of her belief, a single 
 church in Milan. Ambrose refused to 
 give it. 
 
 The long fight of the Arians against the 
 Nicene Creed had been fought and lost. 
 It had filled the Church with clamor and 
 bitterness and division and tragedy. Now 
 it was ended, and Ambrose would give no 
 
AMBROSE 35 
 
 opportunity for beginning it again. He 
 told the empress that she could not have 
 a church. The empress, thereupon, pro- 
 posed to take one. She had her imperial / 
 soldiers, and she gave them orders to 
 drive Ambrose out of the city and to seize 
 such churches as she wished. The bishop 
 took refuge in a church, and his people 
 gathered about him. There they guarded 
 him day and night, passing the time in 
 singing psalms. 
 
 At last, the bishop had a dream. He 
 dreamed that beneath another church two 
 martyrs of some old persecution had been 
 buried. So men went to the place and dug 
 into the ground with spades, and there, 
 sure enough, they came upon the bones 
 of these forgotten saints! And immedi- 
 ately the saints' bones began to work the 
 most astonishing miracles. The lame were 
 made to walk, and the blind to see. The 
 whole city was filled with new excitement. 
 It was plain, men said, that heaven and 
 
36 AMBROSE 
 
 the saints were on the side of Ambrose. 
 In the face of such reinforcements the 
 empress prudently retreated. Thus was 
 fought the last battle with the Arians in 
 Milan. 
 
 The Roman emperors, after Constantine, 
 were most of them weak rulers, sometimes 
 quite young men, like Constantine's own 
 sons, and, for the most part, governing 
 only a portion of the empire. It was 
 divided into east and west, with an em- 
 peror for each division; and each of these 
 divisions was parted into imperial prov- 
 inces. But there was one strong em- 
 peror, who in his time ruled the world. 
 That was the great Theodosius. 
 
 But Theodosius had a hasty temper, and 
 it brought him into a memorable conflict 
 with Ambrose. 
 
 The people of that time were tremen- 
 dously interested in athletic games. They 
 went in great crowds to the vast amphithe- 
 aters where gladiators fought, and the 
 
AMBROSE 37 
 
 circuses where chariot races were run. 
 One side was for the Blues, the other for 
 the Greens. In every city these sports 
 brought together thousands of spectators. 
 
 Now it happened that in Thessalonica, 
 a very popular charioteer had committed 
 a crime, and had very properly been put 
 in prison for it. The time for the races 
 approached, and there was the charioteer^ 
 still in the prison, and with no likelihood 
 of release. The people, for the sake of 
 the race, demanded of the governor that 
 he should pardon the charioteer and let 
 him out. But the governor refused. 
 Thereupon a mob arose. They attacked y 
 the governor's house, and killed him, and 
 dragged his body about the streets; and 
 they released the charioteer. 
 
 Tidings of these disorders came speed- 
 ing to the ear of Theodosius. The mur- 
 dered governor had been his intimate 
 friend. His anger knew no bounds. 
 Straight he sent messengers to a com- 
 
38 AMBROSE 
 
 mander of his troops with orders to avenge 
 this tragedy upon the whole people of 
 Thessalonica. The soldiers found the 
 races in full swing. The immense circus 
 was crowded to the topmost seat. The 
 avengers entered, closed the gates and 
 drew their swords, and proceeded to kill 
 everybody in sight. For three hours they 
 murdered the unarmed people. Seven 
 thousand men, women, and children fell 
 before them. 
 
 The story is still remembered of a father 
 who had taken his two boys to the races, 
 and begged the murderers to spare one, 
 and to this they agreed, but he could not 
 decide which one. He could not choose 
 either of his sons to be put to death be- 
 fore his eyes. So the hasty soldiers killed 
 them both, and their father with them. 
 
 Ambrose immediately wrote a letter to 
 Theodosius. " You are a Christian," he 
 said, " and have done this horror. Into 
 this has your hasty anger led you. As 
 
AMBROSE 39 
 
 for me, I pray for you, but you and I 
 cannot stand together in the same church. 
 Do not venture to appear where I am 
 present. You have done the most horrible 
 thing that was ever heard of. Repent be- 
 fore God, ask His pardon as David did. 
 May He be merciful to your sinful soul."- 
 
 In spite of the letter, the emperor came 
 to church. The bishop met him in the 
 outer porch. " You may not enter," he 
 said. " This is no place for such as you, 
 unless they come in the deepest shame and 
 sorrow. Go back to your palace. Your 
 hands drip with blood. Repent! repent! 
 and then come; but not now." 
 
 It is one of the noblest scenes in history. /■ 
 Never has the Church stood out more 
 splendidly against the world. There were 
 later times, as we shall see, when bishops 
 made themselves masters of kings, but 
 sometimes their victory was spoiled by 
 pride and selfishness. The triumph of 
 Ambrose was a triumph of the Christian 
 
40 AMBROSE 
 
 conscience. He was strong because he 
 was right. And the great emperor knew it. 
 He did repent. He humbled himself be- 
 fore God. In the church, in the presence 
 of the people, he bowed himself to the 
 ground with tears. " My soul cleaveth 
 to the dust," he said. " O God, quicken 
 me according to Thy word." He made a 
 law, which still holds in all civilized 
 countries, that no capital sentence should 
 be carried into effect until thirty days after 
 the condemnation. 
 
 / Thus in the West, in the person of Am- 
 brose, the Church asserted the rights of 
 man against the injustice and tyranny of 
 the State, and prevailed over the power of 
 kings. 
 
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 ST. CHRYSOSTOM AND OTHER SAINTS 
 
 From the painting by Sebastiano del Piombo, Church of St. Chrysostom, Venice 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 
 
 347-407 
 
 When the imperial messenger had fin- 
 ished his address to the people of Antioch, 
 there was a profound silence. Nobody 
 said a word. Only in the borders of the 
 crowd could be heard the sobs of fright- 
 ened women. It was evident that the sit- 
 uation was most serious. 
 
 The emperor, the messenger said, is in 
 need of money. He has to keep up a 
 continual war with the miserable bar- 
 barians who plunder our unprotected 
 towns, and the soldiers must be paid. You 
 are all rich here. Theodosius lays a new 
 tax on his faithful people, the citizens of 
 Antioch. 
 
 Within an hour, the crowd which had 
 listened in ominous silence was a vast mob, 
 
 41 
 
42 CHRYSOSTOM 
 
 yelling in the streets. They attacked the 
 palace of the governor, who happily es- 
 caped through the back door, and saved 
 his life. They broke into the great hall 
 of justice. There was the empty seat of 
 judgment, and behind it, against the wall, 
 a row of stately statues: the image of the 
 emperor Theodosius, and of the empress 
 Flacilla, recently dead and tenderly 
 mourned, and of their two sons, Arcadius 
 and Honorius. For an instant the mob 
 stood still, like the crowd in the Shrine 
 of Serapis at Alexandria. Then a boy 
 threw a stone. It struck the figure of the 
 emperor. Instantly, as if it had been the 
 breaking of a spell, rough hands were laid 
 upon the statues. They were pulled down 
 from their places, kicked and struck with 
 clubs, and broken, and the maimed trunks 
 were dragged in the dust of the streets. 
 The trouble lasted two or three hours. 
 Then the soldiers came and took posses- 
 sion. And the people, scattering to their 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 43 
 
 homes, began to consider what they had 
 been about. 
 
 The massacre in the circus at Thessa- 
 lonica had not yet taken place. That was 
 three years in the future. But the furious 
 temper of Theodosius was well known. 
 What would he do? How would he 
 avenge the insult to himself and his 
 family? It was true that one time when 
 he was told that a mob in Alexandria had 
 stoned his statue, he had put his hand to 
 his head, and laughed, saying, " It doesn't 
 hurt." But this was a more serious affair. 
 He might degrade the city from its proud 
 place in the empire and thus destroy its 
 business. He might multiply the tax by 
 ten. He might take off the heads of a 
 hundred leading citizens. He might do 
 this or that. What would he do? 
 
 The only hope for Antioch lay in the 
 fact that Theodosius was a Christian. He 
 might listen to the apologies of a Christian 
 bishop. The aged Flavian started, accord- 
 
44 CHRYSOSTOM 
 
 ingly, in the dead of winter, over eight 
 hundred miles of hard road, with snow 
 lying deep in the passes of the Taurus 
 Mountains, to carry the repentance of 
 Antioch to the emperor at Constantinople. 
 
 Meanwhile, the city listened day after 
 day to the sermons of a great preacher. 
 
 The name Chrysostom means Golden- 
 mouth, and it was given to a man in 
 Antioch whose other name was John. He 
 had prepared himself for the work of the 
 ministry by years of privation and solitude 
 in the mountains, thinking and praying 
 and listening to the voice of God in his 
 soul. When he came out, he had a burn- 
 ing message to men about their sins. And 
 he feared no living man. He was poor, 
 and preferred to be poor. He asked noth- 
 ing, except an opportunity to speak. And 
 when he spoke, it was with an eloquence 
 which made his hearers cry or laugh or 
 tremble, as he pleased. 
 
 Thus Chrysostom ministered to Antioch 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 45 
 
 during the long weeks of suspense. He 
 preached daily. He taught to people the 
 uncertainty of all the riches and pleasures 
 of this life, and urged them day by day to 
 store their treasures in heaven, and to lay 
 hold upon that happiness which no chance 
 or change can spoil. At last the bishop 
 came in sight, sending his news ahead to 
 Chrysostom, and he announced it from his 
 pulpit. The emperor had pardoned the 
 suppliant city. He was a Christian, and 
 he was mindful of Christ's great words 
 about forgiveness. Then came the bishop, 
 welcomed with festivities like those at 
 Alexandria, " when Pope Athanasius 
 came home." 
 
 Chrysostom had been for ten years the 
 splendid preacher of Antioch when the 
 bishop of Constantinople died. Theo- 
 dosius had died also, and his weak son, 
 Arcadius, was in his place. The real 
 ruler of the eastern empire was a man 
 named Eutropius. 
 
46 CHRYSOSTOM 
 
 The career of Eutropius is one of the 
 most singular in history. He had been 
 born a slave, and had passed from one 
 master to another. One of his occupations 
 had been to comb his mistresses' hair. He 
 had grown old and wrinkled and ugly, till 
 nobody would buy him, and he had been 
 turned out of doors, like an old horse. 
 He had found work in the kitchen of the 
 imperial palace, and had made his way 
 from one domestic post to another, till he 
 had become a chamberlain. Being thus 
 near to the emperor's person, he had gained 
 increasing influence over that weak youth, 
 till he secured his amazing success by 
 suggesting that he marry Eudoxia, the 
 daughter of a general of the Franks. 
 Now, the all-powerful courtier and favo- 
 rite and prime minister, Rufinus, had 
 planned that his own daughter should 
 became the bride of the emperor, and so 
 slyly had Eutropius managed that when 
 the wedding procession actually started 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 47 
 
 out, Rufinus and his daughter waited to 
 meet it in state, till it passed the house of 
 Rufinus and stopped at the house of 
 Eudoxia. That, of course, was the end of 
 Rufinus, and Eutropius took his place. 
 The old slave, who had begged in the 
 streets of Constantinople, had become 
 the right hand and master of the em- 
 peror. 
 
 Eutropius had once heard Chrysostom 
 preach, and when the bishop of Constanti- 
 nople lay dead, and the churchmen were 
 eagerly discussing who should sit in his 
 great seat, he sent secret messengers to 
 Antioch, and they stole Chrysostom. They 
 asked him to get into their carriage, and 
 when he was once in, away they drove, 
 at post haste, much against his will, to 
 Constantinople, and there he was made 
 bishop. The bishop of Alexandria, who 
 was much disgusted, having other plans, 
 was forced to consecrate him. 
 
 Thus Chrysostom became bishop of 
 
48 CHRYSOSTOM 
 
 Constantinople, and found himself in the 
 midst of the imperial court. 
 
 The first thing which he did was to take 
 all the fine furniture which had belonged 
 to his rich and luxurious predecessor, and 
 put it out in the street, and sell it at 
 auction. He dismissed all the servants. 
 The splendid dinners, for which the 
 bishop's house had been famous, came to 
 a sudden end. The new bishop was as 
 poor as the poorest of his people. All 
 the money which came to him he spent 
 for the relief of the needy and the care 
 of the sick. 
 
 Then he preached, as he had done at 
 Antioch, terribly plain sermons about sin; 
 and not about sin in general, but about the 
 actual temptations and sins of the people 
 to whom he spoke. He reproved them 
 for the ways in which they made their 
 money, and for the ways in which they 
 spent it. He reproached them for the cries 
 and groans of their slaves, which he heard 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 49 
 
 from their windows as he passed by in the 
 street. He even criticized the clothes of 
 the ladies. He spared nobody, the court 
 least of all. The proud, luxurious, and 
 selfish life of the emperor and the em- 
 press and their friends he disliked exceed- 
 ingly, and said so plainly. 
 
 From the people, he proceeded to speak 
 his mind about the clergy. He found 
 them idle and neglectful of their duties, 
 and called them to account. Some he re- 
 proved, some he expelled. Thus every 
 day, by every word he said, he made an 
 enemy. They were enemies of the right 
 kind, who had no place in the friendly 
 approval of a true bishop, but they were 
 many, and some of them were in places 
 of great power. They were able, and 
 more than willing, to do him harm. 
 
 Thus the ministry of Chrysostom in 
 Constantinople was very hard. He was 
 as eloquent as ever, and the churches were 
 crowded to hear him, but people went 
 
50 CHRYSOSTOM 
 
 away after the sermon clinching their 
 fists. 
 
 At last, the great Eutropius fell from 
 his high place. He presumed too much 
 upon his power over the weak emperor. 
 One day he said to the empress, " I put 
 you on your throne, and I can thrust you 
 down." Eudoxia ran crying to Arcadius, 
 bringing her little children with her, and 
 demanded the expulsion of Eutropius. 
 And the emperor, with most unexpected 
 energy, expelled him. So he fell, and 
 an hour after he was without a friend. 
 He had lost everything except his life. 
 That he saved by running to the cathedral, 
 and clinging to the altar. From that holy 
 place, nobody ventured to drag him out. 
 The bishop protected him. He faced the 
 crowd which clamored for the old man's 
 blood. He interceded for him with the 
 emperor. He got him for a time into a 
 safe exile. Even so, with his instinct for 
 a preacher's occasion, he could not resist 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 51 
 
 taking him for a tremendous text. There 
 was the fallen favorite, in the sight of 
 the congregation, on the floor by the altar, 
 his hair in disorder, his clothes torn, 
 trembling for fear of death. Chrysostom 
 pointed at him from the pulpit. ^' You 
 see," he said, " how uncertain are all the 
 honors of the world." 
 
 Now, the empress Eudoxia had caused 
 to be erected, in the square fronting the 
 cathedral, a statue of herself. It was of 
 silver, on a porphyry column. And on 
 the day when it was set up there was such 
 a clamor outside the church, with dancing 
 and singing, that Chrysostom could 
 scarcely hear himself preach. He ex- 
 pressed his displeasure in his blunt man- 
 ner, and his words were reported to the 
 empress. It was the crisis of a long 
 hatred. The anger of the court was con- 
 firmed by the anger of the clergy. They 
 were all against the righteous bishop, all 
 whose evil lives he had condemned. The 
 
52 CHRYSOSTOM 
 
 bishop of Alexandria had left his own 
 city to trouble Chrysostom. Councils had 
 convened to find some fault in him, like 
 the councils which made false charges 
 against Athanasius. The affair of the 
 silver statue brought the full storm upon 
 his head. Arcadius, whose father, Theo- 
 dosius, had trembled before Ambrose, 
 ordered Chrysostom into exile. And he had 
 no friends to help him whose strength was 
 of account in such a struggle. 
 
 Out he went, then, into exile. And as 
 he went, a black smoke began to rise from 
 the city, and flames beneath the smoke. 
 The cathedral was mysteriously on fire. 
 It was destroyed; and the great houses of 
 government about it joined in its ruins. 
 And beneath the charred and broken 
 beams and stones which filled the square, 
 lay the porphyry pedestal and the silver 
 statue of Eudoxia. 
 
 They carried the old man, under a 
 guard of soldiers, the whole length of 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 53 
 
 Asia Minor, from Constantinople at the 
 northwestern corner to the region above 
 Antioch, in the southeastern corner. It 
 was much the same journey which Bishop 
 Flavian had made when he went to inter- 
 cede for Antioch with Theodosius. But 
 his place of exile was too near his friends 
 to please his enemies. Letters of sym- 
 pathy came to him by every mail, from 
 the bishop of Rome, from the bishop of 
 Milan, from bishops of the East who 
 braved the enmity of the court. And 
 every mail carried back letters from 
 Chrysostom to his faithful people in Con- 
 stantinople, who were suffering for his 
 sake, to bishops and churches asking for his 
 counsel. He speaks of exile and famine, 
 war and pestilence, siege and solitude, as 
 belonging now to his daily life. The place 
 of his exile was bitterly cold in winter, 
 and there were brigands who came down 
 from the mountains to steal and kill. But 
 he kept his courage and his good cheer. 
 
54 CHRYSOSTOM 
 
 At last an imperial order directed that 
 he should be carried north to the shore 
 of the Black Sea. Chrysostom was ill, 
 and the summer was hot; the journey was 
 long and difficult. The guards who con- 
 ducted him had been given to understand 
 that if their prisoner should chance to die 
 by the way, it would be to their advantage, 
 they would be paid so much the more. 
 And die, he did. Beside a village in 
 Pontus he sank down and could go no 
 further. They dragged him on, but he 
 was evidently dying. They took him to a 
 little chapel, and there, crying, with his 
 last breath, " Glory be to God for all 
 things!" he passed away. 
 
 Chrysostom was as truly a martyr as 
 Cyprian, But the bishop of Carthage had 
 been put to death by pagans; the bishop 
 of Constantinople was put to death by 
 Christians. To this pass had the course 
 of events come in that religion whose 
 disciples had seemed to Cyprian so quiet 
 
CHRYSOSTOM 55 
 
 and holy. While the Church in the West 
 was mastering the evil passions even of 
 emperors, the Church in the East was 
 fighting a losing battle against the sin 
 of the world. After that, in the East, the 
 Court ruled the Church, as it does to this 
 day. There were good and brave men, 
 but the short list of eminent Eastern Saints 
 and Heroes ends with Chrysostom. 
 
 The life of Chrysostom differed from 
 the life of Ambrose as defeat dififers from 
 victory, but the two men were intent on 
 the same thing. The emphasis of the min- 
 istry of Cyprian was upon the Church: 
 he exalted the importance of the Church. 
 The emphasis of the ministry of Athana- 
 sius was upon the creed: he magnified the 
 importance of the creed. But the emphasis 
 of the ministry of Ambrose and of 
 Chrysostom was upon the essential and 
 pre-eminent importance of character. 
 That, they said, is the very heart and life 
 of the Christian religion. 
 
JEROME 
 
 340-420 
 
 When Athanasius fled to Rome, he car- 
 ried with him two tall monks, straight 
 from the deserts by the Nile. They were 
 lodged in the great house of a noble lady 
 who had a little daughter named Marcella. 
 One of the monks was a very grave and 
 silent person, who spent all his time in 
 Rome at the tombs of St. Peter and St. 
 Paul. But the other had many a story tq 
 tell about the wilderness from which he 
 came, and about the monks who lived 
 there. And Marcella listened eagerly. 
 
 Even to grown people, the accounts of 
 the monastic life were like the descrip- 
 tions which travelers give of lands hith- 
 erto unknown. In the sandy wastes beside 
 the Nile were men in little huts who had 
 forsaken the world in order to say their 
 
 56 
 

 
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 ST. JEROME 
 
 From the picture by Ghirlandaio, Church of Ognissanti, Florence 
 
JEROME 57 
 
 prayers in peace. Some had escaped from 
 the dangers of the pagan persecutions; 
 some had grown weary of the life of cities, 
 or disgusted with the selfishness and cruelty 
 of their neighbors; some had come to be- 
 lieve a new doctrine brought from the East, 
 which said that the human body is the 
 root of all evil and the residence of the 
 devil, and that we must starve it and beat 
 it for the good of the soul; some desired 
 only to be let alone. There were thou- 
 sands of them, living this strange life. 
 
 The monk told how they earned their 
 living by making baskets, and how they 
 ate little, and slept little, and prayed much, 
 and how the wild beasts howled at night, 
 and how wild and still it was on the wide 
 sand and under the wide sky. Marcella 
 felt that that was the most wonderful and 
 happy life in the world. And other Ro- 
 man people, her elders, felt the same way. 
 The idea of complete independence of the 
 world, of freedom from all the cares of 
 
58 JEROME 
 
 the common day, and of nearness to God, 
 appealed to a great many who were tired; 
 and to some who were penitent for their 
 sins. They said, Why should we not go 
 out into the wastes and woods and be 
 monks, like the holy people of the Nile? 
 But years passed, and most of the men and 
 women lived in the old way, till Jerome 
 came. 
 
 Jerome was born in that year when the 
 monks visited Rome. Presently he went 
 there to school, and had for teacher 
 old Donatus, whose Latin grammar 
 was studied by all the schoolboys of 
 Europe from that time forward for twelve 
 hundred years. Jerome was an uncom- 
 monly good scholar and his chief delight 
 was to sit down with a book. All his life 
 long, in cities and in deserts, and on 
 journeys, he carried a book with him. 
 
 The accounts which he heard of the 
 monks in the East attracted him as they 
 had attracted Marcella. He went into the 
 
JEROME 59 
 
 East, and entered that life of religious 
 adventure. He became a monk. He 
 found a desert in Syria, near Antioch, 
 where monks were living, and settled down 
 among them. 
 
 They used to tell the story of a lion 
 which came one day to Jerome, holding 
 out his paw with a thorn in it, and Jerome 
 took out the thorn, and the lion became 
 his devoted friend. Jerome himself, how- 
 ever, had much more to say about the 
 devil. He said that the devil spoiled all 
 the peace and happiness of his life. He 
 had gone into the desert to get away 
 from the sin of the world, but the tempta- 
 tions to sin followed him. The devil put 
 evil thoughts into his heart. 
 
 Once he dreamed that God was angry 
 with him for being so fond of Cicero; in 
 his dream, he was in the other world, and 
 the angels beat him with sticks as his 
 teachers used to do in school; his shoulders 
 in the morning were black and blue. For 
 
6o JEROME 
 
 a good while, he read the Bible instead 
 of Cicero. 
 
 But he felt that God was angry with 
 him for much more serious offenses than 
 this. Day by day, he found himself think- 
 ing evil thoughts; and day by day, his 
 temper, which had never been very good, 
 grew worse. In trying to live without 
 eating, he injured his health. In short, 
 he met with the difficulties and suffered 
 the pains which come naturally when 
 people treat their bodies badly, and at- 
 tempt to change the nature with which 
 they were made. 
 
 Then he came to Rome, still believing 
 in the kind of life in which he had been 
 so unsuccessful. He devoted himself to 
 teaching it. He became acquainted with 
 Marcella. She was now a woman of 
 forty, and lived in a splendid palace on 
 the Aventine Hill. Jerome had classes in 
 her house. All the girls in Roman society 
 who desired to do better than to live the 
 
JEROME 6i 
 
 life of the world attended them. Jerome 
 told them what a wicked world it was, 
 and earnestly advised them not to get mar- 
 ried. All the young men in Rome hated 
 him. 
 
 The meetings in Marcella's house af- 
 fected the social life of Rome. Good 
 women came, and brought their friends. 
 The pleasures of society were neglected 
 for these new studies. Nobody went, as 
 yet, into the wilderness to pray, but many 
 prayed and fasted and did their best to 
 live like the monks, at home. Lea 
 founded a convent of holy women. Me- 
 lania went on a pilgrimage to the holy 
 places in Palestine. Fabiola established a 
 hospital. 
 
 The nearest friends of Jerome were 
 the Lady Paula, and her daughters. They 
 belonged, like the other members of this 
 devout company, to the ancient aristocracy 
 of Rome. They had social position, and 
 wealth, and all the honors and luxuries of 
 
62 JEROME 
 
 life. They gave them up to live in the 
 new way. They spent their money in 
 good works, and went about in poor 
 clothes, and fasted. 
 
 One of the daughters died. She had 
 been so fond of gaiety, and had so de- 
 lighted in the pleasant life which, under 
 Jerome's teaching she had given up, the 
 people said she had been killed by the 
 change. They laid the blame on Jerome. 
 At her funeral there was a great indigna- 
 tion, and some proposed to stone the monk 
 or throw him into the Tiber. Finally, 
 when the feeling against Jerome so in- 
 creased that he was in peril of his life, 
 he left Rome and spent the rest of his 
 days in Bethlehem. Paula and another 
 daughter, Eustochium, went with him. 
 There they built two monasteries, one 
 for themselves and such other women 
 as might join them; the other for 
 Jerome. 
 
 The remainder of the life of Jerome 
 
JEROME 63 
 
 was spent in those studies in which he had 
 delighted from his youth. In the quiet 
 of his monastic house, apart from the dis- 
 tractions of the world, he set about a task 
 to which we are all in debt to-day. He 
 translated the Bible into Latin. 
 
 The Bible was the first book in the 
 world to be translated from one language 
 to another. It was brought over from 
 Hebrew into Greek. That was done in 
 Alexandria about two hundred years be- 
 fore the Christian era. The story was that 
 seventy learned Jews, in seventy separate 
 cells, turned the Hebrew into Greek in 
 seventy days, and thus produced seventy 
 Bibles which were all alike, even, — as the 
 phrase is, — to the dotting of the i's and 
 the crossing of the fs. 
 
 But Greek had ceased to hold its old 
 place as the language of the great world. 
 St. Paul, indeed, had written a Greek 
 letter to the Romans, and for many years 
 all Christian services in Rome had been in 
 
64 JEROME 
 
 Greek. But two other languages had now 
 appeared. 
 
 One was the language of the Goths, 
 spoken in various dialects, by that vast 
 multitude of barbarians who every year 
 were drawing nearer to the Roman empire, 
 until, at last, in Jerome's day, they cap- 
 tured Rome itself. This Teutonic lan- 
 guage is of interest to us because it was 
 the parent of our English speech. Into 
 this tongue an Arian bishop, Ulfilas, had 
 already translated a great part of the 
 Bible. It was the first book in all that 
 mighty literature which is now German 
 and English. 
 
 The other language was Latin. In 
 Jerome's time, Greek was the language of 
 the past and Gothic was the language of 
 the future, but Latin was the language 
 of the present. Into Latin, then, he trans- 
 lated the Bible. He studied Greek, he 
 studied Hebrew. A friendly rabbi came 
 over from Tiberias by night to teach him. 
 
JEROME 65 
 
 The work occupied him fifteen years. He 
 dedicated it to his faithful friends, Paula 
 and Eustochium. 
 
 From that day to this, the Latin Bible 
 of Jerome has been the authorized version 
 of the Latin Church. The Vulgate, as 
 it is called, is used in the West, as the 
 Greek Bible, the Septuagint, is used in the 
 East. When the Bible was at last trans- 
 lated into English, the translators knew 
 Jerome's Bible by heart. They brought 
 over into our book the splendid cadence of 
 its sentences. Of course, English as we 
 have it now is a combination of those two 
 languages which in Jerome's time were of 
 the present and the future. It is part 
 Gothic and part Latin. But the words of 
 Latin derivation in our English Bible 
 correspond to the Latin words which 
 Jerome chose. They are written over into 
 our Bible out of his. 
 
 It is unhappily remembered of Jerome 
 that he was not only a monk and a scholar 
 
66 JEROME 
 
 but a fierce debater. He loved to argue, 
 and when he argued he went about it in 
 the spirit of a fighter. The man with 
 whom he disagreed was, for the moment, 
 his worst enemy, and he treated him ac- 
 cordingly. He looked about for every 
 possible mean thing to say about him. He 
 called him names. He accused him of 
 dishonesty. He said that he was a liar. 
 He insinuated that he was both a fool and 
 a knave. 
 
 This method of argument, no matter 
 how well-founded the argument itself may 
 be, always puts the arguer in the wrong. 
 He may have on his side all the truth of 
 the Christian religion, he has the spirit of 
 the devil. It began before Jerome, and 
 continued so long that we have only re- 
 cently outgrown it. It never did good, 
 nor corrected anybody from the error of 
 his mistaken opinions. The instinctive 
 reply is not to say, " Yes, I see that I was 
 wrong and you are right," but to say, 
 
JEROME 67 
 
 " Right or wrong, I will hit you back as 
 hard as you hit me." 
 
 Jerome was a very abusive and bad- 
 tempered saint. Still, that sort of contro- 
 versy was the fashion then ; though he 
 rather outdid the rest of the wrangling 
 brethren. He knew no other way to show 
 that he was in earnest. And his life in 
 the desert had ruined his digestion. 
 
AUGUSTINE 
 
 354-430 
 
 Among the young men who listened 
 with interest to the eloquence of Ambrose 
 in the cathedral of Milan was one named 
 Augustine. He was an outsider, a pagan, 
 and went to church, not because he was 
 concerned about the Christian religion, 
 but because he liked to hear good speak- 
 ing. Perhaps, however, he thought some- 
 times, in the midst of the service and the 
 sermon, of his Christian mother, Monica. 
 
 We are told much of the thoughts as 
 well of the acts of Augustine by him- 
 self, in his famous " Confessions." This 
 was the first of all the autobiographies. 
 Augustine was the first man in all his- 
 tory to write a book about himself. And 
 this he did with such frankness, and such 
 continual human interest, that it remains 
 
 68 
 
ST. AUGUSTINE, WITH HIS MOTHER 
 
 From the picture by Ary Scheffer 
 
AUGUSTINE 69 
 
 to-day the chief autobiography in litera- 
 ture. 
 
 Thus we know that he was born in ^ 
 Africa, not far from Carthage, the son of 
 descendants of Latin colonists, like Cyp- 
 rian. That is, his people were African 
 by residence, but Italian by race. His 
 father was a pagan, and lived the careless, 
 and even evil life which paganism per- 
 mitted. The one good thing reported of 
 him is that he did not beat his wife; but 
 even that was explained by Monica on the 
 ground that it takes two to make a quarrel. 
 
 Augustine says that he was a bad boy 
 at school, getting his lessons pretty well, — 
 though he hated mathematics, — but run- ' 
 ning away to play ball, and being well 
 whipped for it. As he grew up, he showed 
 an inclination to follow the example of 
 his father rather than the piety of his 
 mother. 
 
 He went to college in Carthage, a place 
 full of temptation, into which he fell. He 
 
70 AUGUSTINE 
 
 says, however, that what he most desired 
 was not the pleasure of sin, but the praise 
 of his companions. Accordingly, he pre- 
 tended to be worse than he really was. 
 One of the lesser offenses of the wild 
 youths who were his associates in college 
 was to break up the lectures of the pro- 
 fessors. A gang of them would go about, 
 and rush shouting into classroom after 
 classroom, destroying all the order of 
 the college. Still, Augustine studied to 
 such good purpose that he was asked to 
 become a teacher himself. 
 
 Now he found that the pleasant pastime 
 of mobbing professors was much more 
 agreeable to the students than it was to 
 the professors, and after being put to this 
 annoyance several times, he gave up in 
 disgust, and found some teaching to do in 
 Rome. The students in Rome were much 
 more polite than in Carthage, but they 
 had a custom which was almost equally 
 objectionable. They would attend their 
 
AUGUSTINE 71 
 
 classes with great diligence until just be- 
 fore the time to pay their annual fees; 
 then they would depart and appear no 
 more. As Augustine depended on his fees 
 for his support, this was a serious matter. 
 
 Happily, however, at this moment a 
 professorship fell vacant in Milan; it was 
 a position which was supported by the 
 State, with a salary paid from the State 
 treasury. This comfortable place was of- 
 fered to Augustine by the Roman senator 
 who pleaded against Ambrose for the 
 Altar of Victory. Thus he came to Milan. 
 
 He had now learned some lessons under 
 the instruction of experience. He had 
 mastered the worst of his old sins. He had 
 become interested in the discussion of reli- 
 gion: but not in the Christian religion. 
 He had found a sect of people called 
 Manichees, whose creed was brought from 
 Persia. They believed in two gods, like 
 the Persians, a good god and a bad one. 
 They had a long series of secret initiations 
 
72 AUGUSTINE 
 
 by which one passed by one degree after 
 another to illumination and perfection. 
 Augustine went a little way in this so- 
 ciety, but not far. He was profoundly 
 dissatisfied with the world in which he 
 lived, and with himself. 
 
 He began to find what he needed, in 
 the teachings of Ambrose. Ambrose said, 
 " Here is the Church, a divine teacher with 
 truth from heaven. Come into it, all per- 
 plexed souls, and take this truth and live 
 according to it, and be at peace." It ap- 
 pealed to Augustine. It seemed a pleas- 
 ant prospect. But his mind was full of 
 questions. Several times he went to see 
 the bishop. There sat Ambrose in his 
 great hall, with a book in his hand, and 
 people coming to consult him. When 
 there was a space between these visits, he 
 read his book. Augustine hesitated to in- 
 terrupt his studies. He went away without 
 asking any of his questions. 
 
 At last, one day, one of a little group 
 
AUGUSTINE 73 
 
 of Augustine's friends began to tell the 
 story of St. Anthony, the hermit, as it had 
 been written by Athanasius: how he had 
 heard in church about the rich young man 
 to whom the Lord said, " Sell all that 
 thou hast and follow Me;" how he obeyed 
 that command, and took up his lodging in 
 the desert, how he lived there amidst the 
 friendly beasts, saying his prayers, 
 strengthening his soul, and blessed of God. 
 Augustine was profoundly interested. He 
 went away alone into a little quiet gar- 
 den and flung himself upon the grass. 
 " How long," he cried, " shall I pray * O 
 God, make me a Christian, but not yet,' 
 — how long shall I be like one who is 
 awakened in the morning and knows that 
 he ought to get up, yet lies in idle dream- 
 ing." 
 
 Suddenly he heard the voice of a child 
 singing. Over and over the child sang, 
 "Take and read! Take and read!" It 
 seemed to Augustine a message from on 
 
74 AUGUSTINE 
 
 high. Immediately he rose up and went 
 into the house and took a Bible, and 
 opened wherever it would open and read 
 the words which there appeared upon the 
 page. The words were, " Not in rioting 
 and drunkenness, not in chambering and 
 wantonness, not in strife and envying; but 
 put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make 
 not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the 
 lusts thereof." 
 
 This experience changed his life. He 
 applied to Ambrose for baptism. He de- 
 voted himself to the study and the teach- 
 ing of the Christian religion. He took his 
 mother, and set out to return to Africa. 
 From Milan they went to Rome, and from 
 Rome down the Tiber to the port of Ostia. 
 There they waited for a ship. One even- 
 ing, as they sat together in the starlight, 
 talking of the past and the future, Monica 
 said, " Augustine, I have now no more 
 to live for. All these years I have prayed 
 for you that you might be a Christian. 
 
AUGUSTINE 75 
 
 Now my prayers are answered." The 
 next day she fell sick, in a little while 
 she died, the patron saint of all devout 
 and patient and long-enduring mothers. 
 
 Augustine settled on the farm which had 
 belonged to his father, and gathered 
 friends about him. There they lived, dig- 
 ging occasionally in the garden, but more 
 for exercise than in expectation of crops, 
 and occupying themselves for the most 
 part with quiet talking, and thinking, and 
 reading and writing. One day Augustine 
 went on an errand to the near town of 
 Hippo. There was a service in the parish 
 church, and he attended it. And the 
 bishop saw him in the congregation, and 
 when the time came for the sermon the 
 bishop said, " Brethren, you know that I 
 am getting old, and am in need of help. 
 I am, moreover, a Greek, and it is hard 
 for me to pray in Latin. I ought to 
 have an assistant." Then he looked at 
 Augustine, and everybody looked at Au- 
 
76 AUGUSTINE 
 
 gustine, and there was a great shouting of 
 Augustine's name. There was no help for 
 it; he must be a bishop. By and by the 
 bishop died and Augustine took his place. 
 
 Hippo is in Algeria, on a bay which 
 opens into the Mediterranean. The place 
 is much frequented by astronomers on the 
 occasion of a total eclipse of the sun. In 
 the midst of the town is a new cathedral 
 dedicated to St. Augustine, who is still 
 known there, even among the Moslems, as 
 " the great Christian." 
 
 The size of the place in which a man 
 lives matters little. The only thing which 
 matters much is the size of the man. 
 Augustine in the little town of Hippo was 
 a person of more consequence and influ- 
 ence than the bishop of Carthage, the 
 bishop of Rome, the bishop of Constanti- 
 nople, and the bishop of Alexandria put 
 together. He was the greatest man who 
 had appeared in the Christian Church 
 since St. Paul. 
 
AUGUSTINE 77 
 
 Augustine now became acquainted with 
 the meaning of two new words. One 
 word was " schism," the other was " her- 
 esy." Schism means separation, and was 
 applied to people who separated them- 
 selves from the Church. Heresy means- 
 choice, and was applied to people who 
 chose to think for themselves, and came 
 to conclusions different from the common 
 teaching of the creed. These words be- 
 came important on account of the in- 
 creasing disorder of the age. The Roman 
 Empire was going to pieces, the hands of 
 government were weak, the invading bar- 
 barians were strong, the old order was 
 steadily giving way. It was necessary, 
 under these conditions, to maintain dis- 
 cipline in the Church. There must be 
 leadership and obedience, as in an army in 
 the time of war. The Christians must be 
 kept together. Wise men felt then, as 
 wise men felt afterwards in Massachusetts 
 in the days of the wild Indians, that all 
 
78 AUGUSTINE 
 
 differences must be prevented. People 
 must act alike, and think alike, and keep 
 step, for the general safety. 
 
 Thus Augustine came into contention 
 with the schism of Donatus, and with the 
 heresy of Pelagius. 
 
 The schism of Donatus had now been 
 going on so long that many people had for- 
 gotten what it was all about. It arose 
 after the persecution under Diocletian, as 
 the schism of Novatus arose, in Cyprian's 
 day, after the persecution under Decius. 
 It began with the same question, What 
 shall be done with those who, in terror of 
 death, denied the faith? And there were 
 two answers, as before : the answer of char- 
 ity and the answer of severity. The fol- 
 lowers of Donatus were on the side of 
 severity, and they went out of the Church, 
 as the followers of Novatus had done, and 
 started a Christian society of their own. 
 The new church claimed to be the true 
 church. It had its own bishops, whom 
 
AUGUSTINE 79 
 
 it set up in city after city against the 
 bishops already in control. There were 
 two kinds of Christians, Catholics and 
 Donatists. And they began to fight. 
 
 The Catholic Christians, as they were 
 called who belonged to the old church, 
 appealed to the emperor. And Constan- ^^ 
 tine, who was then on the imperial throne, 
 sent soldiers to Africa, where the Dona- 
 tists were in the greatest numbers, to put 
 them down. But this only made bad mat- 
 ters worse. The Donatists, who had re-K 
 belled against the Church, now rebelled 
 against the State. They became the ene- 
 mies of the established order. Some of 
 them went about in gangs with clubs, 
 and broke into Catholic churches, and 
 beat the Catholic clergy. 
 
 They were good men, too, many of these 
 Donatists. They fought for freedom of 
 conscience. They protested against the 
 endeavor of the State to make them change 
 their religion by sending soldiers against 
 
8o AUGUSTINE 
 
 them; and against the endeavor of the 
 Church to make them submit to rules 
 which they considered wrong. 
 
 All wrongs and rights, however, were 
 now confused in the long contention. It 
 was impossible even to discuss the dif- 
 ferences in any fair and friendly spirit. 
 Augustine tried it. There was a great de- 
 bate at Carthage, with Augustine on one 
 side and a Donatist on the other, but it 
 came to nothing. It came, indeed, to 
 worse than nothing, for Augustine in his 
 earnestness for the order and strength of 
 the Church was led to take Christ's words 
 out of the parable where He said, " Com- 
 pel them to come in," and to apply them 
 to all who were in a state of schism. Com- 
 pel them to come in. Persuade them, 
 argue with them, and thus, if possible, 
 convert them; but if you cannot convert 
 them, compel them. Send soldiers after 
 them, beat them, burn their churches, drag 
 them in. It was said in a moment of 
 
AUGUSTINE 8i 
 
 deep discouragement and indignation, but 
 it was never forgotten. It was applied to 
 people in heresy and schism for hundreds 
 of cruel years. 
 
 The heresy of Pelagius first appeared in 
 public in a letter which he wrote to a 
 young Roman lady who had resolved to 
 forsake the world and thenceforth to live 
 a single life of prayer and fasting. Many 
 of her friends sent letters of congratula- 
 tion. Jerome was particularly enthusias- 
 tic. Pelagius, however, was not so sure 
 about it. The world, he said, is indeed 
 a bad world, but not so hopelessly bad. It 
 is not necessary to go out of it in order to 
 live a righteous life: nor does it greatly 
 matter, so far as holiness is concerned, 
 whether one is married or unmarried. 
 
 The letter came to the attention of 
 Augustine, and he condemned the opinion 
 of Pelagius. Taking his own experience 
 of evil in his early life, and confirming it 
 with sentences from the writings of St. 
 
82 AUGUSTINE 
 
 Paul, he maintained that human nature 
 is bad completely. Man is, by nature, de- 
 praved totally, and comes into the world 
 in sin, the child of the devil; so that 
 even a helpless infant, dying before he 
 has done either right or wrong, must go 
 into everlasting punishment for the sin 
 which is born in him; unless he has been 
 born again in baptism. Nothing that we can 
 do, Augustine said, can save us, no works 
 of goodness, no life of righteousness: we 
 must be saved by the act of God. And 
 God, he added, saves us, not because we 
 deserve it, but because of His own pleas- 
 V ure. Some He has eternally predestined 
 to be saved, others to be lost. Our hope 
 is not in our own merits, but in His mercy; 
 and our help is in the grace of God, gained 
 for us by the death of Jesus Christ, and 
 given to us in the sacraments of the 
 Church. 
 
 The effect of this teaching was to in- 
 crease the importance of the Church. The 
 
AUGUSTINE 83 
 
 world was represented as in the days of 
 Noah, wholly bad and under a destroying 
 flood. The Church was like the ark. 
 Whoever would be saved must get into 
 it, through the door of baptism. Outside 
 were angry waters, and howling winds, 
 and sure destruction. 
 
 So it seemed to Augustine, and the age 
 in which he lived illustrated it. Year by 
 years rose the unescapable flood of the bar- 
 barian invasion. Goths, Huns, and Van- 
 dals threatened the empire. They came 
 over the ancient boundaries of the Dan- 
 ube and the Rhine. They devastated 
 cities, and laid waste great tracts of culti- 
 vated country. And wherever they came, 
 they stayed. They took possession, v 
 
 Finally, in 410, Alaric the Goth sacked 
 Rome. The Romans had believed, concern- 
 ing Rome, as the Jews believed concerning 
 Jerusalem, that it could not be taken. It 
 had so long ruled the world, that it seemed 
 a part of the nature of things, like the ever- 
 
84 AUGUSTINE 
 
 lasting sun. But the soldiers of Alaric 
 conquered it. The ancient city was given 
 over to sword and flame. Amidst a thou- 
 sand other acts of terror, the Goths broke 
 into the house of Marcella, and so beat 
 her that she died in a few days. 
 
 Only the Roman emperor seemed un- 
 moved by this tremendous calamity. He 
 was in a safe retreat at Ravenna when the 
 news came. It is remembered of the em- 
 peror Honorius that there were only two 
 matters in which he was ever known to 
 show the slightest interest: one was the 
 safety bf his own imperial person, the 
 others was the raising of hens, in which he 
 was very successful. His favorite hen was 
 named Rome. When they came, then, 
 V crying, " Your Majesty, Rome has per- 
 ished!" he said, "Why, only an hour ago 
 she was feeding out of my hand!" And 
 when they told him that it was the capital 
 of the world which had been destroyed, 
 he was much relieved. 
 
AUGUSTINE 85 
 
 The Goths under Alaric spread over 
 Italy. After them came the Vandals under 
 Genseric, and invaded Roman Africa. 
 Augustine saw them coming, a long way 
 ofif. He saw that the catastrophe long 
 dreaded had at last arrived. The Roman 
 Empire had fallen. The old power which 
 governed the world had met defeat. The 
 old cities had new inhabitants. Rome had 
 fallen, and the Roman age had come to 
 a tragic end. 
 
 In the midst of this situation, the news 
 of the march of the barbarians coming 
 daily to his ears, Augustine wrote his 
 great book, the "City of God." The city v' 
 of Rome, he said, has indeed perished, 
 but there is another city, the Church of 
 Christ, eternal in the heavens. 
 
 Augustine was now an old man, and 
 ill. And the Vandals were storming the 
 walls of Hippo. He could hear the cries 
 of battle from his sick-bed. " I have but 
 one prayer to God amid these calamities," 
 
86 AUGUSTINE 
 
 he said, " either that He would set this 
 city free from the enemy, or if not, that 
 He would make His servants strong to 
 bear His will, or at least that He would 
 take me to Himself from the world." 
 The end of the prayer was answered. 
 Augustine died. The city, deserted by its 
 inhabitants, was burnt by the Vandals to 
 the ground. 
 
ST. JOHN AND ST. BENEDICT 
 
 From the picture by Perugino in the monastery of Santa 
 Maria Maddalena, Florence 
 
BENEDICT 
 
 480-543 
 
 When it was reported in Rome that a 
 man was living in a cave in a wild gorge 
 by the river Anio, forty miles away, peo- 
 ple were interested but not surprised. It 
 was not at that time an uncommon thing 
 to live in a cave. 
 
 The m.onastic life, whose joys Jerome 
 had preached to the ladies of Roman so- 
 ciety, had by this time attracted great 
 numbers of people, in the West as in the 
 East. This was due in part to two ex- 
 ceedingly popular books which everybody 
 read: the "Life of St. Anthony," by 
 Athanasius, and the " Life of St. Martin," 
 by Sulpicius Severus. The patience and 
 devotion of Anthony in Egypt were 
 equalled, if not surpassed, by the spiritual 
 
 87 
 
88 BENEDICT 
 
 virtues and adventures of Martin in 
 France. 
 
 It was Martin who, in his youth, a 
 cavalryman in the army of the emperor 
 Julian, saw a shivering beggar by the road- 
 side, and cutting his military cloak in two 
 flung half over the beggar's back, and that 
 night in vision saw the Lord in heaven 
 wearing the garment which he had thus 
 given in compassion. It was Martin to 
 whom once appeared a vision of the Lord 
 in shining apparel, with a chariot of fire, 
 and invited the saint to ride with Him to 
 the gates of Paradise; and Martin, looking 
 attentively at Him, said, " Where are the 
 marks of the nails?" There were no 
 marks of the nails, and the vision, which 
 was a trick of the devil, vanished in a 
 cloud of evil smoke. 
 
 The marks of the nails were evident 
 in all the life of Martin, who put him- 
 self to much privation, gave his days and 
 nights to prayer, went about his great 
 
BENEDICT 89 
 
 pagan diocese on foot, braved a savage 
 emperor who had behaved unjustly, and 
 a whole community of wild heathen whose 
 sacred tree he cut down with his own 
 ax, and alike by his courage and his 
 gentleness appealed to the imagination of 
 earnest youth. 
 
 St. Anthony and St. Martin, then, were 
 the heroes of the devout life of the fifth 
 century. The man in the cave knew by 
 heart the books which told about them. 
 
 And, as another and still stronger argu- 
 ment for the forsaking of the world, was the 
 condition of the world itself. All things 
 were in confusion. Alaric the Goth and 
 Genseric the Vandal were followed by 
 Attila the Hun, and by a thousand other 
 lesser captains. The Lombards were 
 settling in the north of Italy. The Franks 
 were taking France. The old laws were 
 no longer a protection, the old customs 
 were giving place to new, the wealthy 
 and educated Latins were thrust out of 
 
90 BENEDICT 
 
 their pleasant houses and these conquerors, 
 uneducated, only partially civilized, 
 speaking strange languages, took posses- 
 sion. The Goths, indeed, had become 
 Christians; but their Christianity was of 
 the Arian kind. And when the Franks, 
 under their king Clovis, were converted 
 and became Catholic Christians, the 
 Franks and the Goths fell to fighting, and 
 the miseries of the times were multiplied. 
 No peaceful citizen could be sure when 
 he went to bed at night that his house 
 would not be burned down before morn- 
 ing. Under these circumstances, even a 
 cave in a dark gorge, while it might not be 
 very comfortable, had at least the advan- 
 tage of being safe. 
 
 So thought Benedict when he hid him- 
 self beside the river Anio. He belonged 
 to a noble family in Rome, and spent his 
 youth there. And when he had had 
 enough, and more than enough, of the hard 
 world, he put it all behind him, and found 
 
BENEDICT 91 
 
 peace and the presence of God in his 
 cave. He had a friend who every day 
 lowered over the face of the clifif to the 
 mouth of the cave a little basket of bread. 
 A bell tied to the basket informed the 
 hermit that his dinner was approaching. 
 
 The reports which were carried about 
 by neighboring shepherds concerning the 
 holiness of the man in the cave caused the 
 monks of a monastery in that region to 
 invite him to be their abbot. " You don't 
 want me for your abbot," said Benedict, 
 when they appeared at the mouth of the 
 cave with their request. " You don't know 
 what sort of man I am. You would not 
 be willing to live according to my rule." 
 But the monks were full of enthusiasm at 
 the idea of a holy abbot and a better life, 
 and they insisted till Benedict consented. 
 So he took command, and at the end of the 
 first week they tried to poison him. 
 
 This experience disclosed the fact that 
 the monastic life needed reforming. A 
 
92 BENEDICT 
 
 hundred other houses of religion were 
 like the abbey whose monks had found 
 the discipline of Benedict too hard. Men 
 had gone into monasticism for a great num- 
 ber of reasons: because they were afraid 
 of Franks and Goths, because they had 
 failed in business or in love, because they 
 did not wish to work. And, having be- 
 come monks, they were living pretty much 
 as they pleased, some starving and some 
 feasting; some saying their prayers, some 
 breaking the Commandments. There was 
 no order, or regularity, or common dis- 
 cipline. There was no accepted rule. 
 
 When Benedict returned to his cave be- 
 side the Anio, his former solitude had 
 become impossible. Good people were 
 greatly interested in the abbot who was 
 so strict that his monks had put poison in 
 his cup. Disciples gathered about him. 
 Noble Roman families sent their sons to 
 him to be instructed in religion. Pres- 
 ently, on the wild hills in the neighbor- 
 
BENEDICT 93 
 
 hood of Benedict's cave were twelve 
 groups of men in twelve monastic houses, 
 living according to his regulations. 
 
 But the world was still too near, and the 
 monks sought a more secure retreat. To 
 the south was a range of mountains, and 
 on the summit of one of them, called 
 Monte Cassino, they found a little temple 
 with an altar dedicated to Apollo, standing 
 in a grove. There were still a few coun- 
 try people who came to offer their sacri- 
 fices in the old way. It was one of many 
 hidden places, among the woods and in 
 the high hills, where the Roman gods 
 were still remembered. These simple peo- 
 ple Benedict converted. Their temple to 
 Apollo he destroyed, and on its site he 
 began the building of a monastery, which 
 became the most famous and influential in 
 all Europe. 
 
 For the monks of Monte Cassino, Bene- 
 dict wrote a rule of life, which was so 
 good that all other monks adopted it. 
 
94 BENEDICT 
 
 Even to-day, wherever there is a monas- 
 tery, the conduct of its life is still gov- 
 erned by St. Benedict. 
 
 He found the monks, following the ex- 
 ample of the East, devoting themselves to 
 pain and prayer, living their own religious 
 life for the good of their own souls. Bene- 
 dict brought them back to save the world 
 which they had abandoned. He stopped 
 the old tortures. He forsook all that 
 starving and beating of the body which 
 good men had undertaken in the deserts 
 of the Nile in the hope of improving their 
 souls. For pain he substituted work. The 
 fare of the monks was to be plain and 
 frugal, but not to the extent of hard- 
 ships. Their work was to be, in part in 
 the field, cultivating the soil, and in part 
 in the cloister, reading, and studying, and 
 teaching. 
 
 The influence of these provisions was 
 far-reaching and of vast importance. 
 
 The Latins had despised all labor of 
 
BENEDICT 95 
 
 the hands. They had had slaves to do that, 
 and it was associated with slavery. It 
 was accounted a disgrace for a free man 
 to work. Benedict and his monks put a 
 stop to that mischievous prejudice. Men 
 saw these gentlemen and saints planting 
 their fields, mowing their grain, gathering 
 their fruit. The sight dignified all the 
 humble life of the farm. The first thing 
 which the monks did when they estab- 
 lished a monastery in a wild place was 
 to clear the land, and they got their 
 barbarian neighbors to follow their ex- 
 ample. 
 
 As for the labor of the mind, the Goths 
 and Franks were unaccustomed to it. 
 When they came on their fierce invasions 
 they brought no books, and those which 
 they found they could not read. For many 
 years they were too busy fighting, and then 
 settling, making themselves the new mas- 
 ters of the old empire, to pay attention to 
 learning. The reading monks did that. 
 
96 BENEDICT 
 
 They preserved the ancient Latin books. 
 They saved Virgil and Horace and Cicero, 
 and all the Latin classics from destruction. 
 They were the teachers of the new genera- 
 tions. 
 
 Thus, when Benedict wrote in his rule, 
 "Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and 
 therefore the brethren ought to employ 
 themselves at certain times in the work 
 of the hands, and again at certain times in 
 divine reading," the words were such as to 
 exercise an influence for the good of the 
 world greater than that of all the books 
 which had been written since the New 
 Testament. 
 
 It is the province and privilege of the 
 men who come first to clear the way and 
 build foundations. Thus Cyprian was the 
 pioneer of the Church: he first brought 
 the Christian society into its place of 
 future importance in the Christian reli- 
 gion. Athanasius was the pioneer of the 
 creed: he first insisted on the essential 
 
BENEDICT 97 
 
 importance of an accurate statement of 
 the faith, Ambrose and Chrysostom were 
 splendid examples of the leadership of 
 religion against unrighteousness. Jerome 
 gave Western Christendom the Bible in 
 its own language. Augustine contributed 
 a system of theology, partly true and 
 partly untrue, which, for good and evil, 
 governed the minds of men during the suc- 
 ceeding centuries. Benedict set in order 
 that monastic life which carried religion 
 and civilization through the confusion of ] 
 the fall of the Roman Empire. 
 
 Beside the monastery in which Benedict 
 lived his good life, his devout sister, 
 Scholastica had a holy house, filled with 
 praying and working women. The rules 
 which they had made permitted the 
 brother and sister to see each other only 
 once a year. So Benedict came, one time, 
 in his old age, to visit Scholastica, and 
 when he rose to go, she begged him to 
 stay longer, and talk of heavenly things. 
 
98 BENEDICT 
 
 And when he persisted, feeling that he had 
 already stayed his time, the sky, the 
 monks said, became black with a great 
 storm, and the rain fell so that he could 
 not go. That was their last visit. 
 
GREGORY THE GREAT 
 
 From the painting by Justus van Ghent, Barlierini Palace, Rome 
 
GREGORY THE GREAT 
 
 540-604 
 
 A Roman senator, rich and of an an- 
 cient family, was so attracted by the Order 
 of St. Benedict that he built six monas- 
 teries in Rome; and then a seventh, in 
 which he went to live himself, and be- 
 came its abbot. His name was Gregory, 
 surnamed " the Great." 
 
 One day as the abbot walked about the 
 streets, he saw that there were slaves for 
 sale. 
 
 There were always slaves for sale in 
 Rome. Some were men who had got so 
 deep in debt that they could not get out, 
 and, having sold all else which they pos- 
 sessed, at last sold themselves. But most 
 of them were captives from the wars. All 
 the borders of the Roman Empire blazed 
 with war. Even after the barbarians came 
 
 99 
 
loo GREGORY THE GREAT 
 
 and destroyed the old empire, still they 
 fought among themselves. And after 
 every battle, the victors, whether they 
 were Romans or Goths or Franks, gathered 
 up a great company of prisoners and sold 
 them in the nearest market. It was better 
 than the former custom of putting them 
 all to death. And it was better sometimes 
 than the modern custom of putting them 
 in military jails without sufficient food or 
 shelter. 
 
 The consequence was that the slave trade 
 was a flourishing business in Rome, and 
 Gregory, kind-hearted and large-minded 
 though he was, never thought of trying to 
 stop it. 
 
 A new lot of captives had come that day, 
 sent down from Britain. They were of 
 the race called Angles, from whom Eng- 
 land got its first name of Angle-land. They 
 came from that western part of Yorkshire 
 which was then called Deira. Their yel- 
 low hair and fair skin pleased the eyes of 
 
GREGORY THE GREAT loi 
 
 Gregory, and he stopped to question them. 
 
 " Whence do you come? " he said. " We 
 are Angles," they replied, " from the king- 
 dom of Deira. " God be gracious to you, 
 my children," said the abbot. " You are 
 Angles? You are as fair as angels. You 
 should be Christians. I will go myself to 
 your land of Deira, and save your people 
 de ira — from the ire, from the wrath, — 
 of God." 
 
 Gregory did not go to England, as he 
 hoped, because he was detained in Rome. 
 The pope died, and all the people de- 
 manded Gregory, as the Christians of 
 Carthage had called for Cyprian, and the 
 Christians of Milan for Ambrose. The 
 desire was unanimous. The people wanted 
 him, the clergy wanted him, the senate 
 wanted him. He wrote a letter to the em- 
 peror begging him to forbid the election, 
 but somebody took the letter and never 
 sent it. There was no escape. So Greg- 
 ory became the pope of Rome. 
 
102 GREGORY THE GREAT 
 
 One time, just before Jerome went to 
 Rome to begin his classes in the house of 
 Marcella, there were two men, each of 
 whom greatly desired to be bishop, and 
 their followers had such a battle in the 
 Church of Sta. Maria Maggiore that, when 
 it was over, a hundred and thirty-seven 
 dead bodies lay upon the floor. It shows 
 not only what a fierce and disorderly time 
 it was, but how much men prized the 
 office. Gregory, indeed, did not desire 
 it, but that was because he did not care for 
 wealth or power. 
 
 The pope of Rome was bishop of the 
 greatest city in the world. The Vandals had 
 ruined Carthage; Constantinople and Alex- 
 andria were far away. Rome had no 
 rival. It is true that the emperor had 
 ceased to live there; but his departure had 
 increased the importance of the bishop, 
 for he was now the leading citizen. He 
 was the most prominent and influential 
 Christian in the Western Church. The 
 
GREGORY THE GREAT 103 
 
 invading barbarians cared little for the 
 old empire, but they had some respect 
 for the Christian religion. Gradually, by 
 the good services of missionaries, many of 
 them from the monasteries of St. Benedict, 
 it became their religion. It was the only ^ 
 living survivor of the old world which 
 they had destroyed. Whatever of ancient 
 custom and culture and learning had re- 
 mained, was in the Church. The Church 
 was the sole representative in all Europe 
 of that departed civilization which had 
 built the great cities, made the enduring 
 roads, carved the statues, and written the 
 books. And the leader and spokesman of 
 the Church was the bishop of Rome. 
 
 Moreover, just about the time when i 
 Gregory was questioning the Angle slaves, 
 there was born in Arabia a man who was 
 to change the whole course of the history 
 of the Christian East. Out of Mecca came 
 Mohammed. To the conquest of the west 
 of Christendom by the Goths and Vandals, 
 
I04 GREGORY THE GREAT 
 
 was added the conquest of the East by the 
 Mohammedans. But the Mohammedans 
 did not become Christians like the Goths. 
 They came in the strength of their own 
 religion, hating the religion of the Chris- 
 tains, and they took possession of almost 
 the whole of the Eastern empire. They 
 captured Jerusalem. They made them- 
 selves masters of the Holy Land. They 
 took Alexandria. They were long delayed 
 in taking Constantinople, but they de- 
 prived it of its ancient power. Thus the 
 successors of Gregory became, not only the 
 greatest bishops in the West, but the great- 
 est in the world. 
 
 This was the office which prevented 
 Gregory from going to England. 
 
 A great slab of stone in the Forum at 
 Rome still shows the carved picture of the 
 emperor Trajan distributing food to 
 widows and orphans. This was the Trajan 
 to whom Pliny wrote in 112 to ask what 
 should be done to stop the dangerous 
 
GREGORY THE GREAT 105 
 
 growth of the Christians. One day, as 
 Pope Gregory passed that way, he stopped 
 in front of the stone picture and looked at 
 it with great appreciation. It seemed to 
 him a pleasant memorial of ancient times 
 and of a good and friendly man. That 
 day, at prayer, he ventured to pray for 
 Trajan, that he might be pardoned for 
 his paganism, and admitted into the 
 Christian heaven. And in a dream the 
 Lord appeared to the devout pope. 
 " Gregory," he said, " you have prayed 
 for the pardon of a pagan, and I have 
 granted your petition; but do not do it 
 again." The story shows how the theology ^ 
 of Augustine had taken hold of the minds 
 of men, who thus found it possible to be- 
 lieve that all the heathens, good and bad, 
 were lost. But it reveals also the fellow- 
 ship of Gregory with anybody who had 
 tried to help his neighbors. 
 
 Gregory's ministry was spent in such 
 good deeds. He took a great and useful 
 
V 
 
 io6 GREGORY THE GREAT 
 
 part in all the life about him: dealt with 
 Arians, who were still troubling Italy, and 
 with Donatists, who were still troubling 
 Africa; disciplined idle and unworthy 
 monks and ministers ; attended to the needs 
 of the poor and the sick; and gave his 
 farmer careful directions about the work- 
 ing of his farm. He interested himself in 
 the music of the Church, and introduced a 
 way of chanting which bears his name, 
 and is still in general use. He added a 
 prayer to that Communion Service which 
 is called the Mass, and thereby completed 
 it in the form in which it is said to-day. 
 The Latin of that service, as it is used in 
 every Roman Catholic church, is substan- 
 tially as it came from the hands of Greg- 
 ory. 
 
 Nothing, however, that Gregory did 
 was of so much importance to us as his 
 sending of a board of missionaries to con- 
 vert the English. 
 
 The Christian Church had been planted 
 
GREGORY THE GREAT 107 
 
 in Britain so early in history that nobody 
 knows when or by whom: probably by 
 Christian soldiers in Roman legions. 
 There it was, however, in that land which 
 the Romans had conquered, and to which 
 many wealthy Romans loved to go in the 
 cool summer. Constantine had started 
 from York on that eventful march which 
 made him the first Christian emperor. 
 And when, presently, he called a confer-*^ 
 ence of bishops to consider the case of the 
 Donatists, three of the bishops came from 
 Britain. 
 
 Then the Angles and Saxons invaded 
 Britain. The Roman legions had been 
 called home to defend Rome, and the 
 Britons, who had depended on their arms, 
 were without defense. They were driven 
 out of their fair country, from their pleas- 
 ant cities and their churches, into the 
 mountains of Wales. The pagan invaders 
 changed Britain into England. Between 
 the Christian Britons and their Christian 
 
io8 GREGORY THE GREAT 
 
 brethren on the continent of Europe was 
 thrust this wedge of English heathenism. 
 Gregory remembered the Angle slaves. 
 Out of one of the Benedictine monasteries 
 which he had built, he chose a man named 
 Augustine, and sent him with a band of 
 forty monks to England. The mission- 
 aries to the English pagans went up 
 through France; and, whenever they 
 stopped to spend the night, such terrifying 
 tales were told them of the fierce ways of 
 the barbarous English, that they stopped, 
 and sent a letter back to Gregory, asking 
 to be relieved from such a dangerous mis- 
 sion. But Gregory urged them on. 
 V Thus in 597, — a date to be remembered, 
 — they crossed the channel, and set their 
 feet upon the soil of heathen England. But 
 there were friends to meet them. Bertha, 
 the Queen of Ethelbert of Kent, was al- 
 ready a Christian, being a daughter of the 
 King of the Franks, who had his throne at 
 Paris. She had kept her religion in the 
 
GREGORY THE GREAT 109 
 
 midst of the paganism of the new coun- 
 try, and had caused to be rebuilt, near 
 Canterbury, where she lived, a little ruined 
 church. This she dedicated to the brave 
 memory of St. Martin, who had contended 
 so faithfully with the pagans of his neigh- 
 borhood, and out to little St. Martin's 
 she was wont to go to say her Christian 
 prayers. 
 
 Ethelbert, accordingly, knew who the 
 Christians were; though he knew so little 
 about them that he preferred to meet the 
 missionaries in the open air, lest they 
 should bewitch him with some spell. He 
 sat, therefore, under a tree, and watched 
 Augustine and his men as they approached, 
 the forty of them in procession, carrying a 
 banner, and singing a litany to the music 
 which they had been taught by Gregory. 
 The king listened gravely as Augustine 
 preached the religion of Christ, and prom- 
 ised to consider the matter carefully. 
 Meanwhile the missionaries were given 
 
no GREGORY THE GREAT 
 
 freedom to teach, and houses in Canter- 
 bury in which to live, and, pretty soon, 
 St. Martin's church in which to worship 
 God. 
 
 The fact that the missionaries came 
 from Rome, that distant and renowned 
 capital of the world, emphasized their 
 message; and it was further confirmed by 
 their holy living. Thus one heathen 
 Englishman after another was converted; 
 presently, the king himself; and after the 
 king, following his good example, ten 
 thousand of his subjects in one day. 
 
 Then Augustine was made a bishop, — 
 the first bishop of the English. Ethelbert 
 gave him his own palace; and a ruined 
 British church beside it became the be- 
 ginning of the Cathedral of Canterbury. 
 The Christian religion was thus intro- 
 duced among our ancestors, the English. 
 
 Gregory sent to Augustine a letter of 
 wise advice. Do not destroy the temples 
 of the English gods, he said; change them 
 
GREGORY THE GREAT in 
 
 into Christian churches. Do not forbid 
 the harmless customs which have been 
 associated with the old religion; consecrate 
 them, like the churches, to Christian uses. 
 Let them revere the saints where they have 
 worshiped idols. Thus, he said, " having 
 some outward joys continued to them, they 
 may more easily accept the true inward 
 joys. For assuredly it is impossible to cut 
 away all things at once from minds hard- 
 ened by evil custom; just as the man who 
 strives to reach the summit of perfection, 
 climbs by steps and paces, not by leaps 
 and bounds." 
 
 It was in accordance with this sensible 
 advice that the missionaries called the fes- 
 tival of Christ's resurrection " Easter," 
 from Eostre, the English goddess of the 
 spring. The Christmas season they called 
 " Yule-tide," from an English god of the 
 winter; and they still brought in the yule 
 log from the woods, and hung the mistle- 
 toe upon the walls, as the ancestors of the 
 
112 GREGORY THE GREAT 
 
 English had done in the long-gone days 
 before ever an Englishman had heard of 
 Christ or had set his foot in England. 
 
 Thus Tuesday kept the old name of 
 Tuesco, the god of war; and Wednesday, 
 of Woden, the father of the gods; and 
 Thursday, of Thor, the god of thunder; 
 and Friday, of Frigg, the goddess of love; 
 by the courtesy of Gregory the Great. 
 
COLUMBA 
 
 From the statue by Gutzon Borglum, Cathedral of 
 St. John the Divine, New York 
 
COLUMBA 
 
 521-597 
 
 When the news spread through the 
 mountains of Wales and along the coasts 
 of Cornwall that Roman Catholics had 
 come to convert the heathen English, the 
 British Christians sent messengers to meet 
 them. They held a conference together 
 under an oak beside the river Severn. 
 
 The Britons looked upon their Roman 
 
 brethren as Robinson Crusoe looked upon 
 
 the English sailors who landed on his 
 
 island. They had been cut off from the 
 
 rest of the civilized world for a hundred 
 
 and fifty years. Much of that time had 
 
 been spent in hard fighting, and most of 
 
 the fighting had ended in defeat. They 
 
 had been driven from their ancient cities 
 
 into the wild hills. Stories were still 
 
 told of the brave battles which their splen- 
 
 113 
 
114 COLUMBA 
 
 did heroes, the Knights of the Round 
 Table, had fought against the invading 
 Angles. But the book in which the stories 
 are collected is called " The Death of 
 Arthur." The knights are vanquished at 
 the end, and the king is killed. 
 
 Two possessions the Britons had brought 
 down through the long tragedy of the war, 
 their language and their religion. 
 
 They still spoke that Celtic speech in 
 which their ancestors had shouted war 
 cries against Julius Caesar, and which their 
 descendants speak to this day in Wales. 
 
 And they still kept the Christian faith, 
 and prayed the Christian prayers. It is 
 true that they had not attempted to con- 
 vert the English, but that was because 
 the fighting had been so fierce, and their 
 sufferings so great. One of them, how- 
 ever, a lad named Patrick, had been cap- 
 tured by Irish pirates in 411, the year 
 after the withdrawal of the Roman legions, 
 and had introduced the Christian religion 
 
COLUMBA 115 
 
 into Ireland. Other missionaries of their 
 race, from Ireland, had introduced it into 
 Scotland. There were many British 
 bishops. In a monastery at Bangor lived 
 as many as two thousand monks, though 
 not one of them had ever heard of Bene- 
 dict or his famous Rule. One Briton, the 
 good heretic Pelagius, had made such a 
 stir, even in Rome, that Augustine of 
 Carthage had heard of it in Africa. 
 
 Thus the Britons who met Augustine of 
 Canterbury represented the Christianity, 
 not only of Wales and Cornwall, but of 
 Ireland and of Scotland. Augustine, how- 
 ever, fresh from Rome, regarded them 
 with that curiosity and superiority with 
 which people from the city sometimes re- 
 gard the inhabitants of the backwoods. 
 He asked them various questions and dis- 
 covered various differences which had 
 naturally arisen in consequence of their 
 long separation from the rest of the 
 Church, The most serious of these differ- 
 
ii6 COLUMBA 
 
 ences was a mistake in the almanac. They 
 had lost count of the date of Easter. 
 Augustine required them to correct these 
 errors. And they went back to consult 
 their brethren in the matter. 
 
 On the whole, there was a disposition to 
 yield these unimportant things and to 
 agree to what the Romans asked. The 
 chief obstacle was the way in which 
 the Romans asked it. Their manner was 
 exceedingly superior and uncivil. As the 
 Britons were on their way to a second con- 
 ference, they asked the counsel of a holy 
 hermit. He said, " Watch Augustine. If, 
 when you approach, he rises to meet you, 
 like a gentleman, do as he requests. If he 
 remains seated, beware how you submit to 
 his authority." So they came to the place 
 of meeting, and there sat Augustine, and 
 he continued sitting. Then they returned 
 to their own place, and left the Romans 
 to carry on their mission by themselves. 
 And Augustine, having his residence at 
 
COLUMBA 117 
 
 Canterbury, went forward with the con- 
 version of Kent; and presently Paulinus, 
 taking up his residence at York, began the 
 conversion of Northumbria. 
 
 Now the same year in which Augustine 
 came to Kent saw the end of the long and 
 useful life of Columba. He was the pio- 
 neer of the missions in the North, as 
 Augustine and Paulinus were the pioneers 
 of the missions in the South. 
 
 The stories of the early life of Columba 
 show that he was very fond of praying, of 
 reading, and of fighting. 
 
 His Irish name was Colum of the Kil; 
 Kil meaning cell, or church. Ireland was 
 already full of churches, and Colum was 
 famous, all the country round, for the 
 frequency and enthusiasm with which he 
 visited them. 
 
 The first adventure which is remem- 
 bered of him was about a book. Of 
 course, in those days, whoever wanted a 
 book must either buy, or borrow, or copy 
 
ii8 COLUMBA 
 
 one. And in Ireland they were very expert 
 in the writing which preceded printing, 
 with illuminated initials and a peculiarly 
 intricate interlacing of lines to decorate 
 the pages. So Colum of the Kil copied 
 a gospel book which was the property of 
 his neighbor Finnian, sitting up nights 
 to do it after his day's work. But when 
 the copy was completed Finnian claimed 
 it as his own. Finnian said that " it was 
 to himself belonged the Son-book which 
 was written from his book." They re- 
 ferred the matter to King Dermot, and he 
 decided against Columba, saying, "To 
 every book belongs its Son-book, as to 
 every cow belongs its calf." 
 
 According to one account, it was this 
 unfair decision which led to the great fight 
 between Columba and the king, but an- 
 other story refers this battle to the Feast 
 of Tara. The king lived at Tara, and 
 there he made a feast, and minstrels sang 
 to the music of their harps, and there was 
 
COLUMBA 119 
 
 much eating and more drinking, and by- 
 and-by the guests fell so merrily to fight- 
 ing that one of them was killed. The 
 chief whose sword had fallen so heavily 
 on his neighbor's head fled from the venge- 
 ance of King Dermot to the protection 
 of Columba, who was already famous as 
 both a saint and a hero. But even there 
 the avenging king laid hands upon him, 
 and had his head. Then it was Columba's 
 turn for vengeance. He gathered together 
 all his kinsfolk, the clan of the northern 
 Neills, and they attacked the king. They 
 fought and Columba prayed. It was like 
 the cursing of Tara, when all the clergy 
 helped the chiefs who besieged the king 
 in his hall ; they rang their bells, and 
 chanted psalms, and " fasted on him." 
 And he lost the battle. 
 
 Out of this wild Ireland, thus partly 
 Christian but partly savage, Columba took 
 his journey after these bloody doings, being 
 expelled, some say, for his share in them. 
 
I20 COLUMBA 
 
 He set out in a little wicker boat, with a 
 few companions, and they sailed and 
 sailed. Once they were about to land 
 upon an island, but when they looked back 
 there was still a glimpse of Ireland on the 
 far horizon, and they pushed forward. 
 Thus they came at last to the island of 
 lona. 
 
 lona is off the west coast of Scotland, 
 south of Staffa which people visit to see 
 the curious stone columns of Fingal's cave. 
 It is a little island, not much more than 
 three miles wide at its greatest width. 
 There are ruins of an old cathedral, but 
 not so old as the days of St. Columba; 
 and there are stone crosses carved with the 
 same complicated interlacing of lines which 
 appears in the ancient Irish books. Only 
 two things remain to recall the presence 
 of the saint: one is the Gaelic language, 
 akin to the Welsh of the old Britons, the 
 other is the island itself, and particularly 
 a little bay in the south whose beach is 
 
COLUMBA 121 
 
 covered with shining pebbles, which the 
 sun and the sea make to look like precious 
 stones. There the little band of exiles 
 landed. 
 
 They built upon the island some rude 
 shelter for themselves, and a place in 
 which to worship God. Then they set 
 out upon a series of adventurous voyages 
 to the mainland. The north of Scotland 
 was inhabited by the Picts. Columba con- 
 verted their king and the people followed 
 his example. The south of Scotland was 
 inhabited by the Scots. They had a new 
 king, whom Columba blessed and crowned. 
 The king's rude palace was at Scone, and 
 some say that the king sat to be crowned 
 upon the rough stone which the English, 
 when they conquered Scotland, brought to 
 London. Anyhow, there is the Stone of 
 Scone in the coronation chair of England, 
 to recall the fact that the first Christian 
 king crowned in Great Britain was 
 crowned by St. Columba. 
 
122 COLUMBA 
 
 lona was the training place of all the 
 missionaries who went on their wild ad- 
 venturous journeys in the North. By-and- 
 by, men from lona founded a mission 
 station on another little island off the east 
 coast of England, and called it Lindis- 
 farne, the Holy Island. 
 
 There is a glimpse of the labors of 
 Columba in the story of another mission, 
 where a Christian preacher brought the 
 gospel to the Northumbrians, The king 
 called a conference of his great men, and 
 they all listened. And one said, " I have 
 been faithful to the religion of our fathers 
 and it has profited me nothing. The old 
 gods have made me neither rich nor happy. 
 I am willing to make trial of these new 
 ones." And another said, " Our life is 
 like the flight of a bird through our lighted 
 hall. In comes the bird out of the dark, 
 flies about a little while in the smoke and 
 light of our fires and torches, and then 
 goes out into the dark. Thus we come 
 
COLUMBA 123 
 
 and go. If these strangers can tell us any- 
 thing about these mysteries of birth and 
 death, let us attend to their teaching." 
 Thus converts were made. The tragedy 
 and the mystery of life impelled men to 
 seek a better explanation of the world than 
 their own religion gave. 
 
 The heart of all this journeying and 
 preaching was Columba. He was a great 
 broad-chested, stout-armed person; "not 
 a gentle hero," an old record says. He 
 loved to drive his little boat into the mid- 
 dle of the fiercest storms. His voice was 
 like the bellow of a bull of Bashan. He 
 slept on the bare ground, and was con- 
 tented with rough fare. He carried his 
 corn on his own back to the mill, ground 
 it, and brought it home again. He 
 prayed and studied; and fought, too, 
 when there was occasion. His people 
 loved him. 
 
 One day, in his old age, he climbed a 
 little hill and looked out over the humble 
 
124 COLUMBA 
 
 buildings of his monastery, and the fields 
 in which his monks were working, and 
 blessed them all. As he came down and 
 sat to rest himself beside the barn, the old 
 white work-horse came and laid his head 
 against his breast. He had been copying 
 the Psalms, as at the beginning he had 
 copied Finnian's Gospel. " They who 
 seek the Lord," he wrote, " shall want no 
 manner of thing that is good." It seemed 
 a fitting place to stop. He laid down his 
 pen. Late that night he went alone into 
 the little church, and in the morning there 
 he was found dead, kneeling before the 
 altar. 
 
 In " Macbeth," when one asks, after the 
 murder of the king, " Where is Duncan's 
 body? " the reply is 
 
 t( 
 
 Carried to Colme-Kill [Columba's 
 
 Island^, 
 The sacred storehouse of his predecessors, 
 And guardian of their bones." 
 
COLUMBA 125 
 
 In the little cemetery beside the church 
 they buried kings, from Ireland, from 
 Scotland, even from Norway, that in the 
 Day of Judgment they might rise up in the 
 good protecting company of St. Columba. 
 
CHARLEMAGNE 
 
 742-814 
 
 The story of the Knights of Arthur 
 ends in defeat. 
 
 The king dreamed a strange and dread- 
 ful dream. It seemed to him that he was 
 sitting in a chair, dressed in the richest 
 cloth-of-gold that ever was made; and 
 under him was " a hideous deep black 
 water, and therein were all manner of 
 serpents, and worms and wild beasts, foul 
 and terrible," and suddenly the chair 
 turned upside down, and he fell among 
 the serpents, and '' every beast took him 
 by a limb." It is a picture of the fall 
 of the Britons into the cruel power of 
 their enemies the Angles. 
 
 The story of the Knights of Charle- 
 magne is also a story of defeat. 
 
 The king has been fighting with the 
 
 126 
 
CHARLEMAGNE 
 
CHARLEMAGNE 127 
 
 Saracens. Out of Arabia have come those 
 wild soldiers of Mohammed to invade 
 Europe. They are threatening both the 
 religion and the civilization of the West. 
 They have destroyed the Eastern empire, 
 and are now proceeding to take the West- 
 ern empire out of the hands of its bar- 
 barian conquerors. Their purpose is to 
 make Arabia a world-power, such as 
 Assyria and Chaldea, and Greece and 
 Rome had been. They intend to annex 
 Europe to Arabia, and to make Rome, as 
 they had already made Jerusalem, subject 
 to Mecca. The situation is like that in 
 the days when Xerxes came with his Per- 
 sians to the conquest of Greece, and was 
 met by Leonidas at the Pass of Ther- 
 mopolae. 
 
 Thus the Saracens are met by Roland 
 and Oliver at the Pass of Roncesvalles. 
 And, as in the old time, there is a traitor. 
 Ganelon, the false knight, shows a way by 
 which the men who fight under the Cres- 
 
128 CHARLEMAGNE 
 
 cent may have the advantage of the men 
 who fight under the Cross. Charlemagne 
 and the greater part of the army have 
 gone on ahead, but Roland will not sound 
 his horn to call them back. He will not 
 ask for help. " Please God and His 
 Holy Angels," he cries, " France shall not 
 be so shamed through me; better death 
 than such dishonor. The harder we strike, 
 the better the emperor will love us." So 
 they strike, till all the sides of the moun- 
 tains are filled with the bodies of the 
 slain. At last, the leaders themselves fall. 
 There is this difiference, however, be- 
 tween the Death of Arthur and the Song 
 of Roland: the defeat of Arthur is the 
 end of the story, but the defeat of Ro- 
 land is only an incident. Back comes 
 Charlemagne and puts the Saracens to 
 flight. It illustrates the contrast between 
 the Britons, fighting their losing battles 
 against the Angles, and their kinsmen 
 the Franks, fighting their winning battles 
 
CHARLEMAGNE 129 
 
 against the Angles' kinsmen, the Saxons. 
 
 This was mainly due to the might of 
 Charlemagne. 
 
 The Franks, over whom Charlemagne 
 was king, were Christians. But their 
 Saxon neighbors, to the north and east, in 
 Germany, were heathen. Christian mis- 
 sionaries had, indeed, been busy, follow- 
 ing the brave examples of Patrick and 
 Columba and Augustine, and tribe after 
 tribe had yielded to the new religion. 
 Boniface, for example, had come down 
 from England, from the church which 
 had been formed at last by the union of 
 the missions of Columba with the mis- 
 sions of Augustine, and had won the title 
 of " Apostle of Germany." But he had 
 died a martyr, the pagan Frisians attack- 
 ing him in his tent and putting him to 
 death. The Saxons were still unconverted. 
 
 High among the Saxon mountains, in 
 the forests of the Teutoberg, stood a tall, 
 mysterious column called the Irminsul. 
 
I30 CHARLEMAGNE 
 
 It was the supreme idol of the Saxons. 
 It looked down over the valleys into 
 which, in the days of Augustine, the Sax- 
 ons had enticed the legions under Varus, 
 and had destroyed them. The Saxons 
 prayed to it before they went to war. It 
 represented the great god of Saxon Good 
 Luck. 
 
 Of course, the Franks and Saxons 
 fought continually. That was then the 
 fashion among neighbors. The Saxons 
 made their forays into the Prankish lands, 
 and stole cattle and burned villages, and 
 the Franks returned their visits. But 
 more and more, as the Franks increased 
 in civilization and in their knowledge of 
 religion, the war betvv^een these tribes 
 became a war between the reign of law 
 and the reign of disorder, between learn- 
 ing and ignorance, and between Chris- 
 tianity and paganism. It was a new mis- 
 sion. Boniface had gone with the gospel, 
 helped and defended only by his good 
 
CHARLEMAGNE 131 
 
 life; and when at last the savage Frisians 
 came howling about his tent, he would not 
 permit any of his companions to strike a 
 blow against them. Charlemagne came 
 with the sword. 
 
 The first thing which he did was to 
 destroy the Irminsul. Down came the 
 sacred column crashing to the ground, and 
 it seemed, for the moment, as if the reli- 
 gion and the might of the Saxons had 
 fallen with it. But fighting the Saxons 
 was like fighting a forest fire. While 
 Charlemagne was putting out the flames 
 of war in one place, they were breaking 
 out more furiously than ever somewhere 
 else. Every time he won a battle, he 
 gathered his prisoners together, the van- 
 quished chiefs and the subdued people, 
 and marched them down into the nearest 
 river and had them all baptized, every 
 man of them. It was a queer kind of 
 mission; and these converts often went 
 back to paganism again when Charle- 
 
132 CHARLEMAGNE 
 
 magne's back was turned, as might have 
 been expected. But there were priests and 
 bishops who went in among the people, 
 dismayed as they were by the failure of 
 their old gods to protect them, and taught 
 them more efifectively the truths to which 
 the sword had so forcibly called their at- 
 tention. 
 
 Thus Charlemagne became the master 
 of all the tribes of Europe. All those 
 various companies of barbarians who had 
 broken down the old empire and settled 
 among the ruins, and the wilder tribes 
 who still lived, like the Saxons, in their 
 native forests, were forced by his strong 
 hand into obedience to a single govern- 
 ment. He had the mind and the ambition 
 of Alexander and of Caesar, and belongs 
 with them among the masters of the 
 world. 
 
 So far did the great sound of his name 
 go, that one time there came to him an 
 embassy from the distant East, from Bag- 
 
CHARLEMAGNE 133 
 
 dad, sent by Harun-al-Raschid, out of 
 the Arabian Nights; to see his court, as 
 the Queen of Sheba came to see the glory 
 of Solomon. 
 
 The eyes of the ambassadors of Harun- 
 al-Raschid were probably attracted most 
 by the armor of the knights and the ranks 
 of the soldiers, and the stories which they 
 told on their return were mostly about 
 Roland and Oliver. But the most signifi- 
 cant persons at the court of Charlemagne 
 were schoolmasters and clergymen. 
 
 There had come down from England, 
 from a school at York, a wise man named 
 Alcuin. And when his errand was ac- 
 complished, and he was about to return, 
 Charlemagne detained him. " Stay here," 
 he said, " and teach us." 
 
 They needed him, that was plain 
 enough. The great men were soldiers, 
 who knew much about war but nothing 
 about books. They were aware in a dim 
 way that a race had preceded them in 
 
134 CHARLEMAGNE 
 
 those lands who, though they had finally 
 been conquered, had excelled their con- 
 querors in art and architecture, in science 
 and letters, in law and order. They had 
 about them continual reminders of that 
 old civilization, in the remains of Latin 
 roads and buildings. They felt them- 
 selves in the neighborhood of a buried 
 treasure to which the clue was lost. In 
 Alcuin, they found the man who had the 
 clue. He knew the old history, and was 
 acquainted with the old art, and was able 
 to read the old books. They became 
 his pupils, beginning with the emperor 
 himself. And some of those whom Alcuin 
 taught established other schools, which 
 grew in years to great universities. 
 
 These schoolmasters were clergymen. 
 Many of them were monks of the Order 
 of St. Benedict, and all looked to the Italy 
 of Benedict and Gregory, as the Jews in 
 the old time in exile when they said their 
 prayers looked toward Jerusalem. There 
 
CHARLEMAGNE 135 
 
 dwelt the bishop who was the head of 
 all things religious as the emperor was 
 the head of all things political. To the 
 clergymen of the court of Charlemagne 
 there were two great powers in the world: 
 the power of the sword, which was held 
 by Charlemagne, and was possessed by 
 him as the master of the new empire of 
 Franks and Saxons and Goths, builded on 
 the ruins of the old; and the power of 
 the spirit, which, as represented by the 
 Church, and by the pope as the ruler of 
 the Church, was bringing among these 
 new masters of the world the civilization 
 and the religion of the past. 
 
 But the pope was beset by enemies: 
 by the Lombards, who had invaded Italy 
 and seized lands there and who, though 
 Christians, were of the Arian kind; by 
 the Greeks, who still had colonies in Italy, 
 and whose allegiance, like that of the 
 pope himself, was to the emperor whose 
 throne was at Constantinople. He was 
 
136 CHARLEMAGNE 
 
 still, in law, the emperor of Rome. Char- 
 lemagne came to the assistance of the 
 pope. 
 
 On Christmas Day, in the year 800, the 
 pope at that time being Leo III., Char- 
 lemagne was in Rome, and attended the 
 service in St. Peter's Church. Suddenly, 
 as he knelt before the altar, the pope 
 placed upon his head a golden crown, and 
 pronounced him emperor of Rome. 
 
 It meant that the new time had finally 
 come. It completed the barbarian con- 
 quest. It announced that the old imperial 
 line was set aside, that the West was in- 
 dependent of the East, and that the true 
 successor of the ancient emperors was 
 Charlemagne the Frank. It was the be- 
 ginning of a new order of things, the 
 Holy Roman Empire. 
 
 In this Holy Roman Empire Charle- 
 magne was supreme. He ruled the 
 Church as he ruled the State. He built 
 churches and monasteries; he sent mis- 
 
CHARLEMAGNE 137 
 
 sionaries and appointed bishops. He ful- 
 filled the proud words of Constantius, who 
 said, " What I wish is a canon of the 
 Church, and what I believe is an article 
 of the creed." But happily, he was as 
 wise as he was strong, a good man, hon- 
 estly intent on the welfare of his people. 
 So he died, full of years and honors, a true 
 successor, not in name only, but in char- 
 acter and power, of the great emperors, 
 and, like them, not emperor only, but 
 Pontifex Maximus also. 
 
 Thus was played the first act in that 
 great contention between the emperor and 
 the pope for mastery, which is the tragedy 
 of the Middle Ages. The emperor was 
 supreme. The hero of the next act was 
 Hildebrand. 
 
HILDEBRAND 
 
 1020-1085 
 
 A NEW pope was on his way to Rome. 
 He had been duly appointed by the em- 
 peror, according to the custom; and in 
 his robes of office, with a splendid retinue 
 about him, he was taking his great 
 journey. But on the road he was met 
 by a young monk. The monk said, 
 " Father, you are not the pope of Rome. 
 You have been appointed by the emperor, 
 but the pope must be elected by the 
 Church." 
 
 Thereupon the new pope put ofif his 
 robes of office, dismissed his retinue of 
 attendant knights and bishops, and en- 
 tered Rome dressed in the gown of a pil- 
 grim, with bare feet. There he was 
 greeted with enthusiasm by the clergy and 
 
 the people and they elected him to be 
 
 138 
 
HILDEBRAND 139 
 
 their pope, according to the ancient man- 
 ner. 
 
 The monk who gave the pope this good 
 advice was Hildebrand. 
 
 Hildebrand's father was a carpenter, 
 but he had an uncle who was a Roman 
 abbot. With his uncle he studied, and 
 when one of his teachers in the abbey was 
 made pope, Hildebrand became his chap- 
 lain. But the popes of that period were 
 short-lived. Some of them died of sick- 
 ness, some of them died of poison, some 
 of them displeased the emperor and were 
 removed by him. Hildebrand's teacher 
 was removed by the emperor. Then the 
 chaplain retired to the great monastery 
 at Cluny. And there he was when he 
 advised the new pope to wait till he was 
 elected by the Church. 
 
 It is plain that Hildebrand, though he 
 was living in a cloister, was attentive to 
 the affairs of the great world. Many 
 good men at that time, finding the world 
 
I40 HILDEBRAND 
 
 bad, turned their backs upon it, and tried 
 to forget it, except when they said their 
 prayers. Hildebrand determined to 
 change it. Great bishops came to Cluny 
 as they passed that way, and great nobles 
 with them. And they all looked pretty 
 much alike. The bishops were rich and 
 powerful, with vast estates, fond of hunt- 
 ing, fond of eating and drinking, and 
 neglectful of their duties. They were 
 appointed to their places by kings and 
 princes, and spent much of their time in 
 courts and palaces, and the clergy under 
 them, having such examples set for them 
 to follow, and nobody to keep them in 
 order, fell into temptation. They cared 
 for money and the comforts of life, rather 
 than for religion. 
 
 Hildebrand saw that the situation 
 needed a strong hand. 
 
 When the new pope went to Rome in 
 pilgrim's dress, Hildebrand went with 
 him. He became his chief adviser. He 
 
HILDEBRAND 141 
 
 advised him to assert himself. He urged 
 him to gather conferences of bishops for 
 the reformation of abuses, and to do it 
 without asking the permission of princes. 
 The pope died, and the Roman people 
 desired that Hildebrand should succeed 
 him. He preferred to be the power be- 
 hind the pope. He secured the appoint- 
 ment of Victor; and after Victor, of 
 Stephen; and after Stephen, of Nicholas; 
 and after Nicholas, of Alexander. Thus 
 for twenty-five years, he was the real 
 pope. 
 
 Finally, after the death of Alexander, 
 the whole city insisted that he should be 
 pope, not only in power, but in name. 
 They demanded Hildebrand, as the people 
 in the old days had demanded Cyprian, 
 and Ambrose, and Gregory. It was the 
 custom for one who was elected pope to 
 take a new name in honor of his new 
 office. Hildebrand remembered his old 
 schoolmaster, Gregory VI., whom he had 
 
142 HILDEBRAND 
 
 served as chaplain, and became Gregory 
 VII. 
 
 Now, after long preparation, he was 
 ready to meet the evils of the world with 
 his own strong hand. 
 
 His plan was to make the Church the 
 ruler of the world. He took up that 
 great fight against the court which 
 Chrysostom, in his time, had lost, and 
 Ambrose had won. 
 
 First, he made the clergy into soldiers 
 of a spiritual army. He separated them 
 from the world. This he did by forbid- 
 ding them to marry. They were living 
 comfortably with their wives and chil- 
 dren, having their interests partly in the 
 work of the Church, and partly in their 
 domestic cares and pleasures. They wxre 
 not only priests, but husbands and fathers 
 and citizens. Hildebrand determined 
 that they should be interested in nothing 
 but the Church. He broke up their 
 families, and placed them, like soldiers, 
 
HILDEBRAND 143 
 
 under the command of their superiors. 
 This he was able to do partly because so 
 many of the careless clergy were unpopu- 
 lar among their people, and partly be- 
 cause the monks had taught by word and 
 by example that the unmarried life is most 
 pleasing to God. The pope encouraged 
 parishes to drive the married ministers out 
 of the churches. 
 
 Then, having made the priests into a 
 church army, he separated their offices 
 from the influences of the world by for- 
 bidding the investiture of bishops. In- 
 vestiture w^as the act by which a prince 
 permitted a bishop to take possession of 
 the lands and property which belonged 
 to his diocese. The theory was that the 
 prince owned all the land, and that when 
 the holder of an estate died it came back 
 into the prince's treasury until he was 
 pleased to give it away again. Thus the 
 new bishop came humbly to the prince or 
 the king and received certain symbols of 
 
144 HILDEBRAND 
 
 his right to own the church's property 
 under this permission. Indeed, the sym- 
 bols, — being the ring which denoted the 
 bishop's marriage to the Church, and the 
 pastoral staff which denoted his rule as a 
 shepherd over his people, — appeared to 
 carry with them, not only the right to hold 
 the property of the Church, but the right 
 to exercise the sacred office itself. That, 
 in fact, was the effect of it. It made it 
 possible for kings and princes to appoint 
 bishops, and for rich laymen to appoint 
 ministers of parishes, as they pleased. 
 Hildebrand forbade investiture. He 
 called a council in Rome which decreed 
 that any clergyman who accepted an in- 
 vestiture should be put out of his office, 
 and that any layman who gave an in- 
 vestiture should be put out of the 
 Church. 
 
 This forbidding of investiture affected 
 every bishop, as the forbidding of mar- 
 riage had affected every priest. The next 
 
HILDEBRAND 145 
 
 step was to increase the power of the pope. 
 The priests having been made soldiers, 
 and the bishops generals, the pope must 
 be commander-in-chief. The pope, said 
 Hildebrand, is the universal bishop. He 
 may depose other bishops, if he will. He 
 alone may make laws for the Church. He 
 is to crown all kings and emperors, and, if 
 they misbehave, depose them. He may 
 absolve subjects from their allegiance. 
 He is the supreme head of all govern- 
 ment, the king of kings and lord of lords, 
 the ruler of the world. 
 
 Some of these claims had been made 
 before. Gradually, through the confused 
 centuries when the old empire was being 
 broken down and the new empire was 
 being builded on its ruins, the position of 
 the bishop of the greatest city of the world 
 had become more and more important. 
 Hildebrand took these theories and put 
 them into action. The one man, by the 
 might of his strong will and the power 
 
146 HILDEBFL\XD 
 
 of his blameless life, confronted the whole 
 amazed and angry societ}' about him, de- 
 clared with a definiteness which could not 
 be mistaken that he was the master of 
 all kingdoms and all churches, and pro- 
 ceeded to act upon the declaration. 
 
 Thus Hildebrand came into collision 
 with the emperor. 
 
 Henry IV., as emperor of Germany, 
 was the greatest sovereign in Europe. He 
 was the successor, under the new condi- 
 tions, of the old emperors of Rome. He 
 was now t\vent}'-five years of age. a care- 
 less prince, following his own pleasures 
 and misgoverning the empire. Already, 
 some of his subjects had appealed to the 
 pope to make him amend his ways. The 
 forbidding of investiture was met by him 
 as the cutting oft of patronage is met by 
 professional politicians. It was an advan- 
 tage to him to give away the great places 
 of the Church, and he proposed to con- 
 tinue to do it. He attacked the pope. 
 
HILDEBRAND 147 
 
 He got his bishops together and they de- 
 clared Hildebrand deposed. The emperor 
 called him a false monk. He threatened 
 to put another bishop in his place. 
 
 Thus they cursed each other, the em- 
 peror and the pope; but the pope's curses 
 were the more effective. The unpopu- 
 larity of the emperor weakened his posi- 
 tion. When the pope declared him ex- 
 communicated and deposed, and thus made 
 rebellion against him a religious duty, the 
 princes of the empire found the oppor- 
 tunity which they desired. They gladly 
 accepted the services of this new ally in 
 their contention against the emperor whose 
 follies had thrown the empire into dis- 
 order. Finding, accordingly, that both 
 the princes and the clergy, and with them 
 the people, were against him, Henry sub- 
 mitted to the pope's demands. 
 
 " You must come to me," the pope 
 said, " and ask pardon for your offenses, 
 and promise to do better. Otherwise, you 
 
148 HILDEBRAND 
 
 shall be emperor no longer." And the 
 emperor came. 
 
 It was in the midst of winter, and the 
 pope was at Canossa, a castle in the heights 
 of the Apennines. There the emperor 
 came, with his wife and child and a 
 few attendants, bringing his crown in 
 his hand. For three days, Hildebrand 
 kept him waiting outside his door, in the 
 cold court of the castle, barefooted and 
 in the woolen shirt of a penitent. Then 
 he admitted him; and the great king, the 
 ruler of the empire, the successor of Char- 
 lemagne, bareheaded and barefooted, pros- 
 trated himself with tears before the pope. 
 
 This was the second act in the long 
 tragedy of the Middle Ages. The pope 
 was now supreme over the emperor. 
 
 Even thus, Henry gained only a half 
 pardon. He was told that he must be put 
 on trial, with Hildebrand for judge; and 
 if he was acquitted he must promise to 
 be faithfully obedient to the pope. 
 
HILDEBRAND 149 
 
 The effect of all this on Henry was most 
 unexpected. The second act of the trag- 
 edy seemed ended, when suddenly the sit- 
 uation was reversed. Henry went away 
 from that humiliation a new man. As he 
 descended the long mountain in the bitter 
 cold, his heart was hot within him. He 
 put the follies of his youth behind him. 
 For the first time, he was a king in earnest. 
 He gathered troops about him. He defied 
 the nobles who were in rebellion. He 
 invaded Italy. He besieged Rome. He 
 took the city. Hildebrand held only the 
 Castle of St. Angelo against him, waiting 
 for the promised assistance of the Nor- 
 mans. But when the Normans came, and 
 Henry retreated, the pope was like the 
 man who prayed for rain and was an- 
 swered with a flood. The victors, the 
 pope's allies, sacked the city; and, when 
 the citizens resisted, tried to burn it to 
 the ground. 
 
 In bitter grief, and amidst the indigna- 
 
150 HILDEBRAND 
 
 tion of the Romans, the liberated pope 
 retired from the sight of his ruined city 
 to Salerno. And there, in the midst of a 
 mighty tempest, the thunder rolling and 
 the winds howling about him, he died. 
 The great mastery, whereby the pope had 
 hoped to rule the world, punishing the 
 sins of princes, was lost almost before it 
 was won. " I have loved righteousness," 
 he said, '' and hated iniquity; therefore I 
 die in exile." 
 
ANSELM 
 
 From an old print 
 
ANSELM 
 
 1033-1 109 
 
 A GREAT fire broke out in the town, as 
 the funeral procession of William the 
 Conqueror entered the gates. Everybody, 
 except the attending clergy, ran to the fire. 
 
 When, at last, order was restored, and 
 the service was begun, and the bishop who 
 preached ended his sermon with a prayer 
 for the soul of William, and a hope that 
 if any present had been offended by him 
 they would now forgive him, a man arose 
 and forbade his burial. " The ground on 
 which you stand," he said, " was the place 
 of my father's house, which this man, for 
 whom you make request, took away from 
 my father by violence, and, utterly refus- 
 ing justice, he, by his strong hand, 
 founded this church. This land, there- 
 fore, I claim, and openly demand it back; 
 
 151 
 
152 ANSELM 
 
 and in the behalf of God I forbid the body 
 of the spoiler to be covered with sod 
 that is mine, and to be buried in my 
 inheritance." So they stopped the service, 
 examined the claim and found it just, and 
 paid the man his due. 
 
 Even then, at the moment of entomb- 
 ment, the body was found to be too big 
 for the coffin, and was burst asunder as 
 they forced it in. 
 
 William the Norman, who avenged 
 upon the English their conquest of the 
 Britons, had ruled England as Charle- 
 magne ruled Europe. He had been su- 
 preme. Of Church and State alike, he 
 had been the head. At his will, he had 
 made and unmade nobles; and at his 
 will, he had appointed and dismissed 
 bishops. The great pope Hildebrand, who 
 humbled the emperor at Canossa, and who 
 blessed the banner under which William 
 went to the conquest of England, sent 
 a messenger to the conqueror to re- 
 
ANSELM 153 
 
 ceive his promise of obedience, and 
 to collect money which was due to 
 the Church in Rome. William con- 
 fessed that the money had been carelessly 
 collected, and said he would do better. 
 But as to the obedience, he refused to give 
 it. " Fealty," he said, meaning the serv- 
 ice due to a superior, " fealty I neither 
 have been willing to do, nor will I do it 
 now, for I never promised it; and I find 
 not that my predecessors did it to yours." 
 
 It was a clear statement of one side of 
 that tremendous contention between the 
 Church and the court in which Charle- 
 magne and Hildebrand played their great 
 parts. There was a man, however, at 
 William's dreadful funeral who was to 
 give an equally clear statement of the 
 other side of the contention, asserting, like 
 Hildebrand, the supremacy of the Church. 
 This man was Anselm. 
 
 Anselm was a native of Italy. He had 
 wandered up into the north of France, and 
 
154 ANSELM 
 
 in a day vv^hen most men of an earnest or 
 adventurous spirit were either monks or 
 soldiers, he had become a monk. The 
 monastery of Bee had been to him a place, 
 not only of religion, but of education. 
 The prior, Lanfranc, was the greatest 
 schoolmaster of his time. Anselm was 
 his greatest pupil. In the wholesome 
 quiet of the place, beside the stream which 
 ran through the wild woods, Anselm began 
 to think. 
 
 Thinking was at that time a disused 
 art. Of course, there was a plenty of the 
 kind of thought which goes along with 
 the planning of campaigns and with the 
 administration of affairs. No man can 
 rule as Charlemagne and William did 
 without being a master of the art of 
 making decisions. But of the persistent 
 study which pursues truth for the joy of 
 pursuing it, and is intent on discovering 
 the meaning of things, there had been little 
 since Augustine. The main work of 
 
ANSELM 155 
 
 scholars, in that difficult time when the 
 old empire was going to pieces and the 
 new empire was being built upon its 
 ruins, was to keep the ancient learning 
 safe. Men were busy copying the classic 
 and Christian books of the old time, and 
 teaching them to a new generation. The 
 new generation, in its turn, having been 
 brought out of ignorance by wise men 
 whose knowledge in those times seemed 
 almost supernatural, had grown up in the 
 habit of intellectual submission. The 
 thing to do vv^as to take what the ancients 
 had said, and accept it respectfully. It 
 was true because they said it. 
 
 Anselm was profoundly respectful to 
 the ancients, but his mind was not satis- 
 fied. He was not content to believe in 
 God because Augustine had believed, or 
 even because St. Paul and St. John had 
 believed. In the quiet of the peaceful 
 abbey, he set himself to establish the 
 truth of the existence of God on the basis 
 
156 ANSELM 
 
 of human reason. He took his arguments 
 from the world outside, and from the 
 world within. In the universal idea of 
 God he found a reason for belief in 
 God. The matter is of importance be- 
 cause it was the beginning of philosophy 
 and science in the new era. 
 
 Then William took Lanfranc to be 
 archbishop of Canterbury, and his coun- 
 selor and right hand in his new domains. 
 Anselm became at first prior, and then 
 abbot of Bee. He was as original in the 
 spirit of his discipline as in the manner 
 of his thought. Almost all of the schools 
 of the time were in the monasteries, and 
 in almost every monastery the boys were 
 taught with the book before them and the 
 birch behind them. They were beaten, 
 as a matter of course. At the universities, 
 when young men came up for the degree 
 of bachelor of arts, they were examined, 
 not only as to the progress of their studies, 
 but as to their ability to ply the rod. 
 
ANSELM 157 
 
 Nobody was qualified to teach who did 
 not know how to punish. But to an abbot 
 who complained of the dullness of his 
 pupils Anselm replied that they were made 
 dull by the method of their education. 
 " Day and night," said the discouraged 
 abbot, " we do not cease beating them, 
 and they only get worse." " It is a way 
 to turn men into beasts," said Anselm. 
 *' It is like taking a tree and tying back 
 all its branches, and then expecting fruit. 
 Be patient, be kind, be sympathetic." 
 
 It was remembered how gentle Anselm 
 was; how he ministered to the sick, to 
 whom food from his hand had a better 
 taste; and how once, in England, a hunted 
 hare sought refuge under his house, and 
 he had the hounds held from hurting it. 
 
 Suddenly, this gentle scholar was taken 
 away from the quiet of his books into the 
 midst of the fierce contentions of public 
 life. He was made archbishop of Can- 
 terbury. 
 
158 ANSELM 
 
 That great place had been vacant for 
 four years. Lanfranc had died. William 
 had died. William Rufus, his successor, 
 had refused to make an appointment. 
 William Rufus had discovered a new way 
 to make money. The Church in England 
 had grown rich. Sometimes out of grati- 
 tude for the blessings of God, sometimes 
 out of interest in religion and desire to 
 strengthen the hands of good men, some- 
 times in the belief that treasure given to 
 the Church on earth would be credited as 
 treasure in heaven, the great bishoprics 
 and the great monasteries had been given 
 splendid gifts of lands and buildings. 
 But the conquests of Charlemagne in 
 Europe and of William in England had 
 established the theory that all the lands 
 and buildings of the country belonged to 
 the sovereign. He had acquired them by 
 driving out their rightful owners, and had 
 given them away as he pleased, and he 
 claimed the right to take them back. 
 
ANSELM 159 
 
 When the new possessor misbehaved so 
 that the king was angry, he was put out 
 as suddenly as he had come in. This 
 idea that the country belonged to the king 
 was extended by William Rufus to in- 
 clude the property of the Church. And 
 it occurred to him that when for the 
 moment there was no bishop or no abbot 
 to receive the rents, he was himself the 
 proper person to receive them. This 
 pleasant proposition he applied whenever 
 a rich place fell vacant. For four years, 
 accordingly, he had refused to appoint an 
 archbishop of Canterbury, in order to take 
 for his own uses the income of that 
 see. 
 
 But William Rufus fell seriously ill. 
 It looked as if he was at the point to 
 die. And he began to think about his 
 sins. They were many in number, for 
 he had been a cruel king like his father, 
 without his father's virtues. He had done 
 all manner of injustice. His prisons were 
 
i6o ANSELM 
 
 full of the victims of his personal displeas- 
 ure. And the stolen archbishopric was still 
 in his possession. Among other prepara- 
 tions for a penitent death, he agreed to 
 give that up. He would appoint an arch- 
 bishop. 
 
 The fame of Anselm was already in 
 England, and he himself was at that mo- 
 ment in the country. It was plain to all 
 good people, and to the king, that he 
 was the man for the place. But Anselm 
 was unwilling, partly from distrust of his 
 own strength, partly from reluctance, to 
 leave his quiet prayers and studies. They 
 forced him to it. They brought him by 
 main strength to the sick room of the king. 
 They took the pastoral staff, the symbol 
 of that investiture against which Hilde- 
 brand had contended, and tried to thrust 
 it into his closed hand. There was no 
 escape. Only by his acceptance could the 
 long injustice and subjection of the 
 Church be ended. 
 
ANSELM i6i 
 
 Thus he became archbishop. And then 
 the king recovered! 
 
 Immediately there arose, between Rufus 
 
 and Ansehn, the inevitable debate of that 
 
 age, the question of mastery. Shall the 
 
 Church obey the king? or shall the king 
 
 obey the Church? It turned upon a 
 
 curious detail. It was the custom for an 
 
 archbishop to add to his appointment by 
 
 the king a confirmation by the Roman 
 
 pope. For this purpose he must go to 
 
 Rome and there receive a small stole of 
 
 white wool, marked with four crosses, 
 
 called a pallium. But when Anselm was 
 
 appointed, there were two popes, each 
 
 claiming to be the true one; and England 
 
 had not yet officially decided between 
 
 them. When, therefore, Anselm came to 
 
 Rufus and asked permission to go to 
 
 Rome to receive the pope's pallium, Rufus 
 
 said, " To which pope will you go? " 
 
 Anselm answered, "To pope Urban." " I 
 
 have not acknowledged Urban," said the 
 
i62 ANSELM 
 
 king, " That is my matter. By my cus- 
 toms, by the customs of my father, no man 
 may acknowledge a pope in England with- 
 out my leave. To challenge my power in 
 this is as much as to deprive me of my 
 crown." 
 
 Thus the fight began. It was a clear 
 question of authority. Is the Church in- 
 dependent of the king, or not? 
 
 On the side of Anselm was the idea of 
 the Church as the representative of right- 
 eousness and law. He felt that to sur- 
 render was to expose religion to all the 
 disorder and violence of a rude age, and to 
 invite again such robbery as had already 
 been committed by the king. To his mind, 
 the supremacy of the pope over the afifairs 
 of England was like what we mean by the 
 supremacy of the Hague Tribunal. It 
 was an exaltation of justice and security 
 over brute strength. 
 
 On the side of Rufus was the idea of the 
 independence of the State. Hard and 
 
ANSELM 163 
 
 rough as he was, it was plain to him that 
 the land must have one sovereign. He 
 could not share either his responsibility or 
 his power with any man, however excel- 
 lent, living in Rome. He could not sub- 
 mit his judgments to any foreign revision. 
 He must be king in his own land. 
 
 Anselm was patient and gentle, but 
 very determined. A council debated the 
 matter, but during the excited debates he 
 was often seen resting his head against a 
 pillar placidly asleep, and when he waked 
 he was still of the same mind. The king 
 contrived to get the pallium sent from 
 Rome by Urban, but Anselm would not 
 take it from the king's hands. It was 
 laid on the altar at Westminster, whence 
 Anselm took it himself. But, after all, 
 he insisted on going to Rome, and went. 
 Rufus at once took possession again of 
 the revenues of Canterbury, and the wise 
 pope, while he received Anselm with great 
 honor, declined to involve himself in the 
 
i64 ANSELM 
 
 dispute. The archbishop retired to a lit- 
 tle hill-town in Italy, and, with great joy, 
 resumed the simple life of study and 
 prayer which his great office had inter- 
 rupted. He wrote a book in which he 
 discussed the problems of theology with 
 even greater boldness and originality than 
 before. 
 
 Then the news came one day that 
 William Rufus had been killed with an 
 arrow in the New Forest, and Anselm 
 returned to his duties. He returned to 
 contend with Henry as he had contended 
 with Rufus, to go again with his appeal 
 to Rome and to be met, as before, with 
 much respect and little aid, but eventually 
 to conquer Henry. The archbishop 
 threatened to excommunicate the king, as 
 the pope in Hildebrand's time had ex- 
 communicated the emperor, and the king 
 yielded. The times were difficult: Robert 
 was making threats from Normandy; the 
 allegiance of many great nobles was very 
 
ANSELM 165 
 
 doubtful; the king did not venture to con- 
 tinue the dispute. He yielded. He 
 agreed to surrender the right of the royal 
 investitures of bishops with the ring and 
 staff. They were no longer " his men," 
 as the phrase ran. They were responsible 
 to their own master, the pope in Rome. 
 The date of this victory of Anselm — 1107 
 — is worth remembering. It was the 
 definite beginning of that papal supremacy 
 in England which continued until it was 
 as definitely abolished, in 1534, by Henry 
 
 vni. 
 
BERNARD 
 1091-1153 
 
 The great abbey of Cluny was rich 
 enough to entertain a king. All the nobles, 
 all the knights and squires, all the men- 
 at-arms of a royal retinue could sleep 
 beneath its hospitable roof, feast in its 
 noble halls, and pray in its lofty chapel. 
 Next to Monte Cassino, which Benedict 
 had founded, it was the most magnificent 
 religious house in Europe. 
 
 There were men, however, to whom 
 
 this splendor of the abbey was its shame. 
 
 They compared the architecture of Monte 
 
 Cassino with that cave in the cliff where 
 
 Benedict had begun to live his holy life. 
 
 They remembered that Cluny had been 
 
 established by devout monks who disliked 
 
 the luxury of the Benedictines, and wished 
 
 to return to the simplicity and severity of 
 
 166 
 
VIRGIN AND ST. BERNARD 
 
 From the painting by Filippino Lippi, Badia, Florence 
 
BERNARD 167 
 
 the ancient rule. They determined to re- 
 peat that good endeavor, and do it better. 
 One of them retreated, accordingly, to a 
 solitary place in a forest whose Latin name 
 was Cistercium, and there entered into the 
 hardships which his soul desired. He 
 lived like a soldier between battles. He 
 kept watch as one who expects an 
 enemy. He maintained a daily drill of 
 the spirit. He contended against the 
 devil. 
 
 But for a long time only a few went 
 with him. When he died, his little mon- 
 astery was the humblest and poorest in 
 France. His successor grew discouraged. 
 It seemed as if the good days of the strict 
 life were passed, and as if there were no 
 longer any who cared to keep the rule 
 which, to the saints, had been a way to 
 heaven, steep but sure. At last, one day, 
 there came in through the forest a com- 
 pany of twenty-five or thirty men. They 
 stopped at the door of Cistercium, and 
 
i68 BERNARD 
 
 asked to be admitted. They desired to be 
 Cistercians. 
 
 The leader of this group was a tall 
 youth, with yellow hair and reddish beard, 
 whose name was Bernard. In the com- 
 pany were his four brothers, and the rest 
 of the number were his relatives and 
 friends. He had persuaded them to leave 
 the world, and to undertake the monastic 
 life in earnest. He had inspired them 
 with his own ideals. To these recruits, 
 Bernard added others. He had the per- 
 suasive eloquence of one who has found 
 the supreme joy of life and wishes to im- 
 part it to his neighbors. Nobody ever 
 lived who took more real delight in going 
 without food and sleep that he might say 
 his prayers and strengthen his soul; and 
 such was the enthusiasm with which he 
 described the charm of the monastic life 
 that mothers hid their sons when Bernard 
 came into their neighborhood, to keep 
 them from hearing his convincing words. 
 
-^ BERNARD 169 
 
 He appealed to the best hopes of high- 
 minded young men, who were looking for 
 a life of romance and adventure. They 
 would find it, he said, in the abbey of 
 Cistercium. 
 
 Pretty soon the little monastery was so 
 crowded that they began to send out 
 colonies. One colony, of which Bernard 
 was the leader, went through the forests a 
 hundred miles to a wild valley which a 
 knight had given to the monks out of his 
 estate. The valley was filled with thick 
 woods, through which ran a little river. 
 The hills came near together at the west, 
 and there they settled, building a rude 
 house. Before them to the east lay the 
 widening valley, eight miles long. Year 
 by year, cutting down trees, draining 
 marshes, clearing land for gardens and 
 pastures, planting vines on the hills on 
 one side and orchards on the hills on the 
 other side, digging a pond for fish, build- 
 ing, not only a chapel, but a mill, they 
 
lyo BERNARD 
 
 civilized the place, and made Clairvaux, — 
 for that was the name of it, — one of the 
 fairest habitations in the world. Nobody 
 left it without longing to return. 
 
 This was not done, however, without 
 great labor and privation. There was a 
 " starving time " at Clairvaux, as there was 
 afterwards at Jamestown and Plymouth. 
 It is a part of the adventures of colonists. 
 Depending wholly on themselves, and be- 
 ginning too late in the season to get food 
 out of the earth, they lived during the 
 first winter on beechnuts. But they liked 
 it. Bernard delighted in it. Even when 
 better times came, and they had good crops 
 and good fruits, he kept to a fare so sim- 
 ple that he was in danger of starvation. 
 He lost all sense of taste, and perceived 
 no difiference between wine and oil. Hap- 
 pily, a good doctor took him in charge, 
 and saved his life, though he was too 
 late to save his health. 
 Bernard was absolutely unselfish. He 
 
BERNARD lyr 
 
 had no plans for personal advantage. He 
 desired nothing, neither money, nor com- 
 fort, nor power, nor reputation. Nobody 
 could rob him. Nobody could influence 
 his thought or act by any threat or prom- 
 ise. In those days when every knight 
 was fighting to increase his possessions, 
 and almost every abbot, — as at Monte 
 Cassino and Cluny, — was trying to widen 
 his lands and erect new buildings and was 
 in search of more money for these pur- 
 poses, the appearance of Bernard was an 
 extraordinary fact. He was the most in- 
 dependent man of his time; and he became 
 the most influential. Selfish as men were, 
 they were still able to appreciate unself- 
 ishness. They saw the value of the opin- 
 ion and judgment of a man whose mind 
 was not affected by any consideration other 
 than the will of God, as he understood it. 
 The result was that during the life- 
 time of Bernard the spiritual capital of 
 Europe was at Clairvaux. Of course, the 
 
172 BERNARD 
 
 monastery grew tremendously. Bernard 
 saw sixty-five colonies go out to found 
 new abbeys. But the glory and the might 
 of it all was the personality of this humble, 
 modest, and self-sacrificing man. That 
 which Hildebrand at Rome, and Anselm 
 at Canterbury, had claimed by right of 
 office, came to Bernard without office 
 and without claim, because of the right- 
 eousness of his life and the purity of his 
 soul. He was called to kings' courts, and 
 was given the final decision of questions 
 on which the peace of Europe depended. 
 But he declined all offers of high position, 
 and went back from these great errands to 
 take his place again at Clairvaux, working 
 in the fields like Columba, feeding the 
 pigs, greasing his own boots. 
 
 One time, a French duke, grandfather 
 of Richard-of-the-Lion-Heart, rich as a 
 great king, vicious in life and uncontrolled 
 in temper, took his part in the continual 
 fight between the Church and the world, 
 
BERNARD 173 
 
 by removing certain good bishops and 
 putting bad ones in their places. To the 
 demand of the pope that he should restore 
 the faithful bishops, he returned a stout 
 defiance. Nobody could do anything 
 with him. Everybody was afraid of him. 
 Bernard came from Clairvaux, weak in 
 body, unattended by any physical force, 
 and met the duke at a church door, and 
 scared him into a fit. The man fell upon 
 the ground and foamed at the mouth. 
 '' Here," said Bernard, " is one of the 
 bishops whom you have deposed. Take 
 him back to his place; and do the same 
 with all the others." And the duke 
 obeyed. 
 
 Another time, Bernard met upon the 
 road a group of men in the midst of whom 
 was one with a halter about his neck, 
 being led to be hanged for robbery and 
 murder. The abbot asked for the man, 
 led him gently to Clairvaux, dressed him 
 in the garments of a monk, placed him in 
 
174 BERNARD 
 
 the quiet company of the brethren, and 
 saved him, body and soul. 
 
 It happened, in Bernard's time, that the 
 whole Church was again divided by the 
 contention of two men, each of whom 
 claimed to be the truly elected pope. The 
 election had been a scene of disorder. 
 Hildebrand had put an end to the old 
 method whereby the pope had been 
 elected at a Roman town-meeting, and had 
 confined the voting to certain rectors of 
 Roman parishes, and bishops of neighbor- 
 ing dioceses, called cardinals. But on this 
 occasion some of the cardinals had elected 
 Anacletus, and others had elected Inno- 
 cent. Each claimed that the other meeting 
 was illegal. The fine theory of Anselm 
 that the pope is the representative of law 
 and order was imperiled by this situation. 
 The two claimants were fighting vigor- 
 ously; Anacletus had driven Innocent out 
 of Italy; the voice of law and order must 
 be sought elsewhere. 
 
BERNARD 175 
 
 The king of France called an assembly 
 of bishops and abbots to consider this great 
 matter. And the king and the assembly 
 summoned Bernard. He was made arbiter 
 of the rival claims. The whole nation, and 
 other nations, awaited his decision. He 
 examined the conditions of the election 
 but, still more carefully, the character of 
 the men. He set aside the legal details, 
 and chose for pope the claimant who 
 seemed to him the better man. He se- 
 lected Innocent. That choice determined 
 France, and further appeals of Bernard 
 determined Germany and England. Inno- 
 cent became pope. 
 
 The new pope visited Clairvaux and 
 was there welcomed, so the old chronicle 
 says, " not by banquets but by virtues." 
 He found a church with bare walls, no 
 pictures, no stained glass; an altar with 
 iron candlesticks and a silver chalice; 
 priests in linen vestments, singing the serv- 
 ice with the utmost simplicity; and the 
 
176 BERNARD 
 
 rule so carefully kept in the refecton* that 
 beans aiid pease were the chief food on 
 the table, there was no wine, and the only 
 fish which appeared was sensed as a spe- 
 cial daint}^ to the pope. Afterwards, 
 when another pope, one of the old pupils 
 of Bernard, came to visit him, they gave 
 him the only fowl which they had in the 
 pantrv. These glimpses show at its best 
 that Cistercian revival of the monastic 
 life which links the name of Bernard with 
 that of Benedict. What it came to, in its 
 turn, appears in '' Ivanhoe " in the per- 
 son of the Cistercian prior Aymer. 
 
 After the settlement of the contention of 
 the rival popes, the next event which 
 stirred the heart of Christendom was the 
 second Crusade. 
 
 Peter the Hermit had preached the first 
 Crusade at the Council of Clermont, when 
 Bernard was but four years old. He 
 must have remembered from his childhood 
 the vast movement of that armv in which 
 
BERNARD 177 
 
 all the strength of Europe seemed to be 
 enlisted; and the stories of his youth must 
 have been tales which were told by knights 
 and palmers after that ill-fated expedi- 
 tion. 
 
 The first Crusade had succeeded in tak- 
 ing Jerusalem out of the hands of the 
 Turks. It had established Christian gar- 
 risons in Antioch and Edessa. In the 
 midst of horrible suffering, avenged by 
 cruelty as horrible, and in spite of all 
 manner of contradiction of the most im- 
 portant principles of Christian living, the 
 Crusade had assisted to civilize Europe. 
 It had called the various nations together 
 for a common purpose; it had widened 
 their experience of the world; and it had 
 brought back into the still savage social 
 life of the West some of the refinement 
 of the East. 
 
 But now news came of the capture of 
 Edessa. That Christian stronghold had 
 fallen before the might of the Turks, and 
 
178 BERNARD 
 
 its loss was a prophecy of the taking of 
 Jerusalem. The Holy City, won by the 
 shedding of the best blood of Europe, was 
 in peril. It was time for a second crusade. 
 So thought Louis VIII. of France, who 
 had just come back sick at heart and 
 stricken in conscience from a little war in 
 which he had burned alive a thousand 
 people in a church. So thought the 
 Knights Templars vowed to the defense 
 of the Holy Sepulcher, and eager for mar- 
 tial exercise. So thought the pope, and 
 Bernard. 
 
 Bernard was to the second Crusade what 
 Peter the Hermit had been to the first. 
 He was its preacher. Mounted on a 
 wooden pulpit, facing a vast multitude 
 under the open sky, slight in figure, but 
 strong in voice, and terrible in his mighty 
 earnestness, he called for volunteers to 
 fight, as he said, for Christ. And again, 
 as at the beginning, there was a tearing 
 of red cloaks for badges, Bernard setting 
 
BERNARD 179 
 
 the example. Again, all over Europe, 
 men were taking the Cross. Women were 
 sending spinning-wheels to knights who 
 were too timid or too sensible to go, sug- 
 gesting that these were more to their taste 
 than the swords of heroes. Armies were 
 being mustered, drilled, and set to march- 
 ing. Again the land was bereft of its 
 best strength. Out of every family, a hus- 
 band, father, brother, son, was on his way 
 to Palestine. And Bernard, in city after 
 city, was threatening the pains of hell to 
 such as stayed at home, and promising the 
 bliss of heaven to such as took the Cross 
 and went. 
 
 But the second Crusade failed like the 
 first, and worse. The Greek emperor at 
 Constantinople resented the Latin invasion. 
 He hated the Crusade. He gave the 
 armies guides who led them into hopeless 
 deserts where they died of thirst. The 
 Turks attacked them. Finally, they took 
 to flight and such as were fortunate made 
 
i8o BERNARD 
 
 their broken way back to their homes. 
 And the grief and indignation of the 
 widows and children of Europe fell upon 
 the head of the man whose sermons 
 had sent these armies to defeat and 
 death. 
 
 Even here, Bernard was still master. 
 With all his self-reproach, he had the con- 
 sciousness of having followed what hon- 
 estly seemed to him the will of God. And 
 this honesty was recognized. People saw 
 that he had made the great mistake for 
 no gain of his own. He returned to his 
 cloister, and took up again his quiet life 
 of prayer and study. He wrote letters 
 to great people; he answered the questions 
 of the perplexed; he indicated what he 
 thought to be the righteous direction of 
 public affairs. Great and little, he in- 
 terested himself in all matters in which 
 a decision must be made for the right or 
 the wrong. One of his last letters was 
 addressed to a count whose vassals had 
 
BERNARD i8i 
 
 stolen some of the pigs of Clairvaux. " If 
 they had been my own," he said, " it had 
 not greatly mattered; I was taking care 
 of them for a neighbor. You must replace 
 them." 
 
BECKET 
 
 1 1 18-1 170 
 
 The story of St. Martin and his cloak 
 was repeated one day — with a difference — 
 in the streets of London. 
 
 The king and the chancellor were rid- 
 ing together in the cold winter, when they 
 saw, in the way ahead of them, a poor 
 man coming down the road, hugging his 
 tattered coat about him, shivering in the 
 bitter wind. " Do you see that poor 
 man?" says the king. "Yes, I see him," 
 says the chancellor, " he is very cold." 
 " He shivers," says the king, " his clothes 
 are thin and ragged. Would it not be a 
 kind and Christian act to give him a warm 
 cloak? " " Indeed, it would," says the 
 chancellor, " and it is mighty good of your 
 Majesty to think of it." So they came 
 
 up with the man, and stopped their horses, 
 
 182 
 
BECKET 
 
 From an old print 
 
BECKET 183 
 
 and the king said : " Friend, you seem very 
 cold; would you not like a thick warm 
 cloak about your shoulders? " And the 
 man, who knew them not, and doubted 
 whether the words were meant in jest or 
 earnest, answered that a thick warm cloak 
 would be a comfortable thing to have. 
 " Then take this one," says the king, 
 laughing, and he began to pull the chan- 
 cellor's cloak from off his back, — a fine 
 cloak of warm cloth, gray and scarlet. 
 The chancellor held on tight to the cloak, 
 and the king pulled hard, and the knights 
 and nobles of the company came clattering 
 up on their horses to see what all the 
 bustle was about. At last, the chancellor 
 gave way, and the astonished poor man 
 had the cloak. 
 
 The king was Henry II., the chancel- 
 lor was Thomas Becket. This was only 
 one of many times when they played to- 
 gether like boys. The king used to go 
 over to Becket's house to see what he had 
 
184 BECKET 
 
 for dinner, and if it looked better than 
 what he was likely to get at home, — and 
 it did often, for the chancellor lived in 
 splendid state, — the king would vault over 
 the table, and seat himself in the best 
 place, without waiting for an invitation. 
 Sometimes he went for business, sometimes 
 for fun. The two were always together. 
 " Never in Christian times," says an old 
 chronicle, " were there two men more of 
 one mind, or better friends." The king 
 was young, and the chancellor was younger 
 still. 
 
 Becket was the son of a merchant who 
 had come from France and had established 
 a profitable business in London. His 
 father had given him a good education, 
 and he had made the most of it. The 
 lad was quick to learn, and what he 
 learned he remembered. He studied law 
 and theology, and was trained also in 
 the exercises of knighthood. He could 
 take his part with grace and strength in 
 
BECKET 185 
 
 the great game of the tournament, with 
 lance and sword. He was tall and slim, 
 with a pale face and black hair, and was 
 most pleasant to look upon. Everybody 
 liked him. To the knowledge of a 
 scholar, he added the manners of a 
 courtier. He had a frank and winning 
 way, and the things which he said, with a 
 bit of a stammer, were good to hear. 
 Wherever he went, he made friends. 
 
 Then his father failed in his business, 
 and Thomas came home and went into a 
 lawyer's office, for a time, as clerk. But 
 he was brought to the attention of the 
 archbishop of Canterbury, who took him 
 into his employ. And thus he proceeded 
 from one position to another, entirely on 
 his merits and good looks, serving always 
 diligently and well, till he became arch- 
 deacon. Those were days when the clergy 
 had a great many other things to do be- 
 side saying prayers and preaching ser- 
 mons. They were lawyers as well as min- 
 
i86 BECKET 
 
 isters. An archdeacon was a kind of 
 judge. Thus, by an easy and natural pro- 
 motion, the archdeacon, having* come to 
 the knowledge of the king, was by him 
 appointed chancellor. 
 
 Thus Becket became both rich and 
 powerful. He came into possession of 
 great estates. He had charge of the king's 
 seal, and all the royal documents and 
 decrees were signed by him. He was 
 the third person in the realm of England; 
 first, the king; second, the archbishop; 
 third, the chancellor. 
 
 One time, he went on a pleasant em- 
 bassy to France. Henry desired to ask 
 the hand of the French king's daughter 
 in marriage for his son. He sent Becket 
 to represent him. The splendor of the 
 ambassador's retinue amazed the country. 
 First, as they marched, came singing 
 boys, two hundred and fifty of them, 
 ten abreast; then the chancellor's hunt- 
 ing dogs, greyhounds in leash, and hunts- 
 
BECKET 187 
 
 men with them; then eight carriages, each 
 drawn by five horses, bearing the furni- 
 ture of the chancellor's chapel, and of 
 his chamber, and of his kitchen; then 
 sumpter-horses carrying his chests of 
 gold and silver plate, his store of money, 
 the sacred vessels of his private altar, and 
 his four-and-twenty changes of raiment. 
 Under each sumpter-wagon walked a 
 chained dog, big and terrible as a lion, 
 and on the back of each horse rode a 
 tailed monkey. Then came the squires 
 with shields, and knights in shining armor 
 riding two and two, and, last of all, the 
 magnificent chancellor. All the roads 
 were lined with people; all the windows, 
 as they passed, were filled with spectators. 
 And all who beheld the glittering proces- 
 sion said, — as the chancellor intended 
 them to say, — " Marvelous is the king of 
 the English, whose chancellor goeth thus 
 and so grandly!" 
 
 Becket went again to France on an 
 
i88 BECKET 
 
 errand not so pleasant. There was a war 
 between the English and the French, and he 
 carried over seven hundred knights, with 
 five thousand soldiers behind them, and 
 he at the head, and fought a forty days' 
 campaign, winning great victories. Once, 
 " with horse at charge and lance in rest," 
 he met in single combat a French knight 
 of renown, whom he overthrew. And 
 ever in battle he was among those who 
 dared the most. 
 
 One story, in the midst of this courtly 
 splendor and knightly valor, shows that 
 Becket had a mind for other things. A 
 man who had affairs which he wished to 
 bring to the attention of the king sought 
 to lay his matters first, — as the custom 
 was, — before the chancellor. But, getting 
 to London too late in the day for such 
 business, he postponed his errand until 
 morning. He rose early, and, passing a 
 church on his way, he went in to say his 
 prayers. The place was empty, except 
 
BECKET 189 
 
 for one other devout person, who was 
 kneeling by the door. The stranger's at- 
 tention was attracted by the earnestness 
 of this worshiper's prayer, and he ob- 
 served him carefully. As he chanced, 
 however, to cough or sneeze, the man who 
 was at his prayers, thus perceiving that 
 he was not alone, brought his petitions 
 to an end, and left the church. When 
 presently, the stranger carried his busi- 
 ness to the chancellor's court, there, on 
 the chancellor's bench, sat the person 
 whom he had seen at his devotions. 
 
 Now, it was the desire of Henry to 
 bring the nation under his own control. 
 It was a wild, rough time, when many 
 men did as they pleased without regard to 
 peace or justice, and there was need of 
 a firm hand. The king, very properly, 
 felt that it was his business to govern 
 England, and he proposed to do it. 
 
 But in those days there were two kinds 
 of law: one law for people in general, and 
 
190 BECKET 
 
 another law for the clergy. There were 
 two kinds of courts: the king's court and 
 the Church's court. And the clergy, who 
 were subject only to the Church's court, 
 included most of the people who could 
 read and write. All the lawyers were 
 clergymen, all the schoolmasters, and most 
 of the men in public office. 
 
 The consequence was that the king was 
 the ruler of only a part of the nation. 
 The real ruler of the other part was the 
 pope in Rome. And this made great 
 confusion, and was constantly in the way 
 of the king's purpose to bring the whole 
 land under one strong law. A man might 
 be a most dangerous citizen, and guilty of 
 most serious offenses, but if he belonged 
 in any way to the estate of the clergy, 
 if he was a monk or even a sexton, the 
 king could not touch him. 
 
 So when the archbiship of Canter- 
 bury died, the king saw an opportunity 
 to end this confusion, and to bring the 
 
BECKET 191 
 
 Church under the law of the State. He 
 appointed Becket in his place. " Now," 
 he said to himself, " Becket and I will 
 work together." The splendid chancel- 
 lor, the king's friend, loving power and 
 wealth and luxury, would be the very 
 man to compel the Church to obey the 
 king's will. 
 
 But there was a quality in Becket which 
 the king had never noticed. He had a 
 strong sense of loyalty to whatever mas- 
 ter he served. He had been devoted to 
 the king, and at his bidding had already 
 disregarded what seemed to be the interest 
 of the Church. He had compelled 
 churchmen to pay taxes which they had 
 not been used to pay. He had served the 
 king completely. But that was because 
 he was the servant of the king. Now, 
 as archbishop, he considered himself the 
 servant of the pope. The man was made 
 that way. That was how his conscience 
 worked. 
 
192 BECKET 
 
 He begged the king not to appoint him. 
 He looked down at his splendid dress, 
 and said, " I am not the man to be set 
 in this holy office. I know, too, that if 
 I take it, the pleasant friendship between 
 us shall surely end in bitterness. You 
 will demand what I cannot grant." But 
 the king insisted. 
 
 Then Becket changed his life. He put 
 off his gay apparel. He fasted and 
 prayed. He gave himself to the Church, 
 as he had previously given himself to the 
 court. 
 
 The king called a council which passed 
 laws bringing all men, whether clergy or 
 not, under the control of the king's 
 judges. He restored the old custom of 
 investiture against which Anselm had 
 contended. He required every bishop to 
 confess himself the " king's man." And, 
 especially, he decreed that whenever any- 
 body was convicted in the Church court, 
 he must be sent at once to the king's court 
 
BECKET 193 
 
 for punishment Against the enactments 
 of this council Becket protested. He was 
 honestly convinced that the welfare of the 
 nation rested on the independence of the 
 Church. 
 
 Thus it was Becket against Henry, 
 Church against State. All the king's fine 
 plans for good government were stopped. 
 The strife divided England for the mo- 
 ment into two nations: on one side, 
 Henry and the barons; on the other side, 
 Becket and the pope. Each was trying 
 to control the other; each was contending 
 for independence. So it went on for six 
 years. Henry attacked the Church by 
 taking away its lands; Becket attacked 
 the State by excommunicating those who 
 were against him. At that time, people 
 believed that excommunication placed 
 men in peril of everlasting punishment. 
 They were afraid of it. Becket, who had 
 fled to France, refused all compromise. 
 He would not agree to any proposition of 
 
194 BECKET 
 
 the king except with the reservation, 
 " saving the honor of my order." That 
 meant that he v^ould not yield in the 
 slightest degree the independence of the 
 Church. Even those who were on 
 Becket's side grew weary of the sound 
 of the words. " Come up," cried one, as 
 his horse stumbled, — " saving the honor of 
 my order." 
 
 At last, the king and the archbishop 
 met in France, and a sort of peace was 
 made between them, and Becket returned 
 to Canterbury. Immediately, he began 
 the fight again. The king's young son 
 had been crowned, during Becket's 
 absence, by the archbishop of York. But 
 a royal coronation, according to the cus- 
 tom, was the business of the archbishop 
 of Canterbury. Becket excommunicated 
 the bishops who had been concerned in it. 
 Thus nothing had been gained. The king 
 was as far from his great plans as ever. 
 
 The news of these doings came to the 
 
BECKET 195 
 
 king in France. And one of those who 
 stood about him said, *' My lord, while 
 Thomas lives, you will not have peace or 
 quiet, or see another good day." And 
 the king answered in fierce anger, " I 
 have nourished and promoted sluggish and 
 wretched knaves," he said, " who are 
 faithless to their lord, and suffer him to 
 be tricked thus infamously by a low 
 clerk." 
 
 Thereupon four knights of the king's 
 household departed straightway from his 
 presence, saying no word to any man, 
 and made their way to England. On the 
 fourth day after Christmas they came to 
 Canterbury and confronted the archbishop. 
 " You have presumed," they said, " to ex- 
 communicate the bishop by whom the 
 king's son was crowned. You have made 
 yourself a traitor to the prince and to the 
 king. Now take back these curses, or else 
 depart out of the land." And when he 
 refused either to change his curses into 
 
196 BECKET 
 
 blessings, or to depart, they threatened 
 his life. They would go and arm them- 
 selves, they said, and come back and kill 
 him. " Here," he answered, " here shall 
 ye find me." 
 
 And there, indeed, they found him. 
 The bell rang for vespers. In the choir 
 of the great church the monks began to 
 sing the service. The archbishop joined 
 them in their prayers. There came a 
 great battering of swords and lances at 
 the door, and the four knights entered. 
 In the late afternoon, and at the season 
 when the days are short, the church was 
 dark, except where candles glimmered in 
 the choir. " Where is Thomas Becket? " 
 cried the knights. " Where is the traitor 
 to the king and realm?" And when the 
 service suddenly ceased, and the fright- 
 ened monks begged Becket to take advan- 
 tage of the dark and hide himself, they 
 cried again, ''Where is the archbishop?" 
 Then came Becket forth. "You shall 
 
BECKET 197 
 
 die," they shouted. " I am ready to die," 
 he answered, " for my Lord, that in my 
 blood the Church may obtain liberty and 
 peace." Then they struck him with their 
 swords, and escaped into the night. 
 
 The murder of Becket horrified all 
 Christendom, but nobody was more filled 
 with horror than the king. He put off 
 his royal robes, and put on sackcloth. 
 Such was his grief that those about him 
 feared that he would lose his reason, or 
 his life. He submitted himself to the 
 judgment of the pope. He agreed to send 
 a hundred knights to fight in the Holy 
 Land against the Saracens, to restore the 
 lands which he had taken from the 
 Church, and to repeal the laws against 
 which Becket had contended. And one 
 day, at Canterbury, he laid himself down 
 on the church floor and directed the monks 
 to beat him, each with a rod. 
 
 As for the martyr, extraordinary things 
 began to happen at his tomb. Sick people 
 
198 BECKET 
 
 were made sound, and the lame began to 
 walk, and the blind to see. The pope 
 placed the name of Becket among the 
 saints. A golden shrine was erected over 
 him, which year by year grew in magnifi- 
 cence. The glory of the magnificent 
 chancellor was eclipsed by the splendor 
 of the saint. Gold and precious gems 
 surrounded him. Pilgrims came from 
 far and near to say their prayers beside 
 him, hoping that he would add his prayers 
 to theirs. Chaucer's pleasant company, 
 telling the Canterbury Tales, was but one 
 of the thousand groups of men and women 
 who came to see the place of the martyr- 
 dom of Becket. 
 
LANGTON 
 
 From the statue by Gutzon Borgluin, Cathedral of 
 St John the Divine, New York 
 
LANGTON 
 
 II70?-I228 
 
 The great fight of Becket against King 
 Henry for the independence of the 
 Church was followed by the great fight 
 of Langton against King John for the 
 independence of the nation. 
 
 John had been false to his father Henry. 
 
 The last days of that strong king had been 
 
 embittered by the rebellion of his older 
 
 sons. John, the youngest, was his favorite. 
 
 For John's sake, Henry had disowned 
 
 Richard and had made war against him. 
 
 But when the battles went against the 
 
 king, and the victorious nobles brought 
 
 him a list of the rebels whom he must 
 
 pardon, the name at the head of the list 
 
 was that of John. Then the sick king 
 
 turned his face to the wall. " Now," he 
 
 said, " let things go as they will, — I 
 
 199 
 
200 LANGTON 
 
 care no more for myself or for the 
 world." 
 
 John had been false also to his brother 
 Richard. You remember the message 
 from the king of France which came to 
 John as he sat at the tournament of Ashby- 
 de-la-Zouche: "The devil is loose; take 
 care of yourself." Richard-of-the-Lion- 
 Heart had been fighting in Palestine, try- 
 ing to take Jerusalem out of the hands 
 of Saladin. Shipwrecked on his way 
 home, he had been seized by his enemies, 
 and held for ransom in Germany. Mean- 
 while, in England, John had been trying 
 to become king of England in his place. 
 The " devil " was Richard, released from 
 prison, returning to his throne. 
 
 Then Richard died, killed with an 
 arrow at the siege of a town in France, 
 and John, becoming king indeed, began 
 to show himself as false to his people as 
 he had been false to his father and his 
 brother. The man who stood against him, 
 
LANGTON 20I 
 
 and saved the country, was Stephen Lang- 
 ton. 
 
 The kings of England since the Norman 
 Conquest had been Frenchmen. Their 
 kingdom had included, not England only, 
 but rich lands in France. And in France 
 they had lived, coming but rarely to Eng- 
 land, partly for the purpose of fighting 
 against rebellious English, and partly for 
 the purpose of getting English money with 
 which to fight rebellious Frenchmen, But 
 when John became king, most of the 
 French possessions had been lost. There- 
 fore he lived, much against his will, in 
 England. 
 
 John's great desire was to get back the 
 provinces of France. But for such a war 
 he needed men and money. He found 
 his demand for money met by the refusal 
 of the bishops, and his demand for men 
 met by the refusal of the barons. The 
 bishops declared that they would not: 
 pay the king's taxes; the barons declared 
 
202 LANGTON 
 
 that they would no longer fight the king's 
 battles over seas. 
 
 The king's struggle with the Church 
 began with the appointment of an arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury. That great place 
 being vacant, there were two men pro- 
 posed to fill it. One was chosen by the 
 monks of Canterbury at their own will; 
 another was chosen by the monks of Can- 
 terbury acting against their own will at 
 the command of the king. One was the 
 Church's man, the other was the king's 
 man. The two appealed to the pope. 
 But the pope, at that moment, was Inno- 
 cent III., whose supreme ideal was to 
 carry into effect the principles of Hilde- 
 brand. He proposed to be the spiritual 
 father of all Europe, having all kings for 
 his sons, and securing thereby the peace 
 and righteousness of Christendom. Inno- 
 cent, accordingly, dismissed both of the 
 applicants for the archbishopric of Can- 
 terbury, and appointed Stephen Langton. 
 
LANGTON 203 
 
 Langton was an Englishman, of high 
 character, then resident in Rome, who 
 for his merits had been made a cardinal. 
 
 The king refused to permit Langton to 
 enter England, and the pope threatened an 
 interdict. Now, in the Middle Ages, an 
 interdict was considered worse than a 
 war and a plague combined. It was a 
 withdrawal of the privileges of the 
 Christian religion from all the people of 
 the land; once an interdict was pronounced 
 at Rome, all church bells ceased to ring, 
 all church doors were closed. There were 
 no more services, and no more sacraments. 
 Nobody could be baptized, nobody could 
 receive the saving grace of the Holy 
 Communion, nobody could be married, 
 nobody could be buried. It meant to the 
 people, not only an interruption of all the 
 rites of religion on which they depended, 
 "but the serious peril of their immortal 
 souls. 
 
 Innocent threatened to lay England 
 
204 LANGTON 
 
 under an interdict till John should receive 
 Langton. And when the archbishop of 
 York was in his turn driven out of the 
 country for his resistance to an unjust tax, 
 the threat was executed. First the land 
 was laid under the interdict; then the king 
 was excommunicated; finally, the king was 
 declared deposed, his throne was pro- 
 nounced vacant, all his subjects were 
 absolved from their obedience to him, all 
 his enemies were encouraged to attack him, 
 and in particular his worst enemy, Philip 
 of France, was commanded to make war 
 upon him. 
 
 Then John found himself in evil case. 
 At first, he was defiant enough, and tried 
 the fortunes of war, but his barons would 
 not fight, and the war went against him. 
 Then he submitted. He knelt before 
 Pandulph, the representative of the pope. 
 He took ofif his royal crown and put it 
 into Pandulph's hands. He confessed him- 
 self the " pope's man." And to the pope 
 
LANGTON 205 
 
 he gave all England, as a conquered king 
 surrenders his kingdom to his conqueror. 
 The interdict was removed and Stephen 
 Langton came to Canterbury. 
 
 Immediately Langton became the head 
 not of the bishops only but of the barons. 
 
 The first thing which he did, when he 
 released the king from his excommunica- 
 tion, was to make him swear to keep the 
 laws of Edward the Confessor. That 
 meant that the king must observe the 
 ancient customs by which the liberties of 
 Englishmen were protected before the 
 Normans conquered England. It speedily 
 became plain, however, that this was too 
 vague a promise. Having such a king as 
 John, it was necessary to make the rights 
 of the people much more definite. John 
 had inherited, from his Norman ancestors, 
 the idea that the kingdom belonged to the 
 king. They had taken England by force, 
 and they proposed to do what they pleased 
 with it. The king's will, they said, was 
 
2o6 LANGTON 
 
 law. But the new England, which had 
 grown up since the Conquest, was now 
 unwilling to consent to this. The des- 
 potism of the foreign kings had united 
 all the races of the lands. It had made 
 Angles and Saxons, Britons and Danes, 
 Englishmen and Normans, into one peo- 
 ple. And this people, with Langton for 
 its spokesman and leader, was at last 
 arrayed against the king. 
 
 Thus the great interdict was followed 
 by the Great Charter. 
 
 Suddenly, to the surprise of John, the 
 barons met in arms and demanded a new 
 statement of the relation between the king 
 and the people. They proposed a series 
 of laws which should thenceforth govern, 
 not only the people, but the king. These 
 laws, based on old customs and traditions 
 much improved by experience, were drawn 
 up by Langton for the king to sign. 
 
 The king postponed and postponed this 
 surrender of his despotic power. He ap- 
 
LANGTON 207 
 
 pealed for help to his new master, the 
 pope, under whose protection he had 
 hoped to overcome his enemies. But the 
 pope sent him no help. The bishops were 
 against him, the barons were against him, 
 the people were against him. He was 
 alone against this demand for the liberties 
 of the land. Thus he submitted to Eng- 
 land as he had before submitted to Rome. 
 
 The place of meeting was an island in 
 the Thames near Windsor. The king and 
 his courtiers were encamped on one bank 
 of the river, Langton and the barons were 
 encamped on the other side, in a wide 
 meadow, whose name of Runnymede has 
 been famous since that day in the history 
 of political liberty. There John signed 
 the Great Charter, " Magna Charter.'' 
 And after he had signed it, back he went 
 to his palace, and there rolled upon the 
 floor in a rage for which he had no words, 
 gnawing the sticks and straws. 
 
 The charter provided for the freedom of 
 
2o8 LANGTON 
 
 the Church from the personal will of the 
 king. It secured all men from imprison- 
 ment or seizure except by process of law. 
 It declared that no new tax should be 
 imposed except by consent of the common 
 council of the realm. And a committee of 
 twenty-four stout and determined barons 
 was appointed to see that the king obeyed 
 it. 
 
 It is true that the pope declared the 
 charter was of no effect. But that was 
 not because of any affection for John or 
 because of any objection to the liberties 
 of England. It was because he felt that 
 he should have been consulted first. That 
 was according to his honest theory of the 
 proper conduct of the world. It is true 
 that Langton was recalled to Rome. But 
 it made no difference. The great thing 
 was done. 
 
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 ST. DOMINIC 
 
 From the picture by Titian, Villa Borghese, Rome 
 
DOMINIC 
 
 1170-1221 
 
 One of the most dangerous things in 
 the world is money; and equally danger- 
 ous is power. 
 
 Both power and money are very pleas- 
 ant possessions, but they tempt people to 
 be selfish. Men who become rich often 
 forget that they have neighbors who are 
 poor; and they who have power are dis- 
 posed to use it for their own advantage. 
 They live in their comfortable houses, and 
 attend to their own business, and shut their 
 eyes and ears to the hardships of the 
 world. They are tempted to be worse 
 than selfish. Being attired in purple and 
 fine linen, and faring sumptuously every 
 day, they forget not their neighbors only, 
 but God also. And this has happened, not 
 
 only to princes, but to priests; not only to 
 
 209 
 
2IO DOMINIC 
 
 barons, but to bishops, and has made its 
 way into monasteries. 
 
 It was very fine for Hildebrand to 
 take the crown of the emperor of Ger- 
 many, and for Innocent to take the crown 
 of the king of England. It was the honest 
 belief of these popes that if they could 
 thus make themselves the masters of the 
 world they could make it a good world. 
 But such mastery brought with it the 
 perils of power and money, and the great, 
 rich Church fell into selfishness and evil 
 living. The cathedrals and the abbeys 
 were splendid buildings, and the services 
 which took place in them were magnifi- 
 cent with colors and lights and incense, 
 but the ministers who conducted the serv- 
 ices and the people who attended them 
 made little effort to make either the world 
 or themselves better. " The time has long 
 passed," said one cardinal to another, 
 " when the Church could say, with Peter, 
 ' Silver and gold have I none.' " " Yes," 
 
DOMINIC 211 
 
 replied the other cardinal, " and the time 
 has also passed when the Church could 
 say, ' Rise up and walk.' " 
 
 This state of things produced a re- 
 action. There were still great numbers 
 of good people who saw clearly that the 
 true purpose of religion is to help men 
 and women to live aright with God and 
 with their neighbors. The sight of the 
 Church of Christ forsaking its proper 
 work in the world, devoting itself to 
 architecture and music, and living in self- 
 ishness and sin, filled them with horror. 
 They hated it. By-and-by the time came 
 when the Church had so far departed 
 from the Christian religion that they felt 
 themselves forced into that great revolu- 
 tion called the Reformation, but, long be- 
 fore that, they cried out, in the name 
 of God, like the old prophets, against a 
 religion which had come to be, in many 
 places, only a combination of idolatry and 
 immorality. 
 
212 DOMINIC 
 
 Thus in the south of France, in the 
 neighborhood of the city of Albi, arose 
 the Albigenses. 
 
 It is difficult to determine just what 
 these people believed. Almost all that 
 is known about them is contained in the 
 accounts of their enemies. Very likely, 
 they had strange opinions. They were 
 reported to hold, like the Manichees of 
 St. Augustine's day, that there is a bad 
 God as well as a good God. That was 
 their explanation of the wickedness of the 
 world as they saw it. It is certain that 
 they were enemies of the Church, and that 
 their enmity was based on moral grounds. 
 They were good, earnest people who loved 
 righteousness and hated iniquity. They 
 stopped going to church, and held meetings 
 of their own. They went about preaching 
 what seemed to them the true religion. 
 The churches were deserted. The people 
 who desired to live aright joined the 
 Albigenses. The Church sent mission- 
 
DOMINIC 213 
 
 aries, men of that Cistercian Order to 
 which St. Bernard had belonged, — but the 
 missionaries were dignified persons, 
 dressed in splendid clothes, and taking 
 excellent care of themselves, and they were 
 in such contrast with the plain, simple, and 
 devout Albigensian preachers that they 
 made no converts. 
 
 At that time, however, a young man 
 was journeying through that part of the 
 country, with open eyes and an under- 
 standing heart. Dominic had just been 
 graduated at a Spanish university, and 
 was taking his first look at the world. He 
 was an excellent scholar, of pure and help- 
 ful life, and desirous to be of use in the 
 Church. He saw at once that the elegant 
 Cistercians could accomplish nothing. 
 What was needed was a company of men, 
 living as plainly and righteously as the 
 Albigensians, who could preach with all 
 the Albigensian directness and with more 
 wisdom. He saw that the revolt of the 
 
214 DOMINIC 
 
 people against the Church was caused by 
 the wickedness and weakness of the 
 Church, and that their departures from 
 the creed were caused by errors which 
 clear explanation might correct. The 
 Church must be represented, then, by 
 better men, and the truth must be correctly 
 taught. 
 
 The men whom Dominic gathered about 
 him for this excellent purpose became 
 presently a new society called the Domini- 
 cans. They brought back into religion 
 the ancient custom of preaching. It had 
 fallen into disuse. Bishops preached, 
 but hardly anybody else; and even the 
 bishops preached little, except in Lent. 
 The purpose of going to church 
 was not to hear a sermon, but to at- 
 tend a service. The Dominicans were 
 preachers. 
 
 Dominic introduced another new Idea 
 into the religion of his time. The Bene- 
 dictines and the Cistercians lived in 
 
DOMINIC 215 
 
 monasteries; their ideal was to keep 
 themselves apart from the world. The 
 Dominicans took a new name. Instead of 
 calling themselves " monks," which means 
 men living alone, they called themselves 
 " friars," which means brothers. They 
 lived out-of-doors. They went about 
 among the people. 
 
 Dominic's mother had a queer dream 
 one night, in which she saw her son 
 changed into a little black-and-white dog, 
 having a blazing torch in his mouth. The 
 black-and-white part of the dream seemed 
 to come true when the Dominicans chose 
 for their dress a long white cassock, over 
 which they wore a black cloak. But a 
 blazing torch may serve either to give 
 light or to set fire. 
 
 The good purpose of Dominic was to 
 enlighten the world. His intention was 
 to advance the cause of truth by the use 
 of reason. The bad world, he thought, 
 would be made better by the persuasion 
 
2i6 DOMINIC 
 
 of earnest preaching. This, however, is a 
 slow process, and calls for long patience. 
 Nobody knows what the eloquence of the 
 Dominicans might have done for the 
 Albigenses, because the sermons of Domi- 
 nic were speedily followed by the sword 
 of Simon de Montfort. The pope pro- 
 claimed a crusade against these critics of 
 the Church. An orthodox army was sent 
 against them. The faithful preachers and 
 their good people were murdered, — men, 
 women, and children together, — in the 
 ruins of their burning houses. The blaz- 
 ing torch burned city after city. At last, 
 the Albigenses ceased to raise their pro- 
 test against the sins of the Church, because 
 scarcely any of them were left alive. 
 Thus the selfish and evil Church met the 
 first determined effort to restore the right- 
 eousness of true religion. 
 
 And after the horrors of the Albigensian 
 Crusade, came the horrors of the Inquisi- 
 tion. People who denied the faith, or 
 
DOMINIC 217 
 
 who were suspected of denying the faith, 
 were examined by inquisitors, put to tor- 
 ture, whipped, pinched with hot iron, 
 their legs and arms broken, their skin 
 scraped ofif, their tongues cut out, their 
 eyes burned in the sockets, and, at last, 
 tied to a stake, the blazing torch set fire 
 to the heap of wood in the midst of which 
 the heretic was fastened. It used to be 
 said that Dominic established the Inquisi- 
 tion. Probably not. It is certain, how- 
 ever, that the bad business of managing it 
 was in the hands of the Dominicans. 
 They addressed themselves to the putting 
 down of heresy. They were the defenders 
 of the faith. They preached, indeed, fol- 
 lowing the example of their founder. 
 They wrote books. One of them, Thomas 
 Aquinas, was the greatest theologian of 
 the Middle Ages. Everywhere, their 
 churches and houses stood beside the 
 churches and houses of the Franciscans; 
 the Dominicans devoted to orthodoxy, the 
 
2i8 DOMINIC 
 
 Franciscans to charity. But they con- 
 ducted the Inquisition. 
 
 Thus the ideals of Dominic were 
 brought to failure. He belongs with 
 Francis, with Wycliffe, and with Wesley in 
 his intention to save the world by preach- 
 ing; but his preachers proved to be only 
 the heralds of the most infamous of the 
 wars of the Church. He belongs with 
 modern men in his purpose to meet error 
 with the weapons of reason; but the move- 
 ment which began with reason proceeded 
 to deal with error after a fashion in which 
 reason had no part whatever. It was the 
 chief enemy of reason. Dominic was a 
 good man, whose single aim was to serve 
 God and the Church. He succeeded in 
 bringing a new earnestness into religion. 
 But that which in him was earnestness 
 in his followers was bigotry and cruelty. 
 The virtues of Dominic are obscured by 
 the crimes of the Dominicans. 
 
FRANCIS 
 1182-1226 
 
 Of all the merry lads in the sunny 
 streets of Assisi, the merriest was young 
 Francis Bernardone. He it was who sang 
 the liveliest songs, and wore the gayest 
 clothes, and was the leader of the games. 
 His father was a merchant whose shop was 
 filled with silk and cloth of gold, and 
 there was money for Francis to spend, and 
 he spent it splendidly. He worked, too, 
 in the shop, and carried his father's 
 goods into the market of Assisi, and into 
 other markets, even so far away as Rome. 
 
 Assisi stands on a hilltop, and one looks 
 out over some of the fairest fields of Italy, 
 away to Perugia on another hilltop, 
 neighbor and rival, with whose citizens 
 the Assisans used to fight whenever oppor- 
 tunity offered. It was thus made plain 
 
 219 
 
220 FIL\^XIS 
 
 to Francis, even from the beginning of 
 his life, that Assisi was not the whole of 
 the world. And this important fact his 
 journeys into other towns confirmed. In 
 one of the battles with Perugia he was 
 taken captive, and lay for a whole year 
 in a Perugian prison. Thus amidst his 
 merriment, he had time to think. 
 
 One day, in Rome, going into St. Peter's 
 Church, and noticing there the careful 
 economy with which the worshipers made 
 their offerings to God, he took his 
 purse and threw down all he had before 
 an altar, the gold and silver making a 
 great clattering upon the floor. Then he 
 changed clothes with a beggar on the 
 church steps, and there sat all day and 
 begged. 
 
 \ Twice, after an illness, he dreamed 
 strange dreams which seemed to tell him 
 what he ought to do with his life. 
 
 One was the vision of a great armory 
 full of swords and lances, into which he 
 
FRANCIS 221 
 
 was bidden to go and arm himself. He 
 thought that this meant that he should 
 be a soldier, and out he started on the 
 next expedition, with shield and helmet, 
 mounted on horseback. But he came back, 
 convinced that soldiering was not the trade 
 for him. 
 
 The other dream commanded him to re- 
 build a ruined church, and at once he set 
 about the work of making a new wall for 
 the little chapel of St. Darnian. He went 
 around asking his neighbors to give him 
 stones^=-^ 
 
 It was this rebuilding of St. Darnian's 
 which sent Francis finally upon his great 
 career. The repairing even of a small 
 ruined church without money, and with 
 no other labor than that of one pair of 
 unaccustomed hands, is a slow process. 
 Francis grew impatient. One day, filled 
 with a great desire to get on with this 
 good work, he took a lot of bales of 
 cloth out of his father's store, and rode 
 
222 FRANCIS 
 
 away to the next town, and sold both 
 cloth and horse. /" There," he said to the 
 priest of St. Darnian's, " take this money 
 for the church." But the priest was not 
 willing to take it, fearing the displeasure 
 of Francis's father. Francis, too, as he 
 considered the matter, began to see that 
 his father might object to this selling of 
 his goods. He tossed the money into a 
 corner, and hid himself. And, indeed, his 
 father did object most seriously. His 
 neighbors also felt that Francis had done 
 wrong. When, at last, he ventured out 
 of hiding and made his way to his home, 
 they hooted him in the streets, said he was 
 crazy, and stoned him, till, as he drew 
 near the house, his father came out to see 
 what all the noise might mean, and, find- 
 ing Francis, seized him, dragged him in, 
 and locked him up. 
 
 Francis was not a boy when these events 
 took place. He was twenty-five years 
 old. Of course, it was not right for him 
 
FRANCIS 223 
 
 to take things out of his father's store and 
 sell them, even for the Church, but he 
 naturally felt, after years of service, that 
 the business belonged in part to him. 
 Anyhow, he was not penitent, and one 
 day when his mother, in love and pity, let 
 him out, back he went to St. Darnian's. 
 
 And then his father went to law about 
 it. He appealed to the magistrates to get 
 his money back. The matter was referred 
 to the bishop. The bishop wisely advised 
 the young man to restore the money to his 
 father; and this he did, gathering it up 
 from the dusty corner where he had 
 thrown it. But when he brought it to 
 his father, he brought his clothes also. 
 He took off his fine garments, piled them 
 on the floor and put the money on top. 
 " Now," he cried, ^' I am the servant of 
 God, and my father is the Father who is 
 in heaven." 
 
 The bishop flung a cloak about him, and 
 somebody gave him clothes to wear, and 
 
224 FRANCIS 
 
 his lodging was at St. Darnian's. The 
 good priest gave him food, and, mindful 
 of the gay feasts in which he had de- 
 lighted, gave him some dainties with it. 
 For Francis, who was always a boy to the 
 end of his life, confessed long after that 
 he had never lost his early liking for 
 sweet things. But when Francis saw the 
 dainties, he perceived that he had not even 
 yet given up the luxuries of life. Im- 
 mediately, he took a plate and went out 
 and begged his food from door to door. 
 From that moment, Francis was in- 
 dependently poor. Gradually, compan- 
 ions came to him, first one and then 
 another, wishing to share his life, and he 
 required them all to give up everything 
 that they possessed The idea of a great 
 society had not come into his mind, but 
 it was plain already that for himself and 
 his little company of friends, poverty was 
 the best condition. In an age which was 
 tremendously intent on money, when even 
 
FRANCIS 225 
 
 the Church was more anxious to be rich 
 than to be holy, there was need of men 
 who had no interest in wealth. These 
 men cared nothing for it. They were 
 glad to be poor. They were happy to be 
 the brothers of the poor. They went 
 about begging with the beggars. 
 
 One day, in church, Francis heard the 
 words of Christ to His disciples, telling 
 them to provide no money for their jour- 
 ney, and to take with them neither shoes, 
 nor staff, nor wallet, but to go and preach, 
 saying, " The kingdom of heaven is at 
 hand." Immediately, he took the words 
 as meant for him. He cast away his 
 shoes and his staff; he unloosed the girdle 
 from which his wallet was suspended, and 
 finding a rope, tied it about his brown 
 cloak. Thus the new order was provided 
 with a uniform. They went with bare 
 feet, in cloak of brown tied with a rope. 
 And they began to preach. They jour- 
 neyed about among the little towns of 
 
226 FRANCIS 
 
 Umbria, getting people together in market 
 places, and speaking to them concerning 
 God and their souls. 
 
 One of the beautiful stories of the 
 preaching of Francis is about his sermon 
 to the birds. As he was preaching to 
 the people, the birds came and made such 
 a noise chirping to each other in the air 
 that the voice of the speaker could hardly 
 be heard. Then the saint, with his gentle 
 courtesy, turned to the birds. " My sis- 
 ters," he said, " it is now time that I 
 should speak. Since you have had your 
 say, listen now in your turn to the word 
 of God, and be silent till the sermon is 
 finished." And the legend says that the 
 birds obeyed, and sat still, listening with 
 attention. 
 
 Another time, when the number of the 
 disciples of Francis had grown great, and 
 the Little Brothers, as they called them- 
 selves, were very many, they held a coun- 
 cil at Assisi, in the flowery plain beside 
 
FRANCIS 227 
 
 the church of St. Mary of the Angels. 
 But Francis had made no arrangements 
 for feeding this multitude of guests. " My 
 children," he said, " we have promised 
 great things to God, and greater things 
 still have we promised to ourselves from 
 God; let us observe those which we have 
 promised to Him, and certainly expect 
 those which are promised to us." And 
 from all the neighboring towns people 
 came driving in with food, so that they 
 had more than enough. 
 
 One day Francis said to a young brother 
 of the company, " Let us go into the town 
 and preach." So in they went, from St. 
 Mary's church beside the gate, and 
 climbed the long Assisi hill, and went 
 about the streets and markets, and at last 
 turned their steps towards home having 
 said never a word. At last the young 
 man asked, " Father, when do we begin 
 to preach?" And Francis answered, 
 " My son, we have been preaching all 
 
228 FRANCIS 
 
 the way, for men have seen us as we 
 wxnt and we have been sermons without 
 speech. Every man is a sermon every 
 day." 
 
 One dark night Francis and Leo walked 
 in the cold rain, weary after a long jour- 
 ney, Francis before, Leo behind. And 
 Francis said, " Brother Leo, if we were 
 able to give sight to the blind and hearing 
 to the deaf and recovery to the sick, that 
 would not be the perfect joy." And 
 presently Francis said, " Brother Leo, if 
 we were able to know all knowledge, that 
 would not be the perfect joy." And, a 
 while after, Francis said, " Brother Leo, 
 if we were able to speak with the tongues 
 of angels, that would not be the perfect 
 joy." "Well then. Father Francis," said 
 Leo at last, " what would be the perfect 
 joy? " And Francis answered, " Here 
 we come, dripping with rain and shiver- 
 ing with cold, to the monastery of St. 
 Mary of the Angels, expecting dry clothes. 
 
FRANCIS 229 
 
 and warmth and food and sleep. Suppose 
 the porter does not know us. We knock, 
 and he says, 'Who is there?' and we an- 
 swer, ' We are two of thy brethren,' and 
 he says, ' You are two vagabonds, you are 
 two tramps,' and out he comes and beats 
 us, and calls us hard names, and rolls us 
 in the mud and snow, and goes in, fasten- 
 ing the door behind him. Then if we get 
 up and go on in great content, glad to suf- 
 fer hardships, remembering how our 
 Master suffered for our sake, that. Brother 
 Leo, would be the perfect joy." 
 
 These stories illustrate the character of 
 Francis. He was the most gentle, the 
 most cheerful, the most unselfish of the 
 saints. In the midst of a time when every 
 man seemed to be thinking chiefly of his 
 own advantage, Francis sought no gain 
 whatever, and desired only to be of serv- 
 ice to others. His example revealed the 
 fact that the world was not so selfish as 
 it seemed. Not only were there men who 
 
230 FRANCIS 
 
 came to live under his rule, but great 
 numbers of women, beginning with Clara, 
 a devout young girl of Assisi, who came 
 from her pleasant home to follow the 
 brown-gowned brethren, and took up her 
 residence in that little church of St. Dar- 
 nian which Francis had rebuilt. And 
 after her, in the enthusiasm which a holy 
 life enkindled, came multitudes of men 
 and women having still their business in the 
 world, their shops to keep, their children 
 to bring up, unable to live in the complete 
 consecration and poverty of Francis and 
 Clara, and yet most earnestly desiring to 
 be better. And for them Francis estab- 
 lished a third order, giving them simple 
 rules of devout living which they could 
 keep in their own homes. Thus the in- 
 fluence of Francis began to touch all the 
 life about him. 
 
 He went to Rome, to ask the blessing 
 of the pope upon his new society. It is 
 said that the great Innocent, who had 
 
FRANCIS 231 
 
 humbled the king of England, was walk- 
 ing in his garden when Francis appeared, 
 and at first ordered him away, thinking 
 that he was a beggar from the street who 
 had got in by mistake; but it was the pope 
 who was mistaken. Innocent blessed the 
 work of Francis, as he was presently to 
 bless the work of Dominic. 
 
 He went even to the remote East, to 
 Egypt and the Holy Land, following the 
 track of the Crusaders, and had an inter- 
 view with the Sultan. The Sultan was 
 engaged in killing Christians, but Francis 
 was not afraid. In he went and preached 
 his gospel, to which the Sultan listened 
 gravely, and dismissed him in peace. 
 
 And year by year, the influence of the 
 self-sacrifice of Francis extended, and the 
 Order grew. One day, the report was 
 brought to him that in a certain city a 
 generous man had given some of his fol- 
 lowers a house to live in. He was filled 
 with great grief and alarm. He foresaw 
 
232 FRANCIS 
 
 that his disciples, devoted to holy poverty 
 and friends of the people because they 
 were poor as the poorest, would by-and-by 
 grow rich like the rest of them, like the 
 men who had followed Benedict, and the 
 men who had followed Bernard. And so 
 indeed it proved. Even in his own life- 
 time, the beautiful simplicity of the Order 
 began to be changed. 
 
 On he went, walking in the steps of 
 Jesus, making his life as near as he could 
 like the perfect life. He went singing, with 
 the love songs of the spirit in place of the 
 love songs of the troubadours. The sun 
 and moon, the hills and lakes, the birds 
 and beasts, he called his brothers and sis- 
 ters, and made a poem about them, prais- 
 ing God for all the blessings of the world. 
 He was always kind and tender, courteous 
 and gentle; but never sparing himself. 
 Even near the end of his short life, when 
 sickness had begun to overtake him, he 
 would say, "Let us begin over again; up 
 
FRANCIS 233 
 
 to this moment we have done nothing for 
 God." And it is said that when he died, 
 and they prepared his body to be buried, 
 they found what looked like nail-prints 
 in his hands and feet, and what looked 
 like the mark of a spear in his side, so 
 long and lovingly had he considered the 
 Cross of Christ, and so deeply had he 
 entered into the fellowship of His suf- 
 ferings. 
 
WYCLIFFE 
 
 1320-1384 
 
 Old St. Paul's, in London, was one of 
 the longest of all churches, but it was 
 crowded in all its length and breadth on 
 the day when John Wyclifife was brought 
 there to be tried. Through the narrow 
 lane between the people he made his way 
 from the west door to the chapel behind 
 the altar. Beside him walked the two 
 most powerful men in England, greatest 
 in riches and in influence, and highest in 
 station, Lord Percy and Duke John of 
 Gaunt. Behind him walked the represent- 
 atives of the four Orders of friars, one 
 for the Order of St. Dominic, one for 
 the Order of St. Francis, two for lesser 
 societies. And behind them came men- 
 at-arms. The archbishop of Canterbury 
 
 334 
 
WYCLIFFE 
 
 From a print by G. White, after a picture in the collection 
 of the Duke ot Dorset 
 
WYCLIFFE 235 
 
 was to be the judge; the bishop of London 
 was to be the accuser. 
 
 " Sit down, Wycliffe," said Lord Percy, 
 " Since you have much to reply, you will 
 need all the softer seat." '' Stand up, 
 Wycliffe," cried the bishop of London. 
 *' An accused man may not sit in the 
 presence of the judge." "Nay, but he 
 shall sit," shouted the lord. "Nay, but 
 he shall stand," shouted the bishop. And 
 then the men-at-arms took one side of the 
 dispute, and the townspeople took the 
 other side. And so they fell to fighting. 
 The church was filled with noise and 
 violence. In the midst of the tumult, 
 Wycliffe was carried off in safety. 
 
 John Wycliffe was a professor in the 
 University of Oxford. He was the 
 greatest scholar and the greatest preacher 
 of his time. As a scholar he wrote 
 in Latin for the reading of learned 
 men, and proved his points by the 
 complicated logic in which learned men 
 
236 WYCLIFFE 
 
 delighted. As a preacher, he spoke In 
 English, plainly, directly, and to the 
 hearts of his hearers. Both in Latin and 
 in English he said things which made all 
 England give attention to him. 
 
 Wycliffe attacked the privileges of the 
 Church. He said that the Church was 
 too rich. He found that the temptations 
 of wealth and power, against which Domi- 
 nic and Francis had done their best, were 
 constantly increasing. Every day the 
 Church was piling up its treasure and 
 extending its land. Even the Dominicans 
 and Franciscans, bound as they were to 
 poverty, were building splendid monas- 
 teries and gathering gold as a farmer 
 gathers fruit. It is true that no friar had 
 anything for his own, but the Orders grew 
 rich, and the " little brothers of the poor," 
 as Francis had called them, lived in pal- 
 aces. The people hated them for their 
 wealth, but still more because, being so 
 rich, they still said that they were poor. 
 
WYCLIFFE 237 
 
 Beside the great houses of the friars, 
 Dominican and Franciscan, were the 
 greater houses of the monks, Benedictine, 
 Cluniac, Cistercian. A third of the land 
 and wealth of England was said to be in 
 the possession of the Church. 
 
 Now, at that time, the theory was that 
 the chief business of the Church is to deal 
 on behalf of men with God. 
 
 God sat far away upon a vast gold 
 throne, and could be approached only as 
 the king was approached, by His courtiers. 
 Whoever wanted anything of God must 
 get it in this way. They who were en- 
 gaged in fighting, as most strong men were, 
 could get God on their side, they thought, 
 by keeping the friendship of the Church. 
 So they gave gifts to the clergy; as busi- 
 ness men, in places where a city is ruled 
 by a political ring, give gifts to politi- 
 cians. 
 
 The main matter, however, concerning 
 which the Church was believed to have 
 
238 WYCLIFFE 
 
 influence with God was that of punish- 
 ment for sin. People were continually 
 taught that they would be punished for 
 their sins. In almost every church a great 
 picture of the Last Judgment was painted 
 on the wall. Michael Angelo's Last Judg- 
 ment, in the Sistine Chapel, is a familiar 
 example. The pictures showed the tor- 
 ments of hell. But there was a way of 
 escape. The Church could save men from 
 these torments. The process was to confess 
 one's sins to a priest, to be absolved by 
 him in the name of God, and to perform 
 such penance as the priest might direct. 
 And this help was applied even to those 
 who had already gone into the world un- 
 seen. The prayers of the priests were be- 
 lieved to be powerful even for such as 
 these. They might still be saved from 
 pain, and helped on into heaven. 
 
 Thus men and women employed the 
 services of the Church both for themselves 
 and for their friends. They gave lands, 
 
WYCLIFFE 239 
 
 built churches, and paid money accord- 
 ing to their means, in order to save them- 
 selves and those whom they loved from 
 the distress of punishment for sin in the 
 vy^orld to come. The value of the Church 
 was thought to consist, not in its relation 
 to this present life, helping people to be 
 better, but in its relation to the future life. 
 The theory that sin could be committed 
 without fear of punishment by paying 
 the Church to save the sinner from the 
 pain which he deserved, encouraged men 
 in sin. The principal business of a man 
 of religion, — a priest, a monk, or a friar, — 
 was to say prayers. The purpose of 
 the Church was not so much to change 
 the will of men, making them better, 
 as to change the will of God, making 
 Him more kind to sinners. And the 
 great wealth which the Church got in 
 payment for these services was spent upon 
 the Church. The people got nothing back 
 but prayers. 
 
240 WYCLIFFE 
 
 It was for speaking against all this that 
 Wycliffe had been brought to trial. The 
 one thing plain at that moment to his mind 
 was that the Church was injured by its 
 wealth. He felt, like Dominic and 
 Francis, that poverty was essential to reli- 
 gion. What they meant was that a self- 
 seeking Church, getting everything and 
 giving nothing, was in no position to do 
 its true work in the world. Wycliffe pro- 
 posed that the property of the Church 
 be taken away. That was the best solution 
 he could think of. And Lord Percy and 
 Duke John of Gaunt agreed with him 
 most heartily; for when the property of 
 the Church was taken away they hoped 
 to get a large share of it for them- 
 selves. 
 
 All this social preaching of Wycliffe, 
 wise or unwise, was suddenly stopped by 
 the Peasants' Revolt. All over England, 
 the poor arose against the rich. The times 
 were hard and people were hungry. The 
 
WYCLIFFE 241 
 
 situation was embittered by a long and 
 unsuccessful war with France, for whose 
 heavy and foolish expenses the land was 
 taxed. Then came John Ball and Wat 
 Tyler and other leaders, and burned cas- 
 tles, and invaded London. And their at- 
 tack was directed, not only against the 
 rich towns, but against the rich monas- 
 teries. The archbishop of Canterbury, 
 who was to have judged WyclifTe in St. 
 Paul's, they killed, and they would have 
 killed John of Gaunt also if they could 
 have caught him. It was made plain that 
 all wealth, whether held by laymen or by 
 churchmen, was in peril. Any attack 
 upon it, even with the best of motives, 
 was likely to be like a lighted match 
 beside a magazine of powder. The 
 Peasants' Revolt stopped the assault 
 of Wycliffe upon the bad wealth of the 
 Church. 
 
 He turned his attention to bad doc- 
 trine. 
 
242 WYCLIFFE 
 
 It became plain to Wycliffe that the 
 power and the wealth which were destroy- 
 ing the spiritual life of the Church were 
 due to the evil influences of a mistaken 
 doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Accord- 
 ing to this doctrine, the pronouncing of 
 certain words by a priest in the service 
 had the effect of bringing Christ to the 
 altar at which he ministered. The bread 
 of the Supper was changed by the priest's 
 words into the body of Christ, and the 
 wine into the blood of Christ. Thus the 
 priest brought God down out of heaven. 
 The miracle proved the priest's power 
 with God. This power he could turn for 
 or against men as he chose. He could 
 save men from the punishment of their 
 sins, or he could condemn them to ever- 
 lasting torment. His blessing was the 
 blessing of heaven; his curse was the curse 
 of hell. 
 
 This doctrine Wycliffe denied. In his 
 lecture room at Oxford he showed his 
 
WYCLIFFE 243 
 
 pupils that it had no foundation in Scrip- 
 ture or in reason. The bread of the sacra- 
 ment was bread still, the wine was wine 
 still. The presence of Christ was a spirit- 
 ual presence. As for the excommunica- 
 tions of the Church, they are of effect, 
 he said, only when they are deserved. The 
 way to be saved is not by sacraments but 
 by godly living. Every man may come 
 straight to God without the aid of any 
 priest. 
 
 The new teaching startled the country. 
 John of Gaunt hurried down to Oxford to 
 tell Wycliffe that he could expect no 
 protection from the court for such ideas 
 as these. The pope sent word from Rome 
 to have the preacher silenced. But Wyc- 
 liffe replied to John of Gaunt that he 
 proposed to follow truth wherever it 
 might lead him. As for the pope, he 
 said that the Greek Church got on very 
 well without any pope, and he thought 
 the Latin Church might do the same. 
 
244 WYCLIFFE 
 
 They held a council against him in 
 London and condemned his teachings. 
 But in the afternoon, while the churchmen 
 were busy pointing out his errors, there 
 came a tremendous earthquake. The 
 whole house in which they sat was shaken, 
 church steeples fell, and towers of castles 
 were destroyed. The effect of this singu- 
 lar coincidence was to strengthen the influ- 
 ence of Wycliffe. He w^as, indeed, 
 dismissed from his professorship at Ox- 
 ford; but he retired to his parish at 
 Lutterworth, and there continued both to 
 write and to preach. 
 
 The little parish became the center of 
 the new movement. Wycliffe took up the 
 work of Dominic and Francis. Dominic 
 had tried to save the Church by the 
 preaching of the truth; the Dominicans 
 were to reason with heretics. But the plan 
 had failed, and instead of convincing men 
 by reason the endeavor was made to com- 
 pel them by torture. Francis had tried to 
 
WYCLIFFE 245 
 
 save the Church by living a life of love. 
 But his example was followed only for 
 a little while. The time came when the 
 Franciscans who desired to live like 
 Francis were persecuted by the Francis- 
 cans who desired to live more comfortably. 
 Wyclifife sent out men from Lutterworth 
 to save the Church by attacking the posi- 
 tions which made the Church strong as 
 an institution but weak as an influence 
 for good. These men, clad in long 
 russet gowns, and called Lollards, car- 
 ried in their hands pages of the English 
 Bible. 
 
 Wyclifife, in his quiet rectory of Lutter- 
 worth, had translated the Bible. He had 
 taken it over from the Latin of Jerome, 
 and had made it speak the common speech 
 of the people. That speech would sound 
 strange in our ears. The English language 
 had not yet come into the form which we 
 have it now. Chaucer, about the same 
 time, was writing the Canterbury Tales. 
 
246 WYCLIFFE 
 
 A glance at Chaucer's pages shows how 
 like his English was to ours, and yet how 
 very different. But that was how men 
 spoke. And when the Bible was read to 
 them in those words, they understood it. 
 That was what Wycliffe wanted. He 
 believed that what was needed to save 
 the Church was an understanding of the 
 Bible, and a return to the spirit of the 
 Bible. " Here," cried the Lollards in the 
 market-places, " here is God's truth in 
 God's book. Where are the priests, where 
 are the penances, where the images of 
 the saints, where are the prayers for the 
 dead, where is the ritual of the sacrament 
 of the altar, where is the pope, in God's 
 book? " 
 
 Wycliffe died in peace, being taken 
 with his last illness in the midst of a 
 service in his church. Half a century 
 later, his enemies dug up his body and 
 burned it, and cast the ashes upon the 
 surface of the little river Swift. And the 
 
WYCLIFFE 247 
 
 Swift, as his friends said, bore them to 
 the Severn, and the Severn to the sea. 
 It was a symbol of the spread of Wyc- 
 liffe's influence. For Wycliffe was the 
 beginner of the English Reformation. 
 
HUS 
 
 1373-1415 
 
 The splendid hope of Hildebrand and 
 Innocent that the bishop of Rome would 
 make the bad world good, had come to 
 naught. They had dreamed of a great 
 pope ministering to the nations as a pastor 
 ministers to his people, correcting the 
 wrong and commending the right, having 
 moral authority over kings, and making 
 peace in the place of war. They felt that 
 what Europe needed was the control of a 
 strong, wise, and good man. 
 
 Unhappily, for three hundred years, 
 from the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury to the beginning of the sixteenth, 
 hardly a pope was either strong, or wise, 
 or good. Some were politicians, who 
 made bargains for money and power with 
 
 kings. Some were well-meaning but weak 
 
 248 
 
JOHN HUS 
 
 From the Herrenhut Archives 
 
250 HUS 
 
 tian men representing the Church is 
 superior to all popes. An attempt was 
 made to get both popes to resign for the 
 good of the Church. When they refused, 
 the council put them both out, and chose 
 another, Alexander V. He died after a 
 short time, and John XXIII., who is 
 thought to have poisoned him, became 
 pope in his place. Thus, although two 
 scandals were amended, — the scandal of 
 the papal court at Avignon, and the scan- 
 dal of the papal schism, — the worst of the 
 scandals remained: the pope was still a 
 man of wicked life. 
 
 John XXIII. is said to have begun his 
 career as a pirate. The record of his mis- 
 deeds was such that before it was read to 
 the Council which finally deposed him, 
 all outsiders were put out and the doors 
 were locked. It was John who began that 
 public and shameless sale of indulgences 
 which hastened the Reformation. He 
 conceived the ingenious idea of making 
 
HUS 251 
 
 money by sending agents all over Europe 
 who promised to release sinners from the 
 punishment due to their sins on the pay- 
 ment of certain specified prices. Of 
 course, there were still good Christians. 
 There were faithful ministers who lived 
 devout lives, and tried to help their people 
 to do right. But the great Church, as 
 represented by the pope at the head, and 
 by the bishops, the monks, and the friars, 
 was teaching men, by constant example, 
 to break the Ten Commandments. 
 
 It was against this dreadful situation 
 that Wycliffe had protested, but the 
 remedies which he had proposed seemed 
 as bad as the disease. When he said that 
 the trouble with the Church was wealth 
 and power, many agreed; but when he 
 proposed to take away the wealth by 
 giving up the property of the Church, and 
 to take away the power by giving up the 
 doctrine of the miracle of the Body and 
 Blood, they would not follow him. 
 
252 HUS 
 
 Neither would they follow Hus. 
 
 John Hus was a professor in the Uni- 
 versity of Prague, and the greatest 
 preacher in that part of the country. 
 Born on a farm, and getting his education 
 in spite of such poverty that he begged 
 in the street, Hus had made himself a 
 scholar and a leader. He was a man of 
 simple mind, and righteous life and plain 
 speech. He saw the evils in the Church 
 about him, and made it the business of his 
 life to put an end to them. The books 
 of Wycliffe came to his knowledge and 
 he liked them greatly. 
 
 Now, there are two ways in which to 
 deal with evil. One way is to attack in 
 general, without making mention of any 
 names. The other way is to attack it in 
 particular, singling out certain offenders 
 and denouncing them. The first way is 
 easy and safe; the second is full of danger. 
 Hus took the second way. 
 
 For example, at the town of Wilsnack, 
 
HUS 253 
 
 the priests of one of the churches had 
 announced a miracle. They said that it 
 was now proved that the bread in the 
 Lord's Supper is indeed the Body of 
 Christ because pieces of it on their altar 
 had shed blood. And the Holy Blood of 
 Wilsnack began to work miracles. Pil- 
 grims came from all directions, bringing 
 their sick, to the great advantage of the 
 Wilsnack church. Hus was sent to look 
 into the matter, and he found that it was 
 all a fraud. The result was that the pil- 
 grimages to Wilsnack stopped. But the 
 Wilsnack clergy hated Hus. 
 
 And other clergy, for like reasons, hated 
 him. The man was absolutely outspoken. 
 He had no " tact," as we say. He never 
 considered whether his words would have 
 a pleasant sound or not. He paid no heed 
 to his own interest. Every day, he made 
 enemies. At that time the most unpopular 
 name in Europe was that of WyclifTe. 
 He was much more disliked by many 
 
254 HUS 
 
 people than the scandalous popes who were 
 busy breaking the commandments. Hus 
 approved of him. He did not go with all 
 the attacks which Wycliffe made on church 
 doctrine, but he liked every word which 
 Wycliffe said about the wicked lives of 
 churchmen. And he said so openly. At 
 a time when bishops were burning Wyc- 
 liflfe's books, Hus was reading them and 
 praising them. He was saying in Prague 
 what Wycliffe had said at Oxford. 
 
 Hus was therefore summoned by his 
 enemies to defend himself before the 
 council which was called to meet at Con- 
 stance. Over this council the Emperor 
 Sigismund was to preside. Hus in his 
 simplicity and innocence, knowing him- 
 self to be opposed to nothing in the 
 Church except its sins, agreed to appear 
 before the council, and the emperor gave 
 him a safe-conduct. This was a paper 
 signed by the emperor himself promising 
 that Hus should be safe from violence and 
 
HUS 255 
 
 should be brought back from the council 
 to his home by the emperor's own guard, 
 if necessary. Thus he went. 
 
 The council immediately arrested Hus, 
 and put him in prison. They paid no 
 heed to the safe-conduct of the emperor, 
 and the emperor, on his side, made no 
 serious protest. The theory was that any 
 man accused of heresy was to be accounted 
 a heretic until he had proved himself 
 innocent, and that no faith was to be kept 
 with heretics. No matter what promises 
 had been made, what safe-conducts given, 
 what oaths solemnly sworn, all went for 
 nothing in the case of a heretic. 
 
 So Hus was put in prison before his 
 trial had begun, and then was moved to 
 another prison where he was chained by 
 the arms in the daytime and by the arms 
 and legs at night. These were some of the 
 more gentle measures of the Inquisition. 
 
 When he was brought at last before the 
 council, he was hooted down whenever 
 
256 HUS 
 
 he began to speak. Charges were read 
 against him; passages were taken from his 
 books and from the books of Wyclifife, 
 which were held to be against the faith 
 and order of the Church. Some of these 
 he denied as not expressing his beliefs; 
 some he said he would gladly change if 
 anybody could show him that they were 
 not true. He refused to change any 
 opinion by reason of compulsion. He 
 declared the independence of man's con- 
 science, and held that belief is a matter 
 of persuasion and conviction, not of 
 authority. 
 
 This was his chief fault. He had won 
 the hatred of the Church by his free 
 speech concerning the sins of churchmen; 
 he was condemned and sentenced because 
 he maintained the right of a man who is 
 in error to be shown his error. His only 
 error was that of insisting that a Christian 
 minister, even a pope, ought to be a good 
 man. That that was an error, nobody 
 
HUS 257 
 
 could convince him. As for heresy, he 
 had none of it. 
 
 Nevertheless, they condemned him to be 
 burned. That was the answer of the 
 council to the man who tried to bring 
 back into the Church the plain righteous- 
 ness of true religion. They agreed that the 
 Church needed to be reformed, and had 
 assembled for the purpose of reforming it. 
 But they did not like John Hus's way. 
 
 They degraded him from the ministry, 
 dressing him in the garments of a priest, and 
 putting a chalice and paten in his hand, 
 and then taking them away with curses. 
 " We commit thy soul," they said, " to the 
 devil." " And I commit it," he answered, 
 " to the most sacred Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 Then they put a paper cap upon his 
 head, with a writing on it saying that he 
 died for heresy. He was taken out and 
 tied to a stake, with a chain about his 
 neck. Fagots were heaped about him, and 
 he was burned to death. 
 
SAVONAROLA 
 
 1452-1498 
 
 The monastery of San Marco in Flor- 
 ence faces a quiet square, and is adorned 
 with the paintings of Fra Angelico. There 
 is the picture of the two disciples who 
 invite the Lord to come and be their 
 guest, and the picture of the brother with 
 his finger on his lips in symbol of silence. 
 In every cell is painted a Madonna, or a 
 crucifix, or the figure of an angel, to help 
 the prayers of the friars of St. Dominic. 
 In one cell, somewhat apart from the 
 others, meant for the prior, are treasured 
 a desk at which Savonarola wrote and a 
 chair in which he sat, and a portrait of 
 him hangs upon the wall. 
 
 Savonarola had intended to be a doctor, 
 like his grandfather; though even as a lad 
 he was interested in theology, and looked 
 
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 SAVONAROLA 
 
 From the picture by Fra Bartolommeo, San Marco, Florence 
 
SAVONAROLA 259 
 
 out upon the world with serious eyes. At 
 the age of nineteen, he was deeply in love 
 with a girl whose parents would not allow 
 her to marry him. His family, they said, 
 was not so good as hers. This made him 
 more serious still. He had never cared 
 for the pleasures of society; now he hated 
 them. He wrote an essay about this time, 
 entitled, " Contempt of the World." 
 
 It was a bad world; that was plain even 
 to a young man of nineteen. What Hus 
 saw in the streets of Prague, Savonarola 
 saw in the streets of Ferrara. There were 
 pride and oppression, vice and drunken- 
 ness, men fighting with sharp swords and 
 women looking on applauding, and no 
 peace or order. Savonarola separated him- 
 self from it. He entered a monastery and 
 became a Dominican. Presently he was 
 sent to live in Florence with the brothers 
 of San Marco. 
 
 The ruler of Florence was Lorenzo, 
 called " the Magnificent." Under his 
 
26o SAVONAROLA 
 
 government all bad things were growing 
 in the city like weeds on a neglected farm. 
 Lorenzo was intent on power and money, 
 and cared little how he got them. With 
 all his splendid titles, his robes of state 
 and his palace, he was like the political 
 bosses, who to-day get control of cities, 
 throw open all the doors of wickedness,, 
 and tax honest citizens for their own 
 advantage. 
 
 It was found that the new brother at 
 San Marco could preach. Not very well, 
 it seemed at first, when he took common- 
 place texts and treated them in common- 
 place ways. But one day, as he spoke in 
 the pulpit concerning the Day of Judg- 
 ment, a sudden inspiration came upon 
 him. He denounced the sins of men in 
 the light of the flames of that awful day 
 of punishment, till his hearers wept and 
 trembled. Afterwards they said that they 
 saw a halo gleaming round his head. 
 
 And then, as he preached again, he had 
 
SAVONAROLA 261 
 
 a vision of a flaming sword, and heard 
 voices promising the mercy of God to the 
 faithful and the wrath of God to the un- 
 faithful, and, as he looked, the sword was 
 lifted against the earth amidst the flash 
 of lightnings and the crash of thunders. 
 
 With this new eloquence, in the spirit 
 of the Day of Judgment, Savonarola at- 
 tacked the city government of Florence. 
 He took his texts out of the Bible, and 
 mainly from the prophets of the Old 
 Testament, but in every text he succeeded 
 in finding something against Lorenzo the 
 Magnificent 
 
 He was made prior of the monastery. 
 It was a bold election, not only because 
 some of the chief citizens had protested 
 against his sermons, but because Lorenzo 
 was the great patron of San Marco. The 
 monastery had been rebuilt by his father, 
 and he himself had enriched and adorned 
 it. Suppose, now, that the richest, most 
 generous, and most influential person in 
 
262 SAVONAROLA 
 
 the parish is at the same time an unscru- 
 pulous political boss and a man of evil 
 life; what shall the parson do? That was 
 the question which confronted the new 
 prior, and he answered by continuing his 
 sermons against Lorenzo. 
 
 When Lorenzo lay upon his deathbed, 
 he sent for Savonarola. He knew that 
 there was one fearless and honest minister 
 in Florence, and he wished his counsel 
 in the preparation of his soul. Savonarola 
 said, " You must repent, and trust in the 
 mercy of God." To this Lorenzo assented. 
 " You must give up the wealth which you 
 have taken by dishonest means." To this 
 also, after some hesitation, he assented. 
 " You must restore the liberties of Flor- 
 ence." Then Lorenzo turned his face to 
 the wall, and made no answer, and the 
 prior in silence came away. 
 
 The liberties of Florence were restored 
 by Savonarola. In the confusion which 
 followed the death of Lorenzo, the prior 
 
SAVONAROLA 263 
 
 was chosen as the natural leader of the 
 decent citizens. The king of France was 
 fighting the king of Naples. Down he 
 came with his army, and entered Florence; 
 and out he went again, by reason of the 
 moral strength of Savonarola. When the 
 king threatened the city, saying, " I will 
 sound my trumpets," it was in the spirit 
 of Savonarola that Capponi answered, 
 " Then we will ring our bells." 
 
 Thus Savonarola prevailed in Florence. 
 He drew up a new plan of government by 
 which the magistrates were bound to the 
 fear of God and the purification of man- 
 ners, and to promote the public welfare 
 in preference to private interests. Jesus 
 Christ was solemnly proclaimed the king 
 of Florence. People put off their gay 
 clothes, and dressed soberly. Hymns took 
 the place of the popular songs. One day, 
 men and women brought their " vanities," 
 their fine apparel, their adornments, and 
 burned them in a great bonfire, while the 
 
264 SAVONAROLA 
 
 Dominicans of San Marco, hand in hand, 
 danced about the flames, to the glory of 
 God. 
 
 But there were enemies. There were 
 many people whose hearts were not 
 touched by the preaching of Savonarola, 
 and who disliked all this new plainness and 
 simplicity. They honestly hated hymns, 
 and desired the open doors of Lorenzo's 
 time. There were also the Franciscans, 
 who were jealous of the popularity of the 
 Dominicans. And there was the pope. 
 
 The very name of the family to which 
 the pope of that day belonged, is a 
 synonym of shameless evil. He was a 
 Borgia. He had abandoned all righteous- 
 ness, and was suspected of having aban- 
 doned all Christian faith as well. He was 
 a criminal and a heretic, and yet the pope. 
 Savonarola denounced him, as he had de- 
 nounced Lorenzo. 
 
 But the pope was possessed of all the 
 power of great wealth and great position. 
 
SAVONAROLA 265 
 
 He could bribe with one hand, and curse 
 with the other. Powerful as he was, he 
 yet saw that it was not safe to let him- 
 self be publicly abused by popular preach- 
 ers. There were too many people who 
 would listen to such preaching eagerly. 
 The Middle Ages were drawing to a 
 close. Already new ideas were beginning 
 to stir the minds of men. The fall of 
 Constantinople at the hands of the Turks, 
 in 1453, had sent fugitive Greek scholars 
 into Europe, and men were beginning to 
 read the Greek Testament, with new 
 understanding. The discovery of America, 
 in 1492, was disclosing the greatness 
 of the world; the invention of print- 
 ing was making it possible for plain 
 men to read books for themselves, 
 and make up their own minds. The 
 invention of powder was putting a 
 new strength into the arms of peasants. 
 The protests of the Albigenses, of the Lol- 
 lards, of the Hussites, were revealing an 
 
266 SAVONAROLA 
 
 increasing unrest in the face of the sins 
 of churchmen. Reforming councils were 
 deposing even popes. Alexander Borgia 
 was afraid to allow Savonarola to preach 
 his fierce sermons. People were so in- 
 terested in them that they crowded the 
 cathedral before the sun was up, on 
 preaching days, each with his lighted 
 candle. 
 
 Then all the enemies fell upon the 
 prior. The pope excommunicated him. 
 The Franciscans proposed a trial by fire, 
 according to an ancient custom: a Francis- 
 can on one side, and a Dominican on the 
 other, were to walk across the wide square 
 between rows of blazing fagots, and the 
 one who got through safely would be 
 proved to be in the right. The rows 
 of fagots were built, and all Florence was 
 there to see. But the Franciscans, though 
 it was their champion who would not 
 venture, contrived to put the blame on 
 the Dominicans. Savonarola and his friars, 
 
SAVONAROLA 267 
 
 as they marched back to San Marco, were 
 hooted and stoned. It was evident that 
 his righteous power was broken. 
 
 The monaster}' was stormed by a mob. 
 The doors were broken down; citizens and 
 friars fought together. Fra Domenico, 
 Savonarola's faithful friend, defended the 
 prior with a huge candlestick, which he 
 wielded like a club. But Savonarola was 
 arrested, and Domenico with him, and an- 
 other also, named Silvestro. They were 
 tried, as the manner was, by torture, and 
 condemned. " I separate thee," said the 
 bishop, " from the Church militant and 
 from the Church triumphant" " Xot from 
 the Church triumphant," said the mam'r: 
 " That is beyond thy power." 
 
 A bronze tablet in the pavement of the 
 great square of Florence shows where 
 Savonarola and his friends were first 
 hanged and then burned for their attack 
 upon the wickedness of the world and of 
 the Church. 
 
268 SAVONAROLA 
 
 Thus passes the procession of our 
 twenty saints and heroes. The list ends 
 with a martyr, as it began. And every 
 man came into acquaintance with diffi- 
 culty and danger. They might have lived 
 in peace and comfort like their neighbors, 
 but they had a strong longing to do good. 
 They entered with great joy into the old 
 war between wrong and right. That war 
 is as new as it is old: it is going on in 
 our neighborhood to-day. Indeed, we are 
 all enlisted in it, on one side or the other. 
 
 THE END 
 
THE QUIETNESS OF DICK 
 
 By R. E, Vernede. Illustrated by Victor Perard. 
 izmo. $1.25 net ; by mail, $1.35. 
 
 "On account of his reputed 'quietness,' Dick is invited by 
 Tod's mother to help her petted son to bear the ennui of his 
 school holidays. From the moment of his arrival things 
 begin to hum. By his initiative the boys climb a dangerous 
 precipice and are with difficulty rescued. They shoot at a 
 lunatic, catch a poacher, steal a yacht, discover a cave and 
 disclose a smuggler's haunt. They unearth a buried ship 
 and even take a hand in the love affairs of the governess. In 
 each episode Dick comes off with flying colors, having earned 
 the gratitude of his elders. The story is lively and humorous 
 and shows an interesting study of the youthful Briton." 
 
 — Chicago Daily News. 
 
 "Thrilling adventures and unlimited fun. . . . The humor is so 
 unforced and the knowledge of boy language and habits of thought is 
 so genuine."— C^A-;>^«3« Register. 
 
 TOM STRONG, WASHINGTON'S SCOUT 
 
 By Alfred Bishop Mason. Illustrated. lamo, 313 pp. 
 $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35. 
 
 A story of adventure. The boys and girls who read this 
 book will know a great deal more about the American Revo- 
 lution than most American citizens do. It is hoped that they 
 will enjoy the way in which it is told and that they will 
 heartily like the shrewd old trapper and the sturdy and 
 sunny-hearted boy, Tom Strong. The story is historically 
 correct. 
 
 "A story of patriotic devotion and military adventure in the days of 
 the Revolution. From the defeat at Brooklyn to the capture of York- 
 town the sturdy, sunny-hearted hero and a shrewd old trapper, his 
 friend, share historic experiences. Famous leaders on the Continental 
 side and among the British appear in the story. Pretty Peggy Shippen, 
 later Mrs. Benedict Arnold, came to the rescue in Philadelphia, and 
 her tragic experiences serve the writer's purpose. ... It certainly 
 maintains continuous interest."— C//rw/2'a« Register. 
 
 "Tom Strong saw and did enough to keep half a dozen active young- 
 sters busy. . . . Zed Pratt, the woodsman, and fat Hans, the 
 Hessian, were friends worth having."— TWw York Sun. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 
 
By CARROLL WATSON RANKIN 
 
 STORIES FOR GIRLS 
 
 THE CASTAWAYS OF PETE'S PATCH 
 
 Illustrated by Ada C. Williamson. $1.25 net. (Just pub- 
 lished.) 
 A tale of five girls and two youthful grown-ups who enjoyed 
 unpremeditated camping; of a picturesque Indian who sells 
 his home in order to live in it; of a mysteriously shipwrecked 
 boy who is unable to tell whence he came ; of Mabel, who 
 tumbled into all the water there was, and of Mabel's friends, 
 who sometimes tumbled in with her; of broken game laws, of 
 a baffled game-warden who proved to be somebody else; and 
 of many other things that mzg/it have happened on the rugged 
 shores of Lake Superior. 
 
 DANDELION COTTAGE 
 
 Illustrated by Mmes. Shinn and Finley. $1.50. 
 
 Four young girls secure the use of a tumbledown cottage. 
 
 They set up housekeeping under numerous disadvantages, 
 
 and have many amusements and queer experiences. 
 
 "A capital story. It is refreshing to come upon an author who can 
 tell us about real little girls, with sensible ordinary parents, girls who 
 are neither phenomenal nor silly." — Outlook. 
 
 THE ADOPTING OF ROSA MARIE 
 
 A sequel to " Dandelion Cottage." Illustrated by Mrs. Shinn. 
 $1.50. 
 The little girls, who played at keeping house in the earlier 
 book, enlarge their activities to the extent of playing mother 
 to a little Indian girl. 
 
 "Those who have read ' Dandelion Cottage' will need no urging to 
 follow further. ... A lovable group of four real children, happily not 
 perfect, but full of girlish plans and pranks. ... A delightful sense 
 of hxiaxor."— Boston Transcript. 
 
 THE GIRLS OF GARDENVILLE 
 
 Illustrated by Mary Wellman. i2mo. $1.50. 
 
 Interesting, amusing, and natural stories of a girls' club— 
 
 " The Sweet Sixteen" of Gardenville. 
 
 "Will captivate as many adults as if it were written for them. . . . 
 The secret of Mrs. Rankin's charm is her naturalness . . . real girls 
 . . . not young ladies with " pigtails,' but girls of sixteen who are not 
 twenty-five . . . as original as amusing." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 34 West 33D Street NEW YORK 
 
STORIES OF FAMILY LIFE 
 
 By AUCE CALHOUN HAINES 
 For Young Folks from 9 to 16 years old 
 
 THE LUCK OF THE DUDLEY GRAHAMS 
 
 Illustrated by Francis Day. 300 pp., i2mo. $1.50. 
 A family story of city life. Lightened by humor 
 and an airship. 
 
 " Among the very best of books for young folks. 
 Appeals especially to girls." — Wisconsin List for Town- 
 ship Libraries. 
 
 " Promises to be perennially popular. A family of 
 happy, healthy, inventive, bright children make the best 
 of restricted conditions and prove themselves masters 
 of circumstances." — Christian Register. 
 
 " By far the most entertaining book for children that 
 we have read in many months." — The Churchman. 
 
 " Sparkles with cleverness and humor." — Brooklyn 
 Eagle. 
 
 COCK-A-DOODLE HILL 
 
 A sequel to " The Luck of the Dudley Grahams." 
 Illustrated by Francis Day. 296 pp., i2mo. $1.50. 
 (Just issued.) 
 
 " Cock-a-doodle Hill " is where the Dudley Graham 
 family went to live when they left New York — a 
 rambling, open-windowed old white house, set among 
 ilowery meadows, pine woods, and river land ; and here 
 Ernie started her chicken-farm, with one solitary fowl, 
 " Hennerietta." The pictures of country scenes and the 
 adventures and experiences of this household of young 
 people are very life-like. It is a home story, sponta- 
 neous, abounding in quaint and delicate humor, and 
 with an undercurrent of strong dramatic interest. 
 
 If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will 
 send, from time to time, information regarding their new 
 books. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 
 
COMPANION STORIES OF COUNTRY LIFE 
 
 FOR BOYS By CHARLES P. BURTON 
 
 THE BOYS OF BOB'S HILL 
 
 Illustrated by GEORGE A. WILLIAMS. i2mo. $1.25 
 
 A lively story of a party of boys in a small New Eng- 
 land town. 
 
 "A first-rate juvenile ... a real story for the live human boy 
 —any boy will read it eagerly to the end . . . quite thrilling 
 adventures." — Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 "Tom Sawyer would have been a worthy member of the Bob's 
 Hill crowd and shared their good times and thrilling adventures 
 with uncommon relish. . . . A jolly group of youngsters as nearly 
 true to the real thing in boy nature as one can ever expect to 
 find between covers." — Christian Register. 
 
 THE BOB'S CAVE BOYS 
 
 Illustrated by VICTOR PERARD. $1 .50 
 
 " It would be hard to find anything better in the literature of 
 New England boy life. Healthy, red-blooded, human boys, full 
 of fun, into trouble and out again, but frank, honest, and clean." 
 — The Congregationalist. 
 
 "Even better than the first book, will interest every healthy 
 youngster. "—CArii-//a« Register. 
 
 " A rousing story of wide-awake youngsters. A very delight- 
 ful book. Told with much 'iiumor.'^— Indianapolis News. 
 
 THE BOB'S HILL BRAVES 
 
 Illustrated by H. S. DeLay. i2mo. $1.50 
 
 The ' ' Bob's Hill " band spend a vacation in Illinois, 
 where they play at being Indians, hear thrilling tales of 
 real Indians, and learn much frontier history. A story 
 of especial, interest to " Boy Scouts." (Just published.) 
 
 If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers 
 will send, from time to time, information about their new books. 
 
 Henry Holt and Company 
 
 34 West 33d Street New York 
 
By JOSEPH B. AMES 
 
 Western stories for boys from 10 to 16 years 
 Illustrated by VICTOR PERARD. Each, $1.50 
 
 PETE, COW PUNCHER 
 
 Perhaps nowhere else can a more faithful picture, ab- 
 solutely devoid of straining for glamor, be found of 
 the cowboy's life by one who knows it. Its monotony, 
 hardships, and frequent griminess are clearly shown, 
 but the spice of adventure and mortal peril is not lack- 
 ing. The story is told from the viewpoint of the ten- 
 derfoot who becomes a cowboy. 
 
 "Here is the real thing— the cowboy's daily life faithfully de- 
 picted. . . . There is, of course, a spice of adventure — the excite- 
 ment of 'busting bronchos' and roping cattle, an occasional hunt, 
 fighting a prairie fire, a chase after horse thieves, and a stampede. 
 Yet, while there is not a prig among the characters, most of them 
 are as respectable as your neighbors. . . . Most grown-ups, as 
 well as their sons, will enjoy thisbook. . . . Victor Perard's illus- 
 trations are pictures of real people, not lay H^nres."— Chicago 
 Record-Herald. 
 
 "Wholesomely exciting . . . stands for real manliness."— CAr«j- 
 tian Register. 
 
 THE TREASURE (?/ M<? CANYON 
 
 A story of adventure in Arizona. $1.50 
 
 Dick Carew, a likable young fellow of sixteen, joins 
 an expedition which is fitted out to search for relics of 
 the Cliff Dwellers in Arizona. The strange appearance 
 of an ancient document, giving the key to the hiding- 
 place of a portion of the treasures of Montezuma, is 
 followed by the search for it through the entire length 
 of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Their sub- 
 sequent adventures furnish enough thrills for even the 
 most captious boy reader. 
 
 " A bright, wholesome book . . . full of the joy of youth . . . 
 well-written, readable."— Z<?«zi-z/i7/^ Courier-Journal. 
 
 •' The narrative is bully reading for boys and it is also one of 
 the kind that men love to run through, just to remind them 
 of the old days and the absorbing books they used to read when 
 they ought to be stud^'ing iheir lessons . . blood-stirring yet 
 wholesome, and its descriptions of the Grand Canyon and Painted 
 Desert, not to speak of the wealth of Aztec history and lore of 
 the Cliff Dwellers, makes it a valuable work, to be ranked 
 among the masterpieces of books for the young."— Aldany 
 Journal. 
 
 If the reader will send his name and address the publishers will 
 send, from time to time, information about their new books. 
 
 Henry Holt and Company, ^New^Yor^'* 
 
BOOKS OF PLAYS FOR CHILDREN 
 
 DESIGNED FOR USE IN THE SCHOOLS 
 By CONSTANCE D'ARCY MACKAY 
 
 THE HOUSE OF THE HEART 
 
 AND OTHER PLAYS FOR CHILDREN 
 
 Short plays in verse to be acted by children of four- 
 teen or younger. Well written, with clear directions for 
 setting and costuming, and plenty of range between 
 simplicity and elaborateness, ^i.io net, by mail, ^1.15. 
 
 Contents: — "The House of the Heart" (Morality 
 Play) — '<The Gooseherd and the Goblin" (Comedy) 
 — "The Enchanted Garden" (Flower Play)— "Nimble 
 Wit and Fingerkin " (Industrial Play) — "A Little Pil- 
 grim's Progress ' ' (Morality Play. — "A Pageant of Hours" 
 (To be given Out of Doors) — "On Christmas Eve." 
 "The Elf Child." "The Princess and the Pixies." 
 " The Christmas Guest." (Miracle Play.) 
 
 " An addition to child drama which has been sorely needed." 
 — Boston Transcript. 
 
 THE SILVER THREAD AND OTHER FOLK 
 PLAYS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 Simplicity is the keynote of these plays. Each has 
 a footnote on its origin, and full descriptions and 
 directions for easily arranged costumes and scene-settings, 
 especially designed to fit the limitations of the school- 
 room stage, ^i. 10 net; by mail, $1.20. 
 
 Contents: — "The Silver Thread" (Cornish); 
 "The Forest Spring" (Italian^; "The Foam Maiden'* 
 (Celtic); "Troll Magic" (Norwegian); "The Three 
 Wishes" (French); "A Brewing of Brains" (English); 
 "Siegfried" (German); " The Snow Witch " (Russian). 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 34 West 33D St. New York 
 
THE CHILDREN OF THE NEW FOREST 
 
 By Captain Marryat. Illustrated in color and 
 line by E. Boyd Smith. Special library binding. 
 $1.35 net. 
 
 THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS 
 
 By James Fenimore Cooper. Illustrated in color 
 and line by E. Boyd Smith. Special library bind- 
 ing- $1-35 net. 
 
 In every detail of illustration and manufacture these edi- 
 tions are made as if these books were being published for the 
 first time for young folks. This attempt to put the juvenile 
 classics in a form which on its looks will attract children, 
 is meeting with widespread support from the public and 
 librarians. 
 
 The text is not abridged. 
 
 Mr. Smith's pictures need no commendation, but he seems 
 to have treated these stories with unusual skill and sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 HALF A HUNDRED HERO TALES 
 
 Of Ulysses and the Men of Old. By various authors, 
 including Nathaniel Hawthorne. Illustrated. 
 Special library binding. $1.35 net. 
 
 The Greek and Roman mythological heroes whose stories 
 are here collected are not covered in any other one volume. 
 The arrangement gives the interest of connected narrative to 
 the account of the fall of Troy, the ^neas stories, and the 
 Adventures of Ulysses. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 
 
In the American Nature Series 
 
 For Boys and Girls from 9 to 16 
 
 INSECT STORIES 
 
 By VERNON L. KELLOGG, author of "American 
 Insects," etc. Illustrated, 298 pp., large i2mo, $1.50 net, 
 by mail $1.62. 
 
 Strange, true stories, primarily for children, but cer- 
 tainly for those grown-ups who like to read discriminat- 
 ingly to their children, finding all the time something 
 of point of view or allusion especially for themselves. 
 
 " The author is among the few scientific writers of distinction 
 who can interest the popular mind. No intelligent youth can fail 
 to read it with delight and profit." — The Nation. 
 
 " They have that rare quality possessed by Kipling's ' Jungle 
 Stories,' which make them enjoyed by both old and young." — 
 New York Globe. 
 
 " A learned and undisputed insect authority . . . presents a 
 group of strange, true stories of insect life, primarily for young 
 folks, but open to grown-up nature lovers, that are little short 
 of fascinating."— CAiVra^o Record-Herald. 
 
 THE FRESH-WATER AQUARIUM AND ITS 
 
 INHABITANTS 
 
 A Guide for the Amateur Aquarist, by OTTO EGGE- 
 
 LING and FREDERICK EHRENBERG. With 100 
 
 illustrations, large i2mo, probable price, $1.75 net. 
 
 This volume gives clear and complete instructions to 
 the amateur. It describes, and illustrates by some of 
 the finest photographs ever taken from life, the great 
 variety of plants, fishes, turtles, frogs, and insects that 
 may be kept indoors in health and contentment. It 
 furnishes information concerning food, treatment in 
 health and sickness, methods of capture and handling, 
 and what aquatic creatures will or will not live in peace 
 together. 
 
 " Gives all the necessary information for maintaining any kind 
 of an aquarium." — Cleveland Plain Dealer. 
 
 "Applicable to the smallest boj^'s essay at keeping an aquarium 
 and to the largest scientific collection." — A'ew York Sun. 
 
 If the reader will send his name and address the publishers will 
 send, from time to time, information about their new books. 
 
 Henry Holt and Company, ^VJw Yorl^' 
 
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