CHAPTER XXX: END OF THE SIXTH CENTURY
(PART I)
We must not suppose that the conversion of the western barbarians was of
any very perfect kind. They mixed up a great deal of their own barbarism
with their Christianity, and, besides this, they took up many of the
vices of the old and worn-out nations, whose countries they had
conquered and occupied. Much heathen superstition lingered among them:
it was even a common saying in Spain, that "if a man has to pass between
heathen altars and God's Church, it is no harm if he pay his respects to
both." The clergy were very wealthy and prosperous, but did not venture
to interfere with the vices of the great and powerful; or, if they did,
it was at their peril. For instance, when a bishop of Rouen had offended
the Frenkish queen Fredegund, she caused him to be murdered in his own
cathedral, at the most solemn service of Easter-day.
Religion became a protection to crime; murderers were allowed to take
refuge in churches, and might not be dragged out until after an oath had
been made that their lives should be safe. It had been the ancient
custom of the Germans to let all crimes be atoned for by the payment of
money: if, for example, a person had killed another, he had no more to
do than to pay a certain sum to the dead man's relations. And this way
of making up for misdeeds was now brought into the Church: it was
thought that men might make satisfaction for their sins by paying money,
and that the effect would be the same if others paid for them after
their death. We may understand how this worked from another story of
queen Fredegund, who seems to have been a perfect monster of wickedness.
She set two of her pages to murder a king, named Sigebert; and, by way
of encouraging them, she said that she would honour them highly, if they
came off with their lives; but that, if they were slain, she would lay
out a great deal of money in alms for the good of their souls!
As might naturally have been expected among such people, it came to be
very commonly thought that the observance of outward worship and
ceremonies was all that religion required. Pretended miracles were
wrought in great numbers, for the purpose of imposing on the ignorant;
and all, from the king downwards, were then ignorant enough to be
deceived by them. The superstitions which had begun in the fourth
century continued to grow on the Church; such as the reverence paid to
saints, and especially to the Blessed Virgin, so that people allowed
them a part of the honour which ought to have been kept for God alone.
Among other such corruptions were the reverence for the "relics" of
saints (that is, for parts of their bodies, or for things which had
belonged to them), and the religious honour paid to images and pictures.
These and other evils increased more and more, until, at length, they
could be borne no longer, and, in many countries, they caused the great
religious change which is called the "Reformation".
But nearly a thousand years had to pass before the time of the
Reformation; and, in the meanwhile, although much was amiss in the
Christianity which prevailed, it yet was the means of blessing and of
salvation. And there were never wanting good men who, although there
were many defects and errors in their opinions, firmly held and clearly
taught the necessity of a real living faith in Christ, and of a
thoroughly earnest endeavour to obey God's holy will.
PART II
The state of Italy towards the end of the sixth century was very
wretched. Vast numbers of its people had perished in the course of the
wars by which Justinian's generals had wrested the country from the
Goths, and had again united it to the empire; multitudes of others had
been destroyed by famine and pestilence. The Lombards, who had crossed
the Alps in the year 568, had obliged the emperors to yield the North,
and part of the middle, of Italy to them; and they continually
threatened the portions which still remained to the empire. No help
against them was to be got from Constantinople; and the governors whom
the emperors sent to manage their Italian dominions, instead of
directing and leading the people to resist the Lornbards, only hindered
them from taking their defence into their own hands.
The land was left uncultivated, partly through the loss of inhabitants,
and partly because those who remained were disheartened by the miseries
of the time. They had not the spirit to bestow their labour on it, when
there was almost a certainty that their crops vould be destroyed or
carried off by the Lombard invaders; and the soil, when left to itself,
had in many places become so unwholesome, that it was not fit to live
on. Italy had in former times been so thickly peopled, that it had been
necessary to get supplies of corn from Sicily and from Africa. But now
such foreign supplies were wanted for a very different reason-that the
inhabitants of Italy could not, or did not, grow corn for themselves.
The city of Rome had suffered From storms, and from repeated floods of
the river Tiber, which did a great deal of damage to its buildings, and
sometimes washed away or spoiled the stores of corn which were laid up
in the granaries. The people were kept in terror by the Lombards, who
often advanced to their very walls, so that it was unsafe to venture
beyond the gates.
The condition of the Church too was very deplorable. The troubles of the
times had produced a general decay of morals and order both among the
clergy and among the people. The Lombards were Arians, and religious
enmity was added to the other causes of dislike between them and the
Romans. In Istria, there was a division which had begun after the fifth
general council, and which kept the Church of that country separate from
the communion of Rome for a hundred and fifty years. The sunken
condition of Christianity in Gaul (or France) has been described in the
beginning of this chapter. Spain was just recovered from Arianism, but
there was much to be done before the Catholic faith could be considered
as firmly established there. In Africa, the old sect of the Donatists
began again to lift up its head, and took courage from the confusions of
the time to vex the Church. The Churches of the East were torn by
quarrels as to Eutychianism and Nestorianism. And the patriarchs at
Constantinople seemed likely, with the help of the emperor's favour, to
be dangerous rivals to the popes of Rome.
Such was the state of things when Gregory the Great became pope or
bishop of Rome, in the year 590.
