I do not say that this unity of principle and organisation always prevailed in the civilisation of these states. If we go back to their more ancient history, we find that the different powers that may be formed in the bosom of one society often disputed for empire. Amongst the Egyptians, Etruscans, even the Greeks, &c. the caste of warriors, for example, strove against that of the priests; in other places, the spirit of clan against the spirit of free association, the aristocratic system against the popular system, &c. But, generally speaking, it was in the ante-historical periods that those contests occurred; only a vague recollection of them remained.
The struggle sometimes recurred in the course of their career; but it was almost always promptly terminated: one of the powers that disputed the sway speedily carried it and took sole possession of the society. The war always finished by the dominion, if not exclusive, at least greatly preponderating, of some special principle. The co-existence and the combat of different principles were but a passing crisis, an accidental circumstance, in the history of these people.
Thence resulted a remarkable simplicity in the major part of the ancient civilisations, but attended with different consequences. Sometimes, as in Greece, the simplicity of the social principle drew forth a prodigiously rapid development; never did a people unfold itself in so short a period, or with such lustre. But after that wonderful burst, Greece suddenly appeared exhausted; its decay, if it were not quite so rapid as its progress, was nevertheless singularly prompt. It would seem that the creative power of the principle of Greek civilisation was worn out, and none other came to invigorate it. In other countries—in Egypt and India, for example—the uniformity of the civilising principle had a different effect; society fell into a stationary state. Simplicity produced monotony; the country was not destroyed, society continued to subsist, but motionless and frozen, as it were.
It is to this same cause that that character of tyranny is traceable which prevailed, under the most different forms, and as an embodiment of principles, in all the ancient civilisations. Society belonged to one exclusive power which would tolerate no other. Every different tendency was proscribed and rooted out. The dominant principle never would permit the coeval manifestation and action of a distinct principle.
This character of unity in the civilisation is equally stamped on the literature and on the works of the mind. Who is not acquainted with the records of Indian literature not long ago disseminated through Europe? It cannot fail to be remarked that they are all imbued with the same spirit; they appear all the result of an identical fact, the expression of an identical idea. Works of religion or morals, historical traditions, dramatic and epic poetry, on all is the same characteristic impressed; the labours of the mind bear that same impress of simplicity and monotony which is observable in their transactions and institutions. In Greece, even, amidst all the riches of the human understanding, a singular uniformity prevails in literature and in arts.
It has been quite otherwise with the civilisation of modern Europe. Without entering into detail, look around and collect your thoughts; it will immediately appear to you a varied, confused, and stormy scene; all the forms and principles of social organisation are there co-existent; spiritual and temporal powers, theocratical, monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical elements, all classes, and all the social arrangements, are mingled and pressing on each other: there are extreme degrees as to liberty, wealth, and influence. And these different powers are in a state of continual strife amongst themselves, without any one succeeding in stifling the others, and taking sole possession of society. In the olden times, all societies seem, at every great epoch, to have been cast in the same mould: it is sometimes pure monarchy, sometimes theocracy or democracy which prevails, but each completely lords it in its turn. Modern Europe presents examples of all the systems and theories of social organisation; pure or mixed monarchies, theocracies, republics, more or less aristocratic, exist there simultaneously side by side; and notwithstanding their diversity, they have all a certain resemblance, a certain family aspect, which it is impossible to overlook.
In the ideas and sentiments of Europe there is the same variety, the same combat. The theocratical, monarchical, aristocratical, and popular creeds, encounter, struggle with, limit, and modify each other. Open the boldest writings of the middle age; no idea is ever followed to its ultimate consequences. The partisans of absolute power recoil at once, and unknown to themselves, before the results of their doctrine: they feel that there are ideas and influences around them which arrest them, and prevent their pushing to extremities. The democrats are subject to the same law. On neither side is that imperturbable audacity, that stubbornness of logic, which are displayed in the ancient civilisations. The sentiments present the same contrasts, the same variety; an energetic zeal for independence accompanying a great facility in submission; a singular fidelity of man to man, and at the same time an uncontrollable desire to exercise free will, to cast aside all restraint, to live selfishly, without concern for others. The minds are as various and as agitated as the social state.
The same character is found in the literatures. We cannot but confess that in artistic form and beauty they are far inferior to the ancient literature; but in the depth of the sentiments and ideas, they are more vigorous and rich. It is evident that the later human mind has been moved on far more points, and to a much greater depth. The imperfection of form proceeds from this very cause.The more rich and numerous the materials, the more difficult it is to reduce them into a simple and pure form. What makes the beauty of a composition—that which we call form in works of art—is clearness, simplicity, a symbolic unity of workmanship. From the prodigious diversity of ideas and sentiments in the European civilisation, it has been much more difficult to attain this simplicity and perspicuity.
This predominant character in the modern civilisation is thus everywhere perceptible. It has doubtless been attended with this consequence, that on considering by itself such or such particular development of the human mind in letters, in arts, indeed in all the directions in which it may advance, we find it, in general, inferior to the correspondent development in the ancient civilisations; but in return, when we look at the whole, the European civilisation shows itself incomparably richer than any other, and it has simultaneously exhibited a much greater number of different developments. It has now existed for fifteen centuries, and it is yet in a state of continuous progression; it has not advanced by many degrees as quickly as the Greek civilisation, but it has never ceased to wax in vigour. A boundless career is open before it, and day by day it presses onward the more rapidly, since an increasing liberty accompanies all its movements. Whilst in the earlier civilisations the exclusive domination, or at least the excessive preponderance, of a single principle, of a single organisation, was the cause of tyranny, the diversity of the elements of social order in modern Europe, and the impossibility that has been met with of any excluding another, have generated the liberty which reigns at present. Lacking the power to exterminate, the different principles have been fain to live together, and to make amongst themselves a sort of forced compact. Each has agreed to take only so much development as it could fairly gain; and whilst elsewhere the preponderance of one principle produced tyranny, in Europe liberty has resulted from the variety in the elements of civilisation, and from the state of combat in which they have been constantly involved.
There is a real and immense superiority in this; and if we go farther, and penetrate beyond the outward facts, into the very nature of things, we shall find that this superiority is approved and supported by reason, as well as demonstrated by facts. Passing by for a moment European civilisation, let us cast our eyes upon the world at large, upon the general course of terrestrial affairs. What is its character? How moves the world? It moves precisely with this diversity and variety of elements, a prey to this incessant struggle that we remark in European civilisation. It has evidently been granted to no particular principle or organisation, to no special idea or power, to gain possession of the world to fashion it once for all, to banish from it all other tendencies, and establish an exclusive sway.Different powers, principles, and systems, are engaged in ceaseless strife, commingling with and limiting each other, alternately predominant and oppressed, but never completely conquered or conquerors. Such is the general condition of the world with regard to the diversity of forms, ideas, and principles, their mutual combats, and their effort towards a certain unity, a certain ideal perfection, which will be perhaps never reached, but to which the human species is tending by freedom and laborious exertion. European civilisation is, then, the image of the world: like the course of things in this world, it is neither narrow, nor exclusive, nor stationary. For the first time, as I conceive, the character of specialty has disappeared from civilisation; for the first time it has been developed with the variety, richness, and activity of the great theatre of the universe.
The European civilisation has entered, if it be permitted me to say so, into the eternal truth, into the plan of Providence; it advances according to the intentions of God. This is the rational solution of its superiority.
I am anxious that this fundamental and distinctive character of European civilisation be borne in mind. It is true that at the present moment I only assert it, for the proof must be furnished by the development of facts. Nevertheless, it will be allowed as an important confirmation of my views, if the causes and elements of the character which I attribute to our civilisation are found at its very cradle; if at the moment when it was first born, at the period of the fall of the Roman Empire, we discover in the state of the world, and in the facts which, from its earliest days, have concurred in forming the European civilisation, the active principle of this tumultuous but fruitful diversity which so distinguishes it. Into this scrutiny I am about to enter. I shall proceed to examine the state of Europe at the fall of the Roman Empire, and endeavour to discover, by an investigation into institutions, creeds, ideas, and sentiments, what were the elements which the ancient world bequeathed to the modern. If we distinguish in these elements that character strongly marked which I have just described, it will form a groundwork for belief in its justness.
First of all, it will be necessary to have a correct conception of what the Roman Empire was, and how it was constituted.
Rome at its origin was only a municipality, a corporation. The Roman government was a mere concentration of the institutions which are suited to a people shut up within the walls of a town— that is, municipal institutions. Such was its distinctive character.
This was not peculiar to Rome. When we look at Italy at this epoch, around Rome, we find nothing but towns. What were then called people, were mere confederations of towns. The Latin people was a confederation of Latin towns. The Etruscans, the Samnites, the Sabines, the people of Græcia Magna, were all in the same state.
At this era there was no country—that is to say, the country had no resemblance to what it is at present; it was cultivated—that was necessary; but it was not inhabited. The rural proprietors were the inhabitants of the cities; they went out to look after their farms, and they often kept a certain number of slaves upon them; but what we at present call the country, consisting of a scattered population, in isolated abodes, or in villages, strewed over the whole soil, was a thing altogether unknown to ancient Italy.
When Rome extended, what were her proceedings? Peruse her history, and you will see that she conquered or founded towns; it was against towns she fought, or with towns she made treaties, and also into towns she sent colonies. The history of the conquest of the world by Rome, is the history of the conquest and founding of a great number of cities. In the East, the extension of the Roman sway does not quite bear this character; the population was there distributed differently from the western: being under another social system, it was much less concentrated in towns. But as it is only with the European population that we are interested, what was passing in the East is of little importance.
Confining ourselves to the West, we everywhere discern the fact that I have pointed out. In Gaul, in Spain, we meet with nothing but towns; at a distance from them, the territory is covered with marshes and forests. Examine the character of the Roman monuments, of the Roman roads. We find great roads leading from one town to another; that multitude of small roads which now intersect the country in every direction had no existence. There was nothing resembling that countless throng of small monuments, villages, country-houses, churches, dispersed over the land since the middle ages. Rome has transmitted to us only colossal monuments impressed with the municipal character, suited for a numerous population collected at one point. Under whatever aspect the Roman world may be considered, this almost exclusive preponderance of cities, and the consequent non-existence of a country, socially speaking, will be found. This municipal character in the Roman world evidently rendered the unity and social bond of a great state extremely difficult to establish and maintain. A municipality like Rome had been able to conquer the world, but it was not so easy a task to govern and organise it. Thus, when the work seemed consummated, when all the West, and a great part of the East, had fallen under the Roman sway, we find this prodigious accumulation of cities, of small states instituted for isolation and independence, disunited, detached from each other, and slipping the noose, as it were, in all directions.This was one of the causes which led to the necessity of an empire of a more concentrated form of government, and one more capable of holding elements so slightly coherent in a state of union. The empire endeavoured to introduce unity and connection into this scattered society. It succeeded to a certain extent. Between the reigns of Augustus and Diocletian, a civil legislation was developed, coincidental with that vast system of administrative despotism which spread over the Roman world a network of functionaries upon a hierarchical form of distribution, closely linked amongst themselves, and to the imperial court, and solely employed in giving effect to the decrees of power in society, and in rendering available to power the tributes and capabilities of society.
Not only did this system succeed in rallying and compressing together the elements of the Roman world, but the idea of a despotism, of a central power, penetrated the minds of men with a singular facility. We are astonished at beholding in this ill-united collection of small republics, in this association of municipalities, a reverence for the imperial majesty, sole, august, and sacred, prevail with such rapidity. The necessity of establishing some common bond between all these portions of the Roman world must have been extremely urgent when the modes and almost the sentiments of despotism found so ready an acceptation in the minds of men.
The Roman Empire was sustained against the dissolution which was threatened from within, and against the barbaric invasions from without, by these principles, by its administrative organisation, and by the system of military organisation which was joined to it. It strove for a long time in a continual state of decay, but always defending itself. The moment at last arrived when the struggle ceased; neither the skill and sagacity of despotism, nor the stolid imperturbability of subjection, any longer sufficed to hold up this great body. In the fourth century it was rented and dismembered on all sides; the barbarians poured in at all points; the provinces no longer made any resistance, or concerned themselves with the general destiny. It was then that a singular idea came into the heads of certain emperors; they wished to make an experiment whether hopes of general freedom, a confederation or system analogous to what we at the present day call the representative form of government, would not better defend the unity of the Roman Empire than the despotic administration. Here is a rescript of Honorius and Theodosius the younger, addressed in the year 418 to the Prefect of Gaul, the sole object of which was to endeavour to establish a sort of representative government in the south of Gaul, and by its assistance to still maintain the integrity of the Empire:—
'Rescript of the Emperors Honorius and Theodosius the younger, addressed in the year 418 to the Prefect of the Gauls sitting in the town of Arles.'Honorius and Theodosius, Augusti, to Agricola, Prefect of the Gauls.'In consequence of the very satisfactory exposition that your Magnificence has made to us, among other information greatly to the advantage of the republic, we decree, with the purpose of giving them the force of law in perpetuity, the following dispositions, to which the inhabitants of our seven provinces [Footnote 4] will pay due obedience, they being such as they themselves might have wished and demanded.
[Footnote 4: The Viennoise, the first Aquitaine, the second Aquitaine, the Novempopulanie, the first Narbonnaise, the second Narbonnaise, and the province of the Maritime Alps.]
Inasmuch as persons in office, or special deputies, frequently resort to your Magnificence on affairs either of public or private utility, not only from each of the provinces, but also from every town, either to render accounts, or to treat of matters having reference to the interest of the proprietors, we have considered that it might be turned to good account and great advantage if, at a certain epoch in every year, dating from the present, there should be an assembly of the inhabitants of the seven provinces held in the chief city—that is to say, in the town of Arles. By such an institution, we have equally in view the providing for individual as well as general interests. In the first place, by the most notable inhabitants meeting together in presence of the prefect, if the public order should not induce his absence, the best possible information will be obtained upon every subject under deliberation. Nothing that is discussed and decided, after mature deliberation, will remain unknown to any of the provinces, and those persons who have taken no part in the assembly will be equally bound to follow the same rules of justice and equity. Furthermore, by ordaining that an assembly be held every year in the city of Constantine, [Footnote 5] we believe we shall promote not only the public good, but also social relations. The city is so advantageously situated, strangers frequent it in such numbers, and it enjoys so extended a commerce, that everything that grows, or is manufactured elsewhere, is brought thither.
[Footnote 5: Constantine the Great had a singular affection for the city of Arles. It was he who established in it the seat of the Gaulish prefecture. He also wished that it should bear his name, but usage was more powerful than his inclination.]
All the famous productions of the rich East, spicy Arabia, mild Assyria, fertile Africa, beauteous Spain, and valorous Gaul, abound in that place with such profusion, that all things admired for their magnificence in the various parts of the world seem the products of its soil. Besides, the junction of the Rhone with the Tuscan Sea draws near, and renders almost neighbours, the countries which the first traverses, and which the second bathes with its sinuosities.Thus, since the whole earth places at the disposal of this city all its most estimable possessions, since the individual productions of all countries are there transported by land, by sea, by the course of rivers, by means of sails, oars, and wagons, will not our Gaul perceive the benefit of the order that we give to convoke a public assembly in that city, where all the enjoyments of life, and all the facilities for commerce, are found concentrated by, as it were, the especial gift of God?'The illustrious prefect, Petronius [Footnote 6] with a praiseworthy and most reasonable purpose, issued orders at a previous date that this custom should be observed; but as its fulfilment was interrupted by the confusion of the times, and the reign of usurpers, we have resolved to restore it to vigour by our authoritative prudence. Therefore, your Magnificence Agricola, our dear and well-beloved cousin, conforming yourself to our present ordinance, and the custom established by your predecessors, will cause the following dispositions to be observed in the provinces:
[Footnote 6: Petronius was prefect of the Gauls between the years 402 and 408.]
'Let intimation be given to all persons honoured with public functions, or proprietors of domains, and all the judges of the provinces, that they must assemble in council every year in the city of Arles, in the interval elapsing between the ides of August and those of September, the actual days of meeting and of sitting being fixed at pleasure.'Novempopulanie and the second Aquitaine, as the most distant provinces, may, if their judges are retained by indispensable duties, send deputies in their place, according to custom.'Those who shall fail to appear at the prescribed place and time shall pay a fine, rated to the judges at five pounds of gold, and to the members of thecuriæ[Footnote 7] and the other dignitaries, three pounds of gold.
[Footnote 7: The municipal bodies of the Roman towns were calledcuriæ, and the members of those bodies, who were very numerous,curiales.]
'We design by this measure to confer great advantages and an important boon on the inhabitants of our provinces. We are likewise assured of adding to the embellishment of the city of Arles, to the fidelity of which we owe much, according to our brother and patrician. [Footnote 8]
[Footnote 8: Constantine, the second husband of Placidea, whom Honorius had taken for a colleague in 421.]
'Given on the 15th of the calends of May, and received at Arles the 10th of the calends of June.'
The provinces and towns refused the boon; no deputies were named, no one would go to Arles. Centralisation and unity were contrary to the primitive nature of that society; the spirit of locality, of municipality, was displayed in full force, and the impossibility of reconstituting a general society or country was clearly evidenced.The towns shut themselves up within their walls, and looked not beyond their own affairs; and the Empire fell because no one would be of the Empire, because the citizens would no longer concern themselves with anything but their own city. Thus, at the fall of the Roman Empire, we find again the same fact that was observable at its commencement—the predominance of the municipal form and spirit. The Roman world returned to its first condition: towns had formed it; it was dissolved, but the towns remained.
It is the municipal system that the ancient Roman civilisation bequeathed to modern Europe; in a very irregular and weakened form, and doubtless very inferior to what it had been in the early times, but still the only real constituted system which had alone survived all the elements of the Roman world.
When I sayalone, I am wrong. Another fact, another idea, equally survived—namely, the idea of the Empire, the name of the emperor, the maxim of imperial majesty, and of an absolute, sacred power, attached to that name. These are the elements that Roman civilisation transmitted to the European civilisation; on one hand, the municipal system, its customs, rules, and precedents, containing the germ of liberty; on the other, a uniform and universal civil legislation, coupled with the idea of the absolute power and the sacred majesty of the imperial name, containing the principle of order and subjection.
But at the same time a very different society, founded upon totally distinct principles, animated by other sentiments, and one destined to infuse into the modern European civilisation elements of quite a different nature, had arisen in the bosom of the Roman society—namely, theChristian church. I speak peculiarly of the Christian church, and not of Christianity. At the end of the fourth, and commencement of the fifth century, Christianity had ceased to be simply an individual creed; it had become an institution, and had taken a constituted form; it had its own government, a body of clergy, a hierarchy arranged for the different clerical functions, revenues, means for independent action, and rallying-points suitable to a great society, provincial, national, and oecumenical councils, and the custom of deliberating in common upon the affairs of the society. In a word, Christianity at this epoch was not merely a religion, it was a church.
If it had not been a church, it is impossible to say what might have happened to it amid the fall of the Roman Empire. I confine myself to purely human considerations; I put aside every element foreign to the natural consequences deducible from natural facts; and I believe that if Christianity had been, as in the early times, only an individual belief, sentiment, or conviction, it would have sunk under the ruins of the Empire, and the invasions of the barbarians.It succumbed at a later date in Asia and in the north of Africa, under an invasion of the same nature, an invasion of Moslem barbarians, even when it was in a state of institution, when it was an established church. Much more might the same result have occurred at the fall of the Roman Empire. There were at that time none of the means in existence by which at the present day moral influences are established or offer resistance independently of institutions, none of the means by which a mere truth or idea acquires an empire over the minds of men, governs actions, and determines events. Nothing existed in the fourth century to give to personal ideas and sentiments such a sway. It is clear that a society powerfully organised and vigorously governed was needed to struggle against so destructive a crisis, and to arise victorious from so fearful a conflict. It is not therefore too much to affirm that, at the end of the fourth, and beginning of the fifth century, it was the Christian church which saved Christianity; it was the church, with its institutions, its magistrates, its temporal power, which strove triumphantly against the internal dissolution which convulsed the Empire, and against barbarity which subdued the barbarians themselves, and became the link, the medium, the principle of civilisation, as between the Roman and barbarian worlds. Hence it is the state of the church rather than of Christianity, properly so called, in the fifth century, which ought to be investigated, in order to discover in what Christianity has from that period aided modern civilisation, and what elements it has introduced. An inquiry necessarily arises, What was the Christian church at that epoch?
When we consider, under a merely human aspect, the different revolutions which have been accomplished in the development of Christianity, from its origin to the fifth century, taking it only as a society, and not as a religious creed, we find that it has passed through three stages essentially distinct.
In the earliest period, the Christian society presents itself as a simple association arising from a common creed, from common sentiments; the first Christians congregated in order to enjoy amongst themselves an interchange of the religious emotions and convictions common to all their breasts. There was no settled system of doctrines, of rules, or of discipline, or no body of persons invested with authority.
There is no doubt that in every society that exists, however newly-born or feebly-constituted it may be, a moral power is perceptible, animating and directing it. So in the different Christian congregations there were men who preached, taught, and morally governed the rest, but no superior, or no discipline, was regularly instituted; the primitive state of the Christian society was simply an association of persons drawn together by an identity of creed and sentiment.
In proportion as it progressed (and very speedily, for the marks are traceable in the earliest records), a system of doctrines, of rules, of discipline, and of functionaries or magistrates, was brought out. Of the magistrates some were calledpresbuteroi, orancients, who became the priests; othersepiskopoi, or inspectors, or watchers, who became bishops; and othersdiakonoi, or deacons, charged with the care of the poor and the distribution of alms.
It is almost impossible to determine the precise functions of these different magistrates; the line of demarcation was probably very vague and fluctuating, but at all events the institutions had a commencement. This second epoch, however, had a predominant feature, which consisted in the control, the preponderance belonging to the body of the faithful. It was they who decided both as to the choice of dignitaries or magistrates, and as to the adoption as well of systems of discipline as of doctrine. The Christian people were not as yet separated from the government of the church. They did not exist apart from or independently of each other, and the Christian people continued to exercise the principal influence in the society.
In the third era everything was changed. A clergy was formed distinct from the people, a body of priests having riches, jurisdiction, a constitution of their own, in a word, a complete government, being in itself a regular society, furnished with all the means of existence independently of the society for whose behoof it was intended, and over which it extended its influence. This was the state in which the Christian church appeared at the commencement of the fifth century, and in the third stage of its constitution. The government was not completely taken out of the hands of the people, or separated from them; a system prevailed which is without any parallel, especially in religious affairs; but in the relations between the clergy and the flocks of the faithful, the clergy ruled almost without control.
The Christian clergy had, besides, another means of influence of a different character. The bishops and clerks became the chief municipal magistrates. We have seen that the municipal system was, properly speaking, all that remained of the Roman Empire. From the annoyances of despotism, and the ruin of the towns, it came to pass that thecuriales, or members of the municipal bodies, fell into despair and apathy. The bishops and the body of priests, on the contrary, being full of life and zeal, naturally offered themselves to guard and direct affairs. It would be wrong to reproach them with officiousness, or to tax them with usurpation; they merely obeyed the natural impulse of events. The clergy alone were morally strong and animated, and it became powerful; the result is a law of the universe.
All the legislation of the emperors at that epoch bears marks of this revolution. In the codes both of Theodosius and Justinian we find a great number of regulations which remit municipal affairs to the clergy and the bishops. I will quote some of them.
'Cod. Just. 1. i. tit. iv.de episcopali audientia, § 26.—With regard to the annual affairs of the cities (whether they refer to the ordinary city revenues, resulting either from funds arising from the city property, or from individual gifts or legacies, or from any other source, whether deliberation is required touching the public works, or magazines of provisions, or aqueducts, or the maintenance of baths or of harbours, or the construction of walls or towers, or the repairing of bridges and roads, or lawsuits in which the city may be engaged, on account of public or private interests), we ordain as follows:—The very pious bishop, and three men of good fame amongst the chief men of the city, shall assemble together; they shall examine every year the works that have been performed, and they shall take care that those who conduct them, or have conducted them, do measure them with precision, give in accounts of them, and make it clear that they have fulfilled their engagements in the administration, whether it be of the public monuments, or of the sums appropriated to provisions and baths, or of what is expended for the repair of roads, aqueducts, or any other work.'Ibid. § 30.—With regard to the guardianship of young people, of the first or second age, and of all those to whom the law assigns curators, if their fortune does not exceed 500aurei, we ordain that the nomination of the president of the province shall not be waited for, as it might give rise to heavy charges, especially if the said president did not reside in the city where the guardianship is required to be provided. The nomination of the curators or tutors shall therefore be made by the magistrate of the city, in concert with the most pious bishop, and other persons invested with public functions, if the city possess several.'Ibid. 1. i. tit. lv.de defensoribus, § 8.—We will that the defenders of the cities, being well instructed in the holy mysteries of the orthodox faith, be chosen and instituted by the venerable bishops, the clerks, the notables, the proprietors, and the curiales. As to their installation, it shall be referred to the glorious power of the Prefect of the Pretorium, in order that their authority may gather more solidity and vigour from the admissory letters of his Magnificence.'
I might cite a great number of other laws illustrative of the fact everywhere displayed, that between the Roman municipal system and the municipal system of the middle ages an ecclesiastical municipal system interposed; that the preponderance of the clergy in city affairs succeeded that of the old municipal magistrates, and preceded the organisation of the modern corporations.
Thus, by its own constitution, by its action on the Christian population, and also by the part it bore in civil affairs, the Christian church exercised prodigious means of influence. From that epoch, therefore, it operated powerfully on the character and development of modern civilisation. I will endeavour to sum up the elements it has infused into it.
In the first place, an incalculable benefit resulted from the existence of a moral influence and force, of a force which simply rested on moral convictions, persuasions, and opinions, in the midst of that deluge of physical force which poured upon society at that epoch. If the Christian church had not been established, the whole world had been overborne by pure physical force. It alone exercised a moral power. It did more: it sustained and spread the idea of a rule or law which was superior to all human laws; it maintained, for the safety of humanity, that fundamental doctrine that there is above all human laws a law, which, according to the spirit of times and manners, is sometimes called reason, and sometimes Divine will, but which, at all periods, and in all places, is the same law under different designations.
The church, then, originated a great fact—namely, the separation of the spiritual from the temporal power. This separation is the source of liberty of conscience; and it rests upon no other principle than that which serves as the base of the most unrestricted and extended liberty of conscience. The separation between the temporal and spiritual powers is founded upon the principle that physical force has no right or influence over the minds of men, or over conviction and truth. It results from the distinction established between the world of thought and that of action, between circumstances of an internal and those of an external nature. So that this maxim of liberty of conscience—for which Europe has struggled and suffered so much, and which has prevailed only so lately, often against the exertions of the clergy—was laid down under the name of a separation between temporal and spiritual power in the earliest stages of European civilisation; and its introduction and maintenance was owing to the Christian church being compelled, by the necessity of its situation, to defend itself against the barbarism of the times.
The Christian church, therefore, shed upon the European world in the fifth century three essential blessings—the recognition of a moral influence, the upholding a divine law, and the disjunction of temporal and spiritual power.
But even at that period all its influence was not equally salutary. So early as the fifth century, some evil principles made their appearance in the church, which have played an important part in the development of our civilisation. Thus there arose within it at that era the doctrine of the separation of the governing and the governed, the attempt to establish the irresponsibility of rulers to subjects, to impose laws, to control opinion, and to dispose of men, without the consent of the governed, or regard being paid to their reason and inclination.It likewise strove to infuse into society the theocratic principle, to seize upon temporal power, and to exercise exclusive domination. And when it failed in fully accomplishing this design, it allied itself with temporal princes, and supported their absolute power at the expense of the liberty of the people, in order that it might obtain a share for itself.
Such were the principal elements of civilisation that Europe drew from the church and the Empire in the fifth century. It was in this state that the barbarians found the Roman world when they came to take possession of it. In order to comprehend all the elements which were included and mingled in the cradle of our civilisation, there remains nothing but the barbarians to contemplate.
It is not with the history of the barbarians that we have to concern ourselves, for relation is not our province. We are aware that, at the epoch in question, the conquerors of the Empire were almost all of the same race, all Germans, except some Slavonic tribes, as the Alani, for example. We are likewise aware that they were all pretty nearly in the same state of civilisation. Some difference might exist amongst them, according to the greater or less degree of contact into which they had respectively come with the Roman provincials. Thus there is no doubt that the Goths were more advanced and milder in their manners than the Franks. But considering things in a general point of view, and with reference to their results upon ourselves, this early diversity amongst the barbaric tribes in civilisation is of no importance.
It is the general state of society amongst the barbarians that it behoves us to ascertain; and this is a subject which is involved in considerable difficulty. We can understand with comparative ease the Roman municipal system and the Christian church, because their influence is perpetuated even to our own days, and we discover traces of them in a multitude of actual institutions and circumstances, affording us a thousand means of identifying and explaining them. But the manners and the social state of the barbarians have completely perished; we are reduced to the necessity of evoking them either from the most ancient historical monuments, or by an effort of the imagination.
There is a sentiment, a fact, which we must impress upon our minds, in order to have a true idea of what a barbarian was, and that is the feeling of individual independence, the joy he experienced in casting himself, in the fulness of his strength and freedom, into the midst of worldly vicissitudes—the pleasure to him of activity without labour, the charm of an adventurous career, full of uncertainty, inequality of fortune, and danger. This was the predominant sentiment of the barbarian state, the moral craving which urged these human masses to movement. At present, in a society so regular as that into which we are wedged, it is difficult to imagine the extent of dominion which this sentiment exercised over the barbarians of the fourth and fifth centuries.There is only one work which in my opinion presents this character of barbarism in its full strength—namely, 'The History of the Conquest of England by the Normans,' by M. Thierry; it is the only book in which the motives, the longings, and the impulses, which are the springs of actions in men when in a social state bordering upon the barbaric, are perceived and brought out with true Homeric vividness. Nowhere do we perceive so well what a barbarian is, or in what his life consists. Something also of the same is found, though, according to my ideas, in a far inferior degree, and in a much less simple and truthful manner, in Mr. Cooper's romances of the North American savages. The existence of the American savages, the ties and the sentiments which they bear with them in the midst of the woods, recall to a certain extent the manners of the ancient Germans. Of course these pictures are somewhat idealised and poetical, the dark side of barbaric life and manners being studiously glossed over. I speak not only of the ills provoked by these manners in the social state, but also of the inward and individual state of the barbarian himself. In this furious craving for personal independence there was far more grossness and animalism than we would conclude from the work of M. Thierry; there was a degree of brutality, frenzy, and sullen apathy, which is not always faithfully given in his account. Nevertheless, when we regard things fundamentally, we are convinced that, in spite of this alliance of brutality, materialism, and boorish selfishness, the desire for individual independence is a noble moral sentiment, which derives its strength from the moral nature of man; it consists in the gratification of feeling as a man, in the consciousness of personality and of human free-will in its fullest development.
The German barbarians introduced this feeling into the European civilisation; it was unknown to the Roman world, to the Christian church, and to almost all the ancient civilisations. Liberty in those ancient civilisations meant political, municipal liberty. Men were not engaged in a strife for personal liberty, but for their liberty as citizens; they belonged to an association, to it they were devotedly attached, and for it they were prepared to sacrifice themselves. It was the same in the Christian church: there prevailed within it a sentiment of strong regard for the Christian corporation, of devotion to its laws, and an ardent desire to extend its empire; or rather the religious sentiment caused a reaction in the minds of men, which was displayed in an inward struggle to subdue individual liberty, and to give blind submission to what faith decreed. But the feeling of personal independence, the taste for liberty making itself apparent at all moments without other design sometimes than that of proving itself—this was a sentiment unknown to the Roman society and to the Christian church.It was imported and fixed by the barbarians at the birth of modern civilisation, and it has performed too important a part, and produced too many happy results in connection with it, to be omitted as one of its fundamental elements.
There is a second fact, a second element in civilisation, that we likewise draw exclusively from the barbarians. It is the military chieftainship, the tie that was formed between individuals as warriors, and which, without destroying the liberty of each, without destroying, except to a certain extent, the equality which almost completely existed amongst them, introduced a graduated subordination, and gave a beginning to that aristocratic organisation which at a later date expanded into the feudal system. The groundwork of this relation was the attachment of man to man, the fidelity of one individual to another, without any outward compulsion, and without any obligation founded on the general principles of society. In the ancient republics, no man was of his own accord specially attached to any other man; all were bound to their city. With the barbarians the social bond was formed amongst individuals, in the first place by the relation of the chief to his companion, when they lived in a banded state traversing the face of Europe, and later by the relation of suzerain and vassal. This second principle, which has also had an important effect on modern civilisation, this devotedness of man to man, comes to us from the barbarians, and from their manners it has passed into ours.
Was I wrong, then, in stating at the commencement that modern civilisation was at its very origin as varied, agitated, and confused as I endeavoured to represent it in the general picture which I gave of it? Do we not discover at the dissolution of the Roman Empire almost all the elements which meet in the progressive development of our civilisation? Three perfectly different societies are found at that period; the municipal society, the last remnant of the Roman Empire, the Christian, and the barbarian society. We find these societies very differently organised, based upon perfectly distinct principles, and inspiring men with opposite sentiments: we perceive the longing for the most absolute independence by the side of the most complete subservience; military chieftainship ranged with ecclesiastical domination; the spiritual and temporal powers in activity on every side; the canons of the church, the studied legislation of the Romans, and the almost unwritten customs of the barbarians—everywhere a mixture, or rather a co-existence, of races, tongues, social situations, manners, ideas, and feelings, all the most contrary to each other. This I adduce as a satisfactory proof of the accuracy of the general character under which I have laboured to present our civilisation.