Plate IIIPlate III—CODEX SINAITICUSEnd of St. Mark (15 : 16-16 : 8) and beginning of St. Luke (1 : 1-18); Mark 16 : 9-20 is missing; 15 : 47 is added at the lower margin by a later hand; remark the numbers of Eusebius's sections and canons. The eight columns of the open book recall the roll-system.Reduced one-fifth from the fac-simile edited by Prof. Lake and published by the Clarendon Press(Oxford and London).
End of St. Mark (15 : 16-16 : 8) and beginning of St. Luke (1 : 1-18); Mark 16 : 9-20 is missing; 15 : 47 is added at the lower margin by a later hand; remark the numbers of Eusebius's sections and canons. The eight columns of the open book recall the roll-system.
Reduced one-fifth from the fac-simile edited by Prof. Lake and published by the Clarendon Press(Oxford and London).
Another change is to be mentioned at the same time. The old form of papyrus rolls became obsolete and the parchment book took its place. The use of this latter form seems to originate in the law schools; the codex, or parchment book, is at first the designation of a Roman law-book. But at an early date the Christian church adopted this form as the more convenient one and gave it its circulation. We hardly say too much when we call the Bible the means by which our present form of book came into general use. Even if the Bible had done nothing else for civilisation than to give mankind the shape of its books that would be a great deal (Plate IV).
The form of a parchment book, or codex, would admit of the copying of several books in one volume. The great Bibles of the fourth and fifth centuries of which we know contained all the books; they formed one volume. So the internal unity running through the Bible as a whole came to be represented even in the outward form.
Plate IVPlate IV—ROLL AND BOOKSt. Luke the Evangelist copying from a roll into a book (codex form): miniature from a Greek manuscript at the Vatican library (gr. 1158), eleventh century.From "Vatikanische Miniaturen." Copyright by B. Herder, Freiburg.
St. Luke the Evangelist copying from a roll into a book (codex form): miniature from a Greek manuscript at the Vatican library (gr. 1158), eleventh century.
From "Vatikanische Miniaturen." Copyright by B. Herder, Freiburg.
The copying of the Bible went on rapidly, monks and noble Christian ladies undertaking it as a form of ascetic work, providing a heavenly merit and sometimes earning bread and butter, too. Instead of the plain copies in an unskilled hand we now find sumptuous books of the finest parchment with purple colouring, in the most luxurious manuscripts the sacred text being written in gold and silver, and the margin sometimes being covered with beautiful paintings. A copy of Genesis in Greek at the Vienna library has forty-eight water-colours, one at the bottom of each page, telling the same story as the text. The manuscript when complete must have had sixty folios: this gives one hundred and twenty of such decorated pages for Genesis, and if it contained the whole Pentateuch we may allow for five hundred and ten illustrations (Plate V). And this manuscript does not stand alone; it is but one ofa large group of illuminated manuscripts. This sumptuous appearance may be taken as a sign of the value attached to the Bible. Persecuted hitherto, it became the ruler of the Christian empire, invested with all the glory of royalty.
The place given to the Bible is best shown by the fact that it presided over the great councils, a copy of the Bible lying upon the presidential chair. It was meant as a symbol for Christ himself taking the place of honour and deciding the great questions of faith. The same holds true for non-ecclesiastical assemblies. In an ordinance of the emperor Theodosius it is required that a copy of the Bible be present in every court-room. The Bible, or rather the Gospels, or to speak even more precisely the most prominent page in them, the beginning of the first chapter of St. John's Gospel, was used for taking an oath. The worn condition of this page in many a manuscript still attests this use.
Presiding over the courts, the Bible began at once to exercise its influence upon the Law. We can already trace this influence in the legislation of Constantine himself: when he forbids to brand a criminal on his face, giving as reason that the image of God ought not to be marred, it is the Biblical notion of the man's face being the likeness of God which underlies this law. When, in a law published in 334,he insists that no man, whoever he is and whatever rank he has, shall be admitted as a solitary witness unless supported by another witness, it is the well-known Biblical rule that at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established. When he makes divorce more difficult, denying the right of remarriage to the man who repudiates his wife without sufficient reason on her part, we feel that it is the injunction of Jesus which is behind this law. I would not say the same of all parts of this legislation which various scholars have adduced as proving Christian influence. Roman law from the second century was influenced to a large extent by the Stoa, all the famous lawyers such as Gaius and Paulus belonging to this school and introducing its ideas into the practice of the courts and into the legislation of the magistrates, especially of the emperor. There is an evident development in the Roman law toward a more humane conception of slavery; this is due to the Stoa. The views on marriage and divorce, the position of "natural children," as the Roman law calls illegitimates, all this is largely due to non-Christian influences. Nevertheless, there are unmistakable traces of a particular influence of the Bible upon the legislation of the Christian emperors, and this influence increases from decade to decade. Constantine gives a rather vague ordinance for keeping Sunday as a day on which courts are not to be held. Theodosius is much stricter; and the climax is reached with Justinian, when Sunday has become a legal holiday.
Plate VPlate V—VIENNA GENESISThe paradise: Adam and Eve appear three times: (1) under the tree of knowledge, Gen. 3 : 6; (2) when discovering their nakedness, 3 : 7; (3) when hiding themselves from the Lord among the trees, 3 : 8. The divine voice, represented by the hand from heaven, belongs to this third scene; it is put in the centre merely for artistic reasons.From "Die Wiener Genesis." F. Tempsky, Vienna.
The paradise: Adam and Eve appear three times: (1) under the tree of knowledge, Gen. 3 : 6; (2) when discovering their nakedness, 3 : 7; (3) when hiding themselves from the Lord among the trees, 3 : 8. The divine voice, represented by the hand from heaven, belongs to this third scene; it is put in the centre merely for artistic reasons.
From "Die Wiener Genesis." F. Tempsky, Vienna.
Justinian, of course, codifies the Roman law, but his Novellæ, the laws issued by himself, show the new spirit of a legislation ruled by the Bible. He sometimes refers directly to the Bible as authority. Still more is this spirit prevalent in some provincial codes. One of these says that everything has to be judged according to the ancient and to the modern law, i. e., the law of Moses, which antedates the laws of all other nations, and the law of Christ, as it is contained in the laws of the emperors Constantine, Theodosius, and Leo. Lawyers of this period indulge in comparisons between the Roman law and the law of Moses.
The Roman empire was Latin in some respects, Greek in others. Latin was the official language of the court, of the law, of the army. But the population spoke mostly Greek, though from the third century on large parts used their native language, Syriac and Coptic, as well. The Bible had been translated into these languages during the former period. Now the general political situation brings the empire into contact with the Goths in the North, with Armenians and Georgians in the East, withLibyans and Ethiopians in the South. As soon as the empire gains any influence among these neighbouring peoples, the Christian mission tries to get hold of them and we see the Bible translated into these languages, which hitherto have had no writing. The Bible marks for these peoples the beginning of a national literature. Their alphabets were made up from the Greek, thus showing that the reading of the Bible with these nations began in connection with their intercourse with the Roman empire.
The Bible ruled even the Greek language of this empire. There are many changes in the later Greek which are surely due to familiarity with the Bible. Words previously unknown in Greek or used in a different sense became quite familiar; everybody knows what is the meaning of Beelzebub, Messiah, Paradise, Satan, and that an angel is not a mere messenger, but is a messenger from God, a spiritual being, and that the word demon always means an unclean spirit.
Moreover, the Bible influenced the style of the writers, especially of the great preachers. One may distinguish three forms of influence in this department: artificial imitation; naïve use of Biblical names and phrases (what is usually called in Germany the language of Canaan); and, lastly, the unconscious influence which the style of any book exerts upon a careful reader. I do not think that there are many instances of artificial imitation in this period. Sometimes a preacher skilfully composed his whole sermon by adding Biblical quotation to quotation; asked to preach a sermon on a saint's day, he did nothing else than comment upon the saint's life in Biblical phrases. The second type of influence is very common; the present emperor is usually spoken of as the new David; the story of a war is always told as if David were fighting the Philistines; each heretic is entitled to be called the new Judas Iscariot who betrays his Lord. The most famous example of this kind is the sermon attributed to Chrysostom after his first return to Constantinople, when he had fled from the wrath of the empress: "Again Herodias is furious, again she flurries, again she dances, again she desires the Baptist's head to be cut off by Herod." The preacher's own Christian name, of course, was John, and the empress was trying to get rid of him for political reasons.
The most important influence, however, is the unconscious influence simply from the use of the Bible. The great power of Chrysostom's sermons was partly due to his eminent rhetorical talent and training. He knew how to gain his hearers' attention; yet for the greater part his thorough acquaintance with the Bible seems to be responsible. Reading the sermons of those great Greek Christian orators of the fourth century, we are often struck by the embedded quotations from the Bible. In the midst of this fluent Greek there is something quite different, something stern, something austere, something dignified and solemn, which immediately appeals to the hearer. As a matter of fact, the preachers themselves, proud as they were of their classical training, had rather the opposite impression; they apologise for introducing barbarous language. Chrysostom insists, in many a sermon, on the idea that the apostles were fishermen, unskilled in literary style, and that it is one of the proofs of inspiration that those men could write at all. He evidently is not aware of the fact, clear to us, that it is just the vigour and strength of Biblical language which gave to his own sermons their magnificent effect. He was filled with Biblical phraseology as was no other preacher of his time. He himself did not realise it, nor did, I presume, the greater part of his congregation, yet it was this which so impressed them. If only the modern editors would note all the Biblical allusions in his works! Yet they are hardly able even to recognise them. We find preachers noted for their brilliancy in extemporaneous speaking, and usually the remark isadded, it was because the speaker knew the Scriptures by heart.
In this way the people became accustomed to Biblical phraseology, and we do not wonder that at last the colloquial Greek also was influenced by the Bible. We can trace its influence even in the romances.
The Bible ruled the home and the daily life; people had their furniture decorated with Biblical symbols; lamps showed Noah's ark or Jonah's whale, Jesus with his disciples in a ship or Jesus treading upon the lion and adder, the serpent and dragon (according to Psalm 91). At the Strassburg Museum there is a beautiful engraved glass cup made probably in a Roman manufactory in Cologne. On one side is engraved Abraham sacrificing Isaac, on the other side Moses striking water from the rock. Rich people wore sumptuous garments embroidered with representations of Biblical scenes. The preachers complain that these people wear the miracles of Christ on their coats instead of taking them to their heart and conscience.
The great officials of the empire used to give to their friends ivory tablets commemorating their honours. In former times they had represented on them the emperor, the empress, or their own portraits, and scenes from the circus; now they choseBiblical subjects. People liked to have long rolls exhibiting the wars and triumphs of an emperor in a continuous series of drawings. Two gigantic rolls of this kind may still be seen at Rome; I mean the columns of Trajan and of Marcus Aurelius. Christian art produced rolls of the same kind, exhibiting the story of Joshua's battles (Plate VI). Senators and noble ladies vied with each other in arranging the history of the Bible and especially the life of Jesus in the form of poems, each word of which was taken either from Homer or from Vergil. It is a wonderful mixture of Bible and classical culture.
Plate VIPlate VI—JOSHUA ROLL(At the Vatican)Joshua is sending from Jericho (at the left, walls tumbling down) to Ai two men to spy out the land, Joshua 7 : 2. The towns are represented by edifices as well as by allegorical figures (Tyche of the City).From "Vatikanische Miniaturen," by St. Beissel. Copyright by B. Herder, Freiburg.
(At the Vatican)
Joshua is sending from Jericho (at the left, walls tumbling down) to Ai two men to spy out the land, Joshua 7 : 2. The towns are represented by edifices as well as by allegorical figures (Tyche of the City).
From "Vatikanische Miniaturen," by St. Beissel. Copyright by B. Herder, Freiburg.
The Bible rules not only the public and the private life, but also the church and its organisations. At the beginning the Christians were afraid of comparing the Old Testament rites with the ecclesiastical institutions. The Law of the Old Testament belonged to an earlier form of religion; it was abolished by the New Testament. Christ, according to Saint Paul, was the end of the Law. But by and by the Old and the New Testament were brought nearer together. An author of the first century remarks that God by his commandments in the Old Testament has shown himself to be a lover of order, therefore in the Christian congregation, too, order ought to rule. He does not call the Christian communion a sacrifice, the Christian minister a priest;but his parallelism comes very near to this, and a century later the step is taken. It becomes usual to speak of bishop, elders, and deacons as high-priest, priests, and Levites. Later on, even the minor degrees were taken back to Biblical models: the subdeacon, lector, exorcist, acolyte, janitor were found represented in the Old Testament. The clergy formed a separate class as distinct from other people as the tribe of Levi was among the tribes of Israel. It was upon the authority of the Old Testament that they claimed rights and prerogatives to be given and guaranteed by the empire. The monks found their models in Elijah and Elisha; common life was represented by the apostles; penitents were Job, David, and the people of Nineveh; widows (as ecclesiastical functionaries) had their models in Naomi, Hannah, Tabitha, etc. The church was the tabernacle of Moses and the temple of Solomon, and each detail in the description of these Biblical buildings was made to agree with a feature in the Christian church by means of allegorical interpretation. The feasts of the church correspond to the feasts of the Old Testament; Easter is usually called Passover, and Whitsuntide Pentecost. At a rather early date a festival of the dedication of the individual church was introduced to correspond with the festival of the dedication of the temple.As the Jews kept two days in the week for fasting, so did the Christians, choosing Wednesday and Friday instead of Monday and Thursday; and in doing so they remembered that it was on a Wednesday that Jesus was betrayed by Judas and on a Friday that he died on the cross. Even the usual hours for prayers were based on Old Testament authority; David, saying in Psalm 141 : 2 "The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice," means vespers, while in the 131st Psalm he is speaking of compline, in the 63d of matins. The vigil was observed as well as commanded by Christ himself (Luke 6 : 12 and 12 : 37). The whole liturgy was explained as being in every detail a representation of the life of Christ. The sacraments, too, were prefigured in the Old Testament. This symbolism is very old and very commonly used; it has influenced Christian art. We see Noah's ark as a symbol of baptism (cf.I Peter 3 : 20); Abel's sacrifice, and Melchisedek offering bread and wine to Abraham, as symbols of the holy eucharist. Abraham entertaining at his home the three angels reveals the holy Trinity. All this is represented in splendid mosaics on the walls of the churches, as for instance in San Vitale at Ravenna.
To us this system of Biblical references for everything in the Christian service seems strange. Wefeel that the worship of the Christian congregation rests on other principles than the ritual of the Old Testament and does not gain anything by such hazardous comparisons. It looks like comparing the stars in heaven with beasts on earth. But the fathers thought that this was the highest achievement at which they could arrive: to allegorise and spiritualise the Old Testament law in order to deduce from it the Christian liturgy. That was what they called worship in spirit and truth. It is exactly opposite to the great idea which Jesus conveyed in those words; it is one of the greatest confusions to which the juxtaposition of the Old and the New Testament in one Bible was leading. Nevertheless, it was of great influence upon civilisation for centuries.
The church and the laity were ruled by the Bible; but the real Bible folk of this time were the monks. There had been a tendency toward asceticism from the very beginning of Christianity. At the moment when the church came into power this tendency increased rapidly. In Egypt as well as in Syria, wherever there was a desert place hermits gathered and monasteries were built. Now, in these monasteries the life was really filled with the reading of the Bible. Even the poorest monk would have a copy of the Gospels to read. Some of the monks, ofcourse, were very simple, unlearned people. They could not read, so they learned it all by heart. And sometimes—we are told in the legendary tales of the monks—it happened that a monk who never before had learned to read was miraculously given the art of reading, God granting it to him as a recompense for his zeal. The monks had their hours for common worship and reading, but they were supposed to read each by himself as much as possible. "The rising sun shall find the Bible in thy hands," is one of the monastic rules, and legend illustrates how the divine grace recompensed assiduous reading: filled with heavenly light all through the night was the cell of a hermit as long as he was reading the Bible. When visitors came the talk was over questions raised by the Bible. It was with quotations from the Bible that the celebrated anchorite entertained the people who called upon him to ask for spiritual help.
Among all Biblical books the Psalter was the one most favoured by the monks. They knew it by heart, almost all of them, and they used to recite it during their manual labour. The Psalter was their spiritual weapon against the temptations of the demons; the demon liked nothing so much as to turn a monk from reciting his Psalter. But besides the Psalter it was the Gospel which prevailedover all other books in these ascetic circles. Many of the hermits were induced to leave the world by attending a Gospel lesson in their church at home. "If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me," or "And every one that hath left houses or brethren or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my name's sake shall receive a hundredfold and shall inherit eternal life." These are the words which occur again and again in the lives of saints as the decisive ones for their "conversion," that is for leaving the world and going to the desert or entering a monastery. The first saying quoted above is referred to in the life of Saint Anthony, the greatest of all hermits, and Saint Augustine had this in his mind when the time came for him to change his life. The second saying makes Saint Hypatius go away from home; his biographer, however, is honest enough to add that the saint, a youth of eighteen, had just received punishment from his father. An actor living luxuriously with two concubines chances to enter a church, and hears read from the Gospel, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand"; so he repents and becomes a monk. I do not mean to say that these tales of the monks are historical and trustworthy in every point, but I venture to thinkthat this statement about the motives for conversion is, after all, a correct one. The gospel is what appeals to the human heart, in all centuries and in all nations. And then the man will try to make the gospel the rule of his life. I think it is remarkable that whereas the church and the empire both were ruled mainly by the Old Testament, these ascetic circles took the gospel as their main rule, that is to say, the gospel as understood by the men of that time. It was to them a new law, a law of asceticism, of self-denial, and they kept to it as strictly as possible. Even if for other Christians it meant an almost inaccessible ideal, the monastery ought to be the place to fulfil it literally.
Our picture would be inadequate, however, if we should neglect the abuse of the Bible, the Bible showing its importance and ruling force even by its influence upon the dark domain of human superstition. The ancient world was full of magic. We remember the story in Acts 19 of how Saint Paul overcame some Jewish exorcists, with the result that "not a few of them that practised curious arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all, and they counted the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver." I suspect many a scholar or librarian of to-day would like very much to have those books among his treasures, but theywere burned; and Christianity scored its first triumph over superstition. Superstition, however, did not give way at this first defeat; on the contrary, it made a strenuous effort to draw over all the forces of Christendom to its own side. There was the name of Jesus, frightening the demons; black magic took this name and converted it to its detestable uses. There was the Gospel, representative of Jesus himself in his heavenly power; superstition made it a vehicle of its own magical rites. There was the Bible, the book of divine oracles; human inquisitiveness turned it into a book from which to read the dark future. The heathen had done this with the poems of Homer and Vergil. Turning over the pages they suddenly stopped at a verse and then tried to find in this verse the answer to their question. The fathers of the early church detested this method as something quite alien to a Christian mind, but as early as the end of the fourth century people came to feel that it was all right if only they used the Bible for the same purpose. In the sixth century even church officials kept to this practice. When a bishop had to be elected they almost always consulted the Psalter first on behalf of the man to be elected. Bible verses written on parchment were attached to easy chairs in order to keep away the evil spirits. Gospels in the smallest form were hungon the necks of the babies. It is astonishing to see how great was the esteem in which the Bible was held and how terribly contrary to the spirit of the Bible this practice was, especially when the Bible was used to do harm. Lead, by its dull lustre, always has reminded mankind of the realm of death; so it was used in black magic for bringing upon an enemy a curse from the gods of the underworld. A rolled sheet of lead, inscribed with a psalm and a dreadful curse against any robber, has been found on one of the Ægean Islands hidden in the ground of a vineyard. Evidently the psalm was supposed to be one of the most effective spells. Even the Lord's Prayer and other parts of the Gospels have been abused in the same way (Plate VII). Nothing is so holy that it cannot be turned into a crime by human sin.
It is a dark page of human civilisation. I am afraid it is a large page, too. I could accumulate instance upon instance. But however interesting this might be, it would give a wrong impression. The Bible was not primarily used as a magical means in those centuries. It was acknowledged as something superhuman, bearing supernatural powers, and therefore ruling everything. It ruled the empire as well as the church. It influenced law, language, art, habits, and even magic.
Plate VIIPlate VII—THE LORD'S PRAYEROn a potsherd found at Megara, sixth century; used probably as a spell.From "Mitteilungen des K. Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts," Athen. Published by G. Reimer, Berlin.
On a potsherd found at Megara, sixth century; used probably as a spell.
From "Mitteilungen des K. Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts," Athen. Published by G. Reimer, Berlin.
From the fourth century on the Germans, tribe by tribe, crossed the Danube and the Rhine and entered the boundaries of the Roman empire. Here part of them settled near the frontier, part took service in the Roman army. But the more numerous they became, the more hostile they were. At last the Roman empire in the West broke down, German kingdoms taking its place. It is a long and cruel history, this period of "Völkerwanderungen" as it is usually called in German, the period of the great migrations. And only after some centuries did the new Roman empire of German nationality come to be established by Charlemagne.
At first the Germans made a brilliant start in taking over Roman civilisation. The Goths had been Christianised and civilised at an early period. While it is true that the Visigoths under Alaric captured Rome and did not refrain from plundering it, the behaviour of the Vandals under Gaiseric was even worse, so that for all time to come their nameis connected with the most brutal pillage. But the noble tribe of the Ostrogoths under their celebrated king Theodoric—called Dietrich von Bern in the German songs—tried another plan; they adopted Roman civilisation as far as possible and endeavoured to combine both nations under one dominion. Theodoric had as his minister or secretary of state a member of the Roman nobility, the most cultivated man of letters of the time, Cassiodorus. We have his collection of reports and letters, and we may infer from them how much, aside from his training in the Roman law school, he was influenced by his Christian belief and Biblical reading. Later on, when he retired into the monastery which he had founded on his estates at Vivarium, all his devotion was given to the study of the Bible. He is the man who inculcated on Western monasticism that love for scholarship which has been ever since a characteristic of the Order of Saint Benedict. Cassiodorus was a Roman, of course, but we have ample evidence that even among the Goths the Bible was read and studied. There was a Gothic translation of the Bible, which is supposed to have been made in the fourth century by Ulfilas. In order not to encourage the warlike spirit in his people he is said to have omitted the books of the Kings, wherein so many wars and battles are described. The educationalaspect of the Bible as teaching the German nations comes out here distinctly. We are able to trace the history of the Goths by their Bible, which, having been translated in the East from Greek manuscripts, shows traces of a Latin influence, evidently introduced when the Goths settled in Italy. There still exist some copies, among them the famous Codex Argenteus, now at Upsala, which in its silver writing on purple ground, is a wonderful specimen of luxurious calligraphy, giving testimony to the degree of civilisation which these Ostrogoths had taken over from Rome (Plate VIII).
There was, however, one great difference between the Germans and the Romans; the latter were Catholics, the former Arians. This religious difference is responsible for many troubles and persecutions brought by the Germans upon the population of the conquered land. The Germans had a church organisation of their own; they had their own clergy, and this clergy was well trained in Bible reading. We find the remarkable fact that the German Arian bishops show an even larger knowledge of the Bible than their Roman Catholic colleagues. The complaint was often heard that the watchwords of Catholicism, as, for example,homoûsios, had no Biblical foundation, while, on the other hand, the Arians were always ready to fill their creeds with Biblicalphrases. These Germans had a profound reverence for the holy Scripture and bowed down to it. It was only by Scriptural proofs that the Catholic clergy of Spain succeeded in converting the Arian king to their faith.
Theodoric built at Ravenna some churches which still exist. Here we see mosaics exhibiting the life of Jesus in a very simple way, but with that unmistakable touch of awe which is so characteristic of German piety. How different are the pictures which were added after Ravenna had become Byzantine! They are highly ceremonial, representing, among others, the emperor Justinian and the empress Theodora with all their suite.
Plate VIIIPlate VIII—GOTHIC BIBLECodex Argenteus, now at Upsala. Sixth century, written on purple parchment in silver and (some words) in gold. The figures at the bottom give Eusebius's harmony of the Gospels: this particular scheme is found in Syrian manuscripts and in the Old Latin Codex Rehdigerianus at Breslau.From "Deutsche Kulturgeschichte," by O. Henne am Rhyn. Grote, Berlin, Germany.
Codex Argenteus, now at Upsala. Sixth century, written on purple parchment in silver and (some words) in gold. The figures at the bottom give Eusebius's harmony of the Gospels: this particular scheme is found in Syrian manuscripts and in the Old Latin Codex Rehdigerianus at Breslau.
From "Deutsche Kulturgeschichte," by O. Henne am Rhyn. Grote, Berlin, Germany.
These were the first centuries of German invasion. The ancient civilisation, championed by the Roman church, was still strong enough to impose itself upon these invaders. Time went on and civilisation more and more lost its energy. Especially in Gaul, in the kingdom of the Merovingians, intellectual darkness spread all over the country. There was no layman who could read, hardly any member of the clergy. We hear of great monasteries, which were rich royal foundations, where no complete Bible was to be found. We see the troubles of a missionary like Boniface. In order to procure the necessary books, he has to apply to his English lady friends,who send him copies of the books he wants, finely written by their own delicate hands. It was a time when a book, a Bible, was a treasure, and to own one was a fact to be recorded by a biographer. This enables us to trace the history of more than one famous manuscript. We are surprised to find what journeys they made. One was sent from Naples to England, and then a century later again removed to the German shore and finally treasured among the rarities of the Fulda library. Another manuscript, now at Florence, came originally from the monastery of Cassiodorus in the extreme south of Italy and found its way to the monastery of Mount Amiata, near Florence, only by a roundabout route through the famous English monasteries, where it was copied. The few scholars of that period had to go a long way before they could get a copy of the Bible worth their attention, and they had to go a long way to find a monastery with hands able to copy manuscripts.
A new epoch begins with Charlemagne, who has a real right to the name of the Great. If one wants to know a great man, one has only to see what attention he pays to minor things. It is simply wonderful how this German king, who restored the old notion of the Roman empire, whose dominion contained France, Germany, Spain, Italy, was takingcare of the schoolboys and fixing his eyes on the way in which the Bible was being copied in the monasteries of his vast realm. In one of his ordinances he complains that they use unskilled boys for copying the most sacred book. It needs, he says, grammar—nay, good grammar—to understand what you are copying. It is no religion to pray to God in ungrammatical language and to have his holy Scriptures in a grammatically incorrect text. From the fact that the monasteries in their letters of application used a bad style he infers that Bible reading here was being neglected. Therefore, Charlemagne tried, in the first place, to bring the schools of his kingdom to a higher standard. Each monastery had to have a well-conducted school for the monks and for the young people who were sent there for education (as they are now sent to public schools). At his own court he had theSchola palatinaand the great emperor himself went there often and took lessons together with the boys. But he did not stop here. His intention was to secure a really good, trustworthy text of the Bible. He therefore invited scholars from everywhere; even some Orientals are said to have shared in the work. The leading man, the chairman of the Committee for the revision of the Bible, as we should say at present, was Alcuin, a monk from England, who by his great learninghad won the confidence of Charlemagne and was appointed by him abbot of the famous monastery of Tours. Here, at the school of Tours, most of the work of revision was done (Plate IX); through Alcuin's influence the revision was mainly based on the text current in England. That this was the best text available at that time is now generally acknowledged by all competent scholars. This was not so in Charlemagne's time; other scholars, Frankish bishops, disapproved of Alcuin's work. They thought the revision would have come out much better if conducted according to the text prevailing in Spain. So Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, issued a version of his own (Plate X). It is always instructive to see how men were the same in former times as they are now: scholars seldom agree one with another. The result was that henceforth two forms of the Latin Bible were used through the next centuries—in the North, Alcuin's revision, in the South, the revision made by Theodulf.
Plate IXPlate IX—ALCUIN'S BIBLE(Brit. Mus. add. 10546)Written at Tours, soon after Alcuin's death: a very good example of fine Carolingian minuscule. The lines are of equal length.From F. G. Kenyon, "Fac-similes of Biblical Manuscripts." By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.
(Brit. Mus. add. 10546)
Written at Tours, soon after Alcuin's death: a very good example of fine Carolingian minuscule. The lines are of equal length.
From F. G. Kenyon, "Fac-similes of Biblical Manuscripts." By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.
Charlemagne would not have cared so much for the text of the Bible had he not esteemed the Bible to be the one great text-book for his people. He himself was filled with Biblical notions. In his private circle, a club for promoting classical reading, he was called David. And it was, indeed, the Old Testament idea of the theocratic king which governed his mind. The king chosen by God and elected by the people, the king a representative of God and the head of the people, the king a valiant warrior and a royal psalmist at the same time, this was his ideal, in which old German notions were combined with Old Testament views. While revering the priest, he always felt himself superior even to the bishop of Rome. He willingly accepted the rôle of a defender, of a protector; he never would have accepted his crown from the hand of a priest. Nothing is so alien to Charlemagne as the later mediæval theory of the two swords, both given by God to Saint Peter, the one spiritual, kept by himself and his successors, the other worldly, given by them to the emperor. No, he had his sword from God directly, and his royalty included the power and the duty of looking after the church's affairs as well. The Bible tells of a king of Judah, called Josiah, who, on being informed that the book of the Law given by Moses and hidden for a long time had been rediscovered, forthwith ordered everything to be reformed and restored according to this law. That served as the model for Charlemagne's own ecclesiastical work. Being the king, he felt responsible for the purity of worship and of doctrine. Therefore, when the question arose in the East if worship was due to the pictures of Christ and the saints,and the bishop of Rome did not please him in his answer, Charlemagne himself, assisted by Alcuin and other theologians of his staff, wrote a treatise on the subject, which he himself thought to be decisive, the so-calledLibri Carolini, a document of a rather Puritan character, showing the austere spirit of early Western theology. When in Spain a discussion began about the divine nature of Christ, he again interfered, sending his theologians to discuss the matter according to the true teaching of the Bible—as is said expressly in their instructions—and after they had decided he even took political measures against those whom he believed to be heretics. We can scarcely understand his attitude in those cases without keeping in mind that he felt himself a new David and a new Josiah.
Plate XPlate X—THEODULF'S BIBLE(Brit. Mus. add. 24142)Written in three columns like many Spanish manuscripts, and in lines of various length, "cata cola et commata," as St. Jerome says.From "Fac-similes of Biblical Manuscripts." By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.
(Brit. Mus. add. 24142)
Written in three columns like many Spanish manuscripts, and in lines of various length, "cata cola et commata," as St. Jerome says.
From "Fac-similes of Biblical Manuscripts." By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.
Sometimes it is a true evangelical spirit which pervades his ordinances for the church. In a proclamation of 811 he says: "We will ask the clergy themselves, those who are not only to read the holy Scriptures by themselves but are to teach them to others also: who are those to whom the apostle says, Be my imitators? or who is the man of whom he says, No soldier on service entangleth himself with the affairs of this life?—or how to imitate the apostle and how to do service to God? What is it to leave the world? does it mean simply not to wear weapons andnot to be married publicly? does it mean to enlarge one's property daily, oppress the poor and induce men to perjury?" Charlemagne is particularly strict about avoiding perjury, not only in the solemn form of public oath, which is taken on the holy Gospel or on the altar or on the relics of the saints, but in common conversation as well. He tries to introduce Matt. 5 : 16, "Even so let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father which is in heaven," as the motto for every Christian's life. That is quite evangelical. But it is from the Old Testament that the tenor of his laws comes. They all have a strong mark of severity, in particular the so-called Saxon laws, which were imposed upon the Saxon tribes when after a very hard resistance they were finally defeated and subdued. Through this law runs, like a bloody thread, the frightful menace:morte moriatur, by death shall he die. This sounds harsh, but it is nothing else than the adaptation of a well-known Biblical phrase (Ex. 19 : 12; 21 : 12: "He shall surely be put to death," R. V.). That is an example of Biblical phraseology. But the Bible influenced the legislation of Charlemagne also in content. I choose three instances: in all three cases the work of Charlemagne was prepared for by church councils. Christianity had begun by voluntarily adopting OldTestament laws; then the church had made their observance compulsory; now Charlemagne gives to the ecclesiastical ordinances the sanction of the state and inflicts penalty upon trespassers. The first instance is Sunday; it was called the Lord's Day; from the sixth century synods and councils had tried to make the people keep this day in a more solemn fashion. They did not refer to the Old Testament commandment at first; they did not even demand that all manual work should be stopped. The frequent repetition of the decree seems to prove that it was rather unsuccessful even in this limited form. Now the government interferes, and its injunctions secure at once to the Lord's Day the strictest observance. It is remarkable that Charlemagne expressly refers to the Old Testament commandment. It is according to the Bible that the day was counted from sunset to sunset. This is the beginning of the Sabbatarian question in the West, the East preceding the West, as we have seen, by about two centuries.
Our second instance is the tithe; it was to be paid, according to the Bible, by all the other tribes to the tribe of Levi, who served at the temple. Now Christians began to pay voluntarily a tithe to their priests, accommodating themselves to the Old Testament rule; but by and by the clergy derived fromthe Old Testament a right of asking for the tithe. The farmer had to pay his tithe to his parish priest. Charlemagne proclaimed this as a law of his kingdom, referring expressly to God's commandments.
The third instance is given in the prohibition against taking interest. It is said in Deut. 23 : 19: "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother." Ecclesiastical authorities took this as forbidding to take any interest in lending money, and they tried to impress this prohibition upon the minds of the Christian people. Here, again, Charlemagne gave his sanction to this ecclesiastical view and made the prohibition against taking interest a part of the public law. It is obvious that the economic life of the nation was deeply influenced by this compulsory adoption of Old Testament laws.
Justice, with the Germans, was to a large extent exercised by means of the ordeals. We scarcely realise the importance these proceedings had at that time. People believed in a divine power bringing out guilt and innocence by means of these curious trials. It was but natural that the Bible, representing the divine oracles, should be present at the ceremony, that both parties should revere and kiss it. But people did more; they made the Bible itself a means of deciding between guilty and innocent. They had a particular kind of ordeal which theycalled determining by means of the Gospels, and another which was called the ordeal of the Psalter, a copy of the Psalter being swung over the head of the suspected person.
I have referred to the palace school. This had its continuation in a graduate school, if we may so call a Bible circle among the theologians attending the court. These theologians, headed by Alcuin himself, were first-rate Bible scholars. They knew great parts of the Bible by heart; they had read all accessible commentaries of the fathers. They had ideas of their own, too, but they were traditionalists to such an extent that they would not say anything of their own unless it was said and supported by the fathers. When asked to write brief commentaries on Biblical books, because the patristic commentaries were too large and comprehensive for the students of this time, they simply gave extracts from the fathers and carefully avoided adding anything of their own. One went so far as to take even the connecting words from the works of Saint Augustine; another, whose mental energy was too strong to keep him within the boundaries of pure traditionalism, excuses himself whenever he introduces an interpretation of his own.
In these studies the ladies and gentlemen of the court took part. It is very interesting and oftenamusing to see what kind of questions they bring before Alcuin as the great oracle of learning. One lady reading her Psalter was puzzled by the words in Psalm 116, "All men are liars." How can babies be liars before they begin to speak, or dumb men? "The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night" (Psalm 121 : 6) seemed to be incompatible with the fact that the moon never burns. A scholar who had come from Greece troubled the court by putting the question: To whom was paid the price with which we were bought according to I Cor. 6 : 20; 7 : 23. Charlemagne himself has other questions. He is troubled by finding that the hymn sung by Christ and his disciples after the Last Supper has not been recorded by any of the Gospels. I wonder if he really was satisfied by Alcuin's answer. After a very learned explanation of the term hymn, Alcuin gives, first, three views of different interpreters: (1) That there was no special hymn, only a general praisegiving; (2) that they had sung the twenty-second Psalm; (3) that it was some Jewish prayer. Then he proceeds to establish his own solution: that it is, in fact, the prayer of Jesus, recorded in John 17, which was meant by the word hymn here. Incidentally, he makes some important remarks upon the harmony of the Gospels: "Although we see in the Gospels some things told similarly, others in a different way, we nevertheless believe that everything is true." That was the leading idea for the criticism of the fathers, and it was the same for nearly all the mediæval centuries. Historical criticism, directed upon the Gospels, would have seemed to show intolerable lack of piety or certain evidence of heretical views.
Theological thinking does not go beyond the limits of Biblical doctrine. Scarcely one or two men dare to think in their own way or speculate on such problems as darkness and nothing (that is, what was before the creation) or on the nature of miracle. There was hardly any attempt at scientific theories. And the best men, indeed, as, for instance, Alcuin, were proud of basing their theology entirely on Biblical ideas.
The one great event in the expansion of Christianity among the German nations is the mission of Saint Augustine to England. When Pope Gregory found some Anglo-Saxon youths at the slave market of Rome and perceived that in the North there was still a pagan nation to be baptised, he sent one of his monks to England, and this monk, who was Saint Augustine, took with him the Bible and introduced it to the Anglo-Saxons, and one of his followers brought with him from Rome pictures showing the Biblical history, and decorated the walls of the church in the monastery of Wearmouth. We do not enter here into the difficult question of the relations between this newly founded Anglo-Saxon church and the old Iro-Scottish church. Differences of Bible text had something to do with the pitiful struggles which arose between the churches and ended in the devastation of the older one. The one point which interests us here is the fact that both Iro-Scottish and Anglo-Saxon monks were driven into missionary work by the Bible. When, in the service, they heard read from the Old Testament or from the epistle to the Hebrews that Abraham and the patriarchs had all left their home, their parents, their native country, and had gone to a foreign land which they did not know, simply in order to please God, then they felt bound to do the same. When at the mass the Gospel was read, "And every one that hath left houses or brethren or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold and shall inherit eternal life," then they hurried away, not knowing where to go, looking only for a far-distant and desert place. It was this ascetic view of the Bible which drove the Iro-Scottish monks over the sea to France, Italy, Germany, which made them preach the gospel to the Germans who had not yet heard of it. It wasthis same motive which caused Willibrord and Boniface to cross the North Sea and come to preach among the Frisians and Saxons. Boniface is said to have received the deadly stroke from a pagan while holding his Bible over his head. They still show the copy at Fulda.
Again, it was the Bible which determined Charlemagne to use force against the Saxons in order to bring them to baptism and Christian faith. Saint Augustine had discovered the passage in the Lord's parable of the great supper, where the servant is told to go out into the highways and hedges and "constrain" them to come in. Thiscoge intrare, he explained, might excuse the using of secular power for the purpose of bringing heretics back to the church or of causing pagans to join the church. Charlemagne knew no better than to suppose that this was the true meaning of the saying of our Lord, and so he felt in conscience bound to use military force and the full strength of the law in christianising the Saxons.
But it was the Bible itself and not Charlemagne's sharp sword and his cruel law which brought over the wild Saxon tribes into Christendom. They had among themselves a poet who had the gift of singing the gospel into their hearts. Charlemagne himself was fond of the national songs; he loved hisGerman language as much as he esteemed Latin. He was convinced that a man ought to pray to God in his native tongue. There are not only three sacred languages, he says, in which to pray and to praise God—Hebrew, Greek, Latin—you may praise him in your German as well. Therefore he arranged that a priest should translate the Biblical lessons and the sermon to the people who did not understand Latin. He would probably have approved a German translation of the Bible; but the clergy were not prepared to do this. They took Latin as the basis of civilisation, and only a few of them had any regard for the uncultivated people. There are preserved some few attempts at translating parts of the Bible into German; they attest what might have come out of this Carolingian movement if the bigotry and narrowness of Charlemagne's son Louis had not stopped it. Among the Saxons a fresh and vigorous spirit was still alive. Having been introduced to Christianity by brute force of war, they embraced the gospel, trying to make it their own by putting it into the form of their national song. We do not know the name of the poet; he seems to have been a clergyman, instructed in the best commentaries of his time, such as were available at the monastery of Fulda. For the framework he used a Gospel harmony which is contained in the famous Codex Fuldensis of the Vulgate, originating at Capua (in south Italy) and brought probably by Boniface himself from England to Fulda. This Gospel harmony he translated freely into some six thousand Saxon verses. His poem is one of the finest assimilations of the Gospel history to national German feeling, to be compared only with Dürer's engravings and Eduard von Gebhardt's paintings. Christ is the heavenly king; the apostles are his loyal kinsmen; he wanders with them through the Saxon wood; he stops at a native spring; all Oriental character has gone, but the gospel has lost nothing. It is as fresh and as real as it ever had been. The fact our author detests most is Christ's betrayal by one of his own men; nothing is so bad as this according to the German mind. Christ on the cross is not suffering; he dies as a victorious warrior. When he says, "I thirst," he expresses by this the fact that he is thirsting after the souls of men, to bring them into paradise. It is wonderful how the gospel has penetrated the German soul in order to produce a harmony like this.
This "Heliand" by the anonymous Saxon poet we shall admire even more if we compare it with the other attempt at bringing the life of Christ into German poesy. It is by Otfried of Strassburg, whose"Christ" is a very learned elaboration, partly in German, partly in Latin, therefore undoubtedly much preferred in the literary circles of that time, but infinitely inferior to the "Heliand" in freshness and popular quality.
It is remarkable that there is something similar to the "Heliand" in the Anglo-Saxon poem, the "Genesis." The theory has been successfully started and proved by later discoveries that both have the same origin. The Saxons of Germany and the Saxons of England were not so far away one from the other that they could not have intercourse and exchange (Plate XI).
However this may be, it is evident that the Bible had an influence in teaching the German nations from the beginning, and that the new civilisation which was to be built would have the Bible as one of its foundations.