The Dark Ages. David Hume

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      That much-abused expression “age of transition” has a real meaning when some fundamental change forces a society to adapt itself slowly and painfully to new conditions. The period of the industrial transformation, brought about by the invention of machinery, in modern states is an example of a true age of transition. The expansion and triumph of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries rendered that period a genuine age of transition in the same sense, and the transition was marked by distress and destruction. Roman and Greek municipal life was inextricably bound up with pagan institutions — temples, cults, games. The interests and habits of the town communities were associated with these institutions, and when Christianity suppressed them, municipal life was deprived of a vital element. For the Church did not succeed in bringing her own institutions and practices into the same intimate connexion with municipal organisation.115 With the passing of paganism something went out of the vitality of ancient town life which could never be restored.

      (4) The principle of compulsion was extended to military service. The sons of veterans were obliged to follow the profession of their fathers, with the uninviting alternative of being enrolled in the class of decurions. They were definitely debarred from a career in the civil service. The sons of civil servants too were expected to follow the career of their fathers.116

      We might better understand the economic conditions which the Emperors sought to regulate by tyrannical legislation if we possessed some trustworthy statistics of the population of the Empire and its various provinces. In the eighteenth century, even after Hume had exploded the old delusion that the ancient states in Europe were far more populous than the modern, Gibbon estimated the population of the Empire in the time of Claudius as 120,000,000. It is now generally agreed that this figure is far too high. Any estimate rests on a series of conjectures, but perhaps half this figure would be nearer the truth. According to a recent calculation, which is probably below rather than over the mark, the population at the death of Augustus amounted to 54,000,000, of which 26,000,000 are assigned to the western provinces including the Danubian lands, and 28,000,000 to the Greek and Oriental provinces.117 By the beginning of the fourth century there seems some reason to suppose that the population had increased. This would be the natural result of the development of city life in Spain and Gaul, and the gradual civilisation of the Illyrian and Danubian provinces. On this basis of calculation, which, it must be repeated, involves many possibilities of error, we might conclude that in the time of Constantine the population of the Empire may have approached 70,000,000.

      We have indeed some definite evidence that in the fourth century the government was not alarmed by the symptoms of a decline in numbers which had confronted the Emperor Augustus. It may be remembered that among the measures which Augustus adopted to arrest the fall in the birth-rate of Roman citizens he penalised bachelors by rendering them incapable of inheriting, and married people who were childless by allowing them to take only half of an inheritance which if they had children would fall to them entirely. It is significant that Constantine removed this disability from bachelors,118 while Theodosius II abrogated the law of Augustus with regard to the childless. This repeal of a law which had been so long in force may fairly be taken as an indication that in the fourth century no fears of a decline in population troubled the Imperial Government.

      § 5. Ecclesiastical Organisation

      While in all ancient monarchies religion and sacerdotalism were a political as well as a social power, the position of the Christian Church in the Roman Empire was a new thing in the world, presenting problems of a kind with which no ruler had hitherto been confronted and to which no past experience offered a key. The history of the Empire would have been profoundly different if the Church had remained as independent of the State as it had been before Constantine, and if that Emperor and his successors had been content to throw the moral weight of their own example into the scale of Christianity and to grant the Church the same freedom and privileges which were enjoyed by pagan cults and priesthoods. But heresies and schisms and religious intolerance on one side, and the despotic instinct to control all social forces on the other, brought about a close union between State and Church which altered the character and spirit of the State and constituted perhaps the most striking difference between the early and the later Empire. The disorders caused by violent divisions in the Church on questions of doctrine called for the intervention of the public authorities, and rival sects were only too eager to secure the aid of the government to suppress their opponents. Hence at the very beginning Constantine was able to establish the principle that it devolved upon the Emperor not indeed to settle questions of doctrine at his own discretion, but to summon general ecclesiastical Councils for that purpose and to preside at them. The Council of Arles (A.D. 314) was convoked by Constantine, and the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea exhibited the full claim of the Emperor to be head of the Church. But in this capacity he stood outside the ecclesiastical hierarchy; he assumed no title or office corresponding to that of Pontifex Maximus. Historical circumstances decided that this league of Church and State should develop on very different lines in the east and in the west. In the west it was to result in the independence and ultimately in the supremacy of the Church; in the east the Church was kept in subordination to the head of the State, and finally ecclesiastical affairs seem little more than a department of the Imperial Government. Even in the fourth century the bishop of Rome has a more independent position than the bishop of Constantinople.

      At the beginning of our period the general lines of ecclesiastical organisation had been completed. The clergy were graded in a hierarchical scale of seven orders — bishops, priests, deacons, subdeacons, acolytes, exorcists, and readers. In general, the ecclesiastical divisions closely correspond to the civil.119 Every city has its bishop. Every province has its metropolitan, who is the bishop of the metropolis of the province. And above the provincial metropolitans is the exarch, whose jurisdiction corresponds to the civil diocese. A synod of bishops is held annually in each province.

      But among the more important sees, four stood out pre-eminent — Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. Of these Rome was acknowledged to be the first, but there was rivalry for the second place. Besides these the See of Jerusalem had, by virtue of its association with the birth of Christianity, a claim to special recognition. By the middle of the fifth century the positions of these great sees were defined, and their jurisdiction fixed. Their bishops were distinguished as Patriarchs,120 though the bishop of Rome did not assume this title. The ecclesiastical map shows five great jurisdictions or Patriarchates. The authority of Rome extended over the whole western or Latin half of the Empire, and included the Praetorian Prefecture of Illyricum.121 The Patriarchate of Constantinople ultimately embraced the civil dioceses of Thrace, Pontus, and Asia.122 The Patriarchate of Alexandria, third in precedence, corresponded to the Diocese of Egypt. The Patriarchate of Antioch comprised the greater part of the Diocese of the East; the small Patriarchate of Jerusalem the three Palestinian provinces. The autocephalous Church of Cyprus stood apart and independent.123

      The development of a graded hierarchy among the bishops revolutionised the character of the Church. For three centuries the Christian organisation had been democratic. Its union with the monarchical state changed that. The centralised hierarchical system enabled the Emperors to control it in a way which would have been impossible if the old democratic forms had continued.

      Constantine and his successors knew how to attach to themselves the powerful organisation of which they had undertaken the direction. Valuable privileges were conceded to the clergy and the churches. Above all, the clergy, like the pagan priests, were exempted from taxation,124 a privilege which attracted many to their ranks. The churches had an unrestricted right of receiving bequests, and they inherited from the pagan temples the privilege of affording asylum.125 The bishops received the right of acting as judges in civil cases which the parties concerned agreed to bring before them, and their decisions were without appeal.126 It was the Imperial policy to make use of the ecclesiastical authorities in local administration, and as the old life of the urban communities declined the СКАЧАТЬ