that it affected indifference. Alaric made no attempt
to take the city by storm, but quietly and patiently en-
closed it with a cordon through which nothing could
force its way, as the Prussians in our day invested
Paris. The city, unprovided for a siege, soon felt all
the evils of famine, to which pestilence was naturally
added. In despair, the haughty citizens condescended



THE LATTER DAYS OF ROME. 349

to sue for a ransom. Alaric fixed the price of his re-
treat at the surrender of all the gold and silver, all the
precious movables, and all the slaves of barbaric birth.
He afterwards somewhat modified his demands, but
marched away with more spoil than the Eomans brought
from Carthage and Antioch.

Honorius intrenched himself at Eavenna, and re-
fused to treat with the magnanimous Alaric. Again,
consequently, he marched against the doomed capital ;
again invested it; again cut off supplies. In vain
did the nobles organize a defence, there were no
defenders. Slaves would not fight, and a degenerate
rabble could not resist a warlike and superior race.
Cowardice and treachery opened the gates. In the
dead of night the Gothic trumpets rang unanswered
in the streets. The old heroic virtues were gone. No
resistance was made. Nobody fought from temples
and palaces. The queen of the world, for five days
and nights, was exposed to the lust and cupidity of
despised barbarians. Yet a general slaughter was not
made ; and as much wealth as could be collected into
the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul was spared.
The superstitious barbarians in some degree respected
churches. But the spoils of the city were immense and
incalculable, gold, jewels, vestments, statues, vases,
silver plate, precious furniture, spoils of Oriental cities,
the collective treasures of the world, all were piled



350 THEODOSIUS THE GREAT.

upon the Gothic wagons. The sons and daughters of
patrician families became, in their turn, slaves to the
barbarians. Fugitives thronged the shores of Syria and
Egypt, begging daily bread. The Roman world was
filled with grief and consternation. Its proud capital
was sacked, since no one would defend it. " The Em-
pire fell," says Guizot, " because no one belonged to
it." The news of the capture " made the tongue of
old Saint Jerome to cling to the roof of his mouth in his
cell at Bethlehem. What is now to be seen," cried
he, " but conflagration, slaughter, ruin, the universal
shipwreck of society ? " The same words of despair came
from Saint Augustine at Hippo. Both had seen the city
in the height of its material grandeur, and now it was
laid low and desolate. The end of all things seemed to
be at hand; and the only consolation of the great church-
men of the age was the belief in the second corning of
our Lord.

The sack of Jiorne by Alaric, A. D. 410, was followed in
less than half a century by a second capture and a sec-
ond spoliation at the hands of the Vandals, with Gen-
seric at their head, a tribe of barbarians of kindred
Germanic race, but fiercer instincts and more hideous
peculiarities. This time, the inhabitants of Koine (for
Alaric had not destroyed it, only robbed it) put on no
airs of indifference or defiance. They knew their weak-
ness. They begged for mercy.



THE LATTER DAYS OF ROME. 351

The last hope of the city was her Christian bishop ;
and the great Leo, who was to Rome what Augustine
had been to Carthage when that capital also fell into
the hands of Vandals, hastened to the barbarian's camp.
The only concession he could get was that the lives of
the people should be spared, a promise only partially
kept. The second pillage lasted fourteen days and
nights. The Vandals transferred to their ships all that
the Goths had left, even to the trophies of the churches
and ancient temples ; the statues which ornamented
the capital, the holy vessels of the Jewish temple which
Titus had brought from Jerusalem, imperial sideboards
of massive silver, the jewels of senatorial families, with
their wives and daughters, all were carried away to
Carthage, the seat of the new Empire of the Vandals,
A. D. 455, then once more a nourishing city. The
haughty capital met the fate which she had inflicted on
her rival in the days of Cato the censor, but fell still
more ingloriously, and never would have recovered from
this second fall had not her immortal bishop, rising with
the greatness of the crisis, laid the foundation of a new
power, that spiritual domination which controlled the
Gothic nations for more than a thousand years.

With the fall of Rome, yet too great a city to be
wholly despoiled or ruined, and which has remained
even to this day the centre of what is most interesting



352 THEODOSIUS THE GREAT.

in the world, I should close this Lecture ; but I must
glance rapidly over the whole Empire, and show its con-
dition when the imperial capital was spoiled, humiliated,
and deserted.

The Suevi, Alans, and Vandals invaded Spain, and
erected their barbaric monarchies. The Goths were
established in the south of Gaul, while the north was
occupied by the Franks and Burgundians. England,
abandoned by the Romans, was invaded by the Saxons,
who formed permanent conquests. In Italy there were
Goths and Heruli and Lombards. All these races were
Germanic. They probably made serfs or slaves of the
old population, or were incorporated with them. They
became the new rulers of the devastated provinces; and
all became, sooner or later, converts to a nominal Chris-
tianity, the supreme guardian of which was the Pope,
whose authority they all recognized. The languages
which sprang up in Europe were a blending of the Ro-
man, Celtic, and Germanic. In Spain and Italy the Latin
predominated, as the Saxon prevailed in England after
the Norman conquest. Of all the new settlers in the Ro-
man world, the Normans, who made no great incursions
till the time of Charlemagne, were probably the strong-
est and most refined. But they all alike had the same
national traits, substantially ; and they entered upon the
possessions of the Romans after various contests, more
or less successful, for two hundred and fifty years.



THE LATTER DAYS OF ROME. 353

The Empire might have been invaded by these bar-
barians in the time of the Antonines, and perhaps
earlier; but it would not have succumbed to them.
The Legions were then severely disciplined, the central
power was established, and the seeds of ruin had not
then brought forth their wretched fruits. But in the
fifth century nothing could have saved the Empire.
Its decline had been rapid for two hundred years, until
at last it became as weak as the Oriental monarchies
which Alexander subdued. It fell like a decayed and
rotten tree. As a political State all vitality had fled
from it. The only remaining conservative forces came
from Christianity ; and Christianity was itself corrupted,
and had become a part of the institutions of the State.

It is mournful to think that a brilliant external civil-
ization was so feeble to arrest both decay and ruin. It
is sad to think that neither art nor literature nor law
had conservative strength ; that the manners and habits
of the people grew worse and worse, as is universally
admitted, amid all the glories and triumphs and boast-
ings of the proudest works of man. " A world as fair
and as glorious as our own," says Sismondi, " was per-
mitted to perish." Eome, Alexandria, Antioch, Athens,
met the old fate of Babylon, of Tyre, of Carthage.
Degeneracy was as marked and rapid in the former,
notwithstanding all the civilizing influences of letters,
jurisprudence, arts, and utilitarian science, as in the latter



354 THEODOSIUS THE GREAT.

nations, a most significant and impressive commen-
tary on the uniform destinies of nations, when those
virtues on which the strength of man is based have
passed away. An observer in the days of Theodosius
would very likely have seen the churches of Rome as
fully attended as are those in New York itself to-day ;
and he would have seen a more magnificent city, and
yet it fell There is no cure for a corrupt and rotten
civilization. As the farms of the old Puritans of Massa-
chusetts and Connecticut are gradually but surely passing
into the hands of the Irish, because the sons and grand-
sons of the old New-England fanner prefer the uncer-
tainties and excitements of a demoralized city-life to
laborious and honest work, so the possessions of the
Piomans passed into the hands of German barbarians,
who were strong and healthy and religious. They deso-
lated, but they reconstructed.

The punishment of the enervated and sensual Roman
was by war. We in America do not fear this calamity,
and have no present cause of fear, because we have not
sunk to the weakness and wickedness of the Romans,
and because we have no powerful external enemies. But
if amid our magnificent triumphs of science and art, we
should accept the Epicureanism of the ancients and fall
into their ways of life, then there would be the same de-
cline which marked them, I mean in virtue and public
morality, and there would be the same penalty ; not



THE LATTER DAYS OF ROME. 355

perhaps destruction from external enemies, as in Persia,
Syria, Greece, and Home, but some grievous and unex-
pected series of catastrophes which would be as mourn-
ful, as humiliating, as ruinous, as were the incursions of
the Germanic races. The operations of law, natural and
moral, are uniform. No individual and no nation can
escape its penalty. The world will not be destroyed ;
Christianity will not prove a failure, but new forces
will arise over the old, and prevail. Great changes
will come. He whose right it is to rule will overturn
and overturn : but "creation shall succeed destruction;
melodious birth-songs will come from the fires of the
burning phoenix," assuring us that the progress of the
race is certain, even if nations are doomed to a decline and
fall whenever conservative forces are not strong enough
to resist the torrent of selfishness, vanity, and sin.



AUTHORITIES.

THE original authorities are Ammianius Marcellinus, Zosimus, Sozomen,
Socrates, orations of Gregory Nazianzen, Theodoret, the Theodosian Code,
Sulpicius Severus, Life of Martin of Tours, Life of Ambrose by Paulinus,
Augustine's " De Civitate Dei," Epistles of Ambrose ; also those of Jerome ;
Claudien. The best modern authorities are Tillemont's History of the Em-
perors ; Gibbon's Decline and Pall ; Milmans's History of Christianity ;
Neander ; Sheppard's Fall of Rome ; and Flecier's Life of Theodosius.
There are several popular Lives of Theodosius in French, but very few
in English.



LEO THE GREAT.

FOUNDATION OF THE PAPACY.

A. D. 390-461.



LEO THE GREAT.



FOUNDATION OF THE PAPACY.

~\T 7ITH the great man who forms the subject of
this Lecture are identified those principles
which lay at the foundation of the Eoman Catholic
power for fifteen hundred years. I do not say that he
is the founder of the Roman Catholic Church, for that
is another question. Eoman Catholicism, as a polity,
or government, or institution, is one thing ; and Eoman
Catholicism, as a religion, is quite another, although
they have been often confounded. As a government, or
polity, it is peculiar, the result of the experience of
ages, adapted to society and nations in a certain state
of progress or development, with evils and corruptions,
of course, like all other human institutions. As a re-
ligion, although it superadded many dogmas and rites
which Protestants do not accept, and for which they
can see no divine authority, like auricular confession,
the deification of the Virgin, indulgences for sin, and



360 LEO THE GREAT.

the infallibility of the Pope, still, it has at the same
time defended the cardinal principles of Christian faith
and morality ; such as the personality and sovereignty
of God, the divinity of Christ, salvation in consequence
of his sufferings and death, immortality, the final judg-
ment, the necessity of a holy life, temperance, humility,
patience, and the virtues which were taught upon the
Mount and enforced by the original disciples and apos-
tles, whose writings are accepted as inspired.

In treating so important a subject as that repre-
sented by Leo the Great, we must bear in mind these
distinctions. While Leo is conceded to have been a de-
vout Christian and a noble defender of the faith as
we receive it, one of the lights of the early Christian
Church, numbered even among the Fathers of the
Church, with Augustine and Chrysostom, his special
claim to greatness is that to him we trace some of the
first great developments of the Roman Catholic power
as an institution. More than any other one man, he
laid the foundation-stone of that edifice which alike
sheltered and imprisoned the European nations for more
than a thousand years. He was not a great theolo-
gian like Augustine, or preacher like Chrysostom, but
he was a great bishop like Ambrose, even far greater,
inasmuch as he was the organizer of new forces in the
administration of his important diocese. In fact he
was a great statesman, as the more able of the popes



FOUNDATION OF THE PAPACY. 361

always aspired to be. He was the associate and equal
of princes.

It was the sublime effort of Leo to make the Church
the guardian of spiritual principles and give to it a theo-
cratic character and aim, which links his name with the
mightiest moral movements of the world ; and when I
speak of the Church I mean the Church of Eome, as
presided over by men who claimed to be the successors
of Saint Peter, to whom they assert Christ had given
the supreme control over all other churches as His
vicars on the earth. It was the great object of Leo to
substantiate this claim, and root it in the minds of the
newly converted barbarians; and then institute laws
and measures which should make his authority and that
of his successors paramount in all spiritual matters,
thus centring in his See the general oversight of the
Christian Church in all the countries of Europe. It
was a theocratic aspiration, one of the grandest that
ever entered into the mind of a man of genius, yet, as
Protestants now look at it, a usurpation, the beginning
of a vast system of spiritual tyranny in order to control
the minds and consciences of men. It took several
centuries to develop this system, after Leo was dead.
With him it was not a vulgar greed of power, but
an inspiration of genius, a grand idea to make the
Church which he controlled a benign and potent influ-
ence on society, and to prevent civilisation from being



362 LEO THE GREAT.

utterly crushed out by the victorious Goths and Van-
dals. It is the success of this idea which stamps the
Church as the great leading power of Mediaeval Ages,
a power alike majestic and venerable, benignant
yet despotic, humble yet arrogant and usurping.

But before I can present this subtile contradiction,
in all its mighty consequences both for good and evil,
I must allude to the Koman See and the condition of
society when Leo began his memorable pontificate as
the precursor of the Gregories and the Clements of
later times. Like all great powers, it was very gradu-
ally developed. It was as long in reaching its culminat-
ing greatness as that temporal empire which controlled
the ancient world. Pagan Rome extended her sway by
generals and armies ; Mediaeval Koine, by her prelates
and her principles.

However humble the origin of the Church of Rome,
in the early part of the fifth century it was doubt-
less the greatest See (or scat of episcopal power) in Chris-
tendom. The Bishop of Rome had the largest number
of dependent bishops, and was the first of clerical dig-
nitaries. As early as A. D. 250, sixty years before
Constantino's conversion, and during the times of per-
secution, such a man as Cyprian, metropolitan Bishop
of Carthage, yielded to him the precedence, and possibly
the presidency, because his See was the world's metrop-



FOUNDATION OF THE PAPACY. 363

oils. And when the seat of empire was removed to the
banks of the Bosporus, the power of the Eoman Bishop,
instead of being diminished, was rather increased, since
he was more independent of the emperors than was the
Bishop of Constantinople. And especially after Borne
was taken by the Goths, he alone possessed the attri-
butes of sovereignty. " He had already towered as
far above ordinary bishops in magnificence and prestige
as Caesar had above Fabricius."

It was the great name of HOME, after all, which was
the mysterious talisman that elevated the Bishop of
Rome above other metropolitans. Who can estimate the
moral power of that glorious name which had awed the
world for a thousand years ? Even to barbarians that
proud capital was sacred. The whole world believed
her to be eternal ; she alone had the prestige of univer-
sal dominion. This queen of cities might be desolated
like Babylon or Tyre, but her influence was indestruc-
tible. In her very ruins she was majestic. Her laws,
her literature, and her language still were the pride
of nations; they revered her as the mother of civiliza-
tion, clung to the remembrance of her glories, and re-
fused to let her die. She was to the barbarians what
Athens had been to the Romans, what modern Paris
is to the world of fashion, what London ever will be to
the people of America and Australia, the centre of a
proud civilization. So the bishops of such a city were



364 LEO THE GREAT.

great in spite of themselves, no matter whether they
were remarkable as individuals or not. They were the
occupants of a great office ; and while their city ruled
the world, it was not necessary for them to put forth
any new claims to dignity or power. No person and
no city disputed their pre-eminence. They lived in a
marble palace : they were clothed in purple and fine
linen ; they were surrounded by sycophants ; nobles
and generals waited in their ante-chambers ; they were
the companions of princes; they controlled enormous
revenues ; they were the successors of the high pontiffs
of imperial domination.

Yet for three hundred years few of them were emi-
nent. It is not the order of Providence that great
posts, to which men are elected by inferiors, should be
filled with great men. Such are always feared, and
have numerous enemies who defeat their elevation.
Moreover, it is only in crises of imminent danger that
signal abilities are demanded. Men are preferred for
exalted stations who will do no harm, who have talent
rather than genius, men who have business capacities,
who have industry and modesty and agreeable manners ;
who, if noted for anything, are noted for their character.
Hence we do not read of more than two or three bishops,
for three hundred years, who stood out pre-eminently
among their contemporaries; and these were inferior
to Origen, who was a teacher in a theological school,



FOUNDATION OF THE PAPACY. 365

and to Jerome, who was a monk in an obscure vil-
lage. Even Augustine, to whose authority in theology
the Catholic Church still professes to bow down, as the
schools of the Middle Ages did to Aristotle, was the
bishop of an unimportant See in Northern Africa.
Only Clement in the first century, and Innocent in
the fourth loomed up above their contemporaries. As
for the rest, great as was their dignity as bishops, it
is absurd to attribute to them schemes for enthralling
the world. No such plans arose in the bosom of any of
them. Even Leo I. merely prepared the way for uni-
versal domination; he had no such deep-laid schemes
as Gregory VII. or Boniface VIII. The primacy of
the Bishop of Eome was all that was conceded by
other bishops for four hundred years, and this on
the ground of the grandeur of his capital. Even this
was disputed by the Bishop of Constantinople, and
continued to be until that capital was taken by the
Turks.

But with the waning power, glory, and wealth of
Eome, decimated, pillaged, trodden under foot by
Goths and Vandals, rebuked by Providence, deserted
by emperors, abandoned to decay and ruin, some ex-
pedient or new claim to precedency was demanded to
prevent the Eoman bishops from sinking into medioc-
rity. It was at this crisis that the pontificate of Leo
began, in the year 440. It was a gloomy period,



366 LEO THE GREAT,

not only for Rome, but for civilization. The queen of
cities had been repeatedly sacked, and her treasures de-
stroyed or removed to distant cities. Her proud citizens
had been sold as slaves ; her noble matrons had been
violated ; her grand palaces had been levelled with the
ground ; her august senators were fugitives and exiles.
All kinds of calamities overspread the earth and deci-
mated the race, war, pestilence, and famine. Men
in despair hid themselves in caves and monasteries.
Literature and art were crushed ; no great works of
genius appeared. The paralysis of despair deadened all
the energies of civilized man. Even armies lost their
vigor, and citizens refused to enlist. The old mechan-
ism of the Caesars, which had kept the Empire together
for three hundred years after all vitality had tied, was
worn out. The general demoralization had led to a
general destruction. Vice was succeeded by universal
violence ; and that, by universal ruin. Old laws and
restraints were no longer of any account. A civiliza-
tion based on material forces and Pagan arts had proved
a failure. The whole world appeared to be on the eve
of dissolution. To the thoughtful men of the age every-
thing seemed to be involved in one terrific mass of
desolation and horror. "Even Jerome," says a great
historian, "heaped together the awful passages of the
Old Testament on the capture of Jerusalem and other
Eastern cities ; and the noble lines of Virgil on the sack



FOUNDATION OF THE PAPACY. 367

of Troy are but feeble descriptions of the night which
covered the western Empire."

Now Leo was the man for such a crisis, and seems to
have been raised up to devise some new principle of
conservation around which the stricken world might
rally. "He stood equally alone and superior," says
Milman, "in the Christian world. All that survived
of Eome of her unbounded ambition, of her inflex-
ible will, and of her belief in her title to universal
dominion seemed concentrated in him alone."

Leo was born, in the latter part of the fourth century,
at Eome, of noble parents, and was intensely Roman in
all his aspirations. He early gave indications of future
greatness, and was consecrated to a service in which
only talent was appreciated. When he was nothing
but an acolyte, whose duty it was to light the lamps
and attend on the bishop, he was sent to Africa and
honored with the confidence of the great Bishop of
Hippo. And he was only deacon when he was sent by
the Emperor Valentinian III. to heal the division be-
tween Aetius and Albinus, rival generals, whose dis-
sensions compromised the safety of the Empire. He
was absent on important missions when the death
of Sixtus, A. D. 440, left the Papacy without a head.
On Leo were all eyes now fixed, and he was immediately
summoned by the clergy and the people of Eome, in



368 LEO THE GREAT.

whom the right of election was vested, to take posses-
sion of the vacant throne. He did not affect unworthi-
ness like Gregory in later years, but accepted at once
the immense responsibility.

I need not enumerate his measures and acts. Like
all great and patriotic statesmen he selected the wisest
and ablest men he could find as subordinates, and con-
descended himself to those details which he inexorably
exacted from others. He even mounted the neglected
pulpit of his metropolitan church to preach to the
people, like Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen at
Constantinople. His sermons are not models of elo-
quence or style, but are practical, powerful, earnest, and
orthodox. Athanasius himself was not more evangelical,
or Ambrose more impressive. He was the especial foe
of all the heresies which characterized the age. He did
battle with all who attempted to subvert the Nicene
Creed. Those whom he especially rebuked were the
Manicheans, men who made the greatest pretension
to intellectual culture and advanced knowledge, and yet
whose lives were disgraced not merely by the most
offensive intellectual pride, but the most disgraceful
vices ; men who confounded all the principles of moral
obligation, and who polluted even the atmosphere of
Rome by downright Pagan licentiousness. He had no
patience with these false philosophers, and he had no
mercy. He even complained of them to the emperor,



FOUNDATION OF THE PAPACY. 369

as Calvin did of Servetus to the civil authorities of