But although the vehemence of the Fathers on such trivial matters might appear at first sight to imply the existence of a society in which grave corruption was rare, such a conclusion would be totally untrue. The pictures of the Roman society by Ammianus Marcellinus, of the society of Marseilles, by Salvian, of the society of Asia Minor and of Constantinople, by Chrysostom, as well as the whole tenor of history, and innumerable incidental notices in the writers of the time, exhibit, after every legitimate allowance has been made, a condition of depravity, and especially of degradation, which few societies have surpassed. The corruption had reached classes and institutions that appeared the most holy. The Agapæ, or love feasts, which formed one of the most touching symbols of Christian unity, had become scenes of drunkenness and of riot. Denounced by the Fathers, condemned by the Council of Laodicea in the fourth century, and afterwards by the Council of Carthage, they lingered as a scandal and an offence till they were finally suppressed by the Council of Trullo, at the end of the seventh century. The commemoration of the martyrs soon degenerated into scandalous dissipation. Fairs were held on the occasion, gross breaches of chastity were frequent, and the annual festival was suppressed on account of the immorality it produced. The ambiguous position of the clergy with reference to marriage already led to grave disorder. In the time of St. Cyprian, before the outbreak of the Decian persecution, it had been common to find

1 The fullest view of this age is given in a very learned little work by Peter Erasmus Müller (1797), De Genio Evi Theodosiani. Montfaucon has also devoted two essays to the moral condition of the Eastern world, one of which is given in Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History.

2 See on these abuses Mosheim, Eccl. Hist. (Soame's ed.), vol. i. p. 463; Cave's Primitive Christianity, part i. ch. xi.

3 Cave's Primitive Christianity, part i. ch. vii.

clergy professing celibacy, but keeping, under various pretexts, their mistresses in their houses; and, after Constantine, the complaints on this subject became loud and general.2 Virgins and monks often lived together in the same house, and with a curious audacity of hypocrisy, which is very frequently noticed, they professed to have so overcome the passions of their nature that they shared in chastity the same bed.3 Rich widows were surrounded by swarms of clerical sycophants, who addressed them in tender diminutives, studied and consulted their every foible, and, under the guise of piety, lay in wait for their gifts or bequests. The evil attained such a point, that a law was made under Valentinian, depriving the Christian priests and monks of that power of receiving legacies which was

1 Ep. lxi.

2 Evagrius describes with much admiration how certain monks of Palestine, by 'a life wholly excellent and divine,' had so overcome their passions that they were accustomed to bathe with women; for neither sight nor touch, nor a woman's embrace, could make them relapse into their natural condition. Among men they desired to be men, and among women, women.' (H. E. i. 21.)

3 These Muliers Subintroductæ,' as they were called, are continually noticed by Cyprian, Jerome, and Chrysostom. See Müller, De Genio Evi Theodosiani, and also the Codex Theod. xvi. tit. ii. lex 44, with the Comments. Dr. Todd, in his learned Life of St. Patrick (p. 91), quotes (I shall not venture to do so) from the Lives of the Irish Saints an extremely curious legend of a kind of contest of sanctity between St. Scuthinus and St. Brendan, in which it was clearly proved that the former had mastered the passions of the flesh more completely than the latter. An enthusiast named Robert d'Arbrisselles is said in the twelfth century to have revived the old custom. (Jortin's Remarks, A.D. 1106.)

4 St. Jerome gives (Ep. lii.) an extremely curious picture of these clerical flatteries, and several examples of the terms of endearment they were accustomed to employ. The tone of flattery which St. Jerome himself, though doubtless with the purest motives, employs in his copious correspondence with his female admirers, is to a modern layman peculiarly repulsive, and sometimes verges upon blasphemy. In his letter to Eustochium, whose daughter as a nun had become the 'bride of Christ,' he calls the mother 'Socrus Dei,' the mother-in-law of God. See, too, the extravagant flatteries of Chrysostom in his correspondence with Olympias.

possessed by every other class of the community; and St. Jerome has mournfully acknowledged that the prohibition was necessary. Great multitudes entered the Church to avoid municipal offices; the deserts were crowded with men whose sole object was to escape from honest labour, and even soldiers used to desert their colours for the monasteries.3 Noble ladies, pretending a desire to live a life of continence, abandoned their husbands to live with low-born lovers. Palestine, which soon became the centre of pilgrimages, had become, in the time of St. Gregory of Nyssa, a hotbed of debauchery. The evil reputation of pilgrimages long continued; and in the eighth century we find St. Boniface writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury, imploring the English bishops to take some measures to restrain or regulate the pilgrimages of their fellow-countrywomen; for there were few towns in central Europe, on the way to Rome, where English ladies, who started as pilgrims, were not living in open prostitution. The luxury and ambition of the higher prelates,

1 'Pudet dicere sacerdotes idolorum, mimi et aurigæ et scorta hæreditates capiunt; solis clericis et monachis hoc lege prohibetur, et prohibetur non a persecutoribus, sed a principibus Christianis. Nec de lege conqueror sed doleo cur meruerimus hanc legem.'—Ep. lii.

2 See Milman's Hist. of Early Christianity, vol. ii. p. 314.

3 This was one cause of the disputes between St. Gregory the Great and the Emperor Eustace. St. Chrysostom frequently notices the opposition of the military and the monastic spirits.

4 Hieron. Ep. cxxviii.

5 St. Greg. Nyss. Ad eund. Hieros. Some Catholic writers have attempted to throw doubt upon the genuineness of this epistle, but, Dean Milman thinks, with no sufficient reason. Its account of Jerusalem is to some extent corroborated by St. Jerome. (Ad Paulinum, Ep. xxix.)

Præterea non taceo charitati vestræ, quia omnibus servis Dei qui hic vel in Scriptura vel in timore Dei probatissimi esse videntur, displicet quod bonum et honestas et pudicitia vestræ ecclesiæ illuditur; et aliquod levamentum turpitudinis esset, si prohiberet synodus et principes vestri mulieribus et velatis feminis illud iter et frequentiam, quam ad Romanam civitatem veniendo et redeundo faciunt, quia magna ex parte pereunt, paucis remeantibus integris. Perpaucae enim sunt civitates in Longobardia vel

and the passion for amusements of the inferior priests,1 were bitterly acknowledged. St. Jerome complained that the banquets of many bishops eclipsed in splendour those of the provincial governors, and the intrigues by which they obtained offices, and the fierce partisanship of their supporters, appear in every page of ecclesiastical history.

In the lay world, perhaps the chief characteristic was extreme childishness. The moral enthusiasm was greater than it had been in most periods of Paganism, but, being drawn away to the desert, it had little influence upon society. The simple fact that the quarrels between the factions of the chariot races for a long period eclipsed all political, intellectual, and even religious differences, filled the streets again and again with bloodshed, and more than once determined great revolutions in the State, is sufficient to show the extent of the decadence. Patriotism and courage had almost disappeared, and notwithstanding the rise of a Belisarius or a Narses, the level of public men was extremely depressed. The luxury of the court, the servility of the courtiers, and the prevailing splendour of dress and of ornament, had attained an extravagant height. The world grew accustomed to a dangerous alternation of extreme asceticism and gross vice, and sometimes, as in the case of Antioch,2 it was the most vicious and luxurious cities that produced the most numerous anchorites. There existed a combination of vice and superstition which is eminently prejudicial to the nobility, though not equally detrimental to the happiness of man. Public opinion was so low, that very many forms of vice attracted little condemnation and punishment, while un

in Francia aut in Gallia in qua non sit adultera vel meretrix generis Anglorum, quod scandalum est et turpitudo totius ecclesiæ vestræ.'—(A.D. 745) Ep. lxiii.

doubted belief in the absolving efficacy of superstitious rites calmed the imagination and allayed the terrors of conscience. There was more falsehood and treachery than under the Cæsars, but there was much less cruelty, violence, and shamelessness. There was also less public spirit, less independence of character, less intellectual freedom.

In some respects, however, Christianity had already effected a great improvement. The gladiatorial games had disappeared from the West, and had not been introduced into Constantinople. The vast schools of prostitution which had grown up under the name of temples of Venus were suppressed. Religion, however deformed and debased, was at least no longer a seedplot of depravity, and under the influence of Christianity the effrontery of vice had in a great measure disappeared. The gross and extravagant indecency of representation, of which we have still examples in the paintings on the walls and the signs on many of the portals of Pompeii; the banquets of rich patricians, served by naked girls; the hideous excesses of unnatural lust, in which some of the Pagan emperors had indulged with so much publicity, were no longer tolerated. Although sensuality was very general, it was less obtrusive, and unnatural and eccentric forms had become rare. The presence of a great Church, which, amid much superstition and fanaticism, still taught a pure morality, and enforced it by the strongest motives, was everywhere felt-controlling, strengthening, or overawing. The ecclesiastics were a great body in the State. The cause of virtue was strongly organised: it drew to itself the best men, determined the course of vacillating but amiable natures, and placed some restraint upon the vicious. A bad man might be insensible to the moral beauties of religion, but he was still haunted by the recollection of its