the first article of the moral code. Political minds may have felt the importance of aggrandising a pacific and industrious class in the centre of a disorganised society. and family affection may have predisposed many in favour of institutions which contained at least one member of most families; but in the overwhelming majority of cases the motive was simple superstition. In seasons of sickness, of danger, of sorrow, or of remorse, whenever the fear or the conscience of the worshipper was awakened, he hastened to purchase with money the favour of a saint. Above all, in the hour of death, when the terrors of the future world loomed darkly upon his mind, he saw in a gift or legacy to the monks a sure means of effacing the most monstrous crimes, and securing his ultimate happiness. A rich man was soon scarcely deemed a Christian, if he did not leave a portion of his property to the Church, and the charters of innumerable monasteries in every part of Europe attest the vast tracts of land that were ceded by will to the monks. 'for the benefit of the soul' of the testator.1

It has been observed by a great historian, that we may trace three distinct phases in the history of the Church. In the first period religion was a question of morals; in the second period, which culminated in the fifth century, it had become a question of orthodoxy; in the third period, which dates from the seventh century, it was a question of munificence to monasteries.2 The despotism

See on the causes of the wealth of the monasteries, two admirable dissertations by Muratori, Antich. Italiane, lxvii. lxviii.; Hallam's Middle Ages, ch. vii. part i.

2 Lors de l'établissement du christianisme la religion avoit essentiellement consisté dans l'enseignement moral; elle avoit exercé les cœurs et les âmes par la recherche de ce qui étoit vraiment beau, vraiment honnête. Au cinquième siècle on l'avoit surtout attachée à l'orthodoxie, au septième on l'avoit réduite à la bienfaisance envers les couvens.'-Sismondi, Hist. des Français, tome ii. p. 50.

of Catholicism, and the ignorance that followed the barbarian invasions, had repressed the struggles of heresy, and in the period of almost absolute darkness that continued from the sixth to the twelfth century, the theological ideal of unquestioning faith and of perfect unanimity was all but realised in the West. All the energy that in previous ages had been expended in combating heresy was now expended in acquiring wealth. The people compounded for the most atrocious crimes by gifts to shrines of those saints whose intercession was supposed to be unfailing. The monks, partly by the natural cessation of their old enthusiasm, partly by the absence of any hostile criticism of their acts, and partly too by the very wealth they had acquired, sank into gross and general immorality. The great majority of them had probably at no time been either saints actuated by a strong religious motive, nor yet diseased and desponding minds seeking a refuge from the world; they had been simply peasants, of no extraordinary devotion or sensitiveness, who preferred an ensured subsistence, with no care, little labour, a much higher social position than they could otherwise acquire, and the certainty, as they believed, of going to heaven, to the laborious and precarious existence of the serf, relieved, indeed, by the privilege of marriage, but exposed to military service, to extreme hardships, and to constant oppression. Very naturally, when they could do so with impunity, they broke their vows of chastity. Very naturally, too, they availed themselves to the full of the condition of affairs, to draw as much wealth as possible into their community. The belief in the approaching end

1 Mr. Hallam, speaking of the legends of the miracles of saints, says: It must not be supposed that these absurdities were produced as well as nourished by ignorance. In most cases they were the work of deliberate imposture. Every cathedral or monastery had its tutelar saint, and every saint his legend, fabricated in order to enrich the churches under his pro

of the world, especially at the close of the tenth century, the crusades, which gave rise to a profitable traffic in the form of a pecuniary commutation of vows, and the black death, which produced a paroxysm of religious fanaticism, stimulated the movement. In the monkish chronicles, the merits of sovereigns are almost exclusively judged by their bounty to the Church, and in some cases this is the sole part of their policy which has been preserved.1

There were, no doubt, a few redeeming points in this dark period. The Irish monks are said to have been honourably distinguished for their reluctance to accept the lavish donations of their admirers, and some missionary monasteries of a high order of excellence were scattered through Europe. A few legends, too, may perhaps be cited censuring the facility with which money acquired by crime was accepted as an atonement for crime. But these cases were very rare, and the religious tection, by exaggerating his virtues, his miracles, and consequently his power of serving those who paid liberally for his patronage.'-Middle Ages, ch. ix. part i. I do not think this passage makes sufficient allowance for the unconscious formation of many saintly myths, but no impartial person

doubts its substantial truth.

1 Sismondi, Hist. des Français, tome ii. pp. 54, 62–63. 2 Milman's Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 257.

Durandus, a French bishop of the thirteenth century, tells how, 'when a certain bishop was consecrating a church built out of the fruits of usury and pillage, he saw behind the altar the devil in a pontifical vestment, standing in the bishop's throne, who said unto the bishop, "Cease from consecrating the church; for it pertaineth to my jurisdiction, since it is built from the fruits of usuries and robberies." Then the bishop and the clergy having fled thence in fear, immediately the devil destroyed that church with a great noise.'-Rationale Divinorum, i. 6 (translated for the Camden Society).

A certain St. Launomar is said to have refused a gift for his monastery from a rapacious noble, because he was sure it was derived from pillage. (Montalembert's Moines d'Occident, tome ii. pp. 350-351.) When prostitutes were converted in the early Church, it was a rule that the money of which they had become possessed should never be applied to ecclesiastical purposes. but should be distributed among the poor.

history of several centuries is little more than a history of the rapacity of priests and of the credulity of laymen. In England, the perpetual demands of the Pope excited a fierce resentment; and we may trace with remarkable clearness, in every page of Mathew Paris, the alienation of sympathy arising from this cause, which prepared and foreshadowed the final rupture of England from the Church. Ireland, on the other hand, had been given over by two Popes to the English invader, on the condition of the payment of Peter's pence. The outrageous and notorious immorality of the monasteries, during the century before the Reformation, was chiefly due to their great wealth, and that immorality, as the writings of Erasmus and Ulric Von Hutten show, gave a powerful impulse to the new movement, while the abuses of the indulgences were the immediate cause of the revolt of Luther. But these things arrived only after many centuries of successful fraud. The religious terrorism that was unscrupulously employed had done its work, and the chief riches of Christendom had passed into the coffers of the Church.

The part which was played by the Catholic doctrine of future torture was indeed probably greater in the monastic phase of the Church than it had been even in the great work of converting the Pagans. Although two or three amiable theologians had made faint and altogether abortive attempts to question the eternity of punishment; although there had been some slight difference of opinion concerning the future of some Pagan philosophers who had lived before the introduction of Christianity, and also upon the question whether infants who died unbaptised were simply deprived of all joy, or were actually subjected to never-ending agony, there was no question as to the main features of the Catholic doctrine. According

to the patristic theologians, it was part of the gospel revelation that the misery and suffering the human race endures upon earth is but a feeble image of that which awaits it in the future world; that the entire human race beyond the Church, as well as a very large proportion of those who are within its pale, are doomed to an eternity of agony in a literal and undying fire. The monastic legends took up this doctrine, which in itself is sufficiently revolting, and they developed it with an appalling vividness and minuteness. St. Macarius, it is said, when walking one day through the desert, saw a skull upon the ground. He struck it with his staff and it began to speak. It told him that it was the skull of a Pagan priest who had lived before the introduction of Christianity into the world, and who had accordingly been doomed to hell. As high as the heaven is above the earth, so high does the fire of hell mount in waves above the souls that are plunged into it. The damned souls were pressed together back to back, and the lost priest made it his single entreaty to the saint, that he would pray that they might be turned face to face, for he believed that the sight of a brother's face might afford him some faint consolation in the eternity of agony that was before him.' The story is well known of how St. Gregory, seeing on a bas-relief a representation of the goodness of Trajan to a poor widow, pitied the Pagan emperor, whom he knew to be in hell, and he prayed that he might be released. He was told that his prayer was altogether unprecedented; but at last, on his promising that he would never make such a prayer again, it was partially granted. Trajan was not withdrawn from hell, but he was freed from the torments which the remainder of the Pagan world endured.2

1 Verba Seniorum, Prol. § 172.

2 This vision is not related by St. Gregory himself, and some Catholics