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Title: The Philosophy of History, Vol. 2 of 2
Author: Schlegel, Friedrich von
Language: English
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THE
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY;
IN A
COURSE OF LECTURES,
DELIVERED AT VIENNA,
BY FREDERICK VON SCHLEGEL.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN,
WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR,
BY JAMES BURTON ROBERTSON, ESQ.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.
MDCCCXXXV.
B. BENSLEY, PRINTER.
CONTENTS
OF VOL. II.
LECTURE X.
On the Christian point of view in the Philosophy of History.--The
origin of Christianity, considered in reference to the
political world.--Decline of the Roman Empire. 1
LECTURE XI.
Of the ancient Germans, and of the invasion of the Northern
tribes.--The march of Nature in the historical development
of Nations.--Further diffusion and internal consolidation of
Christianity.--Great corruption of the world.--Rise of
Mahometanism. 40
LECTURE XII.
Sketch of Mahomet and his religion.--Establishment of the
Saracenic Empire.--New organization of the European West,
and Restoration of the Christian Empire. 78
LECTURE XIII.
On the formation and consolidation of the Christian Government
in modern times.--On the principle which led to the
establishment of the old German Empire. 117
LECTURE XIV.
On the struggles of the Guelfs and Ghibellines.--Spirit of
the Ghibelline age.--Origin of romantic poetry and
art.--Character of the scholastic science and the old
jurisprudence.--Anarchical state of Western Europe. 152
LECTURE XV.
General observations on the Philosophy of History. On the
corrupt state of society in the fifteenth century.--Origin
of Protestantism, and character of the times of the
Reformation. 194
LECTURE XVI.
Further development and extension of protestantism, in
the period of the religious wars, and subsequently
thereto.--On the different results of those wars in the
principal European countries. 228
LECTURE XVII.
Parallel between the religious peace of Germany and that
of the other countries of Europe.--The political system
of the Balance of Power, and the principle of false
Illuminism prevalent in the eighteenth century. 268
LECTURE XVIII.
On the general spirit of the age, and on the universal
Regeneration of Society. 300
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.
LECTURE X.
On the Christian point of view in the Philosophy of
History.--The origin of Christianity, considered in
reference to the political world.--Decline of the Roman
Empire.
A regular history of the life of our Saviour, recounted like any other
historical occurrence, would in my opinion be out of place in a
philosophy of history. The subject is either too vast for profane
history, or in its first beginnings too obscure, whether we consider
its internal importance, or in a mere historical point of view, its
outward appearance. A thinking, and in his way well-thinking Roman,
when he had obtained a more accurate knowledge of the life of our
Saviour from the accounts of the Roman Procurator, or other Roman
dignitaries in Palestine, might have expressed himself respecting the
whole transaction in the following terms: "This is a very
extraordinary man, endued with wonderful and divine power, [for such
vague and general admiration might well be indulged in by a Heathen,
who yet adhered to the fundamental doctrines of his ancestral
faith,]--a man, who, he would continue to say, has produced a great
moral revolution in minds, and was, according to the most credible
testimony, of the purest character and most rigid morals, who taught
much that was sublime on the immortality of the soul and the secrets
of futurity; but who was accused by his enemies, and delivered over to
death by his own people." Such, perhaps, would have been the judgment
of a Tacitus, had he drawn his information from better and less
polluted sources. So long however as all these transactions were
confined to the small province of Judea, the soundest and best
constituted Roman mind could have scarcely felt a more than passing
regret at the perpetration of so signal an act of private injustice;
and would, in other respects, have not regarded it as an event which
could, in a Roman point of view, be termed historical, or worthy to
occupy a place in the more extended circle of his own world.
It was only when Christianity had become a power in the world--the
principle of a new life, and of a new form of life totally differing
from all preceding forms of existence, that it began to attract the
attention of the Romans, as a remarkable historical occurrence. How
perfectly unintelligible, strange and mysterious this mighty event at
its origin, and for a long time afterwards, appeared to the Romans;
how erroneous and absurd were their opinions and conduct in regard to
the Christian religion, we have already shewn by some characteristic
examples.
On the other hand, when we view the whole transaction with the eye of
faith--when we consider all that has since grown up in the world out
of beginnings apparently so small--the case changes its aspect in our
regard; and we are then inclined to believe that the mysteries and
miracles of our Saviour's life and death, nay, the whole system of his
doctrine, which is intimately connected with those mysteries and
miracles, and is itself the greatest mystery and miracle, should be
abandoned exclusively to religion, and, as they transcend the ordinary
sphere of history, would be misplaced in a work of this nature. I will
therefore pre-suppose a knowledge of these sacred mysteries, and,
without entering into any examination of them, will endeavour to
describe the state of the world, and the aspect of society, when the
Christian religion first made its appearance. A notice of some
particular points of doctrine, connected with politics and history,
either in respect to the past or to the future, is by no means
incompatible with my plan; but a complete examination of the whole
system of Christian doctrines, as of any other great system of
doctrine or philosophy, would, for the reason I have alleged, be quite
misplaced in a work of this description. I will in the next place
endeavour to shew the historical influence which this divine power has
exerted, and point out how from its very origin, and still more in its
progress, it entirely renovated the face of the world.
Doubtless the philosophy of history forms an essential part of the
science of divine and human things--things which in the mode of
conceiving or treating them, should be rarely and even never entirely
separated. For how is it possible to attain to a just and correct
knowledge of human things, in any department of life and science,
unless they be viewed in relation to and connection with the divine
principle, which animates or directs them? A certain medium, however,
is to be observed, and the limits must be clearly and accurately
traced between divine and human things, lest the one department should
be confounded with the other. For as it is very prejudicial to
religion to make it merely a matter of learned historical research; so
it is inconsistent with the object of historical philosophy to
transform it into a mere series of religious meditations. Undoubtedly
historical philosophy can and ought to assume the divine principle in
man--the divine image implanted in the human breast--as the great
pivot of human destiny, the main and essential point in universal
history, and the restoration of that Image as the proper purpose of
mankind.
Thus the philosophic historian may endeavour, as I have attempted, to
point out the divine truth contained in the primitive revelation, the
original word which was current among the nations of the primitive
age: in the second period of the world--the decisive crisis between
ancient and modern times--he will discover in the Christian religion,
the sole principle of the subsequent progress of mankind; and the
distinctive character and intellectual importance of the third or last
epoch of the world, he will find only in that light, which, emerging
from the primitive revelation, and the religion of love established by
the Redeemer, has shone ever clearer and brighter with the progress of
ages, and has changed and regenerated not only government and science,
but the whole system of human life. Here is the principle which
furnishes the plan of classification for all the great epochs of
history. From this philosophic survey of history, the historian, in
the accomplishment of his task, may with great propriety point out and
illustrate the ways and views of divine Providence in the conduct of
particular nations and ages, and in the destiny of remarkable
personages, or historical characters, when those views and ways are
strikingly perceptible to our feelings. Yet it is better that this
train of observations should not be too systematically prosecuted, but
should be introduced occasionally only, and as it were episodically,
in those passages of history, where such reflections naturally present
themselves; and they should ever be confined within the limits of a
modest suggestion; for all these reflections are only the esoteric
spirit--the internal religious idea of history. Otherwise the
historian will be exposed to the danger of introducing a system of
Providential designs prematurely formed according to human insight and
human sagacity, into the yet unfinished drama of the world's history,
whose comprehensive vastness and hidden mysteries, besides, far exceed
the narrow limits of all that man can conceive, judge and know with
certainty. And this is a defect which many writers have not entirely
avoided in their otherwise very religious meditations on universal
history. So far, however, as the historian confines his train of
reflections within the modest limits of a mere partial explanation,
and does not prematurely anticipate the general scheme of divine
polity, or plunge too deeply, and with presumptuous confidence into
its details; he will find much and obvious matter for such
considerations, in the visible selection of particular individuals,
and particular nations and even ages for the accomplishment of certain
ends, for the attainment on their part of prosperity, glory, or some
high object in some particular sphere. But this power thus allotted to
particular individuals or to particular nations, exerts even at the
time a general influence on the fate of mankind, and evidently
accomplishes the designs of Providence with regard to the world at
large; forms a point of transition from past ages, or opens a passage
to some manifestation of divine power, with respect to the future. In
the progress of human civilisation, such designs are frequently
manifest. Nay, on the great question of the permission of evil, when
it exerts a widely destructive influence in the moral and physical
world, and on the views of God in that permission; the enlightened
historian may sometimes succeed, if not in penetrating into the hidden
decrees of divine wisdom, yet at least in uplifting a corner of the
mysterious veil which covers them. In particular phenomena of
history--such for example as the destruction of a whole nation, the
Jews for instance; or in the overwhelming calamities, the general
miseries inflicted on a corrupt age, manifesting, clearly as they do,
the retributive justice of God--calamities which, when regarded from
this point of view (and it is only from this point of view they can be
rightly judged), appear like a partial judgment of the world--in all
such historical phenomena, a modest reference to the final causes of
such events may be exceedingly appropriate. This idea of divine
justice, and of God's judgments on the world exemplified in history,
belongs undoubtedly to the province of historical philosophy; and, as
man's resemblance to his Maker constitutes the first foundation-stone
of history, this more practical principle, relating as it does, to
real life and all its mighty phenomena, forms the second.
But the Mystery of grace in the divine Redemption of mankind,
transcends the sphere of profane history. The Christian philosophy of
history must indeed tacitly pre-suppose the truth of that mystery, and
assume it as known, and indeed as self-evident to all well-thinking
persons--it must even, under the inspiration of this faith, refer to
it very many, the greater part, indeed almost all, of the facts and
phenomena of history--but it should forbear to introduce it into its
own province, and should leave it to the sanctuary of religion. In the
same way, whenever philosophy attempts to incorporate and rank this
mystery with her own speculative conceptions, the consequence must
ever be hurtful to religion; for, as philosophy thus attempts to
explain and, as it were, deduce this mystery from her own
speculations, the mystery of Redemption ceases to be a divine fact,
and it is only as such that it is and can be the true and eternal
foundation of religion. I wish here expressly to do away with an
opinion which is completely unhistorical, and even subversive of all
history. I cannot more truly and succintly designate this opinion,
than by stating it as follows:--Christ, to say it in one word, was a
Jewish Socrates; and this purest, noblest, and sublimest of all
ethical teachers (according to the rationalists' interpretation of his
history) met with a fate no less deplorable for mankind than that
which befel the Athenian philosopher, and the wisest of all the
Grecian sages. In reply to this, one observation only need be
made--_If Christ were not more than a Socrates, then a_ _Socrates He
was not._[1] But this opinion is not only unhistorical, or, to speak
more properly, _anti-historical_, because it is in utter opposition
to all covenants, testimonies, authentic records, and even Christ's
express declarations; but fully as much, and even still more on this
account, that if we once remove this divine keystone in the arch of
universal history, the whole fabric of the world's history falls to
ruin--for its only foundation is this new manifestation of God's power
in the crisis of time--this hope in God abiding unto the end. For,
although I do not consider a formal demonstration of the truth of the
Christian religion as falling within the province of profane history;
yet the belief of its truth--a faith in its dogmas, is the only clue
in such investigations. Without this faith, the whole history of the
world would be nought else than an insoluble enigma--an inextricable
labyrinth--a huge pile of the blocks and fragments of an unfinished
edifice--and the great tragedy of humanity would remain devoid of all
proper result.
Confining myself within those limits which the very nature of the
subject, and the force of circumstances prescribe, and which I have
here thought it necessary to mark out with exactness, I shall now, in
order to see under what circumstances Christianity first arose in the
world, and appeared on the domain of history, direct your attention
more immediately to the Jewish state.
Dependant at first on the Grecian dynasty of Egypt, and at a
subsequent period subdued by the Soverigns of the new Syrian monarchy,
which sprang out of the dismemberment of the Macedonian empire, the
more virtuous portion of the Hebrew people evinced under the religious
persecution they had to sustain from the latter monarchs, much
constancy in the old faith of their fathers; for which indeed several
of the heroic family of the Maccabees had the courage to lay down
their lives. From these rulers they were rescued by the Romans, who
took them under their powerful protection, which, with the Jews, as
with all other nations, was soon transformed into a systematic and
very oppressive domination. The Jewish people were so far involved in
the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey, that each party favoured that
aspirant to the throne of Judea, most favourable to its own designs.
Under the monarchy of Augustus, Herod, who was created tributary
sovereign of Palestine about forty years before the Christian æra, was
the last who had been promoted to sovereignty amid this conflict of
parties. The temple of Jerusalem, that had been rebuilt with the
permission of Cyrus, still remained in all its pomp and grandeur. If a
profane curiosity had tempted Crassus and Pompey to intrude within its
sanctuary, on the other hand, the munificence of Herod had added to
its size and increased its decorations. Although Herod ever retained a
partiality for Roman customs, and still more for Grecian opinions, yet
the temple of Jerusalem considered, not as the august sanctuary of
Heaven's revelations to the chosen people, but as the centre of
attraction for the Jewish nation, situated as it was in the midst of a
great commercial city, (one of the largest in all Western Asia), and
forming at once the treasury, and by its close proximity to the
citadel, the rampart, of the city and of the state, must have been
regarded by Herod as the seat of his power, and the nearest object of
his ambition. There were at that period among the Jews two parties,
which, like those of the Patricians and Plebeians in the civil wars of
Rome, bear some resemblance to the parties that at present divide the
world: although in their relative position towards each other, as well
as in their internal character and tendency, there are many important
points which distinguish them from the parties at present existing.
Though from the predominant spirit and peculiar constitution of the
Jewish people, the subjects of contention between the two parties
related chiefly or more immediately to matters of religion; yet
politics were not entirely excluded from their disputes, which
embraced in general the whole of human life and its various relations.
The Pharisees were the chief scribes and doctors of the law, and in
the state, the honoured Patricians of the Hebrews, who sought to
maintain the ancient faith and ancient constitution of their country
with its rights and jurisprudence, adhering indeed with a rigid
scupulosity, and a contentious subtilty to the letter of the old law,
while they had long forgotten its divine spirit, and were notorious
for their attachment to their own interests, their selfish feelings,
and false and contracted views. As they acknowledged, and respected
with the most scrupulous fidelity all existing laws, they sided,
apparently at least, with the Romans; though they never entertained a
cordial attachment for those conquerors; and indeed they ever
cherished the hope of being able to ensnare the great Teacher, so
beloved by the Jewish people, into a declaration against the Roman
rule, as in their limited views they conceived He must, sooner or
later, be necessarily driven to that expedient in order to sustain his
popularity. But it cannot be doubted that the cause which the
Pharisees defended was, on the whole, the legitimate cause of the
Hebrews of that period, since our Saviour himself expressly
acknowledged this, when he said of the Pharisees,--"They sit in the
chair of Moses, and whatsoever they command you, that do ye." It was
precisely because they had made the old law, and the cause of God,
their own cause, that so much was exacted of them; and that they were
judged with so much severity by our Saviour, apparently with greater
severity than were the Sadducees themselves, who by an Epicurean
philosophy, and a latitudinarian system of morals, had fallen almost
entirely from the faith, had affixed a mere human interpretation to
Scripture, and had even called in question the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul. If in this sect there were individuals
entertaining purer and more exalted notions of the truth, we must
regard them rather as happy and honorable exceptions. We must not,
besides, forget that the severe judgments on the Pharisees, which
occur in Scripture, refer only to the more degenerate among them,--a
great portion, doubtless, perhaps the greater part; but by no means
include the whole sect or body, among whom were many worthy
individuals.
We ought also to recollect that the apostle Paul was a Pharisee, and
though a well-intentioned, yet a very zealous, one, for all his
writings shew the man who had sat at the feet of Gamaliel: the latter
again was the grandson of the illustrious Hillel, who is named as one
of the last great doctors of the Hebrews, who was profoundly versed
in their sacred traditions, and was indeed one of the last pillars of
the Synagogue. The Jewish history or tradition mentions seven species
of false Pharisees, to whom all the reproaches of our Saviour are
perfectly applicable. Many other Pharisees, besides the apostle Paul,
are mentioned with honour in Holy Writ, as friends and disciples of
our Redeemer, though they had not the courage openly to declare
themselves his followers.
Whenever, in the history of mankind, we arrive at some epoch of great
crisis, or momentous collision, we find invariably, and in all
countries, two contending parties like these, appearing at once on the
historical arena, though in forms or positions variously modified. The
party defending antiquity, often adheres only to the dead letter of
rigid law, forgetting its inward sense and living spirit; while the
opposite party, which has a strong conviction that the world stands in
need of a new legislation, and that the epoch of a new legislation
approaches, is not entirely in the wrong. But when the members of the
latter party have lost all faith in the sacred traditions of the past,
and have consequently forgotten that the great work of regeneration
can emanate from God only; they conceive that it is in their power to
accomplish this work, nay, they fancy they have already succeeded in
their enterprise, while all their futile attempts can accomplish
nought but a total revolution in the past--a revolution brought about
either by external violence, or, in its best and mildest form, by the
internal ruin of moral principle and feeling. Between these extreme
and conflicting parties, individuals are often found who fly from the
field of contention, and seek out a higher asylum, at least for
themselves. Such were those small communities of holy contemplatives
that then existed among the Jews, the Essenians in Palestine, and the
Therapuntæ in Egypt; but these ascetics, limited in number, formed a
trifling exception by the side of the two great predominant sects. It
was between these two leading parties--on one hand, the narrow-minded
and selfish Jewish legitimatists--stiff adherents to the letter of the
law,--and, on the other hand, the liberal illuminés;--between the old
promises and expectations of the Hebrews, and the Roman dominion, now
become and acknowledged to be legitimate, that our Saviour had to
steer; and it required a more than human prudence to traverse this
critical period, unaffected by the spirit of contending factions.
"Give unto Cæsar what belongs to Cæsar," was his simple declaration,
when men sought to entrap him by their worldly cunning: and this
declaration has remained a fundamental precept of Christianity, and
will continue unchanged to the end of time. So will that other oracle,
"Thou art a rock, and upon this rock I will build my church;" in this
there is a clear and distinct precept how Christians were to treat
those Pagan pretensions of the Romans which regarded acts of
political idolatry, such as the sacrifice before the image of the
Emperor, and acts of a similar kind; and how, as witnesses of the
truth, against all the powers of earth, they were to seal their
testimony with their blood. The capital error of the Jews lay in this,
that in the Deliverer, promised to them of old, they now generally
expected an earthly liberator destined to emancipate them from the
oppressive yoke of the Romans, and to restore their national empire to
its highest glory and splendour. And, indeed, had they not carried
their notions on this point to such extreme lengths, and with such
unyielding obstinacy, much might have been alleged in their excuse.
According to the usual character of prophetic speech, the portrait of
a spiritual Deliverer, invested with real glory and pomp, had been
drawn in such vivid colours in those ancient prophecies, that the
description might, in many passages at least, be easily mistaken for
one of an earthly monarch. Or, to express my meaning with greater
accuracy and precision, as it is the peculiar character of sacred
prophecy to represent events about to follow, in immediate contact
with the ultimate objects to which they tend, there are often in those
prophetic descriptions of the future prosperity of the chosen people,
many passages on the remote period of the last ages of the world, and
on the universal triumph of Christianity throughout the earth at the
end of time; there are often, we say, many of those passages which
also refer and indeed contain the closest allusions to the
commencement of the Christian redemption. In the same way, although in
a different sort of subject, we see our Saviour himself foretell the
impending ruin of Jerusalem and of the Jewish nation, while his
lamentations are closely linked, and almost confounded with, prophetic
warnings respecting the awful and terrific scenes of latter times, and
the approaching day of general account; although both these events,
the ruin of the temporal Jerusalem, and the last glorious
transformation of nature, when creation shall be consummated, and a
new heaven and a new earth shall spring into existence, are to be
strictly regarded as real and historical. So close an attention, and
so great a power of discrimination are requisite to distinguish
between parts, to combine the whole, and place each particular fact in
its proper point of view. But the best excuse that can be offered for
the Jews, in this respect, is the fact, as the scripture clearly
showeth, that all the followers of our Saviour, and his most trusty
disciples, were at first under the same delusion, and for a long time
believed that, though the right moment had not yet arrived, still
their master would certainly appear as the earthly Deliverer and
Monarch of his nation; and indeed the idea of his sufferings and death
was so abhorrent to their feelings, that they even dared to express
their disapprobation, and upbraid their Saviour for entertaining such
thoughts; for it was only at a much later period the bandage fell
from their eyes. And the great reproach which we are to make the Jews
is that they should have adhered with such obstinacy to an error, very
excusable under certain circumstances, and that after all they had
heard, seen and experienced, they should have still closed their eyes
against the light. The conduct of our Saviour towards the Jews is
often represented in a manner little conformable to historic truth,
and to the spirit and character of this mighty revolution, when it is
said that he entirely abrogated the whole system of the Mosaic law.
The outward scaffolding was indeed removed, when it had ceased to be
necessary; such were all those laws which applied only to that state
of strict separation from Heathen nations, which at an earlier period
had been of such absolute importance. Very many things were still
retained; and all now received in the fulfilment a higher spiritual
signification; and this was natural, when we consider that in Judaism
itself every thing which had not been designed merely for local and
temporary wants, from the very commencement of that dispensation, was
typical of Christianity. The twelve apostles, as well as the first
seventy-two disciples, were taken exclusively from the chosen people,
and even, in this respect, the divine promises were completely
fulfilled, and literally observed. The constitution of the ancient
hierarchy has very evidently furnished the pattern for that of the
Christian priesthood; though this of course has been adapted to the
wider circle of a higher and more spiritual system. The expression,
"My kingdom is not _of_ this world," does not imply that it was
not to be _in_ this world a real and effective power, with a form
and organization clearly defined. Many have read so much, or inferred
so much, from this declaration, that they could not adopt an easier or
more polite method of shutting out this divine empire of truth from
the world. In the hours of the greatest solemnity, the divine Master
revealed to his disciples the hidden sense of the ancient revelation
in all the plenitude of its mysteries. As the Saviour himself said
that every word and syllable of the old law must be literally
fulfilled; as in general the spiritual interpretation of the divine
oracles is by no means inconsistent with their literal truth and
inviolable sanctity; so the same remark will apply to the new
revelation, in which every word and every syllable of prophecy will
receive a full and practical accomplishment before the consummation of
time. Even in another point of view, particularly worthy the
consideration of the historian, Christianity must be regarded only as
a divine continuation, a higher and more expansive form, or spiritual
renovation, of the Mosaic institution; and was so intended by its
divine Founder; namely in those aspirations after futurity, which now
so exclusively directed the whole of human life, and its various
views.
That law of divine wisdom, by which earthly existence is to be looked
upon only as a state of expectation, of preparation, and of
struggle--a view of life alone accordant with human nature--that law
has retained its full force in the new covenant. For the primitive
Christians, death was what the Saviour said of himself, a return, a
passing unto the Father, but life was one ceaseless struggle. For him
who unto the end fought steadfast in this struggle, the angel of death
was divested of his terrors; he was a celestial messenger of peace,
that brought to the Christian the bright garland of victory, and the
crown of eternal life; in this faith and in these sentiments, did the
Saints live, and the martyrs die. And as every human soul is conducted
to the realms above by the gentle hand of its divine guardian; so the
Saviour himself has announced to all mankind, in many prophetic
passages, that when the period of the dissolution of the world shall
approach, he himself will return to the earth, will renovate the face
of all things, and bring them to a close. So lively an assurance had
the first Christians of the immediate presence of their invisible lord
and guide, so vivid a hope did they entertain of his speedy return to
the earth; that, in order to check the aspirations of a zeal that
would accelerate the period of consummation so ardently desired,
divine Providence judged it necessary that the Prophet of the New
Testament should close the volume of eternal revelation with that long
succession of ages that were to witness the progressive struggle of
humanity--all those centuries of Christianity that mankind was yet to
traverse, before the promise should be fulfilled, and in the fulness
of time the final and universal triumph of Christianity throughout the
earth should be accomplished, for all mankind must be gathered into
one fold, and under one Shepherd. According to the spirit and precept
of the Christian religion, man must at every moment be prepared; but
he must not, in a presumptuous ardour, accelerate the term of
existence fixed by the wisdom of Almighty God. Thus all those
Christians who, during the times of the most violent persecution of
the church under the Romans, courted the danger, and would not await
the honour of martyrdom, were warned that such conduct was by no means
conformable to the will of God; as it often happened that those who,
by such an overweening confidence in their own strength, had wantonly
rushed to the field of danger, succumbed under their torments, and
fell from the faith.
Had the Jews but opened their eyes in the right time; had they
acknowledged the divine fulfilment of ancient promises in the mission
of Christ, which was in fact far more exalted and more splendid than
any thing they had expected; and had all, or even the greater part, of
the nation embraced Christianity; they would have become the mighty
stem--the great foundation--the central point of all modern history,
and all modern life. But as they did not correspond to this call of
divine Providence, a call fully justified by their circumstances,
their early history, and the prerogatives which the Almighty had once
accorded to them above all other nations; the justice of God required
that they should now receive a signal chastisement, that they should
be deprived of their national existence, dispersed among all the
nations of the earth; and that, in this state of ruin and dispersion,
they should serve as a memorable example to the world. But this
humiliation of the Jews, which was calculated to draw down the
contempt of the Heathen, who looked only to outward things, should
have never given rise to oppression or ill-treatment among Christian
nations; and the more so, as it is still a problem whether any other
people placed in a similar situation, and warped by selfish
prejudices, and old and deep rooted errors, would have done better; or
whether mankind in general, subjected to a similar trial, would have
come off more successfully.
The old temple of the holy city was not, like the idolatrous temples
of the Heathens, a mere magnificent monument of national glory,
adorned with all the splendour of art; but the idea and plan of the
whole structure, its minutest parts, every stone, and every cipher,
were clearly indicative and profoundly symbolical of that invisible
temple, that mighty city, that divine kingdom of peace, which Christ
was to establish on earth, and which he had now at length come to
establish. Even the name of Jerusalem, according to the Hebrew
signification of the word, has the emblematic sense of revelation and
foundation, or city of peace, by which is understood not a mere
earthly and transitory peace, but that higher and divine peace which
forms the subject of all the promises made unto the chosen people.
This prophetic sense and typical design of the holy city is so closely
connected with the origin and whole idea of the city, that in some
passages of the Old Testament such figurative expressions are used, as
if the whole business, nay the whole life, of man had no other object
"than to build up the walls of Jerusalem;" in the same sense as if a
Christian moralist were to say; the proper end and ultimate object of
mankind, and of the history of all nations and ages, is the kingdom of
God, that is to say, the ever wider diffusion and firmer consolidation
of Christian truth and Christian perfection throughout the world. When
the spiritual and internal sense of this mighty and historical
hieroglyph of the Jewish people was no longer understood; when the
mighty truths which it embodied, at the very moment they were about to
receive their full explanation and perfect development, were
misunderstood and rejected; what was more natural than that the
emblem, which had lost its meaning, should be effaced, the temple
destroyed, and the city itself levelled and razed by the arm of divine
justice? This is the view which the Christian historian must take of
that mighty and fearful catastrophe which now befell Jerusalem, and
the whole Jewish people under Vespasian; and indeed the impression
which this event made on the Jews, though somewhat diversified by
national sentiments, is in all essential points conformable to our own
feelings. That in every such widely destructive disaster, which by
divine permission may afflict any portion of the human race, the
loving wisdom of God will know how to take each individual soul under
its special protection, and will guard and spare it, at least, in its
immortal part, is a truth so evident to every religious mind, that it
is unnecessary to enforce it at any length. If, as the Scripture
saith, "the hairs on a man's head are numbered," so will each day, nay
each hour, each pulsation of human existence be counted; yea, every
heartfelt tear the eye of sorrow shall shed, will be reckoned by the
guardian spirit of eternal love. But this religious regard for the
fate of individuals, and this humane sympathy with their misfortunes,
must be kept within its proper sphere in historical disquisitions,
where the principal design is to study and observe, as far as the
limited perception of man will permit, the mighty course of divine
justice, through all ages of the world.
When the Jews were disappointed in the hope they had entertained of a
liberator, who was to be sent from above, armed with divine power to
deliver them from the stern yoke of Roman domination; exasperated by
the ever increasing tyranny of their masters, after several partial
insurrections, the whole nation, three and thirty years after the
death of our Lord, broke out into open rebellion; and the whole
country, torn by infuriated factions, which fanatic hate inspired with
the courage of despair, exhibited all the horrors of the most terrific
revolution. The savage warfare of the Romans in such a deadly
struggle, we have already learned from the example of Carthage; for
however mild and benevolent might be the personal character of Titus,
it was out of his power to introduce any change in the system of war;
and the number of men that perished in the siege and ravage of the
holy city is estimated at 1,300,000; including the small number that
were led away captives, or reserved to grace the triumph of the
conqueror. The Emperor Hadrian rebuilt the city, which had been
totally destroyed, under the new and Pagan name of Ælia Capitolina,
and even erected within it a temple to Jupiter: but no Jew was
permitted to enter within its walls. At a later period the Emperor
Julian had intended to re-establish the Jews in their ancient city,
and in all probability it was his hostility to Christianity which had
inspired him with the design; but unexpected events and physical
obstacles[2] opposed the execution of this plan.
The Jewish covenant and the old revelation of the Hebrews formed the
chief corner-stone on which Christianity was founded; and the first
apostles of the new religion were all chosen from among that people.
The scriptures of the new covenant were composed in the Greek tongue,
and the first apologies, and other expositions of faith, or books of
instruction by the primitive fathers, were mostly written in the same
language. We may therefore consider this language as forming the
second foundation-stone of the Christian edifice. Though the political
consequences of the Macedonian conquests in Asia were not of any
permanence, yet the influence which these conquests have exerted on
the intellectual character of nations, the ascendancy which they gave
to the Greeks over the whole civilized world of that period, were by
no means unimportant. It was by means of these conquests that the
philosophy and literature of the Greeks became, along with their
language, predominant in Egypt and the Western countries of Asia; and
hence this language was adopted as the original tongue of
Christianity; because no other at that period had attained such
intellectual refinement, or such general diffusion. As in human
society every class and condition of life, nay, every individual, by
the peculiar rights and advantages which each exclusively enjoys,
still serves the community, and contributes to the weal of others,
unconsciously and without precisely wishing it; so in the history of
the world, and in the progress of nations, all things are closely
interlinked, and one serves as the instrument, auxiliary, or bond of
union to the other; and it was not one of the least important results
of the Greek science and language, that the two points wherein that
nation had risen to the greatest eminence, and was endowed with the
greatest power, should both have been so nearly allied with the cause
of Christianity, even from its origin. The Roman empire was the third
foundation-stone of the Christian religion; for its vast extent
facilitated in a singular manner the early and very rapid diffusion of
Christianity, and formed indeed the ground-work on which the fabric of
the new church was first constructed.
In the history of the primitive church, historians are wont to
separate the different branches of their subject, which form so many
different parts of a single whole, and thus to describe separately the
dogmas and doctrines of the church, its holy rites and sacraments, its
liturgies and festivals, and next its moral condition and external
relations; and this division of the subject may, no doubt, very well
answer the special design of such ecclesiastical histories. But if we
wish to take a more general view of the subject, to seize the spirit
of Christianity, and form a just, true and lively conception of the
primitive church, we must be particularly careful not to forget in the
investigation of those several heads, that they formed one undivided
and living whole in the eyes of the first Christians, amid the
overflowing fulness of a new moral life; and of this spirit of unity,
as well as of the wonderful energy of faith and love which was its
never-failing source, it is almost impossible for us to form a full
and adequate notion. Christianity in its primitive influence, was like
an electric stroke, which traversed the world with the rapidity of
lightning--like a magnetic fluid of life, which united even the most
distant members of humanity in one animating pulsation. Public prayer
and the sacred mysteries formed a stronger and closer bond of love
among men, than the still sacred ties of kindred and earthly
affection. Some persons have affected to compare the secret assemblies
of the primitive Christians with the pagan Mysteries; and undoubtedly
it was only in secret, and in the retired and obscure oratory, that
the first followers of Christ could gather together amid the fury of
general persecution. But, from a competent knowledge which we possess
of the import of those pagan Mysteries, they had about as much
resemblance to the religious assemblies of the primitive Christians,
as the divine sacrifice of holy commemoration, and the chalice
consecrated with the blood of the eternal Covenant, bore to the human
sacrifices of the Cainites. The Christians saw and felt the presence
of their invisible King and eternal Lord; and when their souls
overflowed with the plenitude of spiritual and heavenly life, how
could they value earthly existence, and how must they not have been
willing to sacrifice it in the struggle against the powers of
darkness; for that struggle formed the whole and proper business of
their lives?--Hence we can understand the reason of the otherwise
incredibly rapid diffusion of Christianity through all the provinces,
and even sometimes beyond the limits, of the vast empire of
Rome;--like a heavenly flame, it ran through all life, kindling, where
it found congenial sympathy, all that it touched into a kindred
fervour. Hence, along with that mighty spirit of love which produced
so rapid a spread of the Christian religion, and which united in the
closest bonds the first Christian communities, that energy of faith
which inspired such heroic fortitude under the dreadful and oft
renewed persecutions of the Romans. The first persecution under Nero
was only a momentary freak of blood-thirsty tyranny--a passing trait
of that monster's cruelty. The first regular edict against the
Christians in the Roman empire was passed by Domitian in the 87th year
of our era, and, according to a custom which had been borrowed from
the Jews, he assimilated the offence of dissent from the national
religion to the crime of high treason. The better Nerva softened the
rigour of this law, and declared that the denunciations of slaves
against their masters were not to be received, but, on the contrary,
such informers were to be severely punished. Trajan also, on the
before-mentioned report of the younger Pliny, decided, in the 120th
year of our era, that the Christians, who were then uncommonly
numerous, were not to be sought after, but that, when denounced, they
should be punished according to the law existing against such
religious associations and communities. But notwithstanding all these
apparent mitigations of severity introduced by the better emperors,
the criminal jurisprudence of the Romans, like their foreign warfare,
ever remained most atrocious; and the passages and allusions which are
to be found in ancient historians, concur with the general voice of
Christian tradition in stating the prodigious cruelties inflicted on
the Christians in those persecutions. In general Hadrian pursued that
milder and middle course of policy which Trajan had commenced before
him; he approved of legal and judicial persecutions against the
Christians, but he strictly prohibited those tumultuary attacks which
were the mere ebullitions of popular hatred. With many vicissitudes,
Christianity remained in this state until the reign of Diocletian,
who, pursuing a far more systematic plan than most of his
predecessors, attempted entirely to root it out; but this was no
longer possible, and the growing church received its first formal
edict of pacification at the hands of the emperor Constantine. The
pagan enthusiast Julian attempted a second time to subvert it, but it
was now too late. In the struggle against pagan cruelty and Roman
persecution, Christianity had come off victorious; in bondage, and
under every species of suffering, it had proved the invincible might
of the divine arm;--and, next to the apostles, the martyrs, so highly
revered by the gratitude of Christians, must occupy the second place
among those who were instrumental in bringing about this mighty
renovation of society, and who sealed their efforts with their blood.
But we must not imagine that the martyrs, as mere men, and by their
unassisted strength, could have endured such dreadful torments with
such unshaken constancy; or, again, that they were the mere
unconscious instruments of a divine fatality, without the co-operation
of their free, clear and steadfast will. By the side of those who were
constant, many individuals were found that were not so,--many, who,
overcome by suffering, delivered up the holy scriptures, or entirely
apostatized from the faith and sacrificed to idols; so that it was
afterwards a matter of dispute, how far the _lapsed_ could be
pardoned and received again into the church.
After that period was past which had witnessed the reign of those
inhuman tyrants that immediately succeeded Augustus, several of the
more virtuous emperors sought by various expedients to bring about the
moral regeneration of the people and empire of Rome. Trajan, who
possessed much of the rectitude and old martial virtues that belonged
to the elder and better period of Rome, sought to introduce these
again; and, though the effects of his policy were transient, they
were still beneficial. Hadrian endeavoured to reanimate paganism, and
to make it once more the basis of the empire and of public life; for
this purpose, he had recourse especially to the more profound and
austere Theology of Egypt; and that new Egyptian style, which
characterizes the later monuments of Roman art, was connected with the
emperor's predilection for the old religion of Egypt. But the healthy
vigour, the moral regeneration, of public life, and of the empire
itself, could not now be obtained by the maintenance, or firmer
consolidation, of the pagan religion; on the contrary, it is in the
erroneous nature of the primitive paganism of Rome that we must seek
for the principal cause why, even in that elder period now so highly
extolled, and which certainly was at least better, a true, pure, and
stable system of morals and politics could never take root and
flourish. Under the two Antonines, the severe morality of Stoicism was
regarded as the vital principle of moral regeneration, and political
reform, and a practical application of its principles was sought for
on all sides. And certainly if the stoical philosophy, with its mere
dead letter of rigid justice, and correct morality, unsupported by the
divine maxims of right faith, and that spirit of exalted love which
true faith alone can impart, could have accomplished this high
design;--if it had possessed within itself this mighty source, this
creative energy of moral and social life; the serious determination and
personal virtues of those imperial stoics might indeed have promised
to the declining age of Rome the fulfilment of the last hope to which
Paganism yet clung. But that which doth not rest on the basis of truth
can receive no life from any external cause; and it can impart no life
to any thing without, because it is decayed within, and when the
illusive bloom of first youth has fled, it sinks inevitably into its
native corruption. "When the Lord doth not build the house," saith the
Psalmist, "those who would build it labour in vain." To the better
times that had witnessed the rule of the three or four great monarchs
we have mentioned, the reign of a Commodus succeeded; and thus the
Empire, down to the time of Diocletian, beheld a constant mutation of
rulers, sometimes benevolent, or at least comparatively good, whose
reigns however were often but of short duration, sometimes weak and
spiritless, and sometimes again tyrants of the most abject and
atrocious cast. Among these latter Sovereigns, however, who in cruelty
and arbitrary caprice, resembled the first successors of Augustus,
there were no characters possessed of that strong Roman sense which
distinguished Tiberius; and the empire in their hands assumed daily
more and more a thoroughly effeminate and oriental complexion.
Nothing was more subject to chance than the right of succession in the
Roman empire, where the arbitrary application of the Roman principle
of adoption opened a wide field to the contention of parties; without
including the frequent recurrence of conspiraces in a military empire,
which, as it was formed by a military conspiracy, ever retained the
stamp of its origin. Augustus had employed his whole life, not without
apparent success, for a time at least, in endeavouring to give to
authority, acquired by force of arms, the colour and forms of
legitimacy. But how could it be ever forgotten that he, as well as
Cæsar, had been raised to the Imperial throne by the army, and amid
the struggles of factions, conspiracies, and civil wars. The soldiers
knew this, and recollected but too well the source whence the supreme
power in the state had emanated. The influence of the Prætorians,
especially, was, from their origin, very considerable, as they
surrounded the Emperor, and formed his body-guard. By virtue of his
office the leader of the Prætorians had a sort of negative and
controlling power, like that of the Censor and popular Tribune in the
ancient republic, except that this functionary wielded the sword,--a
power in some degree acknowledged by the Emperor himself, as it was
accounted one of the highest merits of Trajan, that to the chief of
that troop which defended the person, and often decided the fate, of
the Emperor, he delivered the sword with these words: "For me, if I
govern well--against me, if I should become a tyrant."
Thus the empire was entirely abandoned to chance and caprice, and as
its origin was military, it remained unto the end essentially a
military despotism. The more powerful legions that were quartered in
the most important provinces, especially in those of the frontiers,
soon began to feel that they were far superior in numbers and strength
to the effeminate Prætorians of the capital. Several emperors were
elected and proclaimed by these legions; and in the number, such even
as were not Romans, and were of barbarian extraction; for it happened
that, in the provincial legions, many foreigners, especially Germans,
were engaged in the Roman service in the provinces on the
North-western frontier. Several of the emperors thus chosen by the
legions, continued to reside where the centre of their power
existed--in the station, or in some provincial capital conveniently
situated. The Senate had long been but a mere shadow of its former
greatness; even the capital began to lose much of its importance.
At the same time the repeated incursions of the Northern nations ever
rendered a general invasion more imminent, and the disaster, which men
had foreseen from afar, appeared ever nearer its accomplishment.
Already the first irruption of the Cimbri and Teutones, when not
merely an army for the sake of booty, or to plant a military colony,
but a whole tribe with wives and children had migrated into the Roman
territory, threw Rome into consternation during the civil wars, when
she was at the very height of her military prowess. Cæsar had spared
no exertion to reduce Gaul to complete subjection, and this country
had ever since adopted more and more the language and customs of Rome.
He experienced from no people such vigorous resistance, as from the
Germanic tribes; and to protect against these nations the safety of
the empire, by strongly fortifying the banks of the Rhine and Danube,
constituted afterwards the first concern of the Roman Emperors. What a
shock Augustus received from the defeat of Varus, by the German
Arminius in his native woods! Even under the martial Trajan, who was
almost the last conqueror in the line of Roman Emperors, men began to
entertain serious apprehensions of the invasion of the Germanic
tribes. The first great irruption was that of the Alemanni, who, under
Marcus Aurelius burst into the Rhætian provinces, while similar
movements occurred in Noricum and eastward towards Pannonia. However,
Marcus Aurelius, by an energetic and successful resistance, repelled
this first attempt, and thus was the means of deterring the barbarians
for a long time from similar enterprises; and a hundred years elapsed
before Aurelian drove them again from Italy, over the Alps as far as
the Lech. Among the German nations, the Goths, who from the
Scandinavian Isles had penetrated far into the interior of Germany,
particularly towards the eastern, as afterwards towards the western,
parts of that country, were pre-eminent in power. They could not be
prevented from obtaining a firm footing in the North-eastern
provinces, by the Black Sea. The Emperor Decius perished in the war
against this people; and the Romans were obliged to surrender to them
by a formal treaty, the further Dacia. Constantine, indeed, was
victorious in the war he waged against them; but he preferred to
conclude an advantageous peace, to gain their friendship, and enlist
their youth in the service of the Roman armies. Of the later reigns
that of Diocletian displayed the greatest energy; but his cruel
persecution of the Christians was, even to judge from the mere
external state of society, as little adapted to the spirit of the age
as it was reprehensible in itself, and hence his design remained
unaccomplished. Although, after his abdication, Diocletian showed
himself a thorough Roman in private life, yet, while he swayed the
sceptre, he deemed it expedient to surround the throne with all the
pomp and forms of Asiatic homage. The division of the empire among
several sovereigns appeared then, as afterwards, under Constantine and
his successors, an unavoidable and necessary evil; or, in other words,
the several parts and members of the vast body of the Roman Empire,
which approached nearer and nearer to its dissolution, began to fall
to pieces, and that division itself accelerated again the destruction
of the state, as it became the occasion of internal discord, and
universal convulsion in the Roman world. The revolution accomplished
by Constantine, indeed, might have become a real, and by far the most
comprehensive, regeneration of the Roman state, as it substituted for
its originally defective, and now completely rotten, foundation of
Paganism, a new principle of life, a higher and more potent energy of
divine truth and eternal justice. But Christianity had not yet near
become the universal religion of the people, and Empire of
Rome--otherwise the great re-action, which took place under Julian,
had not been possible. The peasantry, in particular, continued for a
long time yet attached to the old idolatry; and hence the name of
Pagans was derived.[3] Even Constantine, though he publicly declared
himself a convert to Christianity, still did not dare to receive
baptism immediately, and thus enter fully into the great community of
Christians. The administration of the Roman state was so completely
interwoven with Pagan rites and Pagan doctrines, that, from an act of
this public nature, dangerous collisions might have at first easily
ensued. On the whole, the old Roman maxims and principles of
state-policy continued to prevail, even for a long time after the
reign of Constantine; and the period had not yet arrived when
Christianity was to work a fundamental reform throughout the whole
political world,--and a Christian government, if I may so speak, was
to be established and organized on that eternal basis, and to strike
deep root and grow into the faith and life of the people, and into
their habits and their feelings; but this great revolution was
reserved for another and a later period.
[1] In confirmation of this pithy sentence of
Schlegel's, I may cite a remarkable passage from the
celebrated Lessing, which, as coming from an Infidel,
may perhaps have more weight with the Unitarian. "If
Christ," he says, "is not truly God, then Mohammedanism
was an undoubted improvement on the Christian religion:
Mahomet, on such a supposition, would indisputably have
been a greater man than Christ, as he would have been
far more veracious, more circumspect, and more zealous
for the honour of God, since Christ, by his
expressions, would have given dangerous occasion for
idolatry; while, on the other hand, not a single
expression of the kind can be laid to the charge of
Mahomet."--_Lessing's Beiträge zur Geschichte und
Litteratur._ Vol. II. p. 410.--_Trans._
[2] By this expression, Schlegel does not mean to
question the supernatural agency that produced those
obstacles.--_Trans_
[3] From the Latin word _Pagus_, a rural district.
END OF LECTURE X.
LECTURE XI.
Of the ancient Germans, and of the invasion of the Northern
tribes.--The march of Nature in the historical development of
Nations.--Further diffusion and internal consolidation of
Christianity.--Great corruption of the world.--Rise of
Mahometanism.
The idolatry of the ancient Germans, like the less poetical, less
artificial, and less elaborate Paganism of all primitive nations,
consisted in a simple adoration of Nature, such as existed among the
Persians, with whom they had a very close affinity in race and in
language. Thus the objects of their worship were the stars, the sun
and the moon, the celestial spirits, the various powers and elements
of Nature, and in particular the mother earth, under the name of the
goddess Hertha. In the German and English names for the days of the
week, the names of the gods, Thun, Wodan, Thor, and Freya, are still
preserved; and these in the Germanic mythology correspond to the
planets, most clearly visible from our globe--Mars, Mercury, Jupiter,
and Venus; as it is also from these the Romanic languages have taken
the names of the weekdays. It does not appear, indeed, that there
existed in Germany quite so powerful, influential, and well-organized
a body of priests, as the Druids composed in Gaul; and we can only
discover the existence of certain secret rites and mysteries of a very
primitive simplicity; as, for instance, the human sacrifice which was
offered to the lake Hertha, in the Isle of Rugen, when a young man and
maiden were thrown into its solitary waters. It was in the obscurity
of woods, under the sacred oak, or by the Linden, the tree of Northern
enchantment, and on the mountaintops, they celebrated their rites,
festivals, and entertainments, or arranged the Runic sticks to search
into futurity; and as, among the Greeks, the Delphic oracle in moments
of general danger was consulted, and gave its advice on the most
important concerns of the nation; so the prophetesses and sybils of
the North, like the Velleda mentioned by the Romans, exerted a very
decisive influence on the public councils. Old poetical traditions of
gods, heroes, giants, and spirits (in many respects like those of
Persia), formed the keystone of the sacred recollections and national
existence of the Germanic nations.
Their original descent from Asia remained ever strong and lively in
their remembrance, and allusions to it were interwoven into the whole
body of their traditionary poetry; and as in the Persian traditions,
the Arii are celebrated as the most generous and heroic nation of the
primitive ages, so the Asae occupy the most distinguished place in the
Northern mythology. In the Scandinavian North, which remained Pagan
for many centuries after Germany had become Christian, there are still
extant many monuments and songs of a similar purport and strain; and
of these, indeed, abundant vestiges are to be found every-where. These
old historical traditions and this hereditary poetry had often a very
powerful influence on real life, and on the martial enterprises and
achievements of the tribes; and as in the heroic ages of the Greeks,
according to the Homeric description, so in those times the bard,
proclaiming the history of gods and heroes, and attending on the
person of the prince or general of the army, was by no means an
unimportant personage.
A monarchy of such wide extent, as the ancient kingdom of Persia, did
not exist in Germany. The constitution, if we can apply such a term to
the wild freedom of those early ages, was more like that of Greece in
the heroic times, when she was governed by her noble families, and her
territory was divided into a number of petty kingdoms, which only
rarely united in a great league for a common enterprise. This
primitive Germanic constitution was a very simple and free aristocracy
of Nature. The tribe that composed the nation was an union or
confederacy of freemen and nobles under an hereditary tribe-prince,
or chosen leader; and it was only at a later period that among some of
the Germanic nations, this confederacy gave way to a regular regal
government. Every freeman, and every man having a right to bear arms,
was a member of the Hermannia, which was afterwards called the
arriere-ban; and it was this ancient Hermannia that gave rise to the
Roman name for Germany. The land was cultivated by bondsmen and
slaves, who had been either purchased, or taken prisoners in war, or
were the conquered remnant of the ancient inhabitants of the country,
or even men who for some crime had forfeited their freedom and
nobility. When the Romans became better acquainted with the Germanic
nations, the latter had partly become an agricultural people; and they
observed that very primitive custom of letting their fields lie
alternately in fallow--a custom which has been so long retained in the
North of Germany, under the name of _dreyfelder-wirthschaft_.
Private property in land itself was not yet marked out nor enclosed
within any exact limits--there was still much common land, and this
was naturally an inducement for the different tribes, whenever they
had a favourable opportunity, to change their abode and migrate. But
this infant agriculture was still held subordinate to the occupations
of the chace and of the pastoral life, which furnished the principal
means of subsistence. The different forests that still exist in
Germany are merely the remaining fragments of the one, vast,
boundless Hercynian forest, that once extended through the whole
interior of the country. From the quantity of wood that yet remained,
the soil of Germany was much more marshy, and its atmosphere
incomparably colder, than at the present day. The buffalo and the elk,
which at present are so very rarely to be met with in Germany, were
then animals indigenous to our country.
That this condition of the soil, and this unsettled mode of life, in a
growing population are circumstances quite sufficient to account for a
partial, though (without other co-operating causes) not perhaps for
the general, emigration of a whole tribe, must be evident to every
person. Internal factions and wars are quite adequate causes for the
emigration of a whole tribe, or, at least, of a considerable portion.
In the early ages it was customary, when the population became too
numerous, for the younger brothers, or a certain number of youths
chosen by lot, to quit their country under the guidance of a leader of
their choice, or of one marked out by Fame, and, proceeding on an
expedition of adventure, conquer other homes for themselves, and seek
out their fortunes towards the east, or towards the west, or beneath
the fairer sky of a southern region. Even in a more advanced, nay in
the most advanced, stage of civilization, every state and nation is
necessitated by nature, if I may so speak, to disburthen itself of a
redundant population, and to extend itself in new settlements--in one
word, to found colonies, and to possess colonies. This is the standing
law,--the fundamental rule of health in the progressive development of
nations; and where this necessity does not exist in an equal degree,
we must consider it only a case of exception, and we shall be sure to
find that some special cause precludes the operation of this principle
for a time: for, sooner or later, nature will force us to this
expedient. The commercial colonies of the Phoenicians and Greeks
were in part founded, and certainly at least defended, extended and
consolidated by force of arms; and it is only by similar means, that
in modern times, Mexico and Peru have become colonies of Spain.
But in those early ages, and among those northern, warlike children of
nature, this natural necessity of emigration could take no other
course, nor have any other object but a military settlement. Such was
the result of the first irruption of the northern nations, mentioned
in history--the expedition of the Gauls into Thrace, which was soon
succeeded by a second of a similar kind under Brennus; when that
Gallic general marched at the head of his troops into Macedon and
Greece, and became master of the rich temple of Apollo at Delphi, and
of all its accumulated treasures. A remnant of these troops finally
fixed their abode in Asia Minor, and established a Gallic settlement
in a province which from them received the name of _Galatia_. In
this first great expedition, or irruption of the northern nations, the
names of almost all the tribes and their leaders are Celtic; still
some few German names are found amongst them; and this may be easily
accounted for, when we recollect that the Gauls, who were then widely
spread, and inhabited even the North of Italy, were undoubtedly in
possession of most of the Alpine countries, and thus may easily have
engaged in their service some German tribes. Who knows but what some
marvellous tradition, and fabulous account of the lovely climate and
delicious fruits of the Southern regions, together with recollections
of their original descent from the Southern nations of Asia, may have
contributed to bring the Cimbri and Teutones from the islands of
Scandinavia to the plains of Italy? Had the Romans not dreaded the
dangerous precedent, and had they but allotted lands to these nations,
they might easily have kept terms of peace with them, and enlisted
their most valiant youth in the service of their legions; as, indeed,
under the later emperors, the flower of their troops was selected from
the Gothic tribes.
But the case was widely different when the relations of peace and war,
the proximity of frontiers, and the occupation of the German
territory, brought the Romans in closer contact with the Germanic
nations; as, for instance, in the campaigns which Cæsar conducted
against the chief of the Suevi, Ariovistus; Tiberius against
Maroboduus, king of the Marcomanni; and the general of Augustus
against the Saxon prince, Hermann. Here both parties diligently
studied and observed each other's excellencies and defects, and mixed
in the most various intercourse. Thus Hermann's father lived among the
Romans; his brother bore a Roman name; and his nephew was educated at
Rome. Maroboduus himself repaired thither, desirous like a prudent
foe, to examine with his own eyes the capital of Roman greatness and
power. Among the German tribes and their leaders, factions were
sometimes formed even against Hermann and Maroboduus; and at a later
period, these divisions had no inconsiderable influence on the
relations of the Germanic nations with the Romans, and on their
foreign enterprizes. The Roman frontier on the banks of the Rhine and
the Danube, fortified by a long line of castles, fortresses, and
cities, lay for the most part within the German territory, and was
inhabited by some German tribes, or German settlers that had been
attracted thither. Here the nations of Germany saw their brethren of a
kindred race, living indeed under the controul of Roman laws, which
those, who still retained their freedom, sought to repel by force of
arms; but on the other hand, they observed the high cultivation of a
country, blest with all the advantages of civilization, and adorned
with so many of the arts of life, with the culture of the vine, and a
variety of the most exquisite fruits. And when, in the course of the
almost incessant wars waged on the frontier, they either encountered a
feeble resistance, or observed some defect in the mode of Roman
defence, the desire to prosecute their fortune, and penetrate into
those beautiful countries, must have considerably augmented. As, three
centuries ago, the fabulous accounts of treasures of gold, and rich
ores of silver, to be found in America, drew hosts of Spanish and
other European adventurers over the Atlantic to the shores of the
newly-discovered continent; so the charms of a southern sky, the rich
fruits, the vineyards, the blooming gardens of a warm, lovely and
highly cultivated region, wrought powerfully on the imaginations of
the Northerns, and were often the motive of their expeditions and
armed migrations.
The first irruptions of the Alemanni in the reign of Marcus Aurelius,
and subsequent to it, appear to have arisen immediately and naturally,
(as I have said,) out of the perpetual wars waged on the frontier, on
the first advantage which those barbarians obtained over the Romans,
and on the first defect or weakness which they espied in the defensive
operations of their enemies. That the warfare on the frontier was
perpetuated almost without intermission, it is the more natural to
suppose, since the Germanic nations by two armed confederacies of
their tribes, had on their side opposed to the fortifications of the
Roman boundaries a living frontier-wall. The name of the Marcomanni
served to designate not a particular tribe, but an armed confederation
for the defence of the whole nation; and the same remark holds good of
the Alemanni. In the descriptions which the Romans have given of
Germany, they were occasionally led, by their ignorance of the
language, to mistake a league for a people, and to apply to a tribe
the denomination intended to denote a district or a custom. But in
these accounts it is very easy to trace the three or four leading
nations of Germany, that figure afterwards in its history, and which,
on the dissolution of the Roman empire, possessed themselves of its
provinces, spread through the different Romanic countries, and in the
course of time became the founders of the modern European states.
These three principal nations of Germany (and such they were
considered by the Romans,) were the Suevi, the Saxons, and the Goths,
who may be best distinguished by the course of the rivers, which
flowed through the countries they inhabited. The whole of that
extensive country, afterwards called Ancient Saxony, and which lay
along the course and embouchures of the Elbe, the Eyder, the Ems and
the Weser, including the whole sea-coast with Jutland and Denmark, all
the Rhenish Netherlands with the Batavian shores, was inhabited by the
Saxons; a people (for it was only later their name was explained from
a peculiar national weapon, or species of sword,) attached to the
soil, and who were of all the Germanic tribes the least prone to
emigration; for, as mariners, they kept to the sea-coasts, and the
banks of rivers. It was only at the period when the tide of emigration
had reached its highest point that the Saxons, issuing from their
native seat, not only possessed themselves of, but as it were, peopled
anew, the great British Isle; and it is very possible that this not
widely dispersed, but closely connected low-German race, then
out-numbered all the other nations of Germany. It was on the banks of
the Upper Rhine and the Upper Danube that lay the original seat of the
Suevi, a race perhaps more mixed, who occur in history under the name
of the Alemanni, and were distinguished for a restless spirit of
adventure and migratory enterprize. The name of the Franks, a people
occupying so important a place in later history, denoted originally
rather a league than a particular nation; and as their geographical
seat lay between those of the Suevi and the Saxons, they were akin
in character and by descent to both those nations. In their manners
and mode of government they resembled the Alemanni; while in race and
language they were originally more nearly allied to the Saxons. If the
Franks are to be considered a distinct nation, it is the ancient Catti
or Hessians (who have ever been included among that people) that we
must regard as the main stock of the whole race.
But the second great primitive and leading race among the Germanic
nations were the Goths, a people whose territory spread from the
Scandinavian Peninsula, and the shores of the Baltic, along the whole
course of the Vistula, as far as the Black Sea. Their language, as it
exists in the yet extant Gothic bible of Ulphilas, is what we would
now call the high Dutch dialect; though its form is more ancient, and
is distinguished for a certain purity of structure, not without its
peculiar charm. This Gothic dialect is, in tone and form, less akin to
the Saxon and Scandinavian languages, except in so far as the branches
of a stem, the nearer we approach the roots, reveal more clearly their
common origin. In the Scandinavian North, the territories of these two
principal Germanic races, the Goths and the Saxons, were contiguous;
and, proceeding from this common source, the two nations branched out
into separate and various streams. Of a similar, or at least of a
kindred, race to the Goths, were the Burgundians and Vandals, who
afterwards founded the kingdoms of that name in Gaul and Spain.
Hereditary monarchy attained to a more settled form among the Goths
than among any other of the Germanic nations; and, divided between two
different dynasties, the Ostro-Goths were subject to the heroic family
of the Amali, and the Visi-Goths to that of the Balti. The Roman
historians of that age often speak of their martial courage and
magnanimity, as well as of their lofty and commanding stature.
The real emigration of the Northern tribes originated solely and
immediately with the Goths; and, in the first period, was not produced
by any commotion among the Asiatic nations, as was afterwards the
case. As early as the third century, the Goths took possession of the
countries situated on the Northern coast of the Euxine, and penetrated
into Greece as far as Athens. The Emperor Decius fell in the war
against them, and in the peace which they concluded with Aurelian,
they retained the further Dacia which had been previously surrendered.
They now became allies of the Romans, who were happy enough to
cultivate the relations of peace with them, and to recruit their
legions with the Gothic youth. A hundred years later, the Goths on the
death of their king Hermanric, were disturbed in their settlements
near the Black Sea by the Huns: a people who, according to the Chinese
annals, originally inhabited the Northern frontier of China towards
the Eastern parts of the Middle Asia, and who afterwards, bearing down
westward, took up their abode for a long time on the Eastern shores of
the Caspian, till at last they forced their way into the Caucasian
regions, and the territory of the Goths on the borders of the Black
Sea.
It was only now, when the minds of the German tribes of the West were
at the same time rising to a higher and higher pitch of excitement,
and the old Empire of Rome was on every side crumbling into ruins,
that the tide of Northern emigration burst out in all its full and
fearful violence. In the first irruptions, the names of the different
tribes, as well as of their leaders, were almost all without exception
German; but now we meet with many foreign names, which discover not
only the Asiatic Huns, but the Sclavonian, and even perhaps,
occasionally, the Finnish tribes, that were undoubtedly then
intermingled with the Goths in the vast empire of the latter. For
fifty years after the first invasion, the Huns remained at peace in
their new settlements between the Theiss and the Danube, nor did they
disturb the Roman Empire till the time of Attila. The Goths offered to
defend the frontier against these barbarians, and received in return
the province to the south of the Danube.
The Goths readily embraced Christianity; but they received it in the
Arian form; for at the time when religious instructors and the Gothic
bishop Ulphilas were sent from Constantinople, the Arian party had the
ascendancy in that capital. This circumstance had afterwards the most
fatal influence on the destinies of the Roman Empire; for one of the
chief causes of its downfal was this new contest in religious matters.
It was on this very account the second conquest of Rome by the Vandal
King Genseric was attended with far more devastation than the first
under the Visi-Goth King Alaric; for the former persecuted the
Catholic church with all the animosity of an Arian. The Goths were not
animated by feelings of hostility towards the Romans; but were rather
disposed to admire the excellence and superiority of their
civilization. When the Emperor Valens perished in the Gothic war,
which Roman treachery had occasioned, Theodosius contrived to conclude
an advantageous peace with this people, when they stood at the very
gates of Constantinople, took forty thousand of their troops into his
pay, and renewed the armed confederacy of the Goths which Constantine
had formed. When the Gothic prince Athanaric had contemplated with
astonishment the pomp and splendour of Constantinople, and had
conceived sentiments of respect for the personal character of
Theodosius; the Goths, moved by the representations of their prince,
declared to Theodosius that as long as he lived, they wished to have
no other king but himself. But the case was altered under the sons of
Theodosius; and, to defend themselves from this people, these princes
knew no other expedient than to let loose on Italy these barbarians,
and to divert and point the storm of invasion towards that quarter.
This policy produced the expedition of the Visi-Goth King Alaric to
Rome, and the first conquest of the eternal and seven-hilled city.
The disputes between Rome and the new Byzantine court did not a little
contribute to the downfal of the Roman Empire; and the dexterity, or
rather craftiness, which the politicians of Constantinople displayed
on this, as on many other occasions, was often attended with
consequences the most ruinous to Italy. As the universal empire of
Rome had grown out of civil war, so it was undermined and ruined more
by internal discord and corruption, than by the power of the Goths; a
nation with whom the Romans might easily have contracted relations of
amity, and induced to fraternize, and become by degrees one people
with themselves; and indeed, at various periods, the policy of the
better Emperors had prepared the way for such an union. As, of all the
Germanic nations, the Goths were the most powerful; and as their
assistance would have enabled the Romans to resist all the other
tribes; such an alliance, as I here speak of, would have accomplished
by pacific means the purpose of the great Northern migration, namely,
the union of the sound, vigorous, native spirit of the Germans with
the civilization of the Romans (then indeed sunk to the lowest state
of debasement), and whose polity and public life Christianity itself
was unable totally to regenerate. And thus a long intermediate period
of conflict and confusion would have been rendered unnecessary.
During the troubles which followed the first conquest of Rome by
Alaric, the Romans invoked from Africa the aid of Genseric, King of
the Vandals,--a prince who both as a warrior, and as a ruler, was far
more cruel than Alaric, and who every where spread terror on his
march. Jealous and suspicious of the Goths, he invited into Italy
Attila, with all the nations which his martial prowess had subjected
or attached to his authority, and occasioned the expedition of the
latter into the West, where, in the great battle on the banks of the
Marna, the Goths constituted the main portion of both the contending
armies. The Huns and some other of the invading nations were still
Pagans; and the history of that age amply demonstrated that wars are
ever more destructive in proportion as the armies are more numerous,
the throng of armed multitudes more dense, and the nations composing
them more various and dissimilar. Still the general oppression,
anarchy, desolation, and misery, in those times, are not to be traced
solely to wars and battles; for, during the most flourishing and
civilized ages of ancient Rome, wars were almost perpetually waged,
and were generally more, and certainly not less, bloody and
destructive than the present. The Bishop of Rome contrived to avert
the torrent of hostilities from his capital, and the city was spared.
On the death of Attila, the Huns ceased to be formidable; for the
power of that prince, which depended far less on their numbers, than
on his own military prowess and glory, perished at once with him.
Odoacer, Prince of the Heruli and Rugians, (nations also Gothic) was
called to the Empire of Rome from the banks of the Danube. From his
conquest dates the downfal of the Western Empire, and the last Roman
youth who was yet dignified with the name of emperor, was called
Romulus, 1228 years after the first Romulus,--the founder of the
eternal city--a city which after it had lost its outward and political
power, became the centre of a vast sacerdotal dominion, and again
occupied in succeeding times a mighty and important place in history.
When the sway of the Heruli became an object of detestation in Rome
and Italy, the Greek Emperor Zeno, in a formal document, conferred on
the Ostro-Goth King Theodoric, who had been educated at
Constantinople, the dominion of Italy; and the latter, after his
victory over Odoacer, assumed the Roman purple, in lieu of the Gothic
dress. He was highly esteemed in Rome, and by all the Germanic
nations; his name, like that of Charlemagne after him, was celebrated
in the heroic songs of the Germans, while political writers and
historical critics commend alike his talents and his virtues. His rule
was generous and noble; he loved and honoured the arts and sciences
which his age still possessed, and the last of Roman writers,
Cassiodorius and Boethius, were the ornaments of his reign. Factions
which arose on the death of this great prince, and a crime perpetrated
on the relics of his house,[4] afforded the active Emperor of the
East, Justinian, an opportunity to re-establish the Greek sway in
Italy, by means of his successful General, Belisarius. Military
commanders like Belisarius, and some worthier and more enterprizing
princes on the throne of Byzantium, as well as that systematic course
of policy I have before described, maintained the Byzantine Empire;
while Rome itself was ruined, and Italy fell under the dominion of the
Lombards, who succeeded the Goths, and were succeeded in their turn by
the Franks--under whom the Roman Empire of Germany was re-established,
and Rome became, and continued, united with that empire during the
middle ages, though for the most part only in name.
This rapid but faithful sketch of the migration of the Northern
nations seemed necessary to enable us to form a right opinion on this
subject. For this period, which laid the mighty foundation on which
the whole Teutonico--Romanic structure of the institutions, laws,
manners, languages, opinions, and even the peculiar imaginative
character of modern European nations, has been raised, has not always
been fully understood, or justly appreciated by many writers, either
led away by a partial enthusiasm for the antique, or enthralled by
modern opinions and prejudices--writers who wish to trace in all parts
of creation, and even in universal history, the same dead uniformity
and monotony of plan. It is by no means common to meet with an
Historical inquirer, possessing a flexibility of fancy, a justness of
feeling, and a soundness and correctness of judgment, capable of
transporting him into the remote ages of history, and the mythic
antiquity of nations. But in the present instance, and throughout the
whole of this chaotic epoch, when the old fictions of the Titanic wars
appear to be actually realized, and when the marvellous of events and
sentiments is to be found in the obscure and meagre chronicles of that
age, which often unite fragments of popular mythology and Pagan
tradition, with real historic incidents; it is perhaps still more
difficult to form an accurate judgment, and to discriminate between
the elements of truth and falsehood. As we cannot figure to ourselves
such a state of anarchy, we are unable to comprehend it. We should
bear in mind how often in nature the fairest bloom of vegetation, and
the richest fullness of organic life, spring out of a state of
confusion and chaos, when the elemental powers, after a long strife
and conflict, settle at last into a state of harmonious equipoise,
unite and fructify, and in some creative moment, when the struggle of
labour is over, give birth to new and more beautiful forms of
existence. Ancient Egypt was indebted for its fertility to the
periodic inundations of the Nile, which, had they not been provided
against by mounds and dams, would have occasioned the utmost
desolation. Nay, doth not this earth we inhabit, and which nourishes
us, with all that fair and blooming vegetation spread over its
surface, with all that boundless wealth and variety of animal life,
and with all the civility and refinement of man's existence, whose
abode it constitutes; doth not this earth, I say, teeming as it doth
with fertility and life, rest on the gigantic remains of a primitive
world submerged by the old floods, and which was often torn, convulsed
and rent asunder by the eruptions of subterraneous fire? Well, the
migration of the Northern nations brought about a sort of chaotic
struggle between the various elements of society--it was a new Ogygean
inundation of nations in the historical ages--but it laid the fruitful
soil--the historical foundation of a new moral and intellectual form
of life. This vast flux and reflux of nations, rolling in incessant
waves from the East to the West, and from the North to the South, and
back again to the East and to the North, this emission of immense
armies issuing in all directions from a common centre, and returning
again to that centre from every side--all this vast movement must be
looked upon as a strife and contention between the elemental powers of
human society. The first effect, indeed, of such a strife of nature's
elements let loose is to destroy, or at least, to impair all existing
organic forms; and it must be confessed, this wild and protracted
state of confusion and anarchy does not present the most pleasing and
auspicious aspect to the eye of the historical observer. With respect
to the latter circumstance, we must recollect that the extremely slow
progress, and often unexpected delays, in the advancement of human
society, correspond not always, and indeed rarely, to our wishes and
expectations; while, on the other hand, there are epochs in history,
when we are amazed by the sudden out-burst of the most extraordinary
events, and when a great splendour of moral and intellectual life
surprises us of a sudden, like a bright morning in Spring. In other
words, there is a strong, wise and Fatherly hand which guides and
conducts the destinies of individuals, as well as the march of
society, and the course of ages; or as the Scripture, with touching
simplicity, saith, "the Father hath reserved times unto himself;" and
Time in his march keepeth not pace with the rapidity of our desires,
nor moveth according to our views and hopes. But whatever may be, if I
may so speak, the fearful tardiness, wherewith the views of Providence
over the destinies of the human race are accomplished;--a tardiness,
whereof man has to bear the greatest blame; or whatever may be, if I
may so say, the long delays of divine justice--the procrastination of
the period of grace;--it cannot be doubted that the general result of
the great Northern migration was most salutary, and that that mixture
of the Germanic tribes with the degenerate population of Rome--that
alliance between the healthy, vigorous, and native intellectual energy
of Germany, and the rapidly decaying civilization of Rome, were
productive of the mightiest and most beneficial consequences. Whoever
doubts the truth of this observation, may cure his scepticism by
comparing the splendour, activity and variety in the political and
intellectual existence of the modern European states, that have sprung
out of this union of the Germanic and Romanic nations, with the dull
monotony, the thorough moral and intellectual stupor which prevailed
in the later Byzantine Empire.
But I have more than once observed that, independently of that
progressive power of reason, inherent in all the forms and departments
of human activity; and independently of the operations of Divine
Providence, which form that high mysterious chain of unity which links
together the different periods of man's social progress;
independently, I say, of all these, there is a law of nature--a high,
and secret principle of nature, presiding over the life and growth of
human society--which, if kept in due subordination to the higher
principle of Providence, will not be found incompatible with it. The
prevalence of this law of nature may be clearly traced in the history
of mankind, and even in that of particular nations, when their social
progress is not impeded or interrupted by violent or irregular causes.
And in following the current of events in History, the historical
observer can accurately distinguish the different periods of national
developement--the first period of artless, yet marvellous,
childhood--the next of the first bloom and flush of youth--later, the
maturer vigour and activity of manhood--and at last the symptoms of
approaching age, a state of general decay, and second childishness.
This energy of nature, which, together with the other, higher and
divine principle of human destiny, is inherent in mankind, displays
itself even in the sphere of intellect, and particularly in the
flourishing eras of art and science. It is even still more, or at
least quite as, perceptible in those creative moments already
described, of a new, though perhaps, at first, a chaotic epoch of
human society: so far, at least, as those plastic, eventful moments
are not the mere offspring and counterfeit production of revolutionary
violence--but have issued from the very well-spring of nature. When
the latter is the case, it will be found that the whole tendency of
these periods of extraordinary ferment in society is conducive to the
extension of the divine principle, and to the promotion of the views
of Providence, as was eminently the case in the era of the great
Northern migrations; an era, when a catastrophe, at first the most
appalling, led to the further triumph of Christianity, which conferred
on those robust, Northern children of nature the high consecration of
an empire, which thereby, in its ulterior progress, far outshone the
Roman, or any other old Pagan domination. But unquestionably the two
conflicting elements in that eventful period, which contained the
first germs of all modern civilization--the free-born energy of
Germanic nature, and the Romanic refinement, science, and language,
were happily blended and harmonized by the Christian religion only,
which on that account must be regarded as the all-connecting bond--the
one all-animating principle of social life in modern ages. But without
that new element of vital power furnished by the Northern emigrations,
Christianity alone would not have regenerated the degraded people of
Rome, nor have restored its intellectual energy, then sunk to too low
a state of debasement. Above all, the primitive, innate, and deeply
rooted corruption of the Roman government was beyond the power of
remedy, and could only be removed by time.
The evils of the age were indeed, universal; for, even in the bosom of
Christianity, discord had broken out; and where even faith was
preserved in its purity, there, to use the expression of Holy Writ,
"much of first love was gone." But for this, the influence of
Christianity on the Roman empire, and the Roman world, would have been
far more extensive; and a miraculous cure would have been wrought on
the moral distempers of society, as on the physical diseases of
individuals. And as holy hermits were often able to command the
elements of nature and the savage beasts of the desert; so a divine
power, by its mild, conciliating, prompt and effective influence would
in the first moment have allayed the wild jar and strife of the
social elements. But these effects were accomplished only by slow
degrees, by the soothing influence of time, and by the gradual
infusion of the spirit of Christianity into the human mind.
The progressive corruption and ever growing disorders of the Roman
world were productive of consequences in some degree important to
Christianity, particularly in relation to after-ages. To forsake and
renounce that world of cruelty and vice, that kingdom of
dissimulation, that age of confusion and barbarism, and to seek by
preference an abode and asylum in the wilderness, in the neighbourhood
of lions and other savage animals of the desert, required no
extraordinary impulse of Christian feeling, and scarcely more than a
high effort of human courage. And thus in that convulsed period of the
Roman Empire, and under the accurst domination of its last tyrants,
Christian anchorets peopled the solitudes of Thebais,--those solitudes
where the old pyramids and other monuments of hoar antiquity still
speak in mute signs to the traveller, their grave and earnest
language. Self-contemplation did not shut up these Christian
anchorites within a narrow and egotistical sphere of thought, as is
the case with the Indian recluse, who, to outward appearance, leads
the same mode of life. As the primitive Christians evinced the power
of faith and charity by deeds and in sufferings, in words and in works
of manifold kinds; so prayer was to these solitaries the inward porch
of a new and invisible world--a real business of life, and a bond of
the closest and tenderest connection, whereby, though separated from
the world, they remained, even at the remotest distance, intimately
united with all who, like themselves, were firmly united to God.
Thus it was that the Primitive Christians displayed the power of
divine Hope, and ardent Charity, not only in their heroic constancy
under assaults, persecutions, sufferings and torments of all, even the
most exquisite, kinds; but in their renunciation of society and of all
earthly enjoyments, in their contempt and abandonment of a world,
which seemed in truth eternally distracted and irretrievably undone.
In the eremitical life, a simple handicraft was ordinarily coupled
with the duty of spiritual contemplation. These first Christian
Anchorites of Egypt were the original and model of all later monastic
institutes; although, conformably to the living and quite practical
spirit of Christianity, these institutes have generally admitted into
their rules other useful and salutary exercises adapted either to the
general circumstances of the age, or to the wants of individuals--such
as the education of youth--the cultivation of the sciences--the relief
of the poor--the care of the infirm--and the practice of other works
of charity. The Anchorites, who lead a purely contemplative life,
constitute a comparatively small and rare exception in the Christian
church; and they are tolerated only because the ways of human nature
are so infinitely diversified, and often so strange and so singular.
To resist their internal foes, to withstand the assaults of the
fiend--the spirit of discord and corruption, and to preserve inviolate
the purity of morals, as well as of faith, the Primitive Christians as
much needed the divine assistance, as to enable them to endure
outwardly the torments of martyrdom, or to renounce in holy solitude
the pleasures of the world. In this respect three different kinds of
heresy, which were so many trials the Christian religion had to
sustain, are well worthy of our attention. From the very birth of
Christianity, the Gnostics gave loose to the ardour of an Oriental
fancy, indulged in a variety of Theosophistic speculations, and with
their systems of Divine Emanations, Eradiations, Incarnations, and
Persons, formed an almost mythological concatenation of ideas; so that
had it been possible for this sect to become predominant, and for
Christianity to swerve into such a labyrinth of doctrines, our divine
religion would have degenerated into a system of metaphysical
fictions, not unlike the philosophic mythology and poetical creed of
India. Happily these sects of Gnostics were not numerous, nor in
general of long duration; and they were extremely divided among
themselves; for a truly inventive fancy ever strikes out a path of
enquiry for itself. But, when considered in an intellectual point of
view, these sectaries, amid all their strange and whimsical errors,
must ever command the attention of mankind. It would seem from all
appearance, (and indeed the nature of things would sufficiently
warrant the inference) that many of these sects combined with their
own peculiar notions, the opinions of other oriental sects, totally
alien from Christianity. As the march of error is infinitely
progressive, and as, from its very nature, false opinion is sure to
branch out into a variety of ramifications, it is often difficult to
determine with exactness whether some of these Gnostic sects, that
spread through Central Asia, and were lost in a multitude of others,
were or not of a Christian origin. Of all the sects belonging to the
Gnostic family, the Manichæans alone appear to have had a longer
existence; and during the middle ages, they secretly germinated in
Europe.
The second corruption of Christianity was from Arianism, which
corresponds to what in modern times is termed Rationalism; though the
former appeared in another and more Christian form. That the dispute
with Arianism was no mere verbal dispute--that it involved a capital
article of faith--a question of life or death for Christianity--a
question whether the real Foundation--the essential Corner-stone--and
Beginning of our faith were really, truly, and in very deed divine,
and from God, and equal with God, or merely in a certain sense like to
God--(an opinion which the Platonic, or any other system of
philosophy might have included among its tenets)--that the dispute
with Arianism was no mere verbal dispute, must be evident to every
upright, ingenuous, and unprejudiced mind. No sect has ever been so
widely diffused, nor has ever taken such deep root; and, by the arts
and evasions of a prodigious subitlty it maintained its principles
under the mask of apparent submission. It was now that for the first
time, the importance and power of a general council became apparent,
in order to oppose to the many-shaped, subtle, and intangible spirit
of error, a brief, but clear, and definite formulary of that faith
which animated the bosom, and was rooted in the conviction, of every
Christian. This destructive rationalism of the early ages of
Christianity was at last repressed, and became finally extinct; though
the last ramifications of this sect have continued down to our times
among the Eutychians of Armenia, and the Nestorians of Ethiopia.
How much the unhappy disputes of Arianism contributed in this period
of general decline, towards the downfal of the Roman Empire, I have
already had occasion to notice. But that passion for dispute, which,
if not innate in man, has at least become his second nature, and is,
as it were, the original sin of human intellect, displays itself in a
more striking degree in certain sects, that did not question any
article of faith, but merely some subordinate matters of opinion, or
the rights of ecclesiastical authority, and who conducted their
disputes with the most unyielding obstinacy--such a passion, I say,
displays itself more strikingly in these sects than in others, that
called in question points of faith, and who, so far as they were
conscientious in their errors, appear entitled to our respect and
forbearance. Among the former class of disputants, must be ranked some
of the smaller, less diffused, and obscurer sects of the first ages of
the church, like the Montanists and Donatists;--sects, whose influence
was on that account by no means unimportant, and who occupy no
insignificant place in the history of their times; for their errors
constitute the third form of deviation from universal Christianity. In
the same category must we place the great schism of a later period,
which severed the Greek from the Western church; for this unhappy
separation, as is well known, had no relation to any important dogma
of Christianity.
As the general councils of that period prove the self-preserving and
self-sustaining power of Christianity, so the energy of Christian
faith and Christian intellect displays its life, activity and
scientific progress in the numberless and manifold productions of
those first doctors of the church, so highly revered by all succeeding
ages. The style and language of these works must be estimated by the
standard of their age; and it would be absurd to expect them to
possess, in a like degree, the attic simplicity of a Xenophon, or the
full and elaborate periods of a Livy. But with this single exception,
these writings display the most varied talents for oratory and
philosophy, united with extensive learning, the purest feelings of
religious love, and the most correct views in religion. And, to cite
but one or two examples out of the multitude of ecclesiastical
writers, St. Augustine, by the extent of his historical information,
by a philosophy zealous in its enquiries after truth, but still
irresolute, presents the image of a Christian Cicero, in a language
somewhat altered indeed, but distinguished for a similar employment of
rhetoric. Nor was this great man destitute of political discernment
and penetration; and he certainly possessed a much more decided talent
for speculative enquiry, than the old Roman who flourished in the last
age of the Republic. There was next that learned and holy recluse, St.
Jerome, who was as well versed in classical literature as in the
oriental languages, and who was gifted with a depth of critical
discernment, and an original power of thought and expression, equalled
by very few orators and thinkers in any age.
The dread of a false Gnosis was at that period, as often in subsequent
ages, an obstacle to the progress of a profound Christian philosophy.
The leaning of the great ecclesiastical writer, Origen, particularly
in his youth, to some opinions of the Gnostics, excited long after his
death many doubts and controversies respecting some points of his
belief, and tended at least to impair the reverence with which his
philosophical genius was otherwise regarded. This was particularly the
case when the Arians made use of some doubtful opinions of this great
man for the support of their system; as indeed it often happens that
an elevated system of philosophy if not completed in its parts, or at
least that the individual errors it may contain are seized upon by the
dull, innovating spirit of a superficial, and half-doubting faith, and
debased to a quite alien and inferior sphere of speculation.
There is also another error, or rather illusion, which deserves to be
noticed, as it is a characteristic incident in the history of those
early ages of the church; for it was no regular system of error, nor
did its partisans constitute a sect; but it was merely the exaggerated
opinion of some individuals in the bosom of the church, who were
animated by no intentions hostile to Christianity. I allude to the (so
called) Millenarian doctrine, which, as it refers to the future
historical destiny of Christianity, possesses a high historical
interest. Though the Prophet of the New Testament marked out the
period of a thousand years for the duration of the triumph of the
church, he expressly intimated thereby that that period could not be
discovered nor determined by human penetration, for, as the scripture
saith, "a thousand years are as one day with the Lord, and one day as
a thousand years;" and though the inspired writer expressly added,
that as the great combat, which man is doomed to on the earth and in
earthly life, can never be completely terminated, a last combat
awaited humanity at the close of those thousand years; many virtuous
and praiseworthy men were still found, who depicted this kingdom of a
thousand years in the most sensual colours of earthly felicity, and
thus destroyed all faith in that prophetic warning, so necessary for
man and for all ages--all belief in the ideal conception of the
kingdom of divine truth: or, with reckless precipitancy equally
misapplied the words of the prophet, and (as has often been the case
in succeeding times) very unseasonably alarmed themselves and others;
though that long series of ages marked out by the Apostle for the
progress of Christianity might have opened their eyes, and taught them
differently. But the principal cause which opposed, and must ever
oppose an insurmountable difficulty to the Millenarian system of that
and of all succeeding ages, is the limit assigned to the judgment of
Christians in all that relates to the inscrutable decrees of Divine
Providence; whether those decrees regard individuals or mankind in
general. Surely nothing could be conceived more disquieting, more
fatal to human life, than for every individual to know beforehand with
the utmost certainty from his birth the day and hour of his death; and
no greater calamity could happen to any man than a revelation of such
a kind. The same remark is equally applicable to the world in general,
where such fore-knowledge would only produce the utmost disorder and
confusion. As in the case of a sick man reduced to imminent danger
from the increasing symptoms of dissolution; though no man, not even
the physician, can positively know and determine with certainty the
course of events, which is known to God alone, still every friend
would wish that the patient should examine his interior, unite his
thoughts to God, and set his house in order; so cases may be imagined,
when this comparison would apply to mankind at large.
Thus then on the Roman soil, and amid that world once so brilliant,
Christianity had grown up, like a tender, luminous plant, whose seed
had come down from Heaven. For the further expansion of that heavenly
seed, for the formation of the Christian state, and the political
organization of Christian nations, we must allow that the all-wise and
powerful Hand, which guides the destinies of men and of nations, the
march of ages, and the course of events, found it necessary to employ
at first very violent, and (if we may borrow a term of the medical
art) almost heroic remedies. The cause of this undoubtedly must be
sought for in the fact, that although many great and holy men are to
be found in the first ages of the church, mankind on the whole had
very imperfectly corresponded to that mighty and divine impulse which
Christianity had imparted to the world; and had very soon and very
quickly fallen into the most fearful disputes. Scarce had that
inundation of the Northern nations burst in upon the blooming garden
of the Christian West, (and beneficial to mankind as have been the
remote consequences and final results of that revolution, and
defensible therefore as it may be in a historical Theodicea, still we
cannot deny that its immediate effects were most terrible and
destructive;)--scarce, we say, had this inundation of the Northern
nations occurred, when, in the opposite quarter of the East, there
broke out among the nations of Asia, that mighty Arabian
conflagration, whose flames were scattered over the terrified globe,
by the sons of the desert, guided by their new prophet of unbelief,
and animated themselves with all the enthusiasm of destruction.
I am at a loss to conceive how some could have regarded it as a
peculiar merit of this religion of empty arrogance and senseless
pride, that it maintains and inculcates with purity a belief in one
Almighty Deity. This, as the Scripture says, the demons themselves, in
their realms of eternal darkness, believe, without being on that
account at all the better; and it is only a profound ignorance of the
world and himself that could ever make man forget and obliterate from
his bosom that first foundation of all faith. All the elements of
salvation, reconciliation, mercy, love, and happiness for mankind, to
be found in eternal truth, and a belief in that truth, all these are
wanting in the religion of Mahomet. There is not a more decided
contrast than that presented by the silent progress of the new and
divine light of truth in the primitive church, amid oppression and
persecution, in meek submission to every existing law, and, except in
matters of faith, in a patient, unwearied, and cheerful submission to
the hostile, but still legitimate, powers of the earth; and, on the
other hand, that fanatic thirst of conquest inspired by Mahomet--that
express precept to propagate by fire and sword throughout the four
quarters of the globe the new _Unitarian_ faith of Arabia. If
some writers instead of studying the history of modern Europe, in
order to deduce from their researches new matter and occasion for
reviving the old contests about the respective rights and limits of
the secular and ecclesiastical powers, would only examine with
attention the history of the ancient Caliphate, they would soon
satisfy themselves of the fearful character of that Institution, of
the infernal spirit that produced that anti-Christian combination of
spiritual and temporal authority, and of the horrible state of moral
degradation to which it has reduced mankind in every country where it
has prevailed.
It was with the rapidity of a destructive fire that this mighty
mischief spread over the countries of Asia, and a large portion of
Africa, till it soon menaced the Southern extremities of Europe. When
Mahomet died, he was master of Arabia, a country that from the
earliest antiquity had remained in a state of absolute seclusion from
the rest of the world; and consequently if this great revolution had
remained confined within the limits of this region, the religion of
Mahomet would never have exerted so mighty an historical influence on
other nations and kingdoms. But only a few score years from his
decease, and under his immediate successors, the whole Western Asia
between the Tigris and Euphrates, as far as the Mediterranean, Syria,
and Palestine, down to Mount Taurus and the frontiers of Asia Minor,
and soon again the whole Northern coast of Africa, down to the
opposite shores of Spain, were subdued by the disciples of the Koran;
while at the same moment the Roman West and the Empire of Persia were
menaced by the arms of these formidable invaders. It was a general
principle with the Mahometan conquerors to extirpate all recollection
of antiquity in the countries which they subdued, to give them an
entirely new form and aspect--or, in other words, to destroy and
obliterate every vestige of the higher and better civilization that
had adorned those once flourishing regions.
[4] Schlegel alludes to the murder of Amalasontha,
daughter of Theodoric, and to the usurpation of
Theodatus.--_Trans._
END OF LECTURE XI.
LECTURE XII.
Sketch of Mahomet and his religion.--Establishment of the
Saracenic Empire.--New organization of the European West, and
Restoration of the Christian Empire.
From the earliest period, the pastoral tribes of Arabia have lived
under their Emirs, in all the wild independence of Nomade nations;
they were not however without cities, as these were created and
rendered necessary by the trade of the caravan, which in its journies
through the wilderness, and in its passage from one inhabited province
to another, required these points of rest. A few of the
frontier-districts and maritime coasts were indeed possessed by some
of the more ancient Egyptian Pharaohs; but the entire country was
never subdued or conquered either by the Assyrians, the Persians, or
the Macedonian conquerors. Nor were the Romans more successful; and it
was only in the reign of Trajan, the last of Roman emperors, who
meditated schemes of conquest, that a small frontier tract of Arabia
Petræa was taken possession of, and annexed to, the Roman Empire.
Immediately on the death of Trajan, the Roman government recurred to
the pacific policy of Augustus, who had considered it dangerous to
enlarge the empire by any new conquests: and in consequence, this
province of Arabia was abandoned by the Romans, and left to the
enjoyment of its ancient freedom.
This long-established liberty and total independence on all foreign
conquerors and rulers has not a little contributed to exalt among the
Arabs a strong self-consciousness. Their origin, which is very nearly
akin to that of the Hebrews, they deduce as descendants of Yoktan
from _Heber_, who was an ancestor of Abraham, or from Ishmael, the son
of Abraham, that was born in the desert. Among these free and warlike
pastoral nations, the feelings of clanship, the pride of noble
descent, and the glory of an ancient and renowned race, and again the
mutual hostility of tribes transmitted from one generation to another,
the never-to-be-cancelled debt of blood, form the ruling and animating
principle, nay, the almost exclusive purport of existence. This
_tribe-spirit_ of the Arabians has had a mighty influence on the
origin and first developement of the Mahometan religion, and has
stamped on it a peculiar character. And among the Nomade nations in a
similar stage of social advancement, and who combine the freedom of
the pastoral life with the commerce of caravans, and are not total
strangers to the refinement of cities, the faith of Mahomet has not
only obtained the easiest access, but has struck the deepest roots,
and finds, as it were, its most natural disciples. For the Tartar
nations in the interior parts of Asia, and the tribes of Berbers, who
are the original inhabitants of the North of Africa, lead the same
mode of life, though they cannot boast of the ancient origin and high
descent ascribed to the Arabs. Compared with Roman degeneracy, with
the corruption of the Byzantine court, with Assyrian effeminacy, and
the immorality of the great Asiatic cities, this tribe-character of
the Arabians, as preserved in its purity during their ancient freedom,
appears undoubtedly to be of a less corrupt, more moral and more
generous nature. Doubtless the Arabs possessed in the first ages of
their history, a great moral energy of will and strength of character,
and, even in the period of their decline, these qualities are still
perceptible. On the other hand in this _tribe-character_, and in
those feelings of clanship, which determine all the social relations
among that people; pride, party-animosities, and the spirit of
revenge, are the ruling elements of life, and the passions to which
all things are made subservient, or are sacrificed. The moral
corruption of the human race, the profound disorder of man's whole
being, is proved as well by the constant proneness of civilized
nations towards a soft voluptuousness of morals, or by the innate
disposition of politer classes and ages to a spirit of speculative
contention, as by the rude pride and animosities of tribes, which
considered in a natural point of view, appear to be purer and less
corrupt in their morals, or to possess greater strength and generosity
of character. Those tribe-feelings and passions of pride and hatred,
anger and revenge, so prevalent among the Arabians, are displayed in
their ancient poetry, and even constitute its essential spirit and
purport; for except those parables, riddles, and proverbial sayings in
which the Orientals so much delight, this poetry has no mythological
fictions, like that of the Indians and the Greeks, nor with the
exception of a certain enthusiasm of passion, does it evince any truly
fertile and inventive power of imagination.
The old Arabians never possessed, like the Indians, Egyptians, and
Greeks, a poetical, high-wrought, and scientifically arranged system
of Polytheism. The historical traditions of their different races had
much analogy with those of the Hebrews, and coincided with them in a
variety of points; for as they were of the Semitic race, they deduced
their origin from Abraham and the other holy Patriarchs of the
primitive world. Hence the tradition of a purer faith, and the simple,
patriarchal worship of the Deity, appear to have never been totally
extinguished among the Arabs; though indeed the veracious Herodotus
asserts, that they adored the Assyrian Venus under the name of
Alilath. But such a mixture of religious doctrines and practices is by
no means incredible, when we reflect on those periods in the history
of the Hebrews, when though that people were in possession of the
Mosaic revelation and code of laws, and though their whole arrangment
of life were founded thereon; though mighty and zealous prophets
perpetually arose to warn them of their errors; they still went after
Baal, and still sacrificed their children to Moloch. In the age of
Mahomet, and shortly before his time, various kinds of idolatry had
found their way among the Arabs from the neighbouring nations, who if
not now, had formerly been plunged in the errors of Paganism. At the
same time several Jewish tribes existed in Arabia, and even some
Christian communities, belonging mostly to the Oriental sects, mingled
with the rest of the population. The neighbouring Christian monarch,
or Negus of Æthiopia, also exerted considerable influence on the
different tribes and communities of Arabia.
Mahomet felt the most decided aversion to all Pagan idolatry, and even
to all veneration of images; and it is very possible, according to the
opinion of a great historian, who on the whole does not judge the
Arabian prophet unfavourably, that the expectation which the Jews
still entertained of the future coming of a Deliverer and Prophet,
should have operated very powerfully on the mind and imagination of
Mahomet. In the same way as the Jews, then incomparably more active
than afterwards, still expected _Him_ who had long since come; so
certain Christian sects, totally misunderstanding the Scriptures,
which they interpreted according to their own arbitrary sense,
believed that the Holy Ghost and the divine Paraclete whom the Saviour
had promised, was yet to come; although the Saviour had promised that
the Holy Spirit should come down upon his disciples, immediatly after
his ascension, and had added, that the same spirit should for ever
abide with them. Now every one who professed himself a Christian, knew
very well from the Holy Scriptures, that a supernatural light had
descended on the Apostles in the first assembly they held, and
when, as they thought, their Lord and Master had abandoned them; and
that this light had transformed the disciples, till then weak,
wavering, and trembling before the world, into apostolic men filled
with the spirit of God, into prophets of eternal truth and divine
love, humble, but energetic, and no less heroic than enlightened. That
Assister and Comforter, or that guiding Paraclete promised by God to
his disciples, which in the Apostles had proved itself a spirit of
knowledge, of illumination, and of insight into the mysteries of
faith--in the martyrs, a spirit of divine power and of heroic
constancy under sufferings, was now in the great doctors of the
church, and in the general councils the guiding spirit of wisdom,
rightly discerning and steadfastly adhering to the truths of
revelation. But this truth did not prevent many leaders of those sects
from regarding themselves in their own conceit as the Comforter and
the Paraclete promised by God for the consolation of succeeding ages,
or even from permitting themselves to be so considered by their own
disciples. The supposition of the great historian just now cited, that
these Judæo-Christian expectations of the future coming of an earthly
Deliverer, Redeemer and Teacher, or Prophet of the world, may have
exerted no inconsiderable influence on the mind of Mahomet, and may
have awakened similar conceptions and imaginations in his own head, is
confirmed by the fact, that the Koran itself contains no very obscure
allusions and references to the notion of the Paraclete, and to a
supernatural and divine power and force under the very denomination
used among the later Hebrews, and according to the very word
sanctioned for that peculiar object.
In the time of Mahomet, and shortly before him, the Caaba at Mecca
constituted the great sanctuary of Arabian worship. This, if we may so
designate it, was a simple chapel of Pagan pilgrimage, which contained
the black stone, the object of the religious devotion of the Arabs
from a very ancient period. The idolatrous worship of such shapeless
or conical blocks of stone was by no means unknown to the wayward
genius of ancient Polytheism. We meet with a similar form of idolatry
in the mythology of the Greeks, though set off and embellished by the
peculiar fancy of that people; and instances of a like kind were to be
found in the worship which the neighbouring people of Syria paid to
Belus or Baal. Those stones which are frequently mentioned by ancient
historians as having fallen from Heaven, may probably have given rise
to this peculiar species of idolatry; and the fact itself (as now
indeed is often the case with the general traditions of antiquity) is
sufficently proved by the existence of those well-known meteor-stones,
whose origin, though they have undergone chemical analysis, and
mineralogical investigation, still remains, even in the present
advanced state of modern science, a problem of no small difficulty.
The Arabian tribe from which Mahomet was sprung, had long been
intrusted with the care and custody of the Caaba and the black stone,
and placed its highest glory in this its allotted dignity. According
to the Arabian tradition, Abraham had first erected the Caaba, and the
Amalecites had afterwards repaired it. When the tribe of Koreish, who
were invested with this high charge, had to rebuild this temple; they
were at a loss to know how the sacred black stone should be fixed in
the walls, and what hand should touch the consecrated piece, when
quite unexpectedly, this honour fell to the lot of Mahomet, then a
stripling of fifteen. For this reason we may well suppose that this
ancient seat of Arabian worship--the Caaba--produced one of those
youthful impressions that determined the future destiny of this
extraordinary man. Even in the religious system which he afterwards
founded, this ancient sanctuary with its magical stone, has remained
in every age a high object of veneration; and it is only in our times
that the temple of Mecca has been exposed to the rage of the
_Wechabites_, who though their religious fury has taken an
opposite course, exhibit the old Arabian character in all its
fanatical violence. But this old black stone-idol is a very remarkable
feature in the history of Mahomet and of his religion. In the holy
temple of the Caaba were kept and suspended the seven most remarkable
poems which had won the prize over the other tribe-songs of the
Arabs,--a species of poetry peculiar to this people, and breathing all
the enthusiasm of pride and hatred. In these compositions, Mahomet
held a very distinguished rank, and long before he announced himself
as a prophet, his poetry, which far outshone that of his competitors,
had raised him to a high degree of honour and consideration. It was
only in the fortieth or forty-second year of his age, and after a long
and solitary abode in a cavern during what the Mahometans term, "the
night of divine decrees," that Mahomet formed the first determination,
and thought he felt the first inward calling to the mission of a
prophet. The first person that believed in this mission, and
acknowledged him for a prophet, was his own wife Cadijah, who, though
a rich widow, had bestowed her hand on Mahomet, when his sole
patrimony consisted of five camels and an Ethiopian maid-servant, and
had thus raised him to a station of wealth and independence. It is
worthy of notice, that it is only in the epileptic fits to which he
was subject, that he is represented as having mysterious colloquies
with the angel Gabriel. Others represent him as a lunatic; and in
connection with this charge I may mention the story, that he wished to
pass with his disciples as a person transfigured in a supernatural
light, and that the credulity of his followers saw the moon, or the
moon's light descend upon him, pierce his garments, and replenish him.
That veneration for the moon, which still forms a national or rather
religious characteristic of the Mahometans, may perhaps have its
foundation in the elder superstition, or Pagan idolatry of the Arabs.
Modern historians have often complained of the difficulty of
ascertaining the precise truth in the history of Mahomet, from the
severity of his opponents on the one hand, and the enthusiastic
admiration of his Eastern partisans, on the other. If we think proper
to follow those writers only, who by their acquaintaince with the
language have copied from Arabic authorities, we shall find that their
narratives are much distorted by fanaticism, and rendered almost
unintelligible by an absurd exaggeration. Independently of the evident
traces in this religion of a demoniacal influence and operation;
undoubted historical facts will furnish us with sufficient data for
forming a clear and definitive opinion on the character of Mahomet and
the nature of his religion. Although the Arabs of that age, like other
nations of that time, and the ancient Hebrews, universally thought
that supernatural works were to be expected from a prophet; and that
the high power of miracles was necessary to prove a divine mission;
yet Mahomet found it more fitting or convenient to declare, that he
could dispense with the aid of miracles, as he came not to found a new
religion, but to restore the purity of the old--the faith of Abraham,
and the other Patriarchs. Even though we had not such clear and
positive historical proofs and testimonies, respecting the nature of
that presentient faith of Abraham, and the other Patriarchs of the Old
Testament--a faith which pointed to all the mysteries of
futurity--still to suppose that the religion of those pious Fathers of
hoar antiquity, were nothing more than that system of (so called)
pure, but in reality shallow, and meaningless, Theism, which the
pretended Arabian Reformer has announced to the world, would be little
consonant with probability, and little conformable to the nature and
march of the human mind. Considered in its true internal spirit, and
divested of its outward garb of oriental customs and symbolical
language, the religion of Mahomet on a closer investigation will be
found rather to bear a stronger affinity to the inane and superficial
philosophy of the eighteenth century; and if that philosophy were
honest and consistent, it would not hesitate loudly to proclaim and
openly to revere Mahomet, if not as a prophet, still as a real
Reformer of mankind, the first promulgator and mighty teacher of
truth, and the founder of the pure religion of reason.
Such a dead empty Theism, such a mere negative Unitarian faith, is
little adapted for the true purposes of a religion, though it may form
the basis of some scholastic system of Rationalist Theology. Regarded
as a religious system, the creed of Mahomet is neither old nor new;
but is in part perfectly void and meaningless, and in part composed of
very mixed materials. The part in it which is new, is that fanatic
spirit of conquest it has inculcated and diffused through the world;
and that part in it which is old, is copied from the Hebrew traditions
and the Christian revelation, or contains allusions to the one or to
the other, including some old Arabian customs and usages which this
religion has still retained.
In the first infancy of the Mahometan faith, and during the first
disputes and wars which occurred about that religion, a number of
Mahomet's followers were obliged to seek refuge in Æthiopia, when the
Christian monarch of that country asked them whether they were
Christians. They cited in reply several passages from the sayings and
poems of their prophet, relating to the Saviour, to his birth, and to
the Virgin Mary. In these the Prophet spoke of the birth and origin
of our Saviour, as of a Gnostic eradiation or emanation of divine
power; and though such language was by no means consonant with the
Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ, yet it was calculated to
produce on the minds of some of the Eastern sectaries a very false and
deceitful impression. Favourable to Christianity as some of these
expressions might at first sight appear to the ignorant; there was
much again that betrayed a spirit of the most decided hostility
towards the Christian religion. Even the prohibition of wine was
perhaps not so much intended for a moral precept, which, considered in
that point of view, would be far too severe, as for answering a
religious design of the founder; for he might hope that the express
condemnation of a liquid which forms an essential element of the
Christian sacrifice, would necessarily recoil on that sacrifice
itself, and thus raise an insuperable barrier between his creed, and
the religion of Christ. The peculiar spirit and true character of any
religious system, must be judged not so much by the letter of its
professed doctrines, as by its practice and prevailing usages. And
thus that established custom is extremely remarkable, which makes it
imperative on every Jew, who may wish to become a Mahometan,
previously to receive the rite of baptism. Thus did Mahomet think to
stand upon the basis of Christianity; and while addressing the Arabs,
he appealed solely to the religion of their first ancestor, and of
the other Patriarchs, he assigned in his graduated scale of
revelation, the first degree to Judaism, the second to Christianity,
and the third and highest to his own Islam. That he was a mere
fanatic, and entirely devoid of all ambitious or political views, I
cannot admit; and although he himself had even been more unconscious
of a deliberate hostility towards the mysteries of the true religion,
_another_ may have inspired him with that subtle design.
Such then was this new, or as the founder himself styled it, this pure
old doctrine of all-conquering Islam and of all-surpassing faith,
which this pretended restorer of the religion of Abraham--this false
Paraclete of misconceived promise and idle phantasy, brought and
announced to the world:--_a prophet without miracles_--_a faith
without mysteries_--_and a morality without love_, which has
encouraged the thirst of blood, and which began and terminated in the
most unbounded sensuality. Supposing even, that one of the leading
points in this system of morals, the re-establishment of polygamy to
such a wide extent, and at a period of the world when this institution
was formally abolished among many nations, and among others had fallen
into disuse, could be in some measure excused by the customs of Asia,
the wants of climate, and the general prejudices of the nation, or
other like cause;--what must we think of a code of morals professing
to be divine, which in opposition to the Christian doctrine of the
pure happiness enjoyed by the celestial spirits in the intuition of
God, and to which man must even in this life, aspire by vigilant
preparation, if he wishes to render himself worthy of that state--can
form no other ideal of supreme felicity--can devise no other expedient
to fill up the immense void which this religion has left in the
supernatural world, than a boundless Harem--a paradise of lust,
portrayed in the most glowing colours of sensuality!
That part of the Mussulman morality relating to our fellow-beings, the
precept of alms-deeds which it prescribes, is the only part entitled
to praise, which we willingly accord; and we sincerely trust, that not
merely the commandment, but the custom and practice of charity among
Christians may never prove inferior. But in every other respect, this
religion permits not only hatred and vengeance, in opposition to that
Christian precept so repeatedly inculcated, and so deeply engraven on
our minds--the pardon of our enemies; but it encourages, and even
commands irreconcileable hostility, eternal warfare, eternal
slaughter, to propagate thoughout the world a belief in this
blood-stained prophet of pride and lust. Perhaps all the Heathen
nations put together, in the long series of ages, have not offered to
their false gods so many human victims, as in this new Arabian
idolatry have been sacrificed to this highly extolled, anti-Christian
prophet. For the essence of idolatry is not in names or in words, in
rites or in sacrifices; but in the nature of things, in the actual
transactions of life, in unchristian customs, and anti-christian
sentiments; and there is even that old black stone-idol, of which I
said before in a figurative sense, that it has ever remained firmly
fixed in the religion of Mahomet. The commencement of this religion
was not marked by any contest about mysteries of faith, or points of
doctrine; but by combats of another kind more congenial to the spirit
of the Arabs, by a war which broke out between the party of Mahomet,
and the hostile tribe which refused to acknowledge him for a prophet,
and whose refusal occasioned his flight from Mecca. In this contest he
drew the sword, fought courageously against the unbelievers, and by
overpowering by force of arms all who refused to recognize him as a
prophet, thought to prove his divine mission. He met however with much
resistance, and had many factions to overcome, before he succeeded in
subduing the various tribes of his nation. This contest lasted for ten
years, up to the very moment of his death, when he died master of all
Arabia. Shortly before that event, he wrote very insolent letters to
the Emperor Heraclius, and to the great king of Persia, summoning them
to acknowledge him for a Prophet, and to believe in his mission. Both
gave rather evasive replies, than positive refusals;--so great was the
terror which this new power of Hell had already struck into the world.
Immediately on the death of Mahomet, a great contest arose among his
disciples. On one side Ali, his son-in-law, by marriage with his
daughter Fatima, and on the other Abubeker, his father-in-law, whose
daughter Ayesha was the surviving widow of the Prophet, and who was
afterwards succeeded by Omar, contended with all the might of their
respective adherents for superiority and dominion; and this bloody
family-quarrel, which distracted the very infancy of the Arabian
Empire, has produced among Mahometan nations a long and protracted
religious schism, which has continued down to the present day. This
was originally a mere personal dispute, and not a dogmatic controversy
as among Christian sects; for the religion of Mahomet furnishes no
matter for such controversies, as in reality it contains little of a
doctrinal nature, and recognizes no dogmas but the two contained in
the seven Arabic words of the well-known symbol of Islam:--"There is
no God but God, and Mahomet is the Apostle of God." The one of these
is a declaration of the self-evident tenet of the unity of God, but
levelled indirectly against the Christian dogma of the Trinity; while
the other expresses the divine mission of Mahomet, and by calling
forth a veneration that leads to the contempt and rejection of all
things besides, has in a practical point of view, really established a
new species of idolatry. Abubeker and Omar asserted that they alone
were the legitimate Caliphs and successors of Mahomet; and as the
Partisans of Ali rejected the supplement founded on oral tradition, to
the poems and maxims of the Prophet, they were stigmatized as
schismatics by the opposite party. In Persia, the sect of Ali has
remained predominant down to the present day; and as in that country,
the ancient traditions and old national poetry have been partly
preserved, and have been combined in a very peculiar manner with the
tenets of Mahometanism, many bolder, freer, and less contracted
notions have found their way among this people. Hence it is very
possible that on a closer investigation, we could discover a great
difference in the intellectual character of these two sects, not so
much perhaps in religious doctrines, about which there is here little
room for enquiry, as in moral feelings and views of life.
The progress of the Arabian conquests was not checked by these
internal disputes. Five years after the death of Mahomet, and fifteen
from the commencement of the Hegira, the city of Jerusalem was
conquered by the arms of the Arabs; and in the eighteenth year of the
same era, Egypt became a Mussulman province. The thirtieth year of the
Hegira was not yet terminated, before the whole Empire of Persia was
subdued, and its last monarch of the race of the Sassanides, Yezdegerd
had perished in foreign parts, a suppliant and a fugitive. In the
fiftieth year of the Hegira, Arabian vessels menaced and beseiged
Constantinople, which was indebted for its deliverance chiefly to the
use of the Greek fire. In the ninetieth year of the same era, while on
one side the Arabs extended their victorious arms over India, they
subverted on the other the Visigoth kingdom in Spain and Portugal, and
became masters of the whole Hesperian Peninsula, as far as those
inaccessible mountains, in whose fastnesses a fugitive remnant of the
ruling Goths, and of the old inhabitants of the country had intrenched
themselves, thence to carry on that struggle for freedom, which till
the final conquest of Granada, and the complete expulsion of the Moors
from Spain, lasted for a period of eight hundred years. After the
downfal of the first dynasty of Caliphs of the house of Ommiyah, and
the subsequent accession of the Abbassides to the empire, a separate
and independent Caliphate was established in Mussulman Spain, and
lasted there for several ages. The Arabs had scarce achieved the
conquest of Spain, when they aspired to the possession of the
Visi-Goth and Burgundian provinces of France. But a term was at last
put to the progress of their arms, by the mighty victory which the
Frank hero, Charles Martel, gained between Tours and Poitiers, over
their General Abderame, who fell on the field with the flower of his
troops, in the twentieth year after the conquest of Spain, and in the
hundred and tenth year of the Hegira. Thus did the arm of Charles
Martel save and deliver the Christian nations of the West, from the
deadly grasp of all-destroying Islam. In Asia the universal dominion
of the Arabs was more and more firmly consolidated, and the second of
the Abbassides, Almansor, erected the city of Bagdad, or the new
Babylon, not far from the country where the old was situated, and
which was thenceforth the vast metropolis of an immense empire.[5]
The new religion and conquests of the Arabs may be considered in the
light of a new migration of nations, as no inconsiderable portion of
the Moorish population passed into Spain; and this Arabian migration
has exerted in Asia in Africa, a far more extensive influence on
empire, language, manners, political institutions, and intellectual
cultivation, than the invasion of the Germanic tribes has exercised in
Europe. When we compare the immigrations of the Germanic tribes with
those of the Arabs, and consider the violence which characterized the
latter, the pernicious influence they have exerted on the human mind,
and on civilization, and the despotism they have invariably introduced
into political and domestic society, we may look upon the migrating
tribes of Germany, almost as Colonies, which though originally they
partook of a warlike character, yet inclined more and more and to a
peaceful nature, and ultimately assumed that spirit, when the tumult
of intermediate anarchy had subsided, and Christianity had more
intimately blended and finally incorporated the new settlers and the
old inhabitants.
As the divine author of Christianity had promised his disciples, that
the high power of God should ever abide with them, should guide and
defend them; and that the assisting and counselling Spirit of truth,
of peaceful order, and of active zeal should never be removed from
them; the efficay of this divine promise was now manifested during
this intermediate period of anarchy; and though in a different form
from what it appeared in the earlier ages of the church, yet was it
perfectly adapted to the exigencies of the time. The great problem of
the age was first in this new agglomeration of nations, to endeavour
to allay the agitated elements of society, till after that agitation
had subsided, they should grow and strengthen into organic life and
form; and next, to preserve the heritage of European science and
letters, and thus sow the seeds of a richer and more flourishing
harvest for future ages. And to effect this by the mild and genial
influence of Christianity, was the object, the task, and the work of
the distinguished ecclesiastics, bishops, dignitaries, and other
apostolic men of those ages. The two great popes, Leo and Gregory,
shone conspicuous above all their contemporaries, and were in that
period of anarchy, a pillar of strength and a shield of safety to
afflicted Rome and Italy--the guardians of European society and of
Christian science. Both by their practical and instructive writings,
are considered as the last of the ancient fathers; and Leo even is
remarkable for great purity of diction and force of eloquence. In
point of science and learning, the succeeding bishops and dignitaries
of the church cannot indeed be compared with the ancient fathers; but
on the other hand, they united with a true Christian piety a practical
sense that never failed to discern everywhere what was fitting for the
emergency of the moment. The Monastic schools founded by St. Benedict
were indeed of a very different nature from the primitive eremitical
institutes of Egypt; and entirely adapted to the exigencies of Europe
in that age, they were the asylums and seminaries of learning and
philosophic contemplation; and while they promoted the interests of
education, they were equally conducive to the progress of agriculture.
A number of works have sufficiently shewn how much the influence of
the Benedictine order, which for many centuries extended over all the
countries of the West, has advanced the intellectual civilization of
modern Europe, and indeed sown its first seeds.
By Bishop Boniface the Christian religion was established and widely
diffused in the interior of Germany. At an earlier period, other holy
men animated with an apostolic zeal, forty of whom were sent by Pope
Gregory the Great, carried the light of the gospel into Britain;
where it was received with peculiar avidity by the Picts and Scots,
and the old inhabitants of Erin, as well as by the Anglo-Saxons. In
true Christian piety, and in such knowledge and science as the age
possessed, England during this Saxon period, prior and down to the
reign of Alfred, maintained nearly a pre-eminence above the other
kingdoms of the West. Even that apostle of the Germans, Boniface,
originally named Winfried, came from England; and among the writers of
the age, Alcuin asserted the intellectual superiority of the
Anglo-Saxon Christians. Limited as was the knowledge of the Western
world in those ages, and narrow the circle of European science and
learning, still we find in those times, but almost only in the West,
writers of very original powers, and peculiar turn of mind, whose
writings, composed either in a barbarous Latin, or in a half-formed
Romanic vernacular tongue, are the faithful and instructive mirrors of
the spirit of the times. On the other hand, the later Byzantine
writers, though they possessed incomparably greater resources, and
much more extensive philological acquirements, have produced nothing
but learned compilations.
Now there arose in the West, Christian kings, heroes and legislators,
both among the Franks and the Saxons, such as Charlemagne and Alfred,
who as men were not indeed faultless, but who should be judged and
appreciated according to the character of their times; a knowledge of
which is necessary for rightly understanding the spirit of these
extraordinary men. In peace and in war they endeavoured firmly to
establish a new model society on Christian principles and maxims; and
they restored the Western in the form of a great Christian Empire,
destined to defend and protect all Christian states--all the civilized
nations of the European Confederacy against Barbarian invasion and
internal anarchy.
If we compare these Frank and Saxon Kings and Emperors, valiant and
chivalrous as they were, thirsting for glory, yet seeking and
establishing peace, honouring justice, and founding or restoring laws,
on one hand with those Saracen rulers and caliphs, ever burning with a
rage for conquest and destruction, and on the other hand, with that
Byzantine court, presenting almost always the uniform picture of
corruption, and ruling over an empire pining in hopeless decay--if we
contrast those flashes of genius which distinguished the writings of
the Western nations, with the dead, spiritless monotony pervading all
the productions of the Byzantine intellect, superior as the Greeks
were to the rest of Europe in erudition, science and literary stores;
we shall find in this comparison, (taking into consideration the
imperfection of all human things, and actions, and persons, for even
in this period of the world, errors and defects are to be found in the
conduct of individuals mixed up with the most praiseworthy
qualities,) we shall find, I say, in this comparison, the best
vindication and the highest eulogium of the Catholic West and its
earlier history. The misrepresentation of that history formerly so
frequently made by the passion, the exaggerations, and the prejudices
of party, has still an injurious influence, but is with us no longer
in season; for the moment has arrived, when fixed in the right centre,
we must now begin to take a more complete and comprehensive survey of
the primitive world, and classical antiquity, next of the history of
the middle age, and of modern times, down to the present day, and to
that approaching futurity still in the crisis of its formation; and
when we must judge them with more correctness in all their details,
and understand them better by examining their relative position in the
great plan of history, and estimate them all by the standard given to
us by God, which is the only true one. Then we shall judge these
particulars without predilection, and without aversion, "_sine odio et
sine dilectione_," which is somewhat more than that excellent and
greatest of all ancient historians, who gave utterance to this saying,
really accomplished, or was indeed in his time and with his principles
capable of accomplishing. For it is only the knowledge and complete
comprehension of the great scheme of history, which can enable us to
rise above the particular transactions of our own, or of a foreign
nation, of the present times or of past ages; and it is this
knowledge which can alone clearly and safely determine the feeling
with which we should regard particular historical facts. But for that
end, the ancient historian, as well as all antiquity, wanted the clue
which Christianity alone has given us, to the internal connexion of
the world's history, and which they who seek for it elsewhere but in
this religion, will certainly seek in vain.
In this period of anarchy, and during the sway of the Lombards, the
circumstances of the times gave to the Popes a paramount authority in
the internal administration of the city and district of Rome; as well
as a general political influence over all Italy;--an influence which
was for the most part very salutary, and tended effectually to ensure
the public peace and prosperity. I must here observe that this
political position and power of the Popes, so naturally adapted to the
circumstances of the times, and to the general situation of the
Western world, was first put in a clear and correct point of view by
writers not belonging to the Catholic church. For the political
historians on the Catholic side have, in almost every country,
retained too lively a recollection of the warm disputes as to the
respective limits and rights of the ecclesiastical and secular power,
not to be swayed by such feelings in their conception and accounts of
an age long gone by; and this has certainly weakened the impartiality
becoming the tribunal of history.
After the subversion of the Ostro-Goth dominion in Italy, the disgrace
or even dissatisfaction of the Byzantine General, Narses, provoked the
incursion of the Lombards into Italy. This people were not so
exclusively devoted to the Arian party, as a portion of them, and
several among their kings, professed the Catholic religion; but they
were far from possessing the mild, generous character of the Goths,
and their sway often proved oppressive in Italy. Yet every thing
appeared more desirable and more tolerable in the opinion of many
otherwise unprejudiced historians, than the impending danger of
Byzantine rule. When in the middle of the seventh century, the Greek
Emperor Constans II. waged war in Italy against the Lombards, and in
the course of the war conquered Rome, the plunder, especially of the
treasures of ancient art, was so immense, that compared with these
Greek devastations, all the earlier and destructive ravages of the
Goths appeared to be nothing. The ships which were conveying to
Constantinople all these plundered treasures of art, fell into the
hands of the Arabs, and were destroyed, so that it was never known
what became of their valuable freight. So true it is, that Rome
perished solely and entirely by her own hand, by internal discord, and
the weight of her own corruption, and not by the hands of Germans or
of Goths.
When at the commencement of the eighth century, the dominion of the
rude Lombards became oppressive, and the Greek sway under the
Iconoclast Leo was still more detested, and all the cities and
provinces of Italy had revolted against it; Pope Gregory II. without
any previous concert, and by unanimous consent, was placed at the head
of the Italian league, and declared its chief; but he warned his
countrymen against the dangers of precipitation, exhorted them to the
maintenance of peace, and ever cherished the hope of obtaining a
friendly reconciliation with the Byzantine Emperor. The rigid
prohibition of the religious use of images was proper in those cases
only, where the use of them was not confined to a mere devotional
respect, but was likely to degenerate into a real adoration and
idolatry, and where a strict separation from Pagan nations and their
rites was a matter of primary importance, as was the case in the
Jewish dispensation of old. But now that the Mahomedan proscription,
and scornful rejection of all holy emblems and images of devotion,
arose from a decidedly anti-christian spirit, that displayed itself
either in open violence or secret machination against the Christian
religion; this Byzantine attack on images, and this furious war
against all symbols of piety, which in its ulterior consequences might
and must have proceeded to much greater lengths, can be regarded only
as a mad contagion of the moral disease of the age. This disorder and
phrenzy indeed subsided; and the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire in
their religious rites, as well as dogmas, have remained Christians,
and faithful to the old Christian traditions. Yet this controversy on
the use of images, and the animosites and jealousies which it
enkindled between the Christians of the East and West, did not a
little contribute to that perfectly groundless, irrational, and
unhappy schism which has severed the Greeks from the universal church.
The protracted contest between the kings of Lombardy and the Greek
Exarchs of Ravenna, (during whose disputes the Popes felt the calling
and inclination, but had not the power, to exercise the high functions
of Protectors to oppressed Italy,) naturally provoked the arbitration
of the Franks, led to the establishment of their Protectorate over
Italy, and was thus the first occasion of the restoration of the
Western Empire, and of the foundation of the great Christian imperial
monarchy. The sublime idea of such an empire sprang solely and
entirely out of circumstances and events, as they arose, and had not
by any individual been fully anticipated, much less clearly
understood. Hence we cannot attribute to any persons the blame or
entire merit of events that really took place of themselves, by the
mere force of circumstances, the spirit of the times, and the happy
impulse of a lofty inspiration. Nor can we at this remote distance of
time, and under circumstances so totally dissimilar, institute a
formal discussion (in the manner of the Jurists) on the lawfulness or
unlawfulness of any particular measure in this great series of public
acts. No country besides was oppressed by so many and such contending
rulers, as that Italy which had once bowed all nations beneath her
yoke. Sicily, which had been conquered by the Arabs, laboured under
the most cruel oppression; and it was the tyrannical conduct of the
Greek governors that had paved the way for the conquest of that
island. In the third century, the Franks had already migrated into
Gaul; their rulers were from the origin of their empire most devoted
to Christianity; and had besides in their conduct towards kindred or
neighbouring nations, evinced a more judicious, prudent, and
systematic policy, than had been shewn by any other Germanic or Gothic
tribe, in the invasion and subsequent government of the Roman
provinces. This nation, which from its origin had ever been warmly
attached to the Catholic church, which had subdued the Visi-Goth
kingdom in Gaul, had become masters of the Burgundian provinces, while
it perpetually strove to extend and consolidate its dominion in the
interior of Germany; was now, after its splendid victory over the
Saracens, and the general protection which this victory had ensured to
all Christendom, called into Italy, less by the Pope and the Romans,
than by the state of affairs, and the urgency of times and
circumstances, there to terminate anarchy, and re-establish the
ancient order of things, or one better adapted to the exigencies
of the age. The Empire of the Franks was henceforward the most
powerful state in the West, and was indeed the great centre of the
civilized world; as afterwards became, though on a higher and more
extended scale, the great Christian Empire of the middle age in
Germany and in Italy. Here we find that high clue in human history to
which we should ever adhere--on one side, the luminous trace of the
more immediate providence of God--and on the other, the gradual
unfolding of the human mind, evinced in science as in language, in
feelings as in modes of thinking--an intellectual developement, which
though often concealed, and, as it were, buried beneath the agitated
surface of external events, forms (together with the conduct of divine
providence,) the real and essential matter and purport in the history
and progress of human communities. In this respect, if we regard
either of the then two great rival powers in the East, we shall find
that neither the dead monotony of the Byzantine Empire, sinking ever
lower in the scale of moral, political and intellectual degradation,
nor the more hasty growth and the internal distraction of the
Saracenic Empire, (presenting, as it does, in its long series of
political catastrophes, military revolutions, and frequent changes of
dynasty, the same tedious uniformity of despotism,) will furnish much
matter of interest or of moment to the philosophic historian. It is in
this period of the world, the gradual organization of the Christian
state, as in a later age, the developement of Christian science,
which chiefly commands our regard, naturally so curious after all that
relates to the concerns and destinies of mankind, and fixes our
attention exclusively, or more particularly, on that European West,
where all now displayed a fuller life, and a more constant movement
and activity.
The territorial partitions, and the various feuds and dissensions
which occurred between the Frank kings, possess but little, or at best
a subordinate interest, amid the great events of the times--it is the
leading idea of the age, the progressive march of society at this
period, which offers matter of instruction to the historian. Many
faults and errors, however, stained the first execution of this grand
plan of a Christian Empire;--such for instance, were those wars which
Charlemagne waged against the Saxons, as well as similar wars under
his predecessors in the preceding age; for the propagation of the
Christian religion by such means of coercion, can scarcely ever be
excused, and in no case entirely justified. The best excuse is perhaps
in the fact, that all wars between tribes nearly allied, are like
family disputes, usually conducted with greater stubbornness and
animosity. However, in the year 784, Charlemagne concluded with the
Saxons a peace which was very advantageous to the latter; and the
extremely prosperous and flourishing condition of the empire, and even
of the countries in the North of Germany, under Henry the first king
of the Saxon race, proves at least that the evil was confined within
very narrow limits, and had not been productive of such wide-spread
and protracted desolation.
In the transition from the Carlovingian, to the Capetian dynasty, we
should not forget that the monarchy was not strictly hereditary in any
German state, but was for the most part merely elective; and it was
only he, who had proved himself a valiant, prudent, and powerful
defender of his nation, that became the man of the public choice.
Royalty was then considered more in the light of an office, a charge,
a peculiar calling, than of an inheritance or patrimony. The general
idea of the Christian Empire, was a universal protectorate over all
Christian nations and countries--a mighty central dominion founded on
justice, while the great connecting and pervading power of the whole
system was supposed to reside in the perfect unity of religious
principles. When this religious unity was destroyed, the whole
political edifice fell to pieces; and in the struggles of later times,
the artificial relations founded on a mere mechanical balance of
power, on a republican equality of states, without the foundation of
Christian or any other solid principles, have furnished, as experience
has shewn, but a very bad substitute for that old Christian
brotherhood of the European states and nations; and have in the
general subversion of Christian morality, produced a sort of polite
disorder and refined anarchy.
In the partition of the Carlovingian Empire--a partition which was
only in accordance with those principles of descent which regulated
the inheritance of the great families--we can trace an almost heroic,
and if we might use the expression, a naïve patriarchal confidence in
the duration of that religious unity; for it was only on such a basis
that men deemed it possible to combine the advantage of the domestic,
internal government of a country limited in extent, with the controul
of one general superintending monarchy. When a man of such consummate
prudence, such long foresight, and powerful understanding as
Charlemagne deemed such a scheme not impracticable, and thought it
possible to maintain the political unity of his empire, under the
joint dominion of his sons, and by their subordination to their eldest
brother; we should learn not to judge the plan with too much
precipitation, and according to the notions of our times, and our
present systems of policy. This first partition which Charlemagne had
designed, was prevented by the hand of death. The entire division of
the whole Carlovingian Empire into three distinct portions, was first
effected by Lewis the Pious; but the perpetual family dissensions
which occurred under his successors, the weakness or violence of their
characters, and the various factions which arose, rendered totally
impossible the maintenance of that union, which was originally sought
to be perpetuated in the empire, and led to the final dismemberment
and total dissolution of the old Empire of the Franks, when another
dynasty succeeded to the imperial crown.
In the primitive monarchy of the Germans, however, the existence of
the four great national dutchies, which were subordinate to the
imperial crown, far more happily accomplished this union of a local,
domestic, and paternal government with the controul of one powerful
and superintending monarchy; so long at least as internal union
subsisted, and discord had not obtained the supremacy. There then
existed, though mostly in a different form than afterwards, a division
of powers in the state as well as in the church; but unity in this
division, or with this division, was sought for only in Christian and
National sentiments; and as long as these subsisted in their
integrity, the body politic remained unimpaired. At no time has a
political constitution or mode of government been devised, which could
permanently supply the place of principle.
In the national meetings of the great and smaller states of that age,
in their assembled councils of dukes and princes, bishops, counts and
lords, nobles and freemen (to whom were added the Commons of the
cities, when by their rights and privileges they began to obtain
importance), we must look for the first germ of all the succeeding
parliaments and states-general of the European nations, and of the
rights of the different orders of society, and the privileges and
corporate immunities of the cities. All these rights and liberties
were purely local--they grew up on the root of national customs--they
were founded on no speculative theory of universal equality, but on
positive usage, and special laws. The union and stability of an empire
was then sought for not in the balance of artificial forms, but in the
holy heritage of ancient customs, in principle in short.
On this basis, first of Christian, then of national sentiments, do all
Christian states repose; and when this foundation is destroyed, those
states are undone. Ecclesiastical power had then a real and
substantial weight, and a very extended circle of operation; although
its limits and relations with secular authority were not so rigidly
circumscribed as afterwards. To be sensible that this division of
power will not necessarily impair the unity of strength and spirit in
the social frame, as long as principle remains pure, and religious
concord is preserved; we need only call to our recollection the fact,
that all Christian states and kingdoms have sprung from this happy
agreement between secular and ecclesiastical authority, and that this
union was the sure foundation of their stability. And so long as both
powers remained in harmonious accord, the times were prosperous, peace
and justice ever increased, and the condition of nations was
flourishing and happy. Christianity, says a great historian, who
manifests a greater predilection for antiquity, and even for the
oriental world, but whose comprehensive intellect often rightly
appreciates the benign influence of this religion, which with us must
have the priority; Christianity was the electric spark which first
roused the warlike nations of the North, rendered them susceptible of
a higher civilization, stamped the peculiar character, and founded the
political institutions of modern nations, which have sprung out of
such heterogeneous elements. And we may add, Christianity was the
connecting power which linked together the great community of European
nations, not only in the moral and political relations of life, but in
science and modes of thinking. The church was like the all-embracing
vault of heaven, beneath whose kindly shelter, those warlike nations
began to settle in peace, and gradually to frame their laws and
institutions. Even the office of instruction, the heritage of ancient
knowledge, the promotion of science, and of all that tended to advance
the progress of the human mind, devolved to the care of the church,
and were exclusively confined to the Christian schools. If science was
then of a very limited range, it was still quite proportioned to the
exigencies and intellectual cultivation of the age; for mankind cannot
transcend all the degrees of civilization by a single bound, but must
mount slowly and in succession its various grades; and at any rate,
science was not at that time unprofitably buried in libraries and in
the closets of the learned, as was afterwards the case in Europe, and
even partly then among the Byzantines. The little knowledge which was
then possessed, was by the more active spirit, and the sound
understanding and practical sense of the European nations, and their
better priesthood, applied with general advantage to the interests of
society. Science was not then, as in the later period of its proud
ascendancy, in open hostility with the pure dictates of faith and the
institutions of life. On that world so variously excited in peace, as
in war, and by the different pursuits of art and industry, useful
knowledge and wholesome speculation descended, not like a violent
flood, but like the soft distillations of the refreshing dew, or the
gentle drops of fertilizing rain, from the Heaven of faith which
overarched the whole.
[5] It may not perhaps be uninteresting to the reader
to compare with Schlegel's account of Mohammedanism, an
admirable, though briefer sketch of the same religion
by the hand of another great master--the illustrious
Goerres. In the Synopsis which he has published of the
Lectures on Universal History, that he has been for
several years delivering at Munich, we find the
following remarkable passage on the Mohammedan
religion. The author after speaking of the various
trials which the Christian church had to endure, says
"Hence the young church must wrestle with all the forms
of error in the Gnostic doctrines and in the other
heresies; one after the other she remains the
triumphant conqueress over all, and maintains against
every attack her well-balanced equilibrium. At length,
when the contest has raged for centuries, the enemy
combines in one focus all the scattered rays of error;
and the Prophet of Mecca knows how to balance himself
therein. The _rigid Monotheism_ of his doctrine, which
by denying the Trinity, and with it all personal
manifestation of the Deity, limits its idea to the
depths of Eternity, without admitting any true or
living communication of the God-head with what
appertains to time, naturally allures the metaphysical
pride which in this abstraction hath made itself its
own God. The _ethical Pantheism_ which this religion
professes, while it furnishes a pretext, a motive and a
palliation to all the pretensions of the mighty, to the
ambition of usurpers, the violence of pride, and the
arrogance of tyranny, and at the same time consoles and
disarms the injured and the oppressed, by the
inevitableness of destiny, must draw to its preacher
the men of the sword, of violence, and of blood, and
link those once bound indissolubly to him. The _sensual
Eudaimonism_, to which his creed opens so free a scope
both in this world and the next, must rally round the
apostle of lust, the multitude that burns with all the
passionate glow of that fervid zone, and place under
his controul all the wild fiery energies of that
region. And thus do the cold doctrine, the cutting
steel, and the destroying flame go before him as his
missionaries; and the South and the East, and soon even
a part of the European West, are bowed under the yoke
of his religion: and while in the Caliphate he founds
for it a new spiritual and secular empire, the modern
world between Christianity and Mohammedanism becomes
divided into night and day."--Goerres Uber die
Grundlage der Weltgeschicte, page 99-100. _Breslaw_,
1830.--_Trans._
END OF LECTURE XII.
LECTURE XIII.
On the formation and consolidation of the Christian Government
in modern times.--On the principle which led to the
establishment of the old German Empire.
The first three centuries of the Christian era and of modern history
compose the epoch when, by a second fiat of creation, the light of
Christianity spread through the whole Roman world, and when after
undergoing long persecutions, the religion of Christ under Constantine
came victorious out of the struggle. The second epoch or the
succeeding five centuries comprehend that chaotic and intermediate
state in the history of mankind, or the transition from declining
antiquity to modern times, growing out of the ruins of the ancient
world--the fermenting mixture of many and various elements of social
life. But when at last the tempest had disburthened itself of its
fury, the clouds had broken asunder, and the pure firmament of
Christian faith had stretched out its ample vault to shelter the rise
of new communities; when the wild waters of that mighty inundation of
nations had begun gradually to flow off; then the Germanic tribes
incorporated with the Romanic nations, laid the deep firm soil on
which modern European society was to spring up and flourish. For it
was Charlemagne who laid the sure foundation for Christian government,
and all the improvements of its subsequent superstructure. On this
basis of Christian government, and Christian manners, and under the
cover and vivifying influence of the luminous firmament of Christian
faith, sprang human science out of the small fragments of ancient art
and learning, which had survived all these mighty devastations, till
at last it expanded into a fuller bloom, and grew into a more heavenly
and Christian form. This new progress of social man under the
Christian form of government, and this progress of the human mind in
Christian science, mark the third epoch of modern history, or the
seven centuries which elapsed from the reign of Charlemagne, to the
discovery of the New World, and the commencement of the Reformation.
It may naturally be supposed that these seven centuries which
witnessed the progressive civilization of modern nations, and the
vigorous growth and wide spread of Christian principles, were at the
same time a period of struggle both in the state and in science, and
that in each of these departments, the spirit of Christianity was
intermixed with, and most injuriously and fatally thwarted and opposed
by, many unchristian elements. And indeed, to discover and
discriminate between these conflicting elements, to comprehend and
determine their mutual bearings one towards the other, is the fit
problem for historical philosophy. The progress of the Christian state
and the advancement of Christian science, form during this period the
main subject of an universal history, when this is not a mere
collection of special or national histories, but truly universal, in
the philosophic sense of the term; treating solely of those subjects
common to all mankind, or which illustrate the general march of
humanity. Hence all other historical views, dictated by a predilection
for one's own country--inquiries into the political institutions of
one, or several, or all existing states--a review of the circle of
mercantile operations, and their gradual extension, and of the
progress of the mechanical arts--and lastly, curious and erudite
dissertations on literature, philology and the fine arts (however
interesting, instructive, and in many respects useful, such special
dissertations may be in themselves)--all these must be either entirely
excluded from general history, or must at least occupy a place very
subordinate to, and are deserving of notice only as far as they
illustrate, what must ever constitute the main subject of the
Philosophy of History. In the first ages of the world, it is often
difficult to obtain satisfactory information, and a competent degree
of certainty on the subjects which are alone, or at least chiefly,
worthy of attention. But in modern times, it is a far more arduous
task to select out of the immense multitude and variety of facts
susceptible of historical proof, those which are of a general interest
for mankind, and amid the crowd of details steadily to preserve the
general outline of history.
It would be a great error to refer to the Christian constitution of
the state and of science, every remarkable or important incident in
the history of government and of science, merely because such
incidents have occurred in the middle age, or among Christian nations
of later times. We must strive to form a loftier idea of the Christian
model both in science and in government, so that the highest and
noblest monuments in either, should from human infirmity be considered
but faint approximations, I do not say, to the unattainable standard
of an imaginary perfection, but to the sober reality of Christian
truth. Although it is not possible rigidly to separate public life
from public opinions, on account of the intimate union between both,
and the mutual influence which government and science exercise over
one another; yet as the state is the groundwork for the cultivation of
science, and the former must precede the latter, I shall follow this
historical order, and commence with the constitution of the Christian
state.
As here the question is not as to the _Beau Ideal_ of supreme
perfection, or as to a precise, rigid, and scientific theory of the
Christian state, (for which here at least, if not for the present age,
the time may not have arrived)--but merely as to a general outline of
such a theory--I shall only observe, that the Christian state must
rest on the basis of religious feelings. For without feeling its
relation to religion cannot be conceived--and such a mere relation,
considered in itself, would lose its religious character. But the
government which is founded on Christianity, is on that account
limited, and is consequently in its very nature abhorrent either from
absolute despotism, or the uncontrolled tyranny of popular factions.
In the next place, the government founded on religion, is one in which
sentiment, personal spirit, and personal character are the primary and
ruling elements, and not the dead letter, and the written formula of a
mere artificial constitution. In this last respect one may say, that
the Christian government inclines very strongly towards monarchy; for
in monarchy, it is the sacred person of the king, the character of the
ruler, the spirit of his administration, confidence in his person, and
attachment to the hereditary dynasty, which form the basis, the
animating spirit, and vivifying principle of the social system. In a
republic it is not the person, but the law which governs; nay, the
written word of the law is there of the utmost importance; and thus
the dead letter of the constitution is in a republic almost as
sacred, as in a monarchy the person called and consecrated to the
functions of government by divine right. But more than this we should
not say--namely, that the Christian government, founded as it is on
personality and on sentiment, inclines _on the whole_ strongly
towards the monarchical form--a leaning which is by no means
incompatible with many Republican usages and Republican Institutions
of a subordinate kind. Still less should we exaggerate this idea so
far, as to maintain that the Christian government is entirely and
necessarily monarchical, even in its outward form; and that a Republic
is objectionable at all times and under all circumstances without
distinction. Such absolutism in the doctrines of public law, and in
the theory of government, is very remote from true Christian
principles. The unhistorical government of mere Reason--the
destructive principle of revolution--is indeed totally incompatible
with Christianity; principally because the Christian religion
tolerates and recognizes all legal institutions, such as they are,
without enquiring into their origin; (as the gospel not only left
inviolate, but even respected the legality of the Roman dominion in
the conquered and incorporated countries;) and also because the
Christian notion of right, like the Christian system of government, is
by no means absolute, but is ever qualified by circumstances. A
Republican government, which is founded not so much on the abstract
or rationalist principle of absolute freedom and equality, but on
ancient customs and hereditary rights, on freedom of sentiment and
generosity of character, consequently on personality, is by no means
essentially opposed to the true spirit of monarchy; still less is it
inconsistent with the Christian theory of government. But a despotism,
illegitimate not perhaps in its origin, but in its abuse of power,
strikes at the first principles of the Christian state, whose mild,
temperate, and historical character is as abhorrent from absolutism,
as from the opposite principle of unqualified freedom and universal
equality--the revolutionary principle, which involves the overthrow of
all existing rights.
As in the Christian's estimation, the worth and excellence of an
individual is not to be judged by his outward appearance or by the
observance of certain forms, but by the sincerity of his inward
sentiments; so the same observation will apply to states. It is the
spirit and purpose of an action, the nature of a deed, the personal
conduct displayed in a public measure; and not any outward form, which
proves or determines the good or evil tendency of any important act,
which may be the subject of history. That Christian tone and spirit
which belongs to the government of the illustrious, but not immaculate
Charlemagne, does not proceed from the circumstance, that he, like
Alfred after him, solicited the counsels and co-operation of his
Bishops in framing laws for the various provinces of his empire, (for
many of these laws contained moral injunctions,) or that at Rome the
Pope placed the Imperial crown upon his head. But the Christian spirit
of his government is evinced by that lofty idea which filled up the
whole of his active life--by his conception of the relations of church
and state, and of the utility of science for the civilization of
nations--by his project of an universal empire destined to embrace and
protect all civilized nations--the noble fabric of modern Christendom,
of which he laid the first foundation-stone, and which reveals his
enlarged views, comprehending alike his own age and succeeding times.
But whenever we meet in history with a government which independently
of outward forms, is founded on the love of divine justice--on a
principle of self-devotion whereby rulers are ready to sacrifice their
own interest and even their own existence in the cause of justice and
of social order--these, we may be sure are the certain and indubitable
marks of the realization of the Christian theory of law and
government. On the other hand, wherever we perceive despotism or
violence, or what we feel to be absolute wrong, though they be veiled
under the sanction of spiritual or temporal power, then we may be sure
the whole enterprise is unchristian, as the principle is unchristian.
Of all the different forms of this political disease, of the manifold
kinds of tyranny, whether ecclesiastical or secular, military or
commercial, domestic or municipal, academic or aristocratic, the
despotism of popular licentiousness is the most reprehensible in
principle, and the most destructive in its effects.
With the usages and institutions of the Germanic nations, this
peculiar temper of the Christian religion perfectly harmonized;
incomparably better at least, than with the arbitrary government of
the Roman state, which even after the conversion of Constantine, still
retained in all essential points a Pagan character. In the old German
states, the system of hereditary monarchy mostly prevailed;--but it
was quite alien from absolutism, and was intermixed with many
Republican institutions, laws, and customs. The whole system of those
governments was founded on the historical basis of ancient usages--on
the pure, free and generous sentiment of honour--on personal glory and
personal character and talents. As soon as this natural moral energy
of the Germanic nations had received a religious consecration from
Christianity, and those energetic, heroic souls had imbibed with
fervour, simplicity, and humility, the maxims of the religion of love;
all the elements of a truly Christian government, and Christian system
of policy were then offered to mankind. The political history of those
ancient times has been mostly represented in a too systematic point of
view, for the purpose of favouring some particular object, or
interest, or some favourite opinion of modern times; since historians
employ all their ingenuity in tracing step by step, and disclosing to
our view the first rise and gradual growth of any particular form of
government, or principle of right--such as the establishment of
royalty on the one hand, and that of the constitution of the three
orders on the other. But they remain quite unconcerned about every
more exalted principle in society. To judge and appreciate not
according to the standard of our own or any other age, but according
to the dictates of eternal truth, the manners, the modes of thinking,
the tone of society, the spirit and views which animated men, whatever
was good or evil, christian or anti-christian in their sentiments, is
with these writers a matter of the utmost indifference. If there is
any exception from the truth of this remark, it is when they meet with
some singular trait of manners or character--some historical paradox
calculated to stimulate interest, and which they then never fail to
sever from its general connexion with the age, to tear up from its
natural roots, and exhibit to the curiosity of the beholder. And yet
in such individual traits of character in the middle age, though they
be at first remarked only from their singularity, and be not even
fully understood, more traces of historical life and truth are to be
found, than in those systematic representations of history, drawn up
with some specific political view, and which aim at an elaborate
dissection and violent disrupture of institutions, which in those
early times, were inseparably united in the life of Christian nations.
If the best and most praiseworthy measures adopted in that first
period of Christian polity, for the settlement and further improvement
of the Christian state, and for the establishment and application of
christian maxims and principles of government, were nothing more but a
generous effort, a good intention, a rude design--a feeble, imperfect
approximation towards a divine term--yet we must consider them as
peculiar historical phenomena, leave them in their individual
bearings, and not prematurely force them into any systematic
connexion, or attach them to any fixed or formal principle of right;
for in the Christian government, feeling and personality are the most
essential things.
If I could overstep the narrow limits of this work, confined as it is
to a rapid sketch of the main and essential facts in the historical
progress of mankind, I should prefer to draw a portrait of the mode of
government and prevalent opinions of that age, out of the many
characteristic traits in the lives of its distinguished rulers, its
great and virtuous kings and emperors, knights and heroes:--such as
that Charlemagne, who would rightly open the series, that pious
King Alfred, who in a far more contracted sphere, was equally great,
those first Saxon Kings and Emperors of Germany--princes distinguished
for their religious and virtuous sentiments, their great and upright
character, and whose reigns exhibiting as they do, the paramount
influence of religion on public life, constitute the happiest era, and
the truly golden period of our annals. The peculiar nature and
constitution, the internal spirit and essence of the Christian state,
would be much more clearly and vividly represented by the examples of
these great characters, who to the pure will of their energetic,
heroic souls, united a practical knowledge of life, and a natural
insight into the principles of Christian policy. Such a course I would
prefer to entangling myself in the usual disputes about the respective
relations of the spiritual and temporal powers, and all the
contentious points involved in that matter; or to entering upon any
dissertation respecting the decisive era in the developement of
royalty and its rights, or in the progress of the constitution of the
three estates, and of various municipal corporations; however useful
and instructive such enquiries may be in the special history of
particular countries. And even in the latter respect, those glorious
names form a mighty epoch; and in the history of almost all the great
European countries, we meet with some holy and magnanimous monarch,
who laid the solid foundations of his country's constitution, or
introduced a higher civility and refinement in life and manners. Such
were in Hungary the holy King Stephen, and in France, the great St.
Lewis, who in more unquiet times restored a better spirit, and for a
while retarded the progress of corruption. There were also other
kings, heroes and emperors, like Rodolph of Hapsburgh, who without
being honoured with the title of saints, were truly pious, chivalric
and equitable monarchs, and may be esteemed and revered as the
Christian regenerators of their age, and the founders of a true and
religious system of government and manners. A lively sketch of such
men and rulers, who acted and governed well and greatly according to
Christian principles and views, would, I think, furnish a far more
complete idea of the true nature of the Christian state in this its
first period of developement, than any laboured or artificial
definition. There are along with these individual characters,
individual and transient periods of prosperity, which break out for
one generation or more in the history of those early times; periods
which can only be considered as historical exceptions from the general
order of things. Even those more comprehensive, and so far more
general political institutions, evidently peculiar to those Christian
ages, and nowhere else to be found--like the truce of God, which
repressed within certain limits the hereditary spirit of feud--or the
spiritual chivalry in the orders of the Templars and of the Knights of
St. John, consecrated to warfare in the cause of God, and opening as
they did, in the time of the crusades, to the same spirit of
chivalrous feud a higher path and a more noble career--all these
political institutions, I say, springing out of the nature and
exigencies of their age, can be understood only by a reference to the
circumstances and prevailing spirit of the times, and must therefore
be judged as historical peculiarities. As they often sprang up
suddenly without a visible or apparent cause, and as if by some high
mysterious impulse, so they often sank again as rapidly; and the pure
spirit--the true import of such institutions appeared but for a
moment, like a silvery gleam; then they degenerated, or were
transformed into something totally different. And we must not be
astonished at this, since what is best and noblest in man--feeling and
its divine quality, is most easily and rapidly impaired, and may
sometimes indeed preserve an external vigour, when it has undergone an
internal change, and assumed a direction opposed to God and all
goodness. There were also particular rulers possessed of an energetic
will and a comprehensive understanding, who exercised a wide and
commanding, but pernicious influence on their age, and the world; and
among these, the most noted were Barbarossa and that secret friend of
the Saracens, the emperor Frederick the Second; princes who with some
others, must be regarded as the first authors of the great dissension.
After this dissension had broken out in the fearful struggle of the
Guelphs and Ghibellines, and Christendom was divided into two parties;
discord became general, pursued its resistless course, and acting in
those distracted times like some new destroying law of nature,
absorbed all personality and its influence in the general abyss of
error, or made it at least less conspicuous.
I will now endeavour to give a short sketch of the general progress of
European society in this its first period of developement, and to
point out the then peculiar nature and constitution of the
Christian state;--from that epoch when Charlemagne laid the first
solid foundation for a permanent system of christian government and
christian manners, down to the moment when an anti-christian spirit of
discord broke out with incurable violence, and became universally
predominant. I will at the same time endeavour to take an historical
survey of the whole Christian West, as it has remained the theatre of
the subsequent progress of society, and of the great transactions of
the world down to our times.
In the blame so commonly lavished, (and not unreasonably, when we
consider the historical consequences,) on the customary divisions in
the Frankish or Carlovingian Empire, and the other German states, men
forget that according to the old Germanic idea, a kingdom was nothing
more than any other great family estate, or princely inheritance, and
governed, like these, by the same law of descent. This was so from the
earliest times among both the principal races of the Germans. In this
manner we find the nation of the Goths divided into two kingdoms; and
as the Saxons were with difficulty united under one head in their own
ancestral country on the Northern coast of Germany; so in the England
which they had conquered and newly peopled, we find seven
principalities or petty kingdoms of Anglo-Saxons co-existent with one
another; and these were only by accident reduced to a less number, and
but for a time blended into one sovereignty. We often ascribe to the
men, and to the spirit of those times, pretensions quite
inappropriate, inapplicable, and perfectly modern. So possessed are we
with the notion of our times as to the natural and eternal boundaries
of this or that country, of the predestination of a people to
political unity, or of the necessary national unity of every
state--notions or prejudices which are held as so many mathematical
axioms, in which we make the highest idea of policy to consist, to
which we ascribe an inviolable sanctity, and which in our reverence,
and in some cases, we might almost say--idolatry, we exalt above every
thing else, and would make every thing else subservient to. To the
simplicity of those ancient times, the excellence and advantages of a
mild, domestic, paternal, national sovereignty for the more convenient
administration of smaller states, appeared great, and superior to
every other consideration. Thus those who had to decide of themselves,
and without the imperious call of duty--without the feeling of a
strong necessity for undertaking, even at the sacrifice of a part at
least of their own national welfare, the heavy burden of the imperial
office, in that Christian empire evidently established by divine
Providence for the protection of the church, and all the nations
belonging to it;--without this strong feeling of duty, I say, they
never would have deviated from the good old simple usage of dividing
the royal patrimony. The more so indeed as the glory they sought was
rather of a chivalrous kind, consequently purely personal; and that
favourite idol of modern times--national vanity, was perfectly unknown
to them. Their institution, certainly, would not be adapted to our
times; nor was it even suited to those immediately succeeding; but an
age to be judged aright and duly appreciated, must be estimated by its
own standard, and the opinions proper to it. That even a division of
sovereignty and partition of kingdoms is not incompatible with the
external union of the body politic for one general design, so long as
the potentates are animated by a Christian and brotherly feeling, and
a spirit of union as to this one object--the all-uniting bond of
confederacy; is a truth which may be proved by many pleasing and
glorious examples from the history of the earlier middle age, and from
that of Germany especially. If on the one hand we would lay it down as
a general historical law, and axiom of state, that separated or
divided kingdoms and countries can never combine for one common
object, nor remain permanently united in feeling nor Christian
equity--so on the other hand, we must remember that the division of
nations according to certain natural boundaries, which we would fain
regard as the only perfect and absolutely right one, is like the
quadrature of the circle, a problem eluding all calculation, and
remaining for ever insoluble, since each one, according to his
peculiar political position, or national prejudices, views those
eternal boundaries in a different light, and determines them
differently. Thus in order to put an end to all discord and to the
injurious system of partition, nothing would remain but the vulgar
resource of an universal monarchy and military dominion--a resource
which as often as it has been tried, has been as little justified or
recommended by its historical results, as that custom of partition
which prevailed in the German ancestral kingdoms of the earlier middle
age.
The dangers of a bitter family feud, or of the mutual jealousies of
the heirs to the several kingdoms as to their respective portions,
when these grew to any considerable extent, were early enough
perceived. It is to be observed that in the first division of the
great Carlovingian empire into three parts, designed by Charlemagne
himself, but accomplished only under his feebler successor; the
inheritance assigned to the eldest and imperial brother--Lothaire, was
together with Rome and Italy, the Rhenish district situate between
France on the one side, and the interior of Germany on the other, and
extending from Switzerland to the sea--a district where the Romans had
planted many and most flourishing colonies, and which for many ages
back had been far superior in civilization and refinement to the
countries on either side. With the same prospective care, Charlemagne
had already fixed his residence at Aix-la-Chapelle, preferring the
Rhenish province as the then true seat of civilization. But in the
family quarrel and dissensions which ensued, this measure of
Charlemagne as far as it was intended, had no other permanent effect
than to cause amid the partitions of countries and changes of dynasty,
the continuance down to very modern times, of Lorraine as an
independent kingdom or dutchy. The Rhenish district long preserved its
pre-eminence in refinement above the rest of Germany; and with some
external changes, was long the seat of empire.
In that dark old world of the North, on which Christianity was just
beginning to dawn, no monarch after Charlemagne, shone so
conspicuously as the virtuous Alfred, King of the West Saxons in
England. And the same remark is applicable not only to him, but to
England in general, which during this first Christian period of modern
history, far outshone all other countries in literature and science,
as well as in religion, piety, and virtue. The great Pope, St.
Gregory, as I have already mentioned, laid the foundations of
Christianity and intellectual refinement in England, whither he sent
forty Missionaries; and so active was their zeal and efficacious
their influence, that in the succeeding age, this first school of
Christianity in England sent forth to other countries the most eminent
men of their time. Such were the German apostle and bishop, St.
Boniface, and Alcuin, the learned friend and confidant of Charlemagne.
Besides many Latin writers produced by this yet flourishing English
school, the great Christian Philosopher Scotus Erigena, lived in
England in the time of Alfred; and though this philosopher was perhaps
not quite free from speculative error, he was far superior to his own
age, and in the depth and originality of his conceptions, was not
equalled, and certainly not surpassed for many succeeding centuries.
King Alfred, who though a bard and a writer in his own native speech,
prized equally the Latin literature, and who defended his country
against the Danes with the most perseverant valour, was the first
founder of the English constitution; for with the wisdom and pacific
spirit of a lawgiver, he restored the old Saxon rights and privileges,
and the regulations relating to the cities and the different orders of
the state. It was his virtuous courage, which in the most trying
adversity, ever remained cool and collected, that alone rescued the
isle of freedom from the fierce, impetuous power of the Danes.
The successful naval expeditions of the Normans to all the coasts of
Europe, as far as Sicily and even beyond it, and the incursion of the
Magiars into Europe, where they received the name of Hungarians, form
in the ninth century the close, and are, as it were, the last
reverberation, of the great immigration of the Northern nations, and
must on that account not be entirely passed over in silence. This last
maritime migration from the North began with a powerful and
enterprizing ruler of Norway, the fair-haired Harold; and these naval
expeditions which were undertaken, not merely from motives of vulgar
piracy, or of martial adventure, but for the foundation and permanent
settlement of new states, soon scoured all the coasts and regions of
the Northern ocean, as well as of the Mediterranean sea. The province
in France which these freebooters conquered, the French acknowledged
by the title of duchy of Normandy; and they were glad enough thus to
bind it to their king by the homage of fealty, and to attach it to, if
not to incorporate it with, their kingdom. Called to Naples and Sicily
by the Greeks, who demanded their aid against the Saracens, the
Normans there founded for themselves a kingdom of long duration. After
Christianity had introduced into Denmark a better system of government
and legislation, the powerful Danish monarch, Canute the Great, ruled
over England during this period of the Norman sway; till at last,
after a short interval of contest, another Norman, William the
Conqueror, issuing from France, founded a new dynasty in England, and
established on the basis of the old free Saxon constitution, a high
chivalrous aristocracy.
From the remotest part of Eastern Asia, situate between the Uzi and
the Patzinacites, an emigration of nations took a Westward course
towards the country of the Chazars, and at last led the nation of the
Magiars from their original seat to Pannonia, where, according to the
testimony of contemporary writers, the Avars, the descendants of the
ancient Huns, still lived under their Chagan. Once excited into
tumultuous activity, these Hungarians (who were still Pagans) roved as
far as the North of Italy, and down to Thessalonica in Greece, and to
the very neighbourhood of Constantinople; they then advanced westward
in large squadrons far into the interior of Germany, even to Saxony.
It was here that the noble King Henry the First, opposed a vigorous
resistance to their incursions, and Otho the Great put a final term to
the progress of their arms by the victory on the banks of the Lech.
Christianity, which was introduced into Hungary under Geisa, the
father of King Stephen, established a milder system of manners and of
legislation; a system which St. Stephen by a close union with Germany,
brought to full maturity. At the same period, Poland under the happy
influence of the Christian religion, which introduced here a better
system of manners and legislation, was incorporated into the civilized
community of the European nations, and with Germany in particular,
formed a very close political connexion. It is particularly pleasing
to observe the very beneficial influence of Christianity in the
promotion of agriculture, and in the advancement of intellectual
refinement in the Northern vallies of Sweden, during the reigns of
Olaus and St. Eric; when the old Hall of Odin at Upsal was finally
destroyed, and the new religion obtained the victory.
During the period of the Norman glory, the Russians (a populous and
widely spread Sclavonian nation, inhabiting the vast and ancient
Sarmatia, formerly governed by the Goths) called to their assistance
the Varangians, who established a new dynasty at Novogorod. Either
from this circumstance, or from the former dominion of the Goths, the
country was by the neighbouring Finnish tribes afterwards called
Gothland. Russia received Christianity at the hands of the
Byzantines--and thus in its remote North, remained a stranger to the
Catholic West--the more so, indeed, as the country, invaded and
desolated by the Moguls, long groaned under the oppressive yoke of
these barbarians--till at length, in very recent times, and in the
very struggle of regeneration, it has grown up into a mighty power.
Thus the whole circuit of the Christian West, and all the kingdoms it
included, was now tolerably well filled up; and it then consisted of
ten principal countries or nations; but in forming this estimate we
must not attend to minuter subdivisions or mere national varieties,
or to the frequent partitions of kingdoms, and alterations of
territory, amid various conflicting or successive dynasties; but we
should keep in view only the general and permanent outline of the
European states. Germany and Italy, which were respectively the seats
of the Christian empire and the Papal dignity, formed the centre of
Europe. Along with these two states, France and England were the most
active, the most powerful, and the most influential members of the
European commonwealth; while Spain was principally occupied with her
own domestic contests against the Saracens. The Scandinavian countries
were somewhat connected with the Germanic Empire, and Poland and
Hungary, after they had embraced Christianity, were united with that
empire in the closest bonds. Lastly, in the far Northern and Eastern
extremities of Europe, the Byzantine Empire and the kingdom of the
Muscovites, (closely connected by the ties of religion,) formed the
extreme and remotest members of the Christian Republic. Such was the
geographical extent, and such the historical situation of Christendom
at that period.
After the downfal of the Carlovingian family, the empire was restored
to its pristine vigour by the election of the noble Conrad, Duke of
the Franconians. This pious, chivalrous, wise and valiant monarch had
to contend with many difficulties, and fortune did not always smile
upon his efforts. But he terminated his royal career with a deed,
which alone exalts him far above other celebrated conquerors and
rulers, and was attended with more important consequences to
after-times, than have resulted from many brilliant reigns; and this
single deed, which forms the brightest jewel in the crown of glory
that adorns those ages, so clearly reveals the true nature of
Christian principles of government, and the Christian idea of
political power, that I may be permitted to notice it briefly. When he
felt his end approaching, and perceived that of the four principal
German nations, the Saxons alone by their superior power, were capable
of bringing to a successful issue the mighty struggle in which all
Europe was at that critical period involved, he bade his brother carry
to Henry Duke of Saxony, hitherto the rival of his house, and who was
as magnanimous as fortunate, the holy lance and consecrated sword of
the ancient kings, with all the other imperial insignia. He thus
pointed him out as the successor of his own choice, and in his regard
for the general weal, and in his anxiety to maintain a great pacific
power capable of defending the common interests of Christendom, he
disregarded the suggestions of national vanity, and sacrificed even
the glory of his own house. So wise and judicious, as well as heroic a
sacrifice of all selfish glory, for what the interests of society, and
the necessities of the times evidently demand, is that principle which
forms the very foundation, and constitutes the true spirit of all
Christian government. And by this very deed Conrad became after
Charlemagne, the second restorer of the Western Empire, and the real
founder of the German nation; for it was this noble resolve of his
great soul which alone saved the Germanic body from a complete
dismemberment. The event fully justified his choice. The new King
Henry, victorious on every side, laboured to build a great number of
cities, to restore the reign of peace and justice, and to maintain the
purity of Christian manners and Christian institutions; and
prepared for his mightier son, the great Otho, the Restoration of the
Christian Empire in Italy, whither the latter was loudly and
unanimously called. This first age of the Saxon Emperors was the happy
period wherein Germany possessed the greatest power and resources, and
enjoyed great internal peace and prosperity. It is in this period,
too, that we trace the first beginnings of mental refinement, in many
excellent and remarkable productions of the Latin school, which were
soon succeeded by the successful cultivation of the vernacular tongue.
Quite as unhistorical, and even still more absurd than the reproaches
urged against the Carlovingians for their impolitic partition of the
Empire, are those repeated lamentations and eternal regrets in which
modern historians indulge, whenever they have occasion to notice the
frequent expeditions of the German Kings and Emperors to Rome and
Italy, and the connection which subsisted between the German nation
and the Christian Imperial Dignity--a connection which these writers
consider a great misfortune. They do not enter into the true idea of
this dignity--they do not comprehend the urgent need of those times
for an universal Protectorate, which might, like a bulwark, defend
Europe against internal anarchy, and the invasions of barbarous
nations; and which might prevent the light of Christianity from being
perhaps extinguished in a second night of universal barbarism. The
modern critics of those ancient times cannot understand that high
Christian feeling--that exalted principle of self-devotion, whereby a
nation from its internal strength and natural situation, was called by
the general voice to take on itself this burden for the common weal,
and to be the firm sustaining centre of the European system--a calling
which must necessarily occasion a mighty loss and heavy sacrifice of
repose and prosperity to the nation so undertaking the momentous
charge. Without this firm central power, which held together the
European nations, they would, yielding at the first shock, have
succumbed under the attacks of the Mahometans or Moguls.
Without this central power, Europe would have been broken up into a
multitude of petty states, and have sunk into eternal and irremediable
anarchy; whereas now, great as might be at times the confusion, and
fearfully wild the spirit of warfare, there was always a resource and
a remedy against such calamities. As the religious vow of the knight
dignified his duties into a sort of ecclesiastical warfare; so the
high functions of the Emperor were considered as partly
ecclesiastical, and he was looked on as the sworn liegeman of Almighty
God, intrusted with the high sword of universal justice. It was the
exalted idea of this arduous and momentous charge, far more than
schemes of selfish ambition and idle glory, that filled up the lives
of the most active and powerful of those ancient emperors. Hence this
common regard for the general welfare of Christendom, which the
obligations of their respective stations imposed upon them, produced a
very intimate union between the heads of the spiritual and temporal
authority in Europe, and placed them in a state of mutual dependance.
When the mighty emperor, Otho the Great, had been called into Italy,
and had witnessed with his own eyes the state of general corruption
and degeneracy at Rome, where among the baronial factions which
surrounded the Papal chair, one of the more powerful families sought
by the most culpable intrigues to obtain a lasting, and as it were,
hereditary possession of the holy see; he exerted his imperial
authority, and deposed the Pope, who by means so unlawful had obtained
his dignity, and on whom the general voice of the age had long
pronounced a sentence of condemnation, causing a worthier Pontiff to
be elected in his room. There still existed among those of the same
mind in Christendom, an unerring feeling, whereby the righteousness or
unrighteousness of any action, its real spirit and purpose, were
easily and promptly determined without any anxious regard to mere
outward forms. But when that uniformity of feeling had disappeared,
and with it feeling itself had ceased to be a ruling principle of
public and political life, the standard of political estimation rested
almost exclusively on outward forms, and the contentious point of law
involved in those forms; and as in every historical fact men saw but a
precedent fertile of application, or even dangerous in its
consequences, they no longer formed a pure historical judgment on the
general spirit of any great action, and they almost lost the very
notion of such a thing. The whole world at that time was unanimous in
justifying the conduct of the great Otho in that affair. When however
the clergy of Rome, in their first feelings of gratitude and
admiration at their deliverance from intolerable anarchy, and the
toils of an unworthy family, conferred on the emperor the future and
permanent power of choosing the Pope, it might have been easily
foreseen that so extended a prerogative, little compatible as it was
with the independence of the church, would in the sequel provoke a
strong reaction. This accordingly took place about a hundred years
later, when a man of great energy of character, Pope Gregory VII.
arose to reform the church, and achieve its independence against the
many unlawful encroachments of the secular power. And when a prince,
distinguished indeed for his warlike qualities, but utterly
characterless and animated with an unquiet spirit, who, according to
the unanimous testimony of his contemporaries, had incurred many and
most serious charges; when this prince first attacked and deposed the
Pope, and the latter laid him under an excommunication, the conduct of
the Pontiff was not only in strict accordance with the general opinion
of the age as to the mischievous rule of this secular potentate; but
was quite conformable to the then prevailing doctrine of public law,
which sanctioned the responsibility and accountability of the temporal
power. Hence, Henry IV. found it more expedient to loose himself from
this excommunication by a feint submission, than to impugn it by open
force; although he never afterwards ceased persecuting the Pope, whose
constancy was proved in adversity and persecution. In our own times,
justice has been at last rendered to the great qualities of this
Pontiff, and it has been allowed he was perfectly free from all
selfish views, and that the austere and decisive energy of his
character sprang from no other motive than a burning zeal for the
reform of the church and of mankind. The German historians in
particular, and in truth those on the Protestant side, have been the
first to perform this act of justice; and the name of Gregory VII. who
lived in times so different from our own, has long ceased to be with
the Germans a watch-word for party strife.
But on the matter at issue, or rather on the opinion the world then
entertained respecting it, it will be necessary to say a few words.
That the Sovereign is in no way responsible seems in modern times to
be considered an immutable axiom, or rather the first of all axioms in
the science of government; and whenever a monarch in the history of
the middle ages, however vicious he may be and however forgetful of
his dignity, meets with the treatment of the Emperor Henry IV.,
political indignation is raised to the highest pitch. No one can have
the slightest intention of questioning the perfect justness of the
above state-axiom, under certain given circumstances. But, if the
question be a parallel between the middle ages and modern times, we
may oppose to the scandal of the ecclesiastical excommunication
pronounced against this prince during the former period, the still
more fatal example which has occurred within the last three centuries,
of the public execution of several monarchs, and of the assassination
of many others. Thus, in this respect, the history of the middle age
stands purer; and this warns us to decide with less precipitancy on
the superiority of our own standard of political morality, and on the
greater perfection of modern principles of state-policy.[6] According
to the feeling of right, and the prevailing maxims of public law in
that age, a mutual controul and responsibility subsisted between
church and state, and between the heads of either. In the most
esteemed constitutions of modern states, there is also a mutual
dependence and possible controul. Thus the prince may dissolve the
parliament, or resist its enactments by his veto; and, on the
other hand, the parliament, by withholding its sanction to the
imposition of taxes, or refusing the grant of subsidies, may weaken
the sinews of government, and summon, not indeed the king, who seems
to be regarded as a mere cipher, but the ministry to a most severe
reckoning. The government loses all stay and support, when the
Opposition obtains a permanent and decided majority. Whether this
mutual dependence and controul in the modern theory of government be
less dangerous than in the ancient system, is a question which it is
not so easy to decide. As all the institutions of the middle age had a
religious spirit and character, it cannot excite our surprise that
this opposition between the spiritual and temporal power, and this
mutual dependence of the heads of church and state should have been
founded in religion, and in the religious character and purpose of the
Imperial, as well as of the Papal, dignity. It was only by the
excesses of passion and violence, by the exaggerated proceedings of
both the spiritual and temporal powers, as well as by unfortunate
accidents and a human imperfection, by no means inherent in the nature
of the thing itself, that the dispute between church and state grew to
such a fearful magnitude, was so prolonged, and often became almost
incurable. But how easily, even then, peace might be restored between
the spiritual and temporal powers by the wisdom, the prudence, the
good-will, and conciliatory temper of both, is proved by the peaceable
termination of the quarrel respecting investiture under the successor
of Henry IV. In the sequel, indeed, the harsh, stern, inflexible
character of the Ghibelline Emperors, especially Barbarossa, again
perplexed this question; when from the contest growing more and more
violent betwixt the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the political schism
became wider and wider, and discord seemed to be again the mistress of
the world.
[6] In confirmation of what Schlegel asserts in the
text, I shall cite a few passages from some
distinguished Protestant Historians of Germany. To shew
my readers the enlarged, liberal and enlightened views
taken by the Protestant writers of that country on the
political influence of the Papacy in the middle age,
and on the services which at that momentous period the
hierarchy rendered to the cause of social order,
liberty and civilization, it were easy to transcribe
matter more than sufficient to fill a volume. Let a few
examples suffice.--"The Northern nations," says the
celebrated historian of Switzerland, John Muller,
rushing in upon the most beautiful countries of Europe,
trampling under foot, or disturbing and convulsing all
social institutions, menaced the whole Western world
with a barbarism similar to that which, under the
Ottoman sceptre, has obliterated every thing good,
great and beautiful that ancient Greece and Asia had
produced. Yet the Bishops and other Dignitaries
(Versteher) of the church, strong in their authority,
contrived to impose a restraint on those giants of the
North who, as regards intelligence, were but children.
They would not have been more successful than the Greek
prelates, had they been subject to four different
Patriarchs. The Popes of Rome, (whose primitive history
is as obscure and defective as that of the ancient
Roman Republic, since we know little of the first
Popes, except that they devoted their lives for the
faith, as Decius had done for his country,) the Popes,
we say, employed their authority with the same address
which we admire in the ancient Senate, to render their
see independent, subject to its immediate action the
whole Western hierarchy, and establish its sway, far
beyond the boundaries of the ancient empire, on the
ruins of the Northern religions. Thus whoever refused
to honour the Christ, trembled before the Pope; and one
faith and one church were preserved in Europe, amid the
breaking up and subdivision of the newly-founded
kingdoms into a thousand petty principalities. We know
what Pope made Charlemagne the first Emperor; _but who
made the first Pope_? The Pope, they say, was only a
Bishop; yes, but at the same time, the _Holy Father_,
the _Sovereign Pontiff_, the great Caliph, (as he was
called by Ho-Albufreda, Prince of Hamath) of all the
kingdoms and principalities, of all the lordships and
cities of the West. It is he who controuled by the fear
of God the stormy youth of our modern states. At
present even, when his authority is no longer
formidable, he is still very puissant by the
benedictions which he showers; he is still an object of
veneration to innumerable hearts, honoured by the kings
who honour the nations, invested with a power, before
which in the long succession of ages, from the Cæsars
to the House of Hapsburg, a host of nations and all
their great names have vanished.
"We declaim against the Pope! as if it were such a
misfortune that there should exist an authority to
superintend the practice of Christian morality, and to
say to ambition and to despotism, Halt!--so far, and no
further! _Bisher, und nicht weiter_!" So speaks the
illustrious John Muller. The celebrated Herder allows
"that without the hierarchy, Europe in all probability
had become the prey of tyrants, the theatre of eternal
wars, or even a desert."
"The hierarchy," says Beck, "opposed the progress of
despotism in Europe, preserved the elements of
civilization, and upheld in the recollection of men
what is so easily effaced--the ties which bind earth to
Heaven. Those ignorant men, as we affect to call them,
have settled almost all the countries of Europe. The
fruits of that time are the formation of the third
estate, whence dates the true existence of nations--and
the establishment of cities, wherein social life and
true liberty were developed."--_Beck on the Middle
Age_, page 13. _Leipzick_, 1824.
"The weak," says Ruhs, in his Manual of the History of
the Middle Age, "then found in spiritual authority a
better protection against the encroachments of the
powerful than afterwards in the balance of power--a
system which, as it was _a thing purely abstract,
devoid of all external guarantee_, must soon have lost
all influence. The Pope was always present to terminate
the wars which had broken out among Christian princes,
and to protect the people against the injustice and
tyranny of their rulers. The Clergy therefore every
where showed themselves opposed to the power of kings,
when the latter wished to become perfectly
absolute--they wished not to domineer over them, but
confine them within the legitimate bounds of their
authority. The Priesthood was consequently always for
princes, when powerful vassals attacked the rights of
the Sovereign--they were the natural and constant
guardians of the rights and liberty of all
classes."--_Manual of the History of the Middle Age_.
1816.--_Trans._
END OF LECTURE XIII.
LECTURE XIV.
On the struggles of the Guelfs and Ghibellines.--Spirit of the
Ghibelline age.--Origin of romantic poetry and art.--Character
of the scholastic science and the old jurisprudence.--Anarchical
state of Western Europe.
The most rapid sketch of the history of the middle age, if it
contained but a few lively, characteristic and faithful traits on a
subject inexhaustible in itself, would suffice to convince any
reasonable man that great characters, (abounding almost more than in
any other period of history,) important interests, mighty motives, and
lofty feelings and ideas were there in mutual collision; and that in
what is called the anarchy of the middle age we find an active and
stirring life, the most splendid feats of heroism, and many luminous
traces of a higher power. The most careful consideration and profound
investigation of the history of those ages, invariably discovers that
all that was then great and good in the state, as well as in the
church, proceeded from Christianity, and from the wonderful efficacy
of religious principles. Whatever was imperfect, defective, and
hurtful, belonged not to that moral principle which animated society,
and which was itself the best, the noblest, and the soundest; but was
in the character of men, we might almost say, in the character of the
age itself, which, though perhaps not originally and purposely
selfish, had yet become so in the violence of the conflict. And by
selfishness, I do not precisely understand a vulgar self-interest, or
an ordinary ambition, but that absolute will or conduct which springs
from some unalterable resolution, which, hurrying from one extreme to
another, is sure to produce a perpetual alternation of extreme
measures. In some cases this conduct proceeded from a want of
penetration, prudence, and steadiness, which did not always accompany
the deeds of heroic enthusiasm, the astonishing energy of will and
strength of character which distinguished the men of those ages. The
principle then really bad, the principle hostile to good, must be
ascribed to that inclination to discord, innate in man, or which at
least has become his second nature--an inclination which, when united
with those other mighty qualities of the age, assumed indeed the most
formidable shape.
The whole middle age, however, must not by any means be depicted as a
period of universal anarchy; as, from the great difference of times,
and the fact that much in the manners and political institutions of
those ages is now scarcely intelligible, modern writers are but too
apt to indulge in this strain of censure. Above all, we must be
careful to distinguish in the history of the middle ages the variety
of epochs. As long as those religious principles on which church and
state depended, were maintained in their unity and intregrity, the
social stability of that first and happier period is indeed
remarkable, and forms a striking contrast with the succeeding age. For
private feuds, restrained within certain bounds by the manners of
chivalry and the laws of honour, or the more protracted, and
frequently renewed struggles of a warlike nation to repel the inroads
of barbarians, or the aggressions of turbulent neighbours, are no
adequate proofs of general anarchy. But a full knowledge and just
appreciation of the power of principle, which during that better
period was the Christian foundation of the state, is of so much more
importance to our age, as in these times when principle has given way
to the mutable opinion of the moment, and the latter exerts so mighty
an influence on public life; though men have the power to throw off
this ursurped dominion, they will not return to that unity and
stabilty of principle, however strongly they may feel the necessity of
restoring its saving influence. No parallel could be more profitable
and instructive than the comparison between an age and a state, where
principle was predominant, and another where opinion was paramount.
All that was great and good in the history of the middle age, as I
observed at the commencement of this lecture, existed only in
fragments, and this has very much contributed to heighten the
appearance of anarchy throughout the whole of this great period of
human history. Of this the blame must be sought for in a combination
of many injurious causes, and in the resistance of many opposing
elements. That wonderful power of regeneration, by which the whole of
Western Christendom, after every mighty destruction, and reign of
confusion in church and state, has, in a form somewhat modified,
sprung up anew, renovated and exalted, can be ascribed only to that
religion which was in Christian countries the first, and for so many
centuries the apparently almost indestructible support of the social
edifice. In many and memorable periods of regeneration, down to our
own times, this truth has been repeatedly manifested; unless perhaps
this self-renovating power conspicuous in the progress of Christian
Europe, as well as of the particular nations composing it, languishing
and decaying by degrees, become at last utterly extinct.
Among the characteristic, remarkable, and peculiarly Christian
institutions of the middle age, we ought especially to mention that
ecclesiastical truce, or peace of God, which towards the commencement
of the eleventh century, opposed a powerful barrier to the growing and
restless spirit of private warfare. Without its being possible to
specify exactly, how or where this institution first arose, it was at
once proclaimed in several places, and generally received with pious
faith, as a voice of reconciliation from above, an immediate
revelation and benign dispensation of divine Providence; and every
week the tolling of the bell announced the sacred truce from Wednesday
evening to Monday morning, during which time all feuds were to
subside, and all hostilities to cease. It may indeed here be asked in
the spirit of modern times, why were only four, and not the whole
seven days of the week fixed upon, for the cessation of disorder? and
it may be further said that a severe criminal code, and a prompt,
vigorous and enlightened administration of the law, would have
rendered such expedients unnecessary. And it is thus that men speak
and reason without any knowledge of that age; for many feuds,
troubles, and contests then existed, as in all ages have existed and
still exist, which no criminal legislation can reach: and who will not
deem it the part of prudence and a real gain, when peace is not
attainable, to obtain at least a safe and honourable armistice, or to
subtract from the principle of war four sevenths of its baneful
influence and actual duration? And how happy would men have accounted
themselves, if, in other and later times of disorder, when nought was
reverenced or respected, and every thing sacred was an object of
hatred and persecution, they could, amid the general confusion, have
found shelter under such a wall of safety, or been blessed with such a
holiday of peace, though only at particular times of the week! We
should rather admire the power of religion, whereby such a prohibition
without the aid of external force, or secular authority, and running
directly counter to the ruling passion of the age, was received with
such pious faith, and followed with such humble docility.
In the first crusade, religious feeling and enthusiasm was the great
spring of action; and in the outset, at least, it was far more the
glowing eloquence of Peter the hermit, his affecting description of
the Holy Land, and of the holy places groaning under the Saracen yoke,
which contributed to bring about this memorable expedition, than the
pretended policy of the Popes for causing the depression of regal
power, and the promotion of popular freedom. These mighty
consequences, though in fact historically true, became apparent only
at a much later period, and so far from being pre-concerted, were then
not even foreseen. As the first Crusade occurred in the most brilliant
period of Norman glory, the Norman heroes, especially those from
France, took a very active and prominent part in it. The warfare which
the Saracens waged against Christendom was considered (and then
perhaps not without reason,) as a state of permanent and universal
hostility. The chivalrous and defensive wars of Christian nations
against the unbelievers were looked upon in the same light; and if we
may judge from posterior events, Jerusalem and Egypt, in that long and
memorable contest between Europe and Asia, could very well be
regarded, both in a military and political point of view, as the
bulwarks of Christendom. Feats of prodigious, and almost incredible,
heroism were achieved in the Holy Land; and, at the close of the
eleventh century, the victorious cross was planted in the holy city,
and the pious Christian hero, Godfrey, proclaimed King of Jerusalem,
though this title, as suited only to the divine Son of David, he with
all humility renounced.
In this holy city the first two spiritual orders of chivalry sprang
up; the knights of St. John, who took up arms for the defence of
pilgrimage, and in their vows combined the care of the sick pilgrims
with the management of the sword; and the Templars, so called after
the temple of Solomon, and from a recollection of the remarkable
secrets connected with that edifice. Chivalrous institutions of this
kind, wherein Christianity contrived to blend the most opposite
qualities and inclinations of human nature, could not have sprung up
under a mathematical government of reason, or in a state where every
thing is reduced to the level of a dead uniformity, and general
equality, and where all feeling and personality are effaced. But the
voice of ages has decided completely in favour of these marvellous
institutes, and even in our own times, amid all the changes and
fluctuations of opinion, they have preserved the respect, and
obtained the forbearance, of mankind.
Even in the second Crusade which took place about fifty years later,
when the new progress of the Saracen arms appeared to threaten the
safety of the holy city, it was far more the pious eloquence of St.
Bernard than any scheme or calculation of policy, which set the whole
European world in motion. The number of warriors and armed pilgrims
who, under the guidance of the Emperor Conrad, and the King of France,
poured in upon the Holy Land, is computed at more than half a million.
The religious enthusiasm and chivalric heroism which formed the sole
and animating principle of the whole enterprise, were not always
accompanied with sufficient prudence, wisdom and circumspection. The
want of these qualities at least, as regarded the influences of
climate, the physical wants of so vast an army, and a geographical
knowledge of localities, is too often apparent; and in default of this
necessary foresight and preparatory information, many thousands
perished in the second as well as in the first Crusade; a fate which
indeed is not unfrequent in wars, where great bodies of people are
exposed to toil and hardship in a foreign climate. These expeditions
were indeed like new migrations of nations, which took an opposite
direction from the first, and rolled backward from Europe towards
ancient Asia. The great multitude of men engaged, would sufficiently
account for these memorable expeditions, as it proves the redundance
of population in Europe, which sought on this occasion, and by means
of this kind, to disburden itself of its surplus numbers. And if this
numerous population may have given rise to, or afforded materials for,
turbulence and anarchy, still on the other hand, it furnishes a proof
that that anarchy was not of so destructive and depopulating a nature,
as the descriptions of modern historians would sometimes lead us to
suppose.
The real point of transition in German history from good to
evil,--from those Christian principles which were ever predominant in
the earlier period, to the unappeasable contests of the Guelfs and
Ghibellines in the later middle age, must be fixed in the reign of the
Emperor Frederick the First. The hostile treatment of the old Saxon
race, the destruction of that first and greatest of the old national
dutchies of the Germans, was occasioned by the jealousy of the East
Franconians under the dynasty of that race; and this measure, begun
during the reign, (in every respect so mischievous) of Henry the
Fourth, who thus became chargeable with this mighty injustice towards
the whole German nation, was now brought to a head by the Emperor
Barbarossa. And thus, with the most signal ingratitude, was cut off by
the root that noble stem whence German glory and German power had
sprung; for the reigns of the great Saxon Emperors form precisely the
most prosperous and most brilliant period of German history, such
indeed as has never been again witnessed. With the same unrelenting
severity and atrocious cruelty, this Ghibelline Emperor destroyed the
confederate cities of Lombardy, and with them crushed the fair plant
of Italian civilization just then beginning to blossom.
These two great historical parties--the Guelfs and Ghibellines, are
the same which we meet with in other periods of history, and even in
our own times, though under other names, often in a form very
different from that of the present day, and not always in the same
relative position towards each other; but in the middle age they
appeared in the larger and more gigantic proportions of the vigorous,
heroic character belonging to that epoch. There is ever the one party
aspiring after greater freedom, and the other immovably attached to
the ancient faith, and to the principles it inculcates. That the
liberal principles of innovation should, according to the peculiar
complexion which these opinions take in every age, have emanated even
from imperial power, and should have sought to establish their
dominion in the world by force of arms, is not improbable in itself;
and examples of a like kind are not wanting in history. And in this
shape we find these principles in the middle age, where for a long
while they exerted the greatest influence, and at last became almost
predominant. On the other hand the legitimate attachment to the old
permanent principle of faith appeared here in the form of an
ecclesiastical opposition to secular ascendancy. But in the time of
Barbarossa, the solemn reconciliation which took place between this
Emperor and the Pope, restored harmony between the heads of church and
state, and at last composed the long feud. This powerful Emperor,
accompanied by the King of France, and the lion-hearted Richard,
undertook a new crusade, in order to deliver Jerusalem which had been
wrested from the Christians by Saladin; but before he could accomplish
his design, death terminated his active career.
Although the last Ghibelline Emperor Frederick the Second, had been
educated by Pope Innocent III., a Pontiff distinguished by his
enlarged views, and great intellectual endowments, and who had
undertaken the care and guardianship of the Emperor's childhood; yet
the old dispute broke out again under this monarch with more violence
and more implacable animosity than ever. This quarrel was never more
appeased, at least during the sway of Frederick II. and his family;
and it terminated only with the downfal of the Hohenstaufen, the most
powerful of all the princely houses of the middle age. Yet the
Ghibelline name, heretofore stamped in characters of blood upon the
earth, subsisted a long while yet; and for ages after, the Ghibelline
spirit continued to be the prevailing one in Europe. Although the
later Swabian Princes and Emperors of this house, such as Henry VI.
and others, were the patrons of poetry, and of the Provençal
minstrels and German Minnesingers; yet they all resembled one another
in an unbending sternness of character. Henry VI. perpetrated the most
enormous cruelties at Naples; the blood-thirsty Ezzelin, while
Governor of Lombardy under Frederick the Second, has left behind him
so fearful a recollection in Italy, such a character in the pages of
history, that his very name need only be mentioned, and will dispense
with all minuter historical details. The last of this family,
Conradin, was an innocent victim of the public hatred borne to his
ancestors, and he perished on a scaffold at Naples by the hands of
Charles of Anjou, the brother of St. Lewis, who had seized on the
kingdom of the two Sicilies, the lawful patrimony of the royal youth.
The Emperor Frederick the Second--a prince who for his times had
received a most polite education, and was endowed with the greatest
and most original powers of mind,--was not only accused by the Pope in
the excommunication he pronounced against him of a secret but decided
enmity to the Christian religion; but in the general opinion of the
world, laboured under the same suspicion. However, by a prudent peace,
which this prince concluded with the Sultan of Egypt, he terminated
his crusade more successfully than his grandfather had done his own;
for by this he won back the holy places, and placed the crown of
Jerusalem on his head. He was the first who brought into Europe the
Arabic translation of Aristotle's works; and as at this period a
mighty change took place in the science and philosophy of the middle
age, and as even the art and poetry of European nations began to
display new life and energy, it may not be amiss to give here a rapid
sketch of these important changes, as they serve to characterize the
times.
Chivalry was in itself the poetry of life; what wonder then that that
life of imagination, should have opened a new fountain of poesy in the
traditional songs, the fairy lays, the varied minstrelsy, and knightly
narratives of Germany and France, Spain and England, since in these
countries, chivalry was the ruling element of society, and had made
the greatest progress?--For the more immediate object of this
Philosophy of History,--and in order to contemplate the progress of
mankind in matters more serious and important, I have thought the
moral principles of men in the middle age, and their political
doctrines, as they were founded on religion, or on the system of
opposition to religion, to be of far greater moment and importance
than the mere æsthetic part of those ages; for sentimentalists may
indulge in a certain vague, superficial love and predilection for the
times of chivalry, for the romantic spirit of the chivalrous life, and
of the chivalrous poetry, and of the whole system of modern art which
has thence emanated; and nevertheless all the deeper problems of life
involved in that momentous epoch may remain unexamined, unsolved, or
even misunderstood.
On the nature of this romantic tendency, inasmuch as it exerted a
mighty influence on life, and was a motive of vast and undoubted
weight in many of the most important historical events of those ages,
I shall merely say a word by way of psychological illustration; for
this is applicable to the prevailing forms of mind, the peculiar
intellectual bearings of whole nations and ages, as to those of
individuals. As where opinion is the ruling principle of life--it is
very soon broken, divided, parcelled out and lost in a chaos of
heterogeneous theories, and the age--the world--life itself are
involved in interminable disputes; so when religious feeling
constitutes the primary principle of life; and it hath been
dismembered, and torn from its right centre, been driven to some
extreme; and opinions flowing from this source have been carried into
action; then all the great transactions of public life exhibit that
overruling influence of imagination, perceptible not in the earlier,
but in the later periods of the middle age, especially from the great
epoch of the Crusades. Although these and other like great historical
events of that period bear many noble traces of the high religious
source whence they sprang; yet such a paramount influence of
imagination over real life, must in this partial excess be regarded as
the consequence of the dismemberment of man's psychological powers--a
symptom of the dissolution of that internal harmony which can never
subsist in society, unless it be previously established in
consciousness. The radical vice of the middle age--that is to say, the
one most prevalent in its later period from the time of the
Ghibellines--if one may venture to characterize it with such
psychological generality--is discernible in the productions of the
poetry, art and science of that age. And the relations which these
bore to society--the distinctive character--the peculiar spirit of
this critical period in the progress of Christian nations, are matters
of the highest interest and greatest moment. This vice consisted in
that disposition to extremes--that leaning towards the absolute I have
already spoken of, as manifested in will, in determination, in
rule--or in science, speculation, and poetry. The first germ, or at
least the first disposition to this fault, lies in the very origin of
modern nations, especially those five whose political existence sprang
out of the union of the Germanic constitution, manners, and character,
with the Latin civilization, literature, and language in the Romanic
countries; or which at least were formed by a very strong infusion of
the Roman spirit--I mean the German and English, the French, Spanish,
and Italian nations. Where the character of the German tribes, the
free, heroic energy of Germanic nature was blended and incorporated
with the strong worldly sense of the Romans by the influence of
Christian principles and religious love; there sprang out of that
happy union those great and mild characters, to which I have already
drawn your attention, and which flourished during the first period of
the German Empire and of the middle age. But as soon as the influence
of the Christian religion began to decline, and its power was
enfeebled, clouded or obscured, the two elements, which had been
united in the human race, fell asunder; and on one side was to be seen
nothing but mere Roman astuteness (as is often enough the case in the
later history of France and Italy); and on the side of the Germanic
nations, nothing but a rude martial impetuosity and chivalric pride,
uncontrolled and unsoftened by the principle of religion. Or when
again the rigid principles of that old worldly sense and instinct of
dominion, which belonged to the Romans, were conjoined with the heroic
energy of the North, without however the healing and conciliatory
influence of the religion of love; this combination, which is
conspicuous in the vehement but fearful characters engaged in the
Ghibelline contests, was indeed the most unfortunate of all.
How the tendency towards the absolute--that abyss to mankind, which
along with love, confounds and swallows up all life--then hurried the
political world from one extreme to another, we have already
mentioned, so far as was necessary for our object.
But even in the art and poetry, as well as the science of the middle
age, this leaning towards the absolute is equally apparent, and the
more so, as both reached their full maturity at that period only when
this had become the ruling spirit of the age. As, on one hand, the
chivalrous poetry, especially in its origin, was excessively
fantastical, until later it was fashioned into a form of milder
symmetry, and made to pour forth the touching, heart-felt tones of
romantic art; so on the other hand the scholastic philosophy was
bewildered in a maze of subtleties not so much metaphysical as merely
logical, and often quite destitute of sense. The singular manner,
indeed, in which the Italian poet Dante, has in his mighty poem of
visions, wherein he displays the most masterly and classical
condensation of language, and the profoundest poetical art, contrived
to sustain in his progress through the three regions of the invisible
world that fantastic spirit, (which was not confined to the chivalrous
poetry, but was common to every department of imagination in that
age,) next the stern maxims of the Ghibelline state-policy, and a
congenial worship of Roman antiquity, and has managed to unite all
these qualities with the subtle distinctions of the scholastic
philosophy; this singular manner, indeed, has never been an object of
general imitation, nor has it opened a path to the subsequent labours
of art. But this work will ever remain an extraordinary, wonderful,
and characteristic monument, wherein the peculiar spirit of this
first scholastico-romantic epoch of European art and science is
displayed in a most remarkable manner. In this spirit there were many
heterogeneous elements, not confined to their separate and distinct
spheres, but often in the strangest juxta-position, or rather
confusion. And thus a regular scholastic science of love, with all the
borrowed forms of the philosophy of the day, formed often the purport
of the most tender romantic lays or devices; and logical antitheses,
syllogisms, and subtleties were solved in rhyme and verse, with a most
charming play of fancy. It is these vagaries (and so they are in many
respects) which so captivate our feelings in the poetry of
Petrarch--one of the restorers of ancient literature and of modern
learning.
More strongly still than in its poetry, the richness of an inventive
imagination displayed itself in the wonderful architecture of the
middle age, as so many splendid monuments in Germany, England, a part
of France, and in the North of Italy and Venice can attest. The style
of the Byzantine churches was the first and principal model of this
Gothic architecture; though a fantastic monument of Arabic
architecture may here and there perhaps have had some influence in its
formation. The elaborate and ornate style, and the fantastic
singularity of this architecture, breathe the true spirit of the
German middle age. At this time, painting, too, began to make some
progress in Italy and Germany; though its progress was incomparably
slower than that of architecture, and the art reached its perfection
only in the fifteenth century; but devoted entirely to religious
subjects, and consecrated to the use of churches or private devotion,
painting remained, down to the time of Raphael, an art peculiarly
Christian, and displayed the profoundest import, and the most masterly
power. From this period, renouncing, for the most part, the religious
character of the elder Christian painting, art began to be affected by
that enthusiasm for the Pagan antique, which indeed was not limited to
the fine arts, but was the prevailing character of literature and
science in this second period of European culture. And I have made
these few remarks, not so much for the sake of art itself, which would
require a separate investigation, but as tending to elucidate the
various epochs and stages in the progress of modern civilization.
It was an ill-boding gift that the Ghibelline Emperor made to Europe
when he brought from the East the works of Aristotle, translated, or
rather burlesqued, into Arabic, and thence turned again into Latin,
till at last they became often perfectly unintelligible. The elder
Christian philosophers belonging to the first period of the middle
age, such as in England (which still retained a high pre-eminence in
Latin literature and Christian science,) a Scotus Erigena, the
contemporary of Alfred,--a St. Anselm, so highly revered in
theology,--and afterwards in France, an Abelard, and also a St.
Bernard, in whose eloquence there runs so pure a vein of piety--and so
charming a mysticism of feeling--all these elder Christian
philosophers, both in thought and language were incomparably clearer
and more precise than the schoolmen of succeeding times, and were for
the most part entirely free from that interminable play of an idle
logic, and those empty metaphysical subtleties. The natural sciences
were then in too low and feeble a state to form any distinct branch of
human inquiry; and this very circumstance contributed, as was then
indeed perfectly natural, to knit closer the ties which connected
philosophy with theology. But independently of the peculiar
circumstances of those times, it is evident that Christian philosophy
can be founded on religion only, and not on any theory, wherein nature
occupies the first and highest place--not on any doctrine, which
contains the germ of a Pagan worship of nature, renewed under a
scientific form. As little can a Christian philosophy rest on the
principle of Individualism--a reason which submits not humbly to God
and his revelation, but which, all concentrated in itself, aspires to
be all-sufficing and all-creative. In either respect, the Stagyrite,
when studied even in the original, and thoroughly understood, would
have been a guide very unsafe, very likely to mislead, as well in
natural philosophy as in the higher problems of Metaphysics. The best
and most instructive of his writings, his ethical or political works,
could not even be understood by those scholastic admirers of the
Grecian sage; for the profound allusions they contained to the customs
and political history of Greece made the knowledge of these, and a
complete investigation of the original sources of information,
absolutely necessary to their comprehension. Even his logical and
rhetorical books derive their chief and liveliest interest from the
fact that they were intended to remedy the dialectic malady of Grecian
intellect, and to oppose the all-usurping influence of a false
rhetoric among the Greeks. Lastly, to comprehend fully, rightly
appreciate, and turn to advantage, as our times are enabled to do, the
most solid works of the profound ancient--those on mixed physics and
natural history, the schoolmen were entirely destitute of the
necessary aids and preparatory information.
If the Christian philosophers of the middle age, instead of adopting
the Aristotelian system, had built and improved on the philosophy of
those first great original thinkers of Christian Europe already
mentioned, or on the philosophy of the primitive fathers, even those
of the Latin church, for by them also the Platonic doctrines (the only
doctrines of antiquity at all reconcileable with a philosophy of
revelation,) had long been planted and naturalized on the Christian
soil;--if this had been the case, the edifice of Christian philosophy
would have been raised with far greater ease and rapidity, and been
wrought into a much more beautiful structure. Or if even the Greek
originals had been deemed absolutely indispensable towards such an
object, it had been better that, instead of waiting till the
destruction of Constantinople, the powerful Emperors and Potentates,
who patronized art and science, had, during the short duration of the
Latin Empire at Constantinople, brought away with them those
philological treasures, instead of the works of Aristotle so absurdly
disfigured in the Arabic, and in the still more unintelligible Latin
version. It was, on one hand, the inclination of the age to absolute
modes of thinking, to the art of logical tournaments, and on the
other, a hope, secretly entertained, that by the pretended magical
power of these logical devices, one might learn and obtain the mastery
of many profound secrets of nature (which by the way should have been
sought anywhere but in the real Aristotle); finally, the unquenchable
thirst after a fruit of knowledge, deemed forbidden--it was all these
circumstances, which created now that universal and irresistible rage
for Aristotle, reputed as he was to contain the very essence of all
liberal science and philosophy.
The whole foundation of the scholastic philosophy was thoroughly and
essentially false; and it had the most prejudicial and injurious
influence, not only on theology, but on the whole spirit and modes of
thinking of this age. When however the evil appeared nearly incurable,
and the false current of opinion was too strong to be resisted, a
mighty service was rendered to mankind, when acute and sagacious
theologians, endowed with philosophical talents and discernment, like
a St. Thomas Aquinas, adopting the common, but erroneous, basis of
this old Aristotelian rationalism, founded on it a system in which
they attempted to reconcile this philosophy with the dictates of
faith, and thus, in this respect at least, avert from their age the
dangerous consequences of this false direction of the human mind. Yet,
on the whole, this was but an apparent reconciliation; and the
scholastic philosophy, or in other words, the rationalism of the
middle age, broke out often afterwards into a haughty and violent
opposition to the doctrines of revelation.
This scholastic spirit of the now degenerate middle age exerted its
pernicious influence on life itself, and on the sciences more
immediately connected with life, particularly jurisprudence. For when
the first Ghibelline Frederick, on the plains of Roncaglia, gave his
solemn sanction to the Roman law, and to all those absolute rights and
prerogatives of the crown which were thence to be deduced, he thereby
opened a door to an intricate scholastic jurisprudence, to all the
learned subtlety of processes, and the interminable logic of law; and
conferred on mankind a boon as little propitious as the Arabic
Aristotle, which his descendant, the second Frederick, afterwards
brought into Europe. The vast pandects of Justinian were already the
recognized code of laws, under the Eastern Franconian Emperors, long
before the German Jurist Irnerius opened his school of civil law in
the University of Bologna. Those old Roman Formulas of universal
dominion which are occasionally to be found in the Corpus Juris,
suited perfectly the spirit and policy of the Ghibelline Emperors,
who, in particular cases, alleged them against the Greek Emperors and
other Potentates, as clear proofs of the universal monarchy which
appertained to them. But it was particularly from the Ghibelline
period that the Roman law became a favourite science, and its study a
new mania among the European nations, especially on account of the
leaning to absolute principles in that system of jurisprudence, whose
artificial forms of rigid law were indeed little congenial to the
spirit of Christianity, to modern society, and German manners.
The true problem for the legal science of Christian Europe to solve
would have been this--to adopt the forms of the old Roman
jurisprudence, so highly wrought and finished in its way, and to
reform its spirit by the doctrines and principles of Christian
justice; and at the same time to employ the many excellent materials
to be found in the native laws of European nations, and in all the old
Germanic codes. These laws were indeed of a very local nature, adapted
mostly to infant communities and the simple manners of warlike tribes,
and by no means appropriate to a more advanced stage of civilization;
yet they contained the solid substance of genuine freedom and exalted
equity. But this task ought to have been accomplished in that earlier
period when Christianity, which had united and harmonized so many
discordant elements, had still retained all its influence--an
influence which was afterwards wanting. Those ages, however, which
were so thoroughly Christian, and on that very account of such
political importance, were deficient in science; and hence, as I have
already observed, it was not so much deliberate selfishness, or
hostile opposition, but the real want of knowledge and foresight which
occasioned the civil and political institutions of Christian states to
be left imperfect. It is only in very recent times that an attempt has
been made to solve the problem which earlier ages had left unexecuted,
or to supply this old deficiency of a Christian system of
jurisprudence. And if hitherto this task has never been adequately, or
completely, accomplished, though all the conditions have long existed
for the solution of this necessary problem of European society; it
would not be right to defer again the execution of the work, and thus
lose once more the seasonable moment.
How, after the struggle of parties had become more general, and an
absolute mode of thinking the ruling character of the age, the violent
contests between church and state, between the Secular and
Ecclesiastical authorities tended to promote their mutual injury and
destruction, I shall now endeavour briefly to state. After the last
excommunication pronounced against Frederick II., one anti-emperor had
followed another in succession; and German princes, a prince of the
royal household of England, and a king of Castile, had filled
successively the imperial throne; none were generally and legally
recognized, and it was the reign of universal anarchy and savage
club-law. It was a dark interregnum in social order, as if the sun of
justice and of peace had withdrawn its light from a world of
corruption and irreconcilable hate; and for a whole generation this
state of wild disorder, and fear of still greater calamities, lasted.
The loss of Jerusalem and all the Holy Land to the Christians, which
now took place, added to the general gloom of the times.
In vain had St. Lewis in his last Crusade against Egypt, once more
exerted all his energies for the deliverance and preservation of the
Christian possessions in the East; possessions, which had they been
retained, might in the end have formed a rampart and a barrier against
the inroads of the Mussulman power into the adjoining provinces of
Europe. Still the danger from this quarter was not so imminent; for it
was not till a hundred years later that the Turks burst from Asia
Minor into Europe, conquered the Northern provinces of the Byzantine
Empire, and began to menace the Christian kingdoms of the West. But
there was a nearer and mightier danger rolling on against Europe--the
formidable power of the Moguls, which surprised it in this period of
the great interregnum. As if the hostile spirit of destruction had
anticipated or known that the power of Christendom could be subverted
only by internal discord; an old sage or priest of the still Pagan
Moguls, had, about a generation before, announced to the youth, who
was afterwards called Zingis Khan, (that is to say lord of the world,
and who is known by this name in history,) that in a vision, he had
seen the Great Spirit, seated on his flaming throne, judge the nations
of the earth, and that, by his decision, the dominion of the world had
been allotted to the young Khan of the Moguls. Filled with this
spirit, Zingis traversed the world with his countless hosts; conquered
China, Thibet and Japan, subdued the Mussulman Empire of Carizme, and
penetrated as far as the Caspian Sea. The conqueror's four sons
continued the work which he had commenced, and divided the earth into
four parts for their task of desolation. The one to whom was assigned
the Western portion of the earth invaded Christendom with his
innumerable squadrons; the throne of Rurick, the greatest Christian
potentate in the North, was overturned; and for several centuries,
Russia, incorporated with the government of Kipzak, groaned under the
oppressive yoke of the Mogul sway. Poland was overrun by the
all-wasting hosts of Moguls; the King of Hungary was defeated, and
forced to flee his country; Silesia was laid waste, and the bloody
discomfiture of the Christian army at Lignitz filled the whole Western
world with consternation. Happily the destroyers penetrated no further
into Europe; and the stream of their conquests, as if diverted by a
protecting hand, took its course first towards the Arabian Caliphate
of Bagdad, which they put an end to; and afterwards towards India, and
other Asiatic and Mahometan countries. This was a passing, but awful,
warning to Christendom, how much she needed the strong arm of a
powerful Protector, and that union alone would enable her to resist
the assaults and inroads of barbarous nations. It was the strong
feeling of such a necessity which had first inspired the idea of the
Western Empire.
In the German Empire order was first restored by Rodolph of Hapsburgh,
who, notwithstanding his earldom of Alsace and his other hereditary
demesnes in the Alps, had not yet so much power as many other
aspirants to the imperial crown; but his chivalrous virtues ranked him
high in the estimation of many of the princes. A happy and singular
coincidence of accidental circumstances occasioned his unexpected
election to the empire, which appeared to him, as to many others, a
calling from above. Being on the most peaceful understanding with the
Pope, he yet abandoned his expedition to Rome; for he was, above all
things, anxious to put an end to anarchy, to establish the public
tranquillity on a solid basis, and, as far as was then possible, to
restore the reign of justice. The high services which by this he
rendered to his country in those distracted times, History has not
been backward to acknowledge; and, as the Patriarch of the imperial
house of Hapsburgh, he has been the founder of a power which, in
succeeding ages, has ever proved a pillar of strength and security to
Germany and even Europe. But often again did anarchy rear her head,
and often did disorder obtain the ascendant in Germany, as well as in
other European states. Nations felt the want of one mighty,
independent, and protecting power--they lamented the decline of those
Christian principles which had knit so closely all the ties of public
and private life; and they saw with regret the gradual approach of the
general dissolution and mighty ruin of European society. Under
Rodolph's successors, down to Maximilian and Charles the Fifth, the
Emperors were confined in their sphere of action to Germany and its
internal affairs, which do not here immediately concern us. The
expeditions to Rome tended, indeed, to keep alive the remembrance of
the old imperial rights and claims; but they were productive of no
permanent advantage, nor real extension of power. It was only in the
summoning of general councils (the want of which was soon so urgently
felt for the well-being of the church and of Christendom), that the
imperial power was really exerted in favour of the general interests
of Europe.
But the evils which ensued to the church and its head, from its
unhappy conflict with the temporal power, were far more extensive and
fatal in their consequences. In the mighty contests between the Popes
and Emperors, it was actual right which was the subject of dispute;
and, in truth, the first basis and highest principle of all right in
Christian states, and indeed in all human society; and however much of
error the exaggerations of later times may have infused into these
disputes, it was a sublime idea which animated either party. In
France, which now took up that attitude of hostility towards the head
of the church which the Emperors had once assumed, an entirely new era
in European policy, which had now ceased to be Christian, commenced
with the reign of Philip-le-bel. In the place of those great motives
and lofty ideas which animated a Gregory VII., on the one hand, and a
Conrad or Barbarossa, on the other, we meet with a vulgar policy, a
selfish cupidity, and an unworthy cunning. In every point of view,
Philip the Fair may be considered as the worthy predecessor of Louis
XI. Even his conduct towards the whole order of Templars, their
execution, or rather judicial murder, for the purpose of confiscation,
was a deed of violence which nothing could justify; even had the
suspicion entertained against the more corrupt portion of the order,
of having introduced from the East certain unchristian tenets, rites
and practices, been not entirely destitute of foundation. But yet this
suspicion did not affect the whole body, nor even the then worthy
grandmaster, as was shortly afterwards acknowledged by the King of
Portugal and the Pope himself; and, in any case, an ecclesiastical
affair of so much importance ought to have been investigated and
determined by a mode of procedure very different from this arbitrary
and despotic course.
The untimely exaggerations and absolute pretensions of Boniface VIII.,
which, though Papal, may almost be termed _Ghibelline_ (in the
same sense that we have applied that term to the acts of preceding
emperors), must have proved very welcome to Philip the Fair. He found
in the conduct of the Pope, a pretext for enticing him into France, in
order, on the first vacancy in the Holy See, to promote the election
of a Pope favourable to his views, and fix him at Avignon. It was a
deep-laid plan of policy on his part, to fix the residence of the
Popes for ever within his territories, in order more easily to extort
their consent to all his selfish projects, as in the case of the
Templars; a policy by which the Popes, during seventy years, were kept
in a state of absolute dependance on the court of France. And when at
last one of the Popes succeeded in rescuing the chair of Peter from
this Babylonish captivity, and placing it again at Rome, Popes were
elected one against the other at Rome and Avignon; and a schism broke
out in the church which lasted for forty years, till it was finally
quelled by the general council of Constance. A deeper wound could not
have been inflicted on Christianity than this division in the church,
which led minds astray, and introduced an indescribable confusion in
all the relations of public and private life. As, without the
all-protecting and all-connecting authority of the first Christian
Emperors, Europe in general, and Germany in particular, would much
sooner have been split and dismembered, and been deprived of all power
of permanent resistance against foreign aggression, and barbarian
inroads; so, without the Papal power, which was founded on, and
adapted for, unity, and which held together the fabric of the church,
Christianity would very soon have been lost and extinguished in a
multitude of particular sects, petty congregations, and opposite
parties, even where totally dissimilar systems of religion did not
spring up. The maintenance of orthodoxy in the Greek church, where the
Patriarch does not possess the same spiritual power, nor the same
extensive influence on society, as the Pope during the middle ages,
cannot be fairly adduced as an objection to the truth of this
observation. For it would be absurd to expect from the active,
stirring, restless, and animated spirit of the Western nations, moving
on as they did through a series of rapid, incessant, and progressive
changes, that innate monotony of thought even in faith, which was
natural to the dead, torpid Byzantine mind. When the Western church
had been weakened and convulsed by the conflict with the secular
power, the prejudicial and fatal effects of this contest became
apparent in religion itself and the internal region of faith. At
first, indeed, there arose a mighty moral power of resistance against
the growing corruption and the impending evil--a great spiritual
remedy, which sprang out of religion, and was perfectly conformable to
its spirit. It was here again apparent how that strengthening Spirit
of aid and counsel--that Paraclete promised to the church by its
divine Founder, knows at every period, and on every new occurrence of
danger, to employ the remedies the best and most fitting for the
exigences of the time; remedies of which the high origin is clearly
discernible, though in the hands of men they no longer retain their
primitive character, and do not accomplish all the good they might
have effected, or even become at last more and more perverted.
The great wealth of the church was not the sole, but one of the
principal subjects of dispute with the secular power, and was even a
stumbling-block to many, especially among the people. It was this
wealth, indeed, which had furnished the means of cultivating and
fertilizing the soil of Europe, and sowing the seeds of science on
the soil of human intellect; for the existence of the clergy had been
founded on landed property, and by this means they had become
naturalized and domiciliated in the state, and among the nation; till
the splendid endowments which they received from the liberality of
religious zeal, made the abbots, bishops, and the whole of the higher
clergy, wealthy lords, senators, and princes. This wealth and this
power, the clergy, especially in the earlier times, generally employed
in a manner the most praiseworthy, and the most conducive to the
welfare of the community. The annals of modern Europe, and the history
of every great and petty state within it, are full of the high
political services which the excellent churchmen of the middle age
rendered to the public weal. This was universally acknowledged, and
any sudden separation of the higher clergy from the state--any
degradation of that body from the exalted station which they occupied
therein, would have been a most serious loss to society. In the
contests of the emperors and other princes with the church and its
head, the immediate and original object of dispute was not
ecclesiastical property, which no one ever dreamed of attacking; but
the jurisdiction over that property, and the acknowledgment of that
jurisdiction. It is easy to conceive that all the members of the
higher clergy had not rendered services equally eminent, and that the
employment of their riches had not been equally laudable and
blameless. But, independently of individual abuses and scandals, the
great wealth of the dignified clergy, the eminent and splendid rank
they occupied in the state and in society, were ever a stumbling-block
to the people, and even to some ecclesiastics, and seemed in
contradiction with the original rule and evangelical poverty of the
primitive Christians. This was the first cause, the principal subject,
and, as it were, the favourite text of that popular opposition which
now, after the example had been set by princes and potentates, began
to unfurl its banners against the church.
Nothing therefore could be better adapted to the exigences of the age
than that, in opposition to the too great worldly pomp of many of the
high though meritorious and virtuous dignitaries of that time,
communities of men, animated by the sincerest piety, and the most
austere spirit of humility and self-denial, should have arisen to make
themselves all in all to the people, and set the example of perfect
evangelical poverty; or to devote their undivided zeal to popular
instruction and the office of preaching. Men of real sanctity, and the
most humble piety, and gifted with wonderful powers, entered on this
new path of religious zeal; and many amongst them, with a truly
high-minded freedom, reprehended the abuses and the moral corruption
then existing in church and state, and among all orders of society.
They met with contradiction and opposition, and even at an early
period incurred much blame; but here we must be careful to
distinguish human infirmity and partial degeneracy from the holy
origin of those establishments--from that spark of divine inspiration
which called these, and all other ecclesiastical institutes, into
existence. And thus that tide of popular opposition to the church,
which had received its first impulse from the secular power, and the
contests of the Ghibelline Emperors, rolled on with an ever increasing
force, swell, and violence. Scarce had the Waldenses disappeared, when
a religious sect still more numerous, the Albigenses--broke out in the
South of France, and not content with displaying the usual popular
opposition to the riches and real abuses of the church, broached many
errors and doctrines of the Eastern sects, which during the Crusades
may have found their way into that country. For this reason it was
thought justifiable to proclaim against them a formal Crusade, and, by
a most atrocious war of extermination, wherein the remedy appears no
less reprehensible than the evil itself, princes put down this popular
sect, which they regarded as rebellious not only against the church,
but the state itself.
Wickliffe in England was the first single bold Reformer that appeared,
and he was succeeded soon afterwards by an Innovator, whose enterprise
was attended with far more important consequences--John Huss in
Bohemia. Their writings, abounding not only in the wonted condemnation
of real abuses, but in many fanciful doctrines, unfounded assertions,
and germs of heresy, their cause as well as the general state of
affairs, and the problem of the age, became more complicated and
perilous.
John Huss was summoned before the council of Constance, which had
terminated so successfully the schism in the Papacy; but there,
without any regard to the imperial safe-conduct which he had received,
he was condemned, and delivered over to capital punishment. As one
injustice, one act of bloody severity, is sure to bring on another, a
few years afterwards the Senators of Prague were precipitated from a
window. This was the signal for a general rising of the people; Ziska,
at the head of his infuriated troops, ravaged Bohemia, burst into the
neighbouring provinces of Germany, and, with a Hussite army of seventy
thousand men spread terror every where on his march. This insurrection
was indeed suppressed, but Europe grew every day more and more ripe
for a Revolution.
A new and pressing danger, which had been long foreseen, now
threatened Europe from an opposite quarter. The Turks, who for almost
a century had been in possession of the Northern provinces of the
Byzantine Empire, became now masters of Constantinople, and the old
church of St. Sophia was converted into a Mosque. That portion of
Europe which stood in most immediate danger,--Germany, Austria,
Hungary and Poland--was now compelled to make, for the space of more
than two centuries, resistance to the progress of the Turkish power
the object of its most assiduous attention; and this was a
circumstance which tended to impede the emperors in all their other
enterprises, to divert their efforts, and consume their best energies,
and so far, in the then existing embarrassments in church and state,
exerted a very fatal influence on the whole system of European
society.
The immediate effects of the siege and fall of Constantinople were
highly favourable to literature and science in the last half of the
fifteenth century; when the Greek fugitives, by the rich and long-lost
treasures of classical knowledge which they brought, created a new and
brilliant era in letters and science; in Italy in the first instance,
then in Germany (at that time so closely connected with Italy), and
lastly in the rest of Europe. The knowledge of their classical tongue
and ancient literature had never been totally extinguished among the
Greek scholars and ecclesiastics; but in their hands this knowledge
remained a mere dead treasure, which was only afterwards turned to
profitable account, and to the service of society, by the more active
spirit of the Europeans.
The better of the late Byzantine Emperors, particularly some of the
Palæologi, had cultivated the sciences, and, by their love and
encouragement of learning, had given a new life to literature. Even in
the period immediately preceding the fall and conquest of
Constantinople, many Greeks had taken refuge in Italy, particularly
during the various attempts made to bring about the re-union of the
Greek with the Roman church;--attempts, however, which with the
exception of a small number of individuals who went over to the
Catholic church, were not attended with any general success. In Italy
the Greek fugitives established schools for their own language and
literature, and founded libraries; and if in the time of Petrarch few
Italians could be named that were conversant with that language and
literature, (and among these zealous promoters of Greek learning,
Boccaccio must be included with himself,) Florence now under the
Medici, the first Cosmo, and Lorenzo the Great, became a flourishing
seminary of Grecian letters and erudition; and at Rome also, the house
of Cardinal Bessarion was a true Platonic academy of science. Even the
study of the ancient Roman writers received a new stimulus, and was
prosecuted with a more classical taste and spirit. Courtly literati,
and Latin poets formed on the old classical models--political writers
in the Latin tongue, which was still the language of diplomacy--statesmen
and politicians of the greatest influence, trained up in the school of
Greek and Roman history and politics--and polite dilettanti of Pagan
antiquity,--all now gave the tone to this new and second epoch in the
intellectual culture of Europe. But the ruling spirit and tone of the
age proceeded mainly from the revival of the ancient literature and
learning of the Greeks. Natural philosophy, whatever extension it may
have received from the improvements in astronomy, and a more
comprehensive knowledge of the globe obtained by the discovery of the
New World, had not yet been wrought into a scientific form, capable of
exerting, as it did afterwards, an effective influence on the European
mind, or of giving it a new direction. In this period of the
restoration of science, some individuals, like Picus Mirandola, and
above all, the German Reuchlin, followed a Platonic track in search of
a more profound philosophy; or, like Bessarion, Marsilius Ficinus and
others, illustrated and diffused the philosophy of Plato. But these
were partial exceptions, and these first attempts were not always
faultless. Yet it must ever be a matter of regret that the beginning
then made towards a better and more profound philosophy should have
been left unfinished. To this the old scholastic philosophy was then a
powerful obstacle, and the spirit of anarchy, which the religious
contests of the following age called into existence, struck at the
root of all lofty speculation; and even in the flourishing age of the
Medici, it was the æsthetic part of ancient literature, and the
political application of classical knowledge, which formed the main
and almost exclusive object of pursuit.
Thus this regeneration, as it was called, was very imperfect and
incomplete; and, in a general sense, was really not such;--even in
science itself, the advantages which mankind had obtained, and which
they were so eager to display, were more like a passing blossom, than
a sound and vigorous root. Many of those classical spirits were more
conversant and more at home in ancient Rome and Athens, in the
manners, history, politics of antiquity, or even in its mythology
(then investigated with peculiar fondness and enthusiasm), than in
their own age, in the existing relations of society, or in the
doctrines and principles of Christianity.
The prevailing character of this new epoch of intellectual
cultivation, which succeeded to the scholastico-romantic period of
European art and science, was by those modes of thinking and those
modes of life, which, with more or less modification and variety, it
diffused over all the European countries; at the best a very partial
enthusiasm for Pagan antiquity, not merely in the department of art,
but in the whole compass of literature, nay even in history, politics,
and morals also. If we compare with the fearful commotions of the
following age this classical enthusiasm, often so ill suited to the
existing relations of society; its influence on the world will appear
like an enchanting draught, which intoxicated for a while the European
nations, drew them after objects totally foreign, made them forget
themselves in an illusive consciousness of their intellectual
refinement, and lulling them into a false security, blinded them to
their own corruption, and the greatness of the impending danger--the
yawning abyss on whose verge they then stood.
END OF LECTURE XIV.
LECTURE XV.
General observations on the Philosophy of History.--On the
corrupt state of society in the fifteenth century.--Origin of
Protestantism, and character of the times of the Reformation.
The Philosophy of History--that is to say, the right comprehension of
its wonderful course, the solution and illustration of its mighty
problems, and of the complex enigmas of humanity, and its destiny in
the lapse of ages--is not to be found in isolated events, or detached
historical facts, but in the principles of social progress. Historical
particulars can only serve to characterize the inward motives, the
prevailing opinions, the decisive moments, the critical points in the
progress of human society; and thus place more vividly before our eyes
the peculiar character of every age--each step of mankind in
intellectual refinement and moral improvement. To this end, historical
details are indispensable; for the ruling principles of social
developement are of a more exalted kind, and not mere organic laws of
nature, from which as in physiology, when the first principle of the
disorder is well understood, we can accurately deduce and partly at
least determine beforehand, the nature of the different phenomena and
symptoms, the rule of health, the diagnostic of the disease, as well
as the method of cure, the approach of the crisis, and its natural
declension, without being obliged to go through the labyrinth of all
the different cases that may have ever existed. Again, it is not in
the history of man, as in natural history, where the structure of the
various plants and animals forms by close analogy one connected system
of species and genera; and where the growth, bloom, decay and
extinction of individuals follow in an uniform order, like day and
night, or like the change of the seasons. But in the sphere of human
freedom; as man is a natural creature, but a natural creature endowed
with free-will, that is to say, with the faculty of moral
determination between the good or heavenly impulse, and the wicked or
hostile principle; all these organic laws of nature form only the
physical basis of his progress and history. And hardly do they form
this--but rather a mere disposition of which the direction depends on
man, or on the use he makes of his own freedom. It is only when that
higher principle of man's free-will has been weakened, debased,
obscured, extinguished, and utterly confounded, that those laws of
nature can hold good in history. Then indeed the symptoms of a
diseased age, the organic vices of a nation, the prognostics of a
general crisis of the world may be determined to a certain extent with
the precision of medical science. Though the general feelings of
mankind clearly declare the soul to be endowed with the faculty of
free-will; yet to reason, this freedom is an almost inextricable
enigma, the solution of which must be furnished by faith. Or rather
this is a mystery, of which the key and explanation must be sought for
in God and his Revelation; and the same will apply to every higher
principle, that transcends nature, and nature's laws.
Along with the principle of man's free-will which rises above
necessity, that law of nature--there is another higher and divine
principle in the historical progress of nations; and this is the
visible guidance of an all-loving and all-ruling Providence displayed
in the course of history, and the march of human destiny, whether in
things great or small. But the power of evil is something more than a
mere power of nature, and in comparison with this, it is a power of a
higher and more spiritual kind. It is that power whose influence is
not only felt in the sensual inclinations of nature, but which under
the mask of a false liberty, unceasingly labours to rob man of his
true freedom. Thus Providence is not a mere vague notion, a formula of
belief, or a feeling of virtuous anticipation--a mere pious
conjecture--but it is the real, effective, historical, redeeming power
of God, which restores to man, and the whole human race their lost
freedom, and with it the effectual power of good. The problem of human
existence consists in this, that man in the great stage of history, as
in the little details of private life, has to choose and determine
between a true heavenly freedom, ever faithful and steadfast to God,
and the false, rebellious freedom of a will separated from God. The
mere licence of passion or of sensual appetite is no liberty, but a
stern bondage under the yoke of nature. But as that false and criminal
freedom is spiritual, so it is superior to nature; and it is strictly
conformable to truth, to regard him as the first author of this false
liberty, whom revelation represents as the mightiest, the most potent,
and the most intellectual egotist among all created beings either in
the visible or invisible world.
Without this freedom of choice innate in man or imparted to him,--this
faculty of determining between the divine impulse and the suggestions
of the spirit of evil, there would be no history, and without a faith
in such a principle, there could be no Philosophy of History. If
free-will were a mere psychological illusion; if consequently man were
incapable of sentiment or deliberate action; if all in life were
predetermined by necessity, and subject, like nature, to a blind,
immutable destiny; in that case, what we call history, or the
description of mankind, would merely constitute a branch of natural
science. But such notions are utterly repugnant to the general belief
and the most intimate feelings of mankind, according to which, it is
precisely the conflict between the good or divine principle on the one
hand, and the evil or adverse principle on the other, which forms the
purport of human life and human history, from the beginning to the end
of time. Without the idea of a God-head regulating the course of human
destiny, of an all-ruling Providence, and the saving and redeeming
power of God; the history of the world would be a labyrinth without an
outlet--a confused pile of ages buried upon ages--a mighty tragedy
without a right beginning, or a proper ending; and this melancholy and
tragical impression is produced on our minds by several of the great
ancient historians, particularly the profoundest of them
all,--Tacitus, who towards the close of antiquity, glances so dark a
retrospect upon the past.
But the greatest historical mystery--the deepest and most complicated
enigma of the world, is the permission of evil on the part of God,
which can find its explanation and solution only in the unfettered
freedom of man, in the destination of the latter for a state of
struggle, exposed to the influences of two contending powers, and
which commences with the first earthly mission of Adam. This is
nothing else but the real and entire exercise,--the divinely ordained
trial of the faculty of freedom, imparted to the firstling of the new
creation,--the image of God, in the conflict and the victory over
temptation, and all hostile spirits. That man only who recognizes the
permission of God given to evil in its at first inconceivably wide
extent--the whole magnitude of the power permitted to the wicked
principle, according to the inscrutable decrees of God, from the curse
of Cain--and the sign of that curse--its unimpeded transmission
through all the labyrinths of error, and truth grossly disfigured--through
all the false religions of Heathenism,--all the ages of extreme moral
corruption, and eternally repeated, and ever increasing crime, down to
the period when the anti-christian principle--the spirit of evil shall
usurp entire dominion of the world; when mankind sufficiently
prepared, shall be summoned to the last decisive trial--the last great
conflict with the enemy in all the fulness of his power:--that man
only we say, is capable of understanding the great phenomena of
universal history in their often strange and dark complexity, as far
at least as human eye can penetrate into those hidden and mysterious
ways of Providence. But he who regards every thing in humanity, and
the progress of humanity, in a mere natural or rationalist point of
view, and will explain everything by such views; who though perhaps
not without a certain instinctive feeling of an all-ruling
Providence--a certain pious deference for its secret ways and high
designs, yet is devoid of a full knowledge of, and deep insight into,
the conduct of Providence--he to whom the power of evil is not clear,
evident, and fully intelligible; he will ever rest on the surface of
events and historical facts, and satisfied with the outward appearance
of things, neither comprehend the meaning of the whole, nor understand
the import of any part. But the matter of greatest moment is to watch
the Spirit of God, revealing itself in history, enlightening and
directing the judgments of men, saving and conducting mankind, and
even here below admonishing, judging and chastising nations and
generations; to watch this Spirit in its progress through all ages,
and discern the fiery marks and traces of its footsteps. This
three-fold law of the world--these three mighty principles in the
historical progress of mankind--the hidden ways of a Providence
delivering and emancipating the human race--next the free-will of man,
doomed to a decisive choice in the struggle of life, and every action
and sentiment springing from that freedom--lastly the power permitted
by God to the evil principle, cannot be deduced as things absolutely
necessary, like the phenomena of nature, or the laws of human reason.
Such a general deduction would by no means answer the object intended;
but it is in the characteristic marks of particular events and
historical facts, that the visible traces of invisible power and
design, or of high and hidden wisdom must be sought for. And hence the
Philosophy of History is not a theory standing apart and separated
from history--but its results must be drawn out of the multitude of
historical facts--from the faithful records of ages, and must spring
up, as it were, of themselves, from bare observation. And here an
unprejudiced mind will discern the motive, and also, the justification
of the course we have pursued; for in the Philosophy of History, we
have not to do with any system--any series of abstract notions,
positions, and conclusions, as in the construction of a mere
theory--but with the general principles only of historical
investigation and historical judgment.
In the multitude, however, of historical phenomena, all things,
especially in times of great party-conflicts, are of a mixed nature,
where in the selection of characteristic traits, we should rather
avoid than seek for any rude and violent contrasts. For while on the
one hand, in any great historical contest, we are bound to recognize
the full justice of the true cause, yet on the other, we shall often
find some flaw--some stain--some weak point connected with that
cause--not inherent in the cause itself, but chargeable solely on
human infirmity. Or when we must condemn the Revolution of any period,
as pernicious in its general relations, and reprehensible in itself,
we shall often see some motive lie concealed in its origin--in its
first proceedings, which taken in itself, and abstractedly of
subsequent errors, and the false consequences thence deduced,
comprises some important indications of right--some lofty aspirations
after truth. Every general assertion must be restricted by exceptions,
and qualified by various modifications; and as in historical events,
so in historical narration and speculation, nothing is so hurtful and
unprofitable as an absolute mode of reflection, enquiry, and decision.
This remark we may apply by anticipation to the whole period of latter
ages, and as inculcating the necessity of that conciliatory spirit,
which true philosophy cannot fail of adopting for its rule. It is only
when we have gone very deeply into the varied and complex nature of
the circumstances of any age, and examined in their manifold bearings
those historical phenomena which attend or produce the critical
turning-points, the decisive eras of history, that we can clearly
discover the spiritual elements--the great ideas which lie at the
bottom of a mighty revolution in society. In every other abstract
science, an exception from the rule appears a contradiction--but in
the science of history, every real exception serves but the better to
make us comprehend and judge the rest.
Such an exception I have now to point out in reference to my remarks
on the intellectual progress of Europe, in those two epochs of its
mental cultivation, one of which I designated as the scholastico-romantic
era, the other as the era of enthusiasm for the Pagan antique; the
former being inadequate to the wants of that age, as well as of
posterity, and the other secretly destructive of the old Christian
order of things. But on the whole, from the tone prevalent in either
period, I do not know I could have otherwise characterized the spirit
peculiar to those two epochs. Yet even in those periods, and in the
sphere of philosophic and religious meditation, the spirit of
Christianity showed itself independent of, and superior to the temper
of the times; and between these opposite eras, we meet with works
displaying a clear and beautiful simplicity of expression, united with
the utmost purity and depth of ascetic feelings. Among several others,
I need only cite the German Thomas a Kempis, whose most celebrated
work has become a manual of devotion for all the European nations,
while those who know the philosophic spirit which reigns in his other
writings, can well recognize in this the same clear masterly mind,
which throwing off the abstruse forms of the school, pours itself
forth in a most lovely simplicity of diction.
I may be permitted to cite this glorious exception of a mind, that
amid the degenerate science of that age, rose into the pure atmosphere
of Christian philosophy, inasmuch as it serves to throw a light on the
general spirit of the times. Had that mild light of moral truth and
divine charity not been then so rare an exception; had that spirit of
Christian morality been somewhat more widely diffused; the violent
commotions in the following generation would not have occurred; for
they would have had no motive, nor object, nor any possible source of
existence. But in direct opposition to that pious Fleming, there was a
great Italian writer, who gave the tone to the moral and political
opinions of his age, and exerted the mightiest influence on his times,
both as a moralist and as a politician. I allude to Machiavelli, who
may serve as a proof, that the maxims and principles of Pagan
antiquity, with which the scholars of that age were imbued, were not
confined to the departments of art and of imagination, or of mere
erudition, but had a very powerful influence on politics: and however
much one may attempt to excuse, or explain away the design of one of
his works,[7] still all his other political writings clearly and
evidently shew that he was actuated by no other maxims of state-policy
than the old Roman and Pagan principle, of grasping, inexorable, and
selfish cunning. This writer announced only with greater clearness and
precision what were already the prevailing principles of his times,
and was thus the means of bringing those principles to fulness and
maturity.
When the Christian bond of union between the European states and
nations had been so completely dissevered, policy, together with all
moral principle, became for the most part Pagan, came to consider all
means as lawful for its ends, respected not the sacredness of any
institution, and was guided in all its projects by selfishness,
cupidity, or ambition. Animated with this spirit, and guided by these
views, Lewis XI. consolidated the absolute authority of the crown in
the interior of his dominions, with the same inflexible perseverance
of character, and the same consummate political art, which in his
endeavours to maintain his power against the Duke of Burgundy and
other neighbours, characterized his foreign policy. In Ferdinand the
Catholic, King of Spain, who permanently united the two kingdoms of
Arragon and Castile, put an end to the Arab dominion by the conquest
of Granada, and came into possession of the golden mines of America;
the arbitrary principles of policy and of government, which were then
so generally prevalent, are particularly perceptible. The barbarous
persecution, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, was certainly
prejudicial to the welfare of the country, was in itself an act of
reprehensible severity, and was, above all, a dangerous precedent for
the further extension and application of the same oppressive policy
towards the Arabian population (still very numerous in many provinces
of Spain), and towards the peaceable descendants of the old Mahomedan
conquerors. From the contests carried on in Spain itself, with the
Mahomedans for the space of eight centuries, a religious war almost
entered into the system of national policy. The wisdom of a great and
lenient monarch, like Charles the Fifth, might indeed mitigate the
evils of the times, and as long as he lived, and as far as
circumstances permitted, might oppose a check to the torrent of the
new opinions in Germany. But with all his pacific endeavours he was
unable either to prevent the rupture and separation of a part of
Germany, or to stop the progress of arbitrary principles of
government, which under his successor on the Spanish throne, became
perfectly irresistible. The intermixture of political and
ecclesiastical affairs and institutions existed more or less
everywhere, and in truth had a deep historical foundation in the
peculiar circumstances of place; and unless we deeply investigate all
the particulars of those local circumstances, and accurately
discriminate their several peculiarities, it would be difficult, and
indeed rash to pronounce a general opinion respecting them--as so
sweeping a judgment would give a false and erroneous turn to a censure
apparently well-founded, and often just in itself. The Inquisition in
Spain for instance, was from the very peculiar character which it took
in that country, far more a political than an ecclesiastical
institute. If the secular power had been guilty of arbitrary and
violent encroachments on ecclesiastical jurisdiction, ecclesiastical
power in its turn had from the spirit of the times become in many
respects too secular.
When the Popes had returned to Rome from the captivity of Avignon,
experience taught them how necessary to their dignity and
independence was the possession of a sovereign principality, which
however inconsiderable, should be at least free from foreign controul.
Nay, since the German Empire had become really extinct, or existed
only in name, it was the interest of the secular powers themselves,
that the political authority of the Pope within the ecclesiastical
states should rest on a firm and secure foundation, and should thus
afford them a guarantee that the sovereign Pontiff would not again be
in a state of exclusive dependance on any one of the different
powers--divided as they now all were in interests, and animated by
mutual jealousy. Without taking into account the personal scandals of
Alexander VI., the mode in which some Popes, especially of the Borgia
family, sought to consolidate their power within the ecclesiastical
territory, must have appeared very revolting in the spiritual heads of
Christendom. And although Julius II. possessed many great and princely
qualities; still an injurious impression must have been produced on
the public and popular mind, when the chief ecclesiastic, and a prince
of peace girded on the sword, and put on the martial cuirass. The name
of the Medicean Pope, Leo X., is one celebrated in the history of art
and science, and serves to denote its most brilliant era; he possessed
perhaps all the qualities most calculated to shed lustre round the
throne of a secular monarch; but he was not the Pontiff to discern
the fearful dangers and urgent necessities of the church in that age,
to avert those dangers by his foresight, or to surmount them by
conciliation.
A succession of such Pontiffs immediately prior to the breaking out of
the Reformation, is of no slight historical importance. It would
really appear as if the church were destined, by the losses it
experienced, to learn the greatness of the danger to which its too
worldly policy exposed it, and to be brought back by misfortune to its
true, proper, and essential destination. Indeed at that time, the
materials of political combustion were by no means wanting in Italy.
Even in the absence of the Popes, a political fanatic, Rienzi, had
excited a Revolution for the purpose of restoring the ancient
Republic; and the internal feuds and civil wars of Florence were the
effects of factions, almost inseparable from a state constituted like
the Florentine Republic. In the last period of civil disorder, shortly
after Lorenzo's death, a religious fanatic, the Dominican
Savanarola--appeared at the head of a political Revolution; and his
revolutionary principles were strangely mixed up with his religious
tenets. Here evidently is a fact not undeserving of attention, if we
would wish to form a right estimate of the state and circumstances of
that age--it is that the very origin of this new species of fanaticism
or heresy, and not its ulterior progress (as in the case of the
Hussites,) was marked and accompanied by political commotions, and
crimes against the state.
When that bond of religious unity--that high fellowship of Christian
feeling which had united the various states of Christendom, was in a
great measure dissolved, the different powers of Europe (as is usually
the case among neighbouring independent nations, when directed by
separate views of policy) the different powers of Europe engaged in a
system of alliances subject to various fluctuations, but all formed on
the principle of a mere dynamical equilibrium--just as if government
and social power, even under the influence of Christianity, were
nought but a mere material weight--a mere lever of physical force.
Ever since the expedition of Charles VIII. into Italy had provoked
resistance, and occasioned a re-action, the dominion of that country,
for which Spain and France contended with all their might, was a
peculiar subject of jealousy between those states, and gave rise to
many wars. The other powers that took an active part in this game of
political alliances--this system of the balance of power,--were
Venice, the Emperor Maximilian, and the Pope. How very much an active
participation in affairs of so worldly a nature was unbefitting the
last-named potentate, I need not stop to observe. That conduct gave
occasion afterwards to a great public scandal. For instance, when the
Pope had formed an alliance with the King of France against Charles V.;
and to resent this, the Emperor's German army (among whom were a
great many entertaining the opinions of Luther), had proceeded to the
conquest of Rome; this was a fresh and mighty source of scandal at
that momentous epoch. Nay, the great dissatisfaction of the Emperor
with the conduct of some Popes (though this referred merely to their
political acts), when coupled with his conciliatory conduct towards
the German Protestants, induced many to question the sincerity of his
attachment to the Catholic faith. However false and unfounded such a
surmise might be, still all things contributed to foster the belief,
and on all sides there was a concurrence of circumstances to lead the
public mind more and more astray.
The good and high-minded Emperor, Maximilian, who had meditated, and
might have accomplished many other noble projects and important
enterprises, was compelled to labour during his whole life, though in
vain, to discover in the total absence of all physical resources, some
counterpoise to the power of France, and some barrier and security
against the encroachments of Turkish ambition. But when fortune had
placed on the head of Charles V. the united crowns of Spain and
Burgundy, the necessity of choosing an Emperor, who like those of
earlier ages, might be capable of coping with all the dangers of the
times, was universally felt; and this feeling led to the election of
Charles. But for this choice, the system of European states would
have fallen to pieces, and Christendom become a prey as well to
foreign conquest as to internal anarchy. The mind of Charles was
entirely occupied with the old idea of an universal Christian Empire,
and a religious feeling was at the bottom of all his political schemes
and enterprises. But whatever might be the extent of the countries
over which he reigned, and whatever the apparent greatness of his
power, yet amid the various designs he had to prosecute, and in the
struggle he had to maintain against the combined array of so many
hostile elements, he felt the want of those real resources which are
to be found in a compact and well-united monarchy. To the Spanish
crown he imparted great splendour, and even in Italy remained the
master; but he met with very imperfect success in his efforts against
Mohammedan power--a power from whose oppressions, and still further
encroachments, it was the first duty of the Emperor, as the armed
Protector of Christendom, to defend the European states. His
conciliatory policy towards the German Protestants did not attain its
object, for amid the general ferment of the age, the torrent of
religious opinions bore down all before it. His wish to re-establish
order in church and state by means of a general council, and thereby
to consolidate anew the old foundations of faith, was fully
accomplished only after his death.
In all that regards the origin and first breaking out of the
Reformation, I wish to premise that all controversy on points of
dogma, all controversy on the merits or demerits of individuals, the
worthiness or unworthiness of persons, does not enter into the plan of
this work. My object is particularly to describe the various manner in
which the religious revolution commenced in the three or four
countries over which it exerted the most remarkable influence; as well
as the dissimilar form which it finally assumed in each of those
countries. I wish particularly to trace the influence of the
reformation on the progress of Christian states, and on European
literature and science; two things which constitute the main subject
of the last chapters of this Philosophy of History. But we must notice
briefly, and as far as is necessary to the elucidation of the subject,
the point of connection existing between persons and doctrines, and
the historical event which alone is the subject of our enquiries. In
the first place, it is evident of itself, that a man who accomplished
so mighty a Revolution in the human mind, and in his age, could have
been endowed with no common powers of intellect, and no ordinary
strength of character. Even his writings display an astonishing
boldness and energy of thought and language, united with a spirit of
impetuous, passionate, and convulsive enthusiasm. The latter qualities
are not indeed very compatible with a prudent, enlightened, and
dispassionate judgment. The opinion as to the use which was made of
those high powers of genius must of course vary with the religious
principles of each individual; but the extent of those intellectual
endowments themselves, and the strength and perseverance of character
with which they were united, must be universally admitted. Many who
did not adhere afterwards to the new opinions, still thought at the
commencement of the Reformation, that Luther was the real man for his
age, who had received a high vocation to accomplish the great work of
regeneration, the strong necessity of which was then universally felt;
for no well-thinking man then dreamed of a subversion of the ancient
faith. If at this great distance of time, we pick out of the writings
of this individual, many very harsh expressions, nay particular words,
which are not only coarse, but absolutely gross, nothing of any moment
can be proved or determined by such selections. Indeed the age in
general, not only in Germany, but in other very highly civilized
countries, was characterized by a certain coarseness in manners and
language, and by a total absence of all excessive polish and
over-refinement of character. But this coarseness would have been
productive of no very destructive effects; for intelligent men well
knew that the wounds of old abuses lay deep, and were ulcerated in
their very roots; and no one was therefore shocked if the knife,
destined to amputate abuses, cut somewhat deep. Luther acquired, too,
the respect of princes, even of those opposed to him. Thus when
shortly after the commencement of the Reformation, a general
insurrection of peasants broke out, which renewed all the excesses of
the Hussites; Luther so far from exciting the rebels, like some of the
new Gospellers, opposed them with all the powers of his commanding
eloquence, and all the weight of his high authority; for he was by no
means in politics an advocate for democracy, like Zuinglius and
Calvin, but he asserted the absolute power of princes, though he made
his advocacy subservient to his own religious views and projects. It
was by such conduct, and the influence which he thereby acquired, as
well as by the sanction of the civil power, that the Reformation was
promoted and consolidated. Without this, Protestantism would have sunk
into the lawless anarchy which marked the proceedings of the Hussites,
and to which the war of the peasants rapidly tended; and it would
inevitably have been suppressed, like all the earlier popular
commotions--for under the latter form, Protestantism may be said to
have sprung up several centuries before. And besides, none of the
other heads and leaders of the new religious party had the power, or
were in a situation to uphold the Protestant religion--its present
existence is solely and entirely the work and the deed of one man,
unique in his way, and who holds unquestionably a conspicuous place in
the history of the world. Much was staked on the soul of that man, and
this was in every respect a mighty and critical moment in the annals
of mankind, and the march of time. The real problem for the age would
have been to terminate this unhappy confusion of doctrines, that is to
say, that disorder and not unfrequent confusion in the relations of
the ecclesiastical and civil powers, (occasioned by the general state
of things in Europe, and by the circumstances which first promoted the
political and intellectual civilization of the West)--in a word, to
compose the old dispute between church and state, and bring it to a
just Christian settlement by a peaceful and amicable arrangement. Then
the many existing, though scattered, rays of true Christian piety,
humility, and self-denial, as well as the new discoveries in science
would have acquired a more intense and more extended power--an event
which was now entirely prevented by a great civil war between two
religious parties, and was not brought to a full accomplishment till a
much later period. But the total rejection of the traditions of the
past (and here was the capital vice and error of this Revolution),
rendered the evil incurable, and even for Biblical learning and
philology now so highly valued, the true key of interpretation, which
sacred tradition alone can furnish, was irretrievably lost, as the
sequel has but too well proved. And even if this were not the case,
how could mere learned institutes of Biblical philology, united with
popular schools of morality, constitute the spirit and essence of a
religion? This is no where so fully understood, and so deeply felt,
as in Protestant Germany at the present day--Germany, where lies the
root of Protestantism, its mighty centre, its all-ruling spirit, its
vital power, and its life-blood--Germany, where to supply the want of
the true spirit of religion, a remedy is sought sometimes in the
external forms of liturgy,[8] sometimes in the pompous apparatus of
Biblical philology and research, destitute of the true key of
interpretation[9]; sometimes in the empty philosophy of Rationalism,
and sometimes in the mazes of a mere interior Pietism.
Undoubtedly even within the pale of Catholicism, we meet occasionally
with individuals who adopt the same, or at least very similar systems,
who either give in to the principle of Rationalism, or to a false
theological illuminism (as in the recent period of Neology), or like
some of the Jansenists, indulge in the unsafe and illusive suggestions
of a sentimental mysticism. For the contests of two hostile parties
will not always prevent the imitation of defects, and the contagion of
errors; and this is only an additional reason, why in a work of this
kind, we should abstain from entering more closely and minutely into
the nature of these controversies. In contemplating the first steps of
this great Revolution; in considering the circumstances of that
period, we experience a feeling of regret, that the great problem of
that age, the arduous task which devolved on it, of accomplishing an
universal regeneration and real Reformation of the world, should have
remained unexecuted, from the very revolutionary turn which affairs
took--nay, that this task should not even have been understood or felt
by any of the leading characters of the time. The earlier disputes
between the spiritual and temporal powers had related to the dominion
over certain territories, or over Ecclesiastical property in general,
and especially to the jurisdiction of the state over the latter
species of property. The allurements which the confiscation of church
property held out to cupidity, must be ranked among the main causes
which contributed to the diffusion of Protestantism. Thus, for
instance, Prussia, the country of the Teutonic order, was now
converted into a secular dutchy; and in the interior of Germany, a
celebrated knight,[10] led away by the spirit of that age of feud,
invaded one of the Ecclesiastical electorates, thinking no doubt, that
that state, like every other Ecclesiastical domain, was the lawful
booty of the first comer. But independently of these partial changes
and minor transactions, (and in many Protestant countries, such as
England and Sweden, church property remained inviolate, and even
Episcopacy was retained,) the hostility of the German Reformers to the
church was of a different and more spiritual nature; and it was the
religious dignity of the priesthood which was more especially the
object of their destructive efforts. And this is the point, where
doctrinal controversy enters within the province of history; for the
priesthood stands or falls with faith in the sacred mysteries. The
rejection of these mysteries, by one half of the Protestant body in
Switzerland, France, England, and the Netherlands, Luther not only
discountenanced, but strenuously reprobated; yet it was only by a
subtle distinction he attempted to separate those mysteries from the
functions of the priesthood; and it was not difficult to foresee that
together with faith in the sacred mysteries, respect for the clergy
must sooner or later be destroyed, as indeed experience has
sufficiently demonstrated. For that great mystery of religion, on
which the whole dignity of the Christian priesthood depends, forms the
simple, but very deep internal keystone of all Christian doctrines;
and thus the rejection, or even the infringement of this dogma, shakes
the foundations of religion, and leads to its total overthrow. The
pacific conferences of learned and well-meaning men of both parties,
though often renewed, were not attended with real and ultimate success;
although sometimes, in looking at the language of such a man as the
mild Melancthon, we are almost perplexed to discover the few points
which do not coincide with the old Catholic doctrines--so nearly akin,
and almost identical do the two religious systems appear, when we
merely consider their separate parts. Equally fruitless were all those
honest attempts at pacification, incessantly made by the Emperor
Charles, who sought by his interim to create delay, while he indulged
a secret hope, that the agitated waves of anarchy,--all that mighty
tempest of opinion, would be allayed by time, and would finally be
stilled. But that interim has been of longer duration than was at
first calculated, and it still awaits the judgment of God for its
great day of termination.
When we consider Luther's original powers of mind, independently of
the use and employment which he made of those extraordinary powers,
(for even the greatest comet, though it should cover half the heavens
with the splendour of its light, can never possess, or be supposed to
possess, the sun's genial warmth;)--when I say, we consider the
intellectual endowments of this extraordinary man solely in
themselves; the boldness of his speculations and the vigour of his
eloquence will be found to form an epoch, not only (as is universally
acknowledged) in the history of the German language, but in the
progress of European science and European culture. After the first
period in the intellectual history of Europe, which I denominated the
scholastico-romantic epoch, and after the second, which I termed the
epoch of enthusiasm for Pagan Antiquity, and in which a Christian
simplicity of eloquence and a depth of scientific enquiry appear as
only happy and occasional exceptions; a third epoch now arose, which
from the general spirit of the age, and the tone of the writings,
which exerted a commanding influence over the times, cannot be
otherwise designated than as the era of a polemico-barbarous
eloquence. This rude polemic spirit which had its origin in the
Reformation, and in that concussion of faith, and consequently of all
thought and all science which Protestantism occasioned, continued,
down to the end of the seventeenth century, to prevail in the
controversial writings and philosophic speculations both of Germany
and England. This spirit was not incompatible with a sort of deep
mystical sensibility, and a certain original boldness of thought and
expression, such, for instance, as Luther's writings display; yet we
cannot at all regard in a favourable light the general spirit of that
intellectual epoch, or consider it as one by any means adapted to the
intellectual exigencies of that age. But with respect to the language
and literature of Germany, so far as these are of general interest, I
should wish to make one observation. Besides Thomas à Kempis, whom I
have already mentioned, I might cite several other religious writers
of the fifteenth century and even of an earlier period, who though
less known, were distinguished by a similar spirit, partly among those
who made use of the Latin language, then universally current, and
partly among those who, like Taulerus, for example, made the German
the vehicle of their thoughts. And indeed were we to compare the
gentle simplicity, the charming clearness of thought and expression
which reign in the works of these writers, with the productions of the
following age of barbarous polemic strife, we should then be furnished
with the best criterion for duly appreciating the earlier and the
later period.
With respect to those institutes of the church, which had early
devoted themselves to the task of the propagation of the gospel, or of
the defence and support of religion, and made this spiritual conflict
and holy engagement the business of their lives; it now happened, as
it had often occurred before, that the proper defenders of the church
arose at that moment, and adopted that course and mode of defence
which the circumstances of the church precisely required. The powerful
prelates of the old Episcopal sees, who had rendered such high and
imperishable services to the cause of European civilization, though
they might not be unfaithful to the original spirit of their calling,
and might be no strangers to science, were, however, much too
dependant on government, and mixed up in affairs of state. The more
popular and mendicant orders, from their very nature and character,
and their peculiar habits of life and modes of speech, were not always
calculated to exert due influence on government and the upper classes
of society, while their ardent zeal, unmindful of times and
circumstances, often transgressed the bounds of moderation. The great
want of the age was a religious order, which established in opposition
to Protestantism, should not be dependant on the state, but devoted
exclusively to the interests of the church; a religious order, which
well equipped with modern learning, science and accomplishment,
possessing a knowledge of the world, acquainted with the spirit of the
times, and pursuing the course which expediency dictated, with
prudence and circumspection, should undertake the defence of the
Catholic religion, and the propagation of the gospel in foreign
countries, and worthily and successfully prosecute this twofold
object. Such an order was the society of the Jesuits in its first
institution; and that among the founders and first members of this
order, there were men of undoubted piety and eminent sanctity, men
animated by the sublimest principles of Christian self-denial,
possessed of great intellectual endowments, and favoured by God with
high preternatural powers, no unprejudiced historical enquirer will
deny. Whether the reproaches which have been made to many members of
this order, of having exerted an undue political influence, and
displayed a spirit of intrigue and ambition in the history of this
period, be well-founded or not, I shall not stop to enquire; because
such charges at best can affect individuals only, and not the society,
whose very name indeed has become in our times the watch-word of party
strife and contention. The severest condemnation of the Jesuits
proceeds from a quarter where we clearly discern the most implacable
hostility to Christianity and to all religion; and this circumstance
ought to furnish the Jesuits with an additional claim to our good
opinion; but any judgment on the merits of this society, as this is a
question which more immediately regards the present age, is quite
foreign to the purpose of the present work. If some members of the
order adopted at this period those absolute maxims and principles of
policy and government, which in general characterized that age; and if
the writings of others were distinguished by that rude polemic tone
and spirit spoken of above, and which was equally characteristic of
those times; it would be unjust to lay to the charge of the order, or
even of particular members, failings and defects which were common to
the age, and a perfect exemption from which is the most rare of human
excellencies.
A violent insurrection can be put down only by forcible means; but
every system of terror, of whatsoever nature, is sure to provoke,
sooner or later, a re-action equally terrible. And if the dangerous
disease be checked by means merely external, and no healing remedy be
applied to the root and principle of the disorder, nor used to
renovate the impaired organs of life--if the fire be smothered in its
own flames--it will lie concealed beneath the ashes, and will burn in
secret, till the first casual and unlucky spark shall kindle it anew
into a fiercer blaze. Such, in my opinion, are the plain and obvious
principles which the historian should bear in mind, while passing in
review periods of revolution like the one under consideration;
principles, which even now are susceptible of no very remote
application.
In that first period of ferment which marked the birth of the
reformation, the revolt of the peasants had been put down with amazing
promptitude and vigour. It was but ten years later, when in the north
of Germany, a new insurrection broke out, which from its religious
complexion, seemed still more revolting, whose adherents sought to
establish on earth the invisible empire of God by fire and sword, and
whose new spiritual monarch, John of Leyden, made his triumphant entry
into Munster, amid many and dreadful excesses; till at last this
savage fanaticism was crushed, and (as invariably happens in similar
cases), met with a bloody end.
But the most singular phenomenon at this momentous epoch was Henry
VIII. of England: a prince who while he adhered to the Catholic
doctrines, and zealously asserted them against Luther, yet severed
his kingdom from the church, declared himself its spiritual head, and
by that monstrous and unchristian combination of the two powers,
appeared in the midst of Christendom, like the Caliph of England.
When, too, we take into consideration the private life of this Prince,
his endless series of divorces, and the execution of his Queens; his
conduct was a greater scandal to his contemporaries, and fixes a
deeper stain on the history of his age, than any other earlier example
in Italy, or elsewhere, several of which have been already mentioned.
The executions on account of religion which took place under Henry,
and which, as he was opposed to both Catholics and Protestants,
affected the two parties alike, were of a peculiarly odious and
blood-thirsty character. On this subject I wish to make one
observation. From the connection which then subsisted between church
and state, a case might easily arise, where a religious error would
become a political crime. When an insurrection originating in a
religious cause, breaks out and threatens the peace of society, like
the religious war of the Hussites, and the revolt of the German
peasants, no other resource remains but to put down force by force.
But when the first violence has subsided, another and a better and a
truly moral remedy should, if possible, be applied to the evil; and
this remedy was not always administered in a right, benign, and truly
Christian form. Strange and fanciful have been, in all times and
places, the offsprings of human error. Thus even in the most modern
times, and in a peaceful and civilized country, examples still occur,
where religious errors lead their unhappy dupes to violent attempts on
their own lives, or the lives of others; and a wise legislation and
humane judicature should rather treat these errors as mental diseases,
than judge them according to the rigid letter of criminal law. How
much more should not this be the case, when religious error is
confined to the sphere of speculation, and is not attended with any
practical consequences. It is often perhaps not easy to draw the line
of demarcation between measures of wise precaution against the
assaults of a dangerous fanaticism, and unchristian modes of
punishment. But certainly the criminal process of Ecclesiastical
tribunals at that period, was not only opposed to the spirit of
Christianity, but at utter variance with the express and ancient
canons of the church, and urgent admonitions of the Fathers, that the
church should strenuously avoid the shedding of blood. Men sought to
evade this wise and beautiful law, by abandoning all executions to the
secular arm; but except in the punishment of actual crimes, and in the
necessary defence against open insurrection, we must admit that the
spirit of this law was grievously violated. A vindictive criminal
jurisprudence, which was then dictated by the mutual rage of
contending parties, and which was made still more revolting to
Christian feelings by the religious colouring it assumed, remains a
stigma on that age; for it was the work not of one, but of both
religious parties, or to speak more properly, of members of both
parties. The commencement, indeed, of this great disorder--of this
great departure from the law of love--is to be found in the middle
age, during the strife of exasperated factions; but how small are
those beginnings when compared with the excesses of subsequent times.
When we hear the middle age called barbarous, we should remember that
that epithet applies with far greater force to the truly barbarous era
of the Reformation, and of the religious wars which that event
produced, and which continued down to the period when a sort of moral
and political pacification was re-established, apparently at least, in
society and in the human mind.
[7] The Prince.
[8] Schlegel here alludes to the Ordinances promulgated
a few years ago by the King of Prussia, for the reform
of the Protestant Liturgy.
[9] The author here refers to that mania for Biblical
criticism, long prevalent in Protestant Germany, and
which however it may inform our reason, and gratify a
laudable curiosity, is in itself no guide to the
knowledge of religious truth.--_Trans._
[10] Schlegel here alludes to Prince Albert of
Brandenburgh.
END OF LECTURE XV.
LECTURE XVI.
Further developement and extension of Protestantism, in the
period of the religious wars, and subsequently thereto.--On
the different results of those wars in the principal European
countries.
The true Reformation, loudly demanded in the fifteenth century as the
most urgent want of the times, not only by the capricious voice of the
multitude, but by the first and most legitimate organs of opinion in
church and state, and the nature of which had been long before clearly
stated, and fully and generally understood,--ought to have been a
divine Reformation. Then would it have carried with it its own high
sanction--it would have proved it by the fact--and at no time and
under no condition would it have severed itself from the sacred centre
and venerable basis of Christian tradition, in order, reckless of all
legitimate decisions, preceding as well as actual, to perpetuate
discord, and seek in negation itself a new and peculiar basis for the
edifice of schismatic opinion. Such a vast, extensive, deep, and
effectual Reform, which while it kept within the limits of ancient
faith, and steadily adhered to its divine centre, would at the same
time renovate and revivify the church, was not then accomplished. The
disciplinary canons of the council of Trent undoubtedly contained many
wise, excellent and wholesome regulations, whose efficacy has been
proved by the experience of the different Catholic countries, and
whose reception has been determined by the local circumstances of
each; for these regulations intended for the correction and removal of
abuses, and for the revival of ancient discipline, were not adopted
without modification, nor received to a like extent in all Catholic
countries. On the other hand, with respect to the Protestants, the
decrees of the council of Trent, from the very nature of things, could
be only of a defensive character. Instead of the desired Reformation,
Protestantism early enough announced itself as a new and peculiar
religion, and still more was it constituted as such; but the rupture
was already consummated--the evil had become incurable, before the
remedy was applied. Protestantism was the work of man; and it appears
in no other light even in the history which its own disciples have
drawn of its origin. The Partisans of the Reformation proclaimed
indeed at the outset, that if it were more than a human work, it would
endure, and that its duration would serve as a proof of its divine
origin. But surely no one will consider this an adequate proof, when
he reflects that the great Mohammedan heresy, which more than any
other destroys and obliterates the divine image stamped on the human
soul, has stood its ground for full twelve hundred years; though this
religion, if it proceed from no worse source, is at best a human work.
But even as the mere work of man, the Reformation was unquestionably a
mighty, extraordinary, and momentous revolution, which when once it
had been outwardly established in the world, (though inwardly it
remained in a state of perpetual agitation,) has thenceforward mostly
directed the march of modern times, influenced the legislation and
policy of the European states, and stamped the character of modern
science, down to our own days, when though its influence has not been
so exclusive and undivided, as at an earlier period, it has been still
the main and stirring cause of all the great political changes, and
all the new and astonishing events of our age. We must endeavour to
view this great Revolution with the impartial eye of the historian,
and labour duly to comprehend and judge it in all its manifold
bearings, and in all its remote consequences; and if we should feel
inclined to lament and deplore the long continuance of this unhappy
division in the great European family, we should remember that such a
feeling of regret, however innocent and natural in our own bosoms, and
in our own conviction, can furnish no adequate criterion for an
historical decision. At any rate, we should in no case immoderately
repine at such an event, and murmur against Destiny, that is to say,
the ruling Providence which permits the occurrence of such evils. The
permission by God of a mere human, unsanctioned enterprise, nay, of a
mighty, general, protracted, and incurable division among mankind--a
system of opposition with all its unhappy consequences, its moral
impediments, and its political disasters; such a permission forms, as
I have already observed, the great enigma of history--the wonderful
secret of the divine decrees in the conduct of mankind, as well as in
the conduct of individuals. Perhaps this great enigma will then only
be perfectly unravelled, and the mystery which hangs over this
subject, then only be perfectly dispelled, when this mighty Revolution
shall have been terminated, and brought to a close. Even now, the
experience we have acquired, however imperfect and limited it may be,
makes one thing evident; namely, that the influence of Protestantism
has not been confined to those states and countries where it became
predominant, and where it received a public and legal establishment.
Far greater was the danger, far more fatal were the consequences, when
an open rupture, a formal separation from the church did not take
place, or had, if a temporary, at least no permanent existence--but
where Protestantism, that is to say, the spirit of Protestantism, a
like or a kindred set of opinions, was infused into the moral system
of countries externally Catholic, and secretly instilled into the
veins of the body politic, gradually corroded its vitals; till at
last, amid a false and apparent repose, the long suppressed element of
revolutionary innovation infected with its deadly virus, opinion,
science, and lastly, government and society. The conscience in its
enquiries after religious truth, to whatever decision it may come,
only looks to the determination of a point of faith as the sole clue
of its investigations. But in historical enquiries, this rigid
intersecting line of faith forms no adequate rule of judgment. The
experience of our own times, or that of the last generation has
proved, that innovations in faith, politics and philosophy ingrafted
on a Catholic nation, are far more fatal to its repose, and that of
its neighbours, than a system of Protestantism which has settled into
a state of permanent peace and stability. Hence for instance, the
policy and political interests of England, which is a state more than
any other essentially Protestant, have often been in perfect
accordance with the political system of an old leading Catholic power.
And I would ask, has the Atheism of the eighteenth century been
productive of fewer commotions and less convulsion in the world, than
Protestantism in the first period of its existence, or in the era of
religious wars; although the infidel party in the last century by no
means constituted a distinct and separate sect, but was like a deadly
contagion of the spirit of the times, infecting all beside and around,
above and below it, whithersoever the wind of chance, or the breath of
fanatic zeal might carry it.
According to my own personal conviction, the theological point of view
is to be preferred in historical enquiries as the best and final rule
of investigation. But in these latter times, when religious opinion is
so divided, and where the juridical view of things, in which each
party struggles to make out a favourable case for itself, leads only
to endless disputes; the historian is compelled to view the diseased
state of society with the eye of a pathologist. In medicine it is
considered far better and more advantageous, that a dangerous disease
should be got rid of in a decisive but happily terminated struggle for
life or death, than that by any sudden check given to the crisis, the
disorder should fall on any internal part, and thus attack and corrode
the vital powers. This principle, which the history of particular
countries has shewn to be equally applicable to man's moral existence,
may be applied to the general state of Europe at that period. If
Protestantism had then been outwardly suppressed and put down, would
it not have raged inwardly, that is to say, would not the most
essential part of Protestantism, the spirit of Revolutionary
innovation, the spirit of destructive negation, rationalism, in a
word, have secretly remained? And may we not conclude from the
examples of a partial experience, that that secret and inward working
of the disease would have been far more dangerous and fatal?--I should
wish that these and other like expressions before made use of, should
not be taken as so many categorical assertions; for the question of
doctrine, lying as it does beyond the reach of doubt, does not fall
within the limits of my plan, and the perfect reconciliation of minds
is not in the power of man, but can come only from God. But these
expressions are merely meant to convey a conciliatory view of things
in history, (and, as is the proper duty of the philosophic historian,)
to vindicate the ways of providence. Undoubtedly this great religious
contest, this long protracted struggle has tended to excite the
emulation of both parties in the pursuits of learning, and the labours
of science, to stir up a mutual vigilance in the moral conduct of
individuals, as well as in the administration of states, and thus to
keep both parties in a state of salutary watchfulness and activity.
Even from the collision of these two conflicting elements, there has
sprung up in some countries a new and third element, which though not
such as could be desired, nor entirely conformable to Christianity,
has still been productive of important and remarkable consequences. Of
the eight or nine countries, in which Protestantism has obtained a
firm footing, and acquired a permanent existence, there are three in
particular, where it has been attended with mighty historical
effects, and where the originally destructive conflict of hostile
elements has given birth to three new and momentous phenomena in the
history of mankind. These are, in Germany the religious pacification,
which forms the basis of her future prosperity, stamps the peculiar
character of the German nation, and designates its future moral
destiny: in England, the highly valued, or as it is there called, the
glorious Constitution of 1688, whose mere outward form, or dead
letter, has been an object of desire to so many other nations:--lastly
in France, the Revolution in philosophy, produced by the indirect
influence of Protestantism, and the combination of so many Protestant,
or semi-protestant elements, and which gave birth to a frightful
political Revolution, which after a short intervenient period of
military despotism, has been succeeded in its turn by a mighty epoch
of moral and social regeneration--a regeneration which indeed has not
yet been consummated, which is still in a state of precarious and
convulsive labour, but is even on that account the more entitled to
the historian's attention.
Of the countries immediately contiguous to Germany, the home and
cradle of Protestantism, Switzerland was at the commencement of the
Reformation, the theatre of a fierce civil war, in which the Swiss
Reformer fell fighting on the field of battle. But the strong federal
spirit of the Swiss, the necessity of mutual defence, and the nearly
equal numbers and strength of both religious parties, produced at an
early period a religious pacification. The indirect Protestant
influence which French Switzerland has exerted over France, has
continued very great and powerful from Calvin to Rousseau. After the
German treaty of Westphalia, the Austrian Emperors established in
Hungary, which was already half subdued by the Turks, and still more
exposed to their ravages, the principle of religious toleration--a
principle that became a received maxim of state, and was incorporated
into the very constitution of the country. In the last half of the
sixteenth century, there penetrated into Poland the sect of Socinus,
which professed tenets distinct from those of the primitive Reformers,
and which with the usually rapid march of religious innovation, and
schismatic dissent, had now rejected along with the great Mystery of
devotion, the fundamental article of Christian theology, the doctrine
of the Trinity. As long as the Socinians formed a distinct and
separate body of religionists, they were not very numerous in Poland,
or elsewhere; but during the prevailing infidelity of the eighteenth
century, they acquired many more disciples, and in many countries have
become almost the predominant sect.--How Prussia, the land of the
Teutonic order was transformed into a secular duchy, which for about a
century remained connected with Poland, I have already had occasion to
observe. Into no country of Europe was Christianity introduced so
late as into Lithuania, where the faith was planted only towards the
end of the fourteenth century. In the ancient Russian provinces of
Poland, as well as in Hungary and other neighbouring countries, a
large portion of the population belonged to the Greek church. In the
great struggle of the following age, and in the perpetual wars which
Poland had to sustain against Turkey, Sweden and Russia, all these
hostile and heterogeneous elements of which I have spoken, and to
which may be added the real or apparent attachment of the religious
Dissenters to Sweden, increased the general ferment and confusion in
the Polish state, down to the final dissolution and dismemberment of
the kingdom. Russia, which towards the end of the fifteenth century
had been restored to a high degree of power and splendour by Wassili
Ivanowitch, (who entertained the most friendly relations with the
Emperor Maximilian, and who had established in his Empire the German
Hanseatic league), Russia still remained totally separated from the
European community, and was exempt from the influence of
Protestantism, like Spain and Italy at the opposite extremity of
Europe. The Scandinavian countries at the commencement of the
fifteenth century, had been incorporated into one state, and
considered merely in a geographical point of view, they might have
formed a great and lasting power in the North; and under many
vicissitudes, they remained united till the sixteenth century. Yet
the voice and feelings of the two nations were against the Union; and
Gustavus Vasa effected at once the total and definitive separation of
Sweden from Denmark, the establishment of his own monarchical sway in
the former country, and the introduction of Protestantism, which was
brought into Sweden, not as in other countries, by the torrent of
popular opinion, but by the arm of power--by the authority of a
sovereign who knew how to conduct the enterprise with steady
perseverance, and slow, patient and consummate skill. In Sweden,
however, Episcopacy was retained. By its situation betwixt Prussia and
Poland, and by the Protestant influence in Germany, Sweden became for
a time in the seventeenth century a great European power; and to this
political eminence the personal qualities of Gustavus Adolphus, as
well as of several other Swedish monarchs principally contributed. In
Sweden, Protestantism did not give rise to any events of a new and
peculiar character, or of great historical moment, as in England and
Germany. The Reformation was established in Denmark, chiefly though
not exclusively as in Sweden, by sovereign power; in Iceland, its
establishment was almost the work of violence. In those still regions
of the North, the real abuses and scandals existing in the Catholic
church were neither so great nor numerous as in the Southern
countries. There was greater simplicity of manners; and corruption
was much less diffused, much less generally known than even in
Germany; and thus the ancient faith had struck deeper roots in the
minds of men, and could not be eradicated but with difficulty. To that
old Revolutionary spirit of the Swedes, which in their earlier history
had often displayed itself in the party-contests of their high
aristocracy, a wider field was now opened by the Reformation
introduced by the court; and armed in the Protestant cause, this
spirit found fuller scope in the troubles of Poland, in its connection
with Prussia and other states, and above all, in the great religious
war of Germany. When at a later period, and after the Swedish
ascendancy in Europe had passed away, this spirit became compressed
within narrower limits, and was thrown back upon itself, it then broke
out into many violent internal commotions.
It was only under the successor of the despotic Henry that
Protestantism was really introduced into England; but it there
appeared under two different forms, and with two parties in a state of
mutual and violent hostility. In England Episcopacy was retained; but
in Scotland, the Puritans, the Methodists of those days, had the
ascendant. But under Queen Mary, the wife of Philip II., King of
Spain, a Catholic re-action took place; and this again was succeeded
by a Protestant re-action under Elizabeth, whose steady and inflexible
policy alone consolidated the establishment of Protestantism--a policy
at whose shrine the head of the unhappy Mary Stuart fell a sacrifice.
Thus things proceeded from one extremity to another--from the
execution of King Charles I. to the establishment of a Republic, and
the absolute sway of a Protector--till amid the various disputes of
the Scotch and English Protestants, and the various struggles of
national rivalry, the court fell back upon Catholicism. At last, King
William from Holland, a century before the breaking out of the French
Revolution, gave the final triumph to Protestantism, and brought to
maturity the glorious constitution of that island, which has been so
repeatedly transplanted, imitated and modified on the Continent and in
other parts of the world. On this basis, a thorough Protestant policy
was established, which affected even the public and international law
of Europe--a policy which has so eminently characterized England in
modern times, particularly during the period of her great power, and
which was followed, or even accompanied by a Protestant philosophy. I
should premise that this Protestantism in philosophy should not by any
means be confounded with, but should carefully be distinguished from,
the Revolutionary philosophy--from an unbridled anarchy in science and
speculation, though the former in its corruption may easily degenerate
into the latter. For the modern Paganism--the avowed Atheism of the
eighteenth century acquired many more partisans and assumed a far
bolder attitude on the Continent, than in the Constitutional island,
which even in philosophy oscillates in a sort of artificial equipoise
between truth and error.
In the Netherlands, Protestantism was indeed a strong co-operative
cause, but not the only cause of the rupture with Spain; for even in
earlier times the Burgundian spirit had been prone to turbulence, and
the arbitrary rule of the Spaniards had excited in other countries
also general dissatisfaction, aversion, and resistance. When the
Protestant half of the Netherlands had separated from Spain, and had
established the sovereign and independent state of Holland, the latter
ever exerted a powerful influence on England in all religious and
political matters, in the same way as Belgium has ever exercised a
marked influence over France. But in Holland, Protestantism did not
give rise, as in Germany and England, to any events of a new and
peculiar character, if we except the general toleration of religious
sects, which was there carried to a further extent than in any other
state.
In her own interior, Spain had an arduous problem to solve--she had to
overcome the old energetic resistance of a whole people,--the
tolerably numerous descendants of the former lords and conquerors of
the country, who still adhered to the Arabian manners and language,
and even in part professed the doctrines of Mohammedanism. This
struggle, which commenced under Philip II. by very severe laws
against the Moriscoes, terminated under Philip the Third, with the
barbarous expulsion of the whole Moorish population to the coasts of
Africa. That from the intimate and manifold relations which existed
between Spain and Germany under Charles V., the armies of the Emperor
may have introduced into Spain the opinions of the new German
gospellers to a greater extent perhaps than can be now stated with
certainty, or than is now susceptible of minute and accurate proof, is
by no means improbable; and this fact would serve to explain, though
not entirely to justify many acts of the Spanish government. At any
rate, the Spanish mind and character, in other repects so generous and
upright, so little prone to selfish cunning or fickle frivolity,
became in the long strife and animosities of a fierce religious war,
more and more partial and exclusive, arbitrary and violent. There yet
lingered, however, many chivalrous virtues peculiar to this
high-minded nation--many extraordinary and lofty effusions of
religious genius, such as are displayed in the wonderful writings of
St. Theresa, whose holy meditations are couched in language of such
inimitable beauty. Among no other people did the spirit and character
of the middle age, in its most beautiful and dignified form, so long
continue and survive in manners, ways of thinking, intellectual
culture, and works of imagination and poetry, as among the Spaniards;
and it is not the mere effect of chance, but it is a very remarkable
and characteristic fact, that in Spain alone, the peculiar poetry of
the middle age attained to its utmost perfection, and reached its last
exquisite bloom.
In Italy, too, art and poetry flourished in her beautiful language;
and classical erudition made considerable progress, and even arrived
to a very advanced state, during that troubled period when the rest of
Europe was involved in religious disputes and civil wars. But the fair
and flourishing Italian literature of that age may be compared to a
blooming garden, situated on a volcanic soil. No immediate danger then
threatened Italy, though we are not to estimate private opinions by
the standard of those which publicly prevailed; there were at least no
public examples of that excessive partiality and passionate enthusiasm
for Pagan antiquity, which occurred in that earlier and brilliant
period of moral ferment and false security--the fifteenth century. On
the contrary, in some individual instances the real progress of
science was impeded, and on the whole its march retarded by a dread of
the danger of its abuse; and hence the old scholasticism remained
longer than was right in hereditary possession of its exclusive
empire, although that contentious and partly negative Rationalism of
the middle age was ill calculated to supply the place of a truly
Christian philosophy, which the circumstances of the church then so
imperiously demanded. It should then have been borne in mind, that
every new error--every new shape which the old Proteus may assume in
the changing spirit of time, requires, not indeed a new philosophy
(for philosophy itself, which is, as the ancients said, the science of
divine and human things, is in the sanctuary of its highest subjects
and problems an edifice unchangeable through all ages, and built on
the everlasting foundation of divine truth), but a new form and
direction given to philosophy, a new resuscitation of its powers.
Indeed the venerable Bishop and holy man of God, St. Charles Borromeo,
had in his Manual of Religion furnished an example, in which we see
the utmost profundity of ascetic science united with a beautiful
lucidness of expression, and the greatest simplicity and purity of
taste. But the regular philosophy of the schools remained for a long
time yet much too scholastic; and it was prejudicial, or at least
disadvantageous to the Catholic cause, that the first foundations of a
better philosophy, of one at least more faithful to its high vocation,
and of an enlarged and improved science, should have been laid by men,
like Bacon and Leibnitz, who belonged to the opposite party.
Protestantism had penetrated into France from French Switzerland, as
the very name of Hugonots indicates. The religious wars in France
broke out much later than in Germany; and the religious disputes in
that country had this distinctive character; that the Princes and
noble leaders of the Opposition, the factious among the high
aristocracy, and the contending parties at Court, made the Protestants
(who formed indeed only the minority among the people, and still more
in the state, but yet a very important and powerful minority), the
tools and instruments of their own political designs and intrigues. It
is this peculiar combination of circumstances which has stamped the
character of the French religious wars, and which distinguishes them
from those of Germany. The religious wars in the former country were
not of such long and uninterrupted duration, nor were they of so
destructive and desolating a character as the thirty years' war. On
the other hand, the treaties of religious pacification were of much
shorter duration, and were renewed even five or six times, for they
were ever followed by new insurrections. Even the edict of Nantes,
which was destined to terminate this long anarchy, did not prevent the
recurrence of troubles after the assassination of Henry IV., and was
itself totally repealed at a subsequent period. The various political
intrigues of discontented nobles, and of factious leaders of the
Opposition, gave a very hateful complexion to the religious wars in
France; and that disposition to vindictive retaliation, which swayed
parties in the various alternations of power, presented formidable,
and almost insurmountable obstacles to the establishment of a
permanent religious peace. That odious character in the religious wars
of France, appears in England under equally revolting colours in the
despotism of the eighth Henry, in the crafty policy of Elizabeth, in
the great anarchical and regicide rebellion, and in the tyranny of
Cromwell, and has been often and strongly pourtrayed by the national
historians. It is extremely worthy of remark, as the fact serves to
explain many posterior events in history, that the struggle in France
remained undecided, partook from first to last of an uncertain and
fluctuating character, and led neither to the establishment of a free
Constitution, as in England; nor to the foundation of a firm, lasting,
and irrevocable religious pacification, as in Germany. But this
struggle remained an unsolved problem of state-policy, like the
religious dispute itself--a dispute whose contagion infected the
Catholics themselves, inoculated that portion of the population, and
continued to rage among their descendants. In France, the Protestants
were in a decided minority, and it was by other and subordinate causes
that they acquired a temporary power and importance in the first
religious wars; but in England they probably became the majority at a
very early period, though not such an overwhelming majority as they
form at the present day.
The Catholic and Protestant parties then divided Germany into two
nearly equal portions, as in point of numbers they do at the present
day; and although political power does not depend on numbers,
particularly when, as was at that time the case, so many
heterogeneous elements were combined, yet both the contending parties
were sufficiently strong not to succumb easily in the contest. It is
this fact which ultimately established the necessity of a cordial and
permanent religious peace, and caused that necessity to be so
universally acknowledged. But this very equality of numbers, and still
more the active interference of almost all the great continental
powers in the contest, rendered it at first more obstinate and
lasting. Never was there a religious war, so widely extended and so
complicated in its operations, so protracted in duration, and
entailing misery on so many generations. That period of thirty years'
havoc, in which the early civilization, and the noblest energies of
Germany were destroyed, forms in history the great wall of separation
between the ancient Germany, which in the middle age was the most
powerful, flourishing, and wealthy country in Europe, and the new
Germany of recent and happier times, which is now gradually recovering
from her long exhaustion and general desolation, and rising again into
light and life from the sepulchral darkness--the night of death, to
which her ancient disputes had consigned her.
We can be little astonished at the origin of this war--indeed it is
almost a matter of surprise that hostilities did not break out sooner;
and the very fact that external warfare was so long suppressed, may
account for the violence and animosity of the first conflict. The
first religious peace was in reality a mere truce--another prolonged
interim which still left many debateable points, that with the most
honest intentions in both parties it was extremely difficult, and
almost impossible to settle by a peaceful and equitable adjustment.
Where so much combustible matter existed, the merest accident might
enkindle a conflagration. This first occurred in Bohemia, where the
old insurrection of the Hussites had been put down by force--(the only
way in which on its first outbreak, it could have been suppressed) but
where as it now appeared that no vital remedy had been applied to the
roots of the disorder, much diseased and inflammable matter yet
remained. Still the revolt of Bohemia was not the only cause or
subject of a war, which some historians have considered rather as a
complicated series of wars, partially varying in their object. The
whole country--the age itself seemed involved in warfare; and war
appeared as the permanent policy, the ruling spirit, the inveterate
habit, and natural necessity of mankind. As a masterly hand[11] has
seized and pourtrayed many events and incidents--many scenes and acts
of this great tragedy--the religious feelings, and steadfast and
inflexible character of the Emperor Ferdinand II.--the high military
glory and conquests of the Swedish monarch Gustavus Adolphus--and the
genius and disastrous fate of the General Wallenstein;--it is
unnecessary to dwell at any length on these great historical
recollections, though the subject is inexhaustible in itself. The
peace which was the fruit of a high and imperious necessity, is in the
point of view we here take, of far greater interest.
With respect to indemnities, the treaty of Westphalia did not differ
from any other treaty of general peace, in which lands and parcels of
land are to be allotted, and even secularized, but where the number of
claimants exceeds the portions of allotment. Considered, too, as a
treaty which restored, and fixed on a firm basis, the peace of the
German Empire, the treaty of Westphalia did not depend in this, as in
other respects, on the force of its own articles, but on the general
system of European policy--on the principle of the balance of power
which regulated that policy--a principle which then, and still more in
later times, this treaty has much contributed to diffuse and extend.
But it is as a solemn pact of religious peace, that I wish here
particularly to consider the treaty of Westphalia--as the final
conclusion of all religious wars (and in this respect it has never
been materially violated)--as a lasting covenant of religious freedom,
whose main principle continues deeply implanted in the German mind,
while the two other relations in which this treaty remained so
incomplete, have for the most part lost their practical interest.
When we contemplate, too, this treaty as a noble labour of equity--the
successful work of unwearied industry, it has no parallel among
preceding treaties of peace; and hence it has become the basis of the
international law of Europe, and the textbook of diplomatic science in
modern times even down to our own days. Hence its long, undisturbed
duration. The nations--the age itself blessed it as the termination of
their long calamities; but far greater has been its influence on
after-times. The religious peace which it established, has become in
modern times a national habitude--a second nature to the German
people; for here and no where else must we look for its high
historical destination. It may be said that this, like every other
peace where the question of right remains the subject of dispute, is
only a truce--another mere interim--but it is a sacred and eternal
truce--a divine interim--that is to say, an intermediate state of
peace to last till God shall pronounce his final and unfailing award.
Of little moment to the philosopher, who considers this religious
peace in its vast bearings on the past, the present, and the momentous
future, is the reflection of the Jurist how far, and under what
restrictions this treaty in the altered circumstances of recent times,
can be considered as really valid and politically binding. For more
than any other treaty, has this solemn pact of religious peace been
interwoven with life, and become a reality. And when we take a wide
survey of the world, and include the future in our prospective ken, we
may say, that now that most of the separate articles of this treaty
have lost their value, and are no longer susceptible of execution, the
general spirit and object--the high import of this religious peace are
much nearer their fulfilment than formerly, when the practical
application of this treaty to particular cases was solely considered.
For that outward, but lasting covenant of religious peace--that holy
truce and interim forms the prelude and introduction to another,
higher, far more comprehensive, spiritual and divine peace, for which
our age--the epoch of a mighty regeneration--is irrevocably destined.
For how can Christianity, that is to say, eternal truth itself, be for
ever torn by divisions? The solution of the great problem of the last
three hundred years is by no means complicated, if we understand it in
this sense, but extremely simple. For, if as it is the object of all
true and elevated philosophy to prove, faith and science are really
and essentially one, faith will be restored to its former unity, and
then the schism between faith and science will cease.
Even as regards the political relations of the present times, this
great, fundamental treaty of peace has become a new Christian basis of
international law; for the spirit of Christianity requires that where
absolute justice, which is rarely attainable, cannot be found, a
system of peaceable and equitable compromise should before all things
be preferred. And hence this treaty has, for all succeeding times,
stamped the pacific and conservative policy of the great German power
of Austria. In France and England, indeed, religious wars afterwards
occurred; but they were merely the last agitations--the after-pains of
that fearful period of convulsive labour. These commotions were soon
allayed; and the example and precedent of this great religious
pacification in Germany, highly and universally admired as it was,
caused the principle of religious toleration to be tacitly
acknowledged as one which religion and necessity alike prescribed for
the imitation of all Europe.
Among the last and most frightful consequences of the general
revolution in the church, was the calamitous execution of King Charles
the First, which for the sake of order, I have previously adverted to,
and which took place a year after the establishment of the great
religious peace in Germany, and was followed forty years afterwards by
the great national peace of England--the final settlement of the
British constitution. Among the lamentable events which occurred at
that period in France, was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the
last, and comparatively speaking, the most solid and durable of the
treaties of religious peace made in that country--a revocation which
can by no means astonish us, since this edict, destitute of all
internal and external guarantees, and which emanated solely from
absolute power, could not offer the same security, nor possess the
same durability, as the great, fundamental treaty of Westphalia. Yet
both in France and abroad, this measure, so appalling to the whole
European world, was, after so long an interval, extremely unexpected.
One of the effects of this measure was a cruel war of extermination
carried on in the mountains of the Cevennes against the Protestants,
who appear to have there derived a part of their tenets from some of
the earlier sects of the middle age. With respect to the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, considering it merely as an act of authority, and
independently of the blow which it gave to the establishment of a
permanent religious peace, we can only say that such an abuse of power
on the part of the majority, (and it is to the influence of a
preponderant majority this act was ascribed by public opinion,) such
an abuse of power was a very dangerous precedent in the native land of
all violent reactions; and thus in our days the emigration of the
French nobility has been the great historical counter-blow to the
banishment of the Hugonots.
This violent expulsion of the Protestants could not even accomplish
the immediate object of its authors; for the spirit of Protestantism
had struck much too deep roots in France; and the evil could not be
removed by mere physical force, and without the application of a moral
remedy. The Protestant influence of French Switzerland was not
destroyed, and indeed it became still more powerful in the sequel;
while a far deeper wound was inflicted on the Catholic cause in France
by the spread of Jansenistical principles from the Netherlands, which,
supported as those principles were by great literary talents, exerted
then a mighty influence over the French nation. The essence of
Jansenism was the Rationalism of Calvin, combined with feelings of
pietism, and covered over with a deep varnish of Catholicism. It was
not the small party of the Jansenists of Utrecht, excluded as they
were from the church, and completely separated from the two great
religious parties of Europe, that could injure the Catholic cause in
France; but it was that modified or disguised Jansenism which had
crept into the very bosom of the Gallican church, and there grew up in
secret, that was most to be feared. All these partial or disguised
influences of the spirit of Protestantism derived their full sanction
from the theory of a Gallican church, such as it was proclaimed by the
supreme authority in the state. In the Protestant constitution of
England, indeed, the principle of a National church, like the
Anglican, (however such a principle may be opposed to the very essence
and fundamental maxims of Christianity), is not inconsistent with the
origin and general doctrines of that church. But in the Catholic
church, where the principle of national dissent is not admissible to a
like extent, such a system is perfectly absurd, and carries with it
its own refutation. The older theory of a Germanic church cannot be
here adduced as an historical precedent; for that theory was started
with a view to regulate the external relations of the church, or to
fix with more precision the limits of the Papal and Imperial power,
but did not refer to matters of doctrine, or to the internal
discipline of the church. Yet with this system of a Germanic church,
in the period of the Ghibelline ascendancy, many errors were mixed
up--the first germs of the schism afterwards consummated. But this
disguised, half-schism of the Gallican church, not less fatal in its
historical effects than the open schism of the Greeks, has contributed
very materially towards the decline of religion in France, down to the
period of the Restoration. It was not only the dispute with Rome,
which Louis XIV. carried to such fearful extremes; but the alliances
he so frequently renewed with the Swedish conqueror, and with the
Turkish power (still so formidable to the whole of Christendom), which
must, as coming from a Catholic quarter, have given much scandal to
the age; and we must at least allow that the foreign policy of Lewis
XIV. was scarcely in any respect Christian, and that it prepared the
way for that relaxation of moral and religious principles which took
place in France under his feebler successors. Lewis XIV. undoubtedly
well knew how to strengthen his regal prerogative, and render it more
absolute, and in this work, like several of his predecessors, evinced
the most systematic art, and the greatest determination of character.
But all the great problems of that age--all the religious questions
which then divided the world, which forming as they did the highest
object of all practical reflection and conduct were then so warmly
agitated, could not be brought to a permanent, adequate, and generally
satisfactory solution by the capricious mandates of power, or the
partial adjudications of regal authority. And if in this establishment
of absolute power in the interior, no regard is paid to the lawful
rights either of Foreign nations, or of the people at home, what
security is there that such a system will or can endure?
The splendour of the then French literature is one of the main pillars
on which the glory of that reign and century depends--this literature
which attained so high a degree of perfection, contains however to
some extent the germs of that political scepticism, and those
religious errors, which led to the disasters of subsequent times. An
Æsthetic cristicism of pure art, falls not within the limits of the
plan I have traced out to myself, and I can notice subjects of this
nature only inasmuch as they serve to denote the character of
particular ages and nations. As in no country was the spirit of the
middle age--the scholastico-romantic character of the first period of
European cultivation, both in the tone of feeling and the mode of
expression so long preserved, nor raised to such a state of high
refinement and beautiful perfection, as in Spain; so we may say that
the peculiar characteristic of the French mind in the age of Lewis
XIV. consisted in a studious and minute avoidance of the two principal
defects in the intellectual productions of the middle age--the
scholastic vagueness and obscurity in works of speculation on the one
hand, and the fantastic wildness in works of imagination on the other.
That choice and exquisite taste which prevails in all those models of
secular and clerical, historical, poetical, and philosophic eloquence,
which that age produced in such abundance, originated in this species
of precision averse from all excess and obscurity. And it was by the
clearness and lightness it owed to this principle that the French
language became, in the eighteenth century, the universal model and
most convenient medium, not only of conversation, but of epistolary
communication, among the polite classes of all European nations. But
in a comprehensive survey of general literature, this standard of a
pleasing style must not be considered as universally applicable, or
higher than any other; and without wishing to compare objects totally
dissimilar in themselves, I may observe that although among all the
classical writers and orators of that age, Bossuet is the greatest in
point of style, and at the same time the most solid and intellectual,
yet the _naive_ loquacity and infantine simplicity which
distinguish the incorrect, old French diction of St. Francis of Sales,
are peculiarly graceful and attractive in themselves; while in the
depth and clearness of the ascetic spirit, the Saint far surpasses the
former writer more celebrated in the world.
In the regular philosophy of the schools, the Latin was mostly the
prevailing language during the seventeenth century. In this the system
of Descartes then formed an epoch; or at least obtained very general
credit. His fanciful vortices in nature, as well as his rigid
demonstration by reason, of that principle which is exalted above all
reason, comprise rather the first germ of the various errors in the
physics and metaphysics of the succeeding age, than a sound basis of
true science, and a Christian philosophy of the human mind. Spinoza
was the immediate disciple of Descartes, but it is in Germany alone
that his rationalist system of pantheism, expressed as it is in the
forms of mathematical demonstration, and embellished by a morality
pure and noble, (at least in appearance and in its general outline,)
has been justly appreciated in its true metaphysical import, and has
found philosophic critics and imitators. But in its negative bearings,
the philosophy of Spinoza, together with other writings by that
inquirer and others on and against revelation, had a very extensive
influence in those times; and that philosophy forms the notable point
of transition to the metaphysical speculations of our own age. Socinus
had directed his attacks against the great mystery in the existence of
the living God--the Christian dogma of the Trinity. In the system of
Spinoza, philosophic Protestantism, or the progressive spirit of
negation, advanced one step further; for he denied the personal
existence, or the living personality of God, and endeavoured to
substitute for the notion of the God-head the empty idea of the
Infinite.
On the other hand, the systems of Bacon and Leibnitz were two
different foundations laid in that age for a higher and a better
philosophy--systems which by a more extensive developement and
harmonious combination of their parts might have been moulded into a
frame of phylosophy thoroughly Christian. Almost all the scientific
labours of Leibnitz were directed to this point, namely, the
demonstration, confirmation, and exemplification of the truths of
Christianity, by the aid of science. The vast system of spiritualism,
exalted far above all ideas of nature, which was propounded, or rather
sketched out by Leibnitz, (with the exception of some peculiar
opinions and mere hypotheses,) agrees perfectly with that purer
Platonism which all the Christian writers and fathers of the first
ages inculcated. And the fundamental principles of such a philosophy,
if exposed in their native clearness and simplicity and without
adventitious alloy, are the same which in their general spirit are to
be clearly traced, or are tacitly implied in the sacred Scriptures,
whose lofty purposes, however, rise far above the narrow forms and
limited sphere of philosophic investigation. How well Leibnitz
understood and appreciated, and how far he subscribed to the truth of
the Catholic religion, has been brought to light in a singular manner
in our own days;[12] and if we except some oversights, very pardonable
under all circumstances, his philosophic sketch of the Catholic system
of theology, is in its masterly brevity one of the boldest and
happiest expositions of that religion, at least for the general
purposes of the world. The other great celebrated philosophical system
of modern times, was based in the principles of the philosophy of
experience--a system which has tended to enlarge almost immeasurably
the field of natural discoveries. As the founder of the philosophy of
experience--Bacon had conceived it, that philosophy, if we except some
particular defects and individual errors, is by no means at variance
with the Christian philosophy of Revelation; for the latter is in
itself a philosophy of experience, though of another, higher, and
spiritual kind. And it is the more necessary to keep this in view, as
otherwise the ordinary abyss of rationalism can scarcely be avoided.
The case is widely different when the principles of the empirical
philosophy, as in Locke and his followers, are directed against
everything exalted, supernatural and spiritual in man and his
consciousness. By this important distinction, Bacon is an European
philosopher, like Leibnitz; but Locke is a mere English philosopher;
as it was in England this Protestant philosophy sprang up and kept
pace with the Protestantism of state, engendered and nurtured by the
Constitution of 1688. However, in England, the Protestant philosophy,
true to its character, kept within the limits of a mitigated
scepticism, and did not plunge into the same wild, revolutionary
excesses as the French philosophy of the eighteenth century, that
started with the same principles.
The high intellectual cultivation of the English is by no means
confined to this negative philosophy, but is of a very peculiar
character, and like the British Constitution, combines in the most
singular manner the most heterogeneous elements. For although the
British Constitution is generally considered as the fashionable model
for our times, and in one respect may indeed be so considered; yet a
powerful aristocracy and many parts of the feudal constitution of the
middle age, are there established in a sort of harmony, or at least
permanent equipoise with the more modern elements of commerce and
democracy. The heroic spirit of chivalry, and the whole moral
character of the middle age were long paramount in England; and hence
in the poetry of no country, if we except the Spanish, is that spirit
so conspicuous. The struggles between the houses of York and Lancaster
during the fifteenth century, which in the rugged and almost savage
sternness of those heroic characters, bear no little resemblance to
the contests of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, form the heroic and
traditionary, though not very remote era of British history--an era
which witnessed, too, the high military glory that England acquired in
the many battles and chivalrous engagements fought on the French soil.
The great national poet of England, who has taken the subject of many
of his dramas from that glorious period of his country's annals,
maintains a sort of sceptical medium--a kind of poetical balance
between the romantic enthusiasm of elder times, and the clear-sighted
penetration of modern; and it is in this peculiar combination of
qualities, that the originality of his genius, his unfathomable depth
and high intellectual charm partly consist. As the Constitution of
England--that is, the balance of her social institutions--sprang out
of the old and mighty struggles which had convulsed that country; we
must not be surprised at finding in her higher poetry, which is only
the image and reflection of life, the same artificial union and
combination of the conflicting elements existing in her political
organization. A profound analysis of art, conducted exclusively with
this view, and towards which the German mind has a strong and perhaps
excessive inclination, would be foreign to my present plan. To point
out the traits of analogy existing between the productions of
intellect, and the ages and nations to which they severally belong,
may serve to throw a clearer and more vivid light on important periods
and momentous epochs of history; and it is with this view I have
indulged now, as formerly, in short parallels of this kind. Down to
the most recent times, this marked predilection for the romantic world
of the middle ages, and the chivalrous days, as well as the bold
genius of poets bursting through all vulgar trammels, have been the
distinctive character of English poetry, and have partly tended to
make it so great a favourite with all the nations of Europe.
On the other hand, the negative philosophy of the English remains true
to its character, in as far as carefully shunning all objects of a
higher nature, it has for the most part made it a principle to limit
its views entirely to man, without attempting to dive and penetrate
into the profound mysteries of the Deity, or into the internal secrets
of nature. To this a high philosophy will object, man is no isolated
being; but as he was originally placed by his Creator in nature, it is
only in that connexion with God and Nature, that the mysteries of his
inward being, and the history of his outward progress can be fully
understood and explained. In historical researches and narrations,
when these are confined to special subjects and particular eras, and
do not attempt the more comprehensive plan of the Philosophy of
History, that confined spirit of philosophic investigation which
limits its views exclusively to man, is not prejudicial; for on the
other hand, the flexible powers of poetical genius (unless their
activity be cramped by the sceptical influence of a Protestant
philosophy), keep the mind alive to all high and generous qualities,
characteristic peculiarities, and original greatness in men and
events. Hence that department of British literature which embraces
historic research and narrative, is peculiarly fertile, and has met
with a general and European success.
The Protestantism of state, which was brought to maturity by the
English Constitution, was during the eighteenth century, when England
held generally the foremost rank among the nations, extended and
applied in the system of the balance of power, to the whole Continent
of Europe. But the Protestantism of science which originated there,
formed together with the system of religious peace, the first
foundation of Illuminism; and denotes the whole period of its history
from the commencement of the eighteenth century down to the French
Revolution.
[11] The author here alludes to the history of the
Thirty years' war by Schiller.--_Trans._
[12] The author alludes to the Systema Theologicum of
Leibnitz, first published in Paris in the year 1819,
from the manuscript sent by the court of Prussia to
that of France. It was published by the Abbe Emery, who
accompanied the Latin original with a French
translation.--_Trans._
END OF LECTURE XVI.
LECTURE XVII.
Parallel between the religious peace of Germany and that of the
other countries of Europe.--The political system of the Balance
of Power, and the principle of false Illuminism prevalent in
the eighteenth century.
The great benefits of the religious peace of Germany, which founded
upon, and springing out of a great historical necessity, has struck
such deep roots in the public mind, and at last become a second nature
to the Germans, may be best appreciated by a comparison with the state
of religious liberty such as it now exists, or did recently exist
among other nations--and those in truth which are in every other
respect the most civilized of modern Europe. In Germany, indeed, the
strict and vigilant maintenance of that religious peace, on which her
whole political existence depends, and without which she would fall
into an anarchic struggle of parties; has received in recent times a
new confirmation; and this religious peace, which has been revived,
not indeed in its old forms, but in its general spirit and essential
import, has become only the more necessary, as by the recent
partitions of territories, a great intermixture of religions has been
introduced into states where formerly one religion only prevailed.
Thus in that state,[13] which was originally the greatest of all the
Protestant states of Germany, and is now even still more powerful than
formerly, a full half of the population is Catholic. Nearly to the
same extent, the same observation will apply, though inversely, to
that Catholic state[14] in Germany, which next to the Imperial state
itself, is the greatest. So strongly has this Magna Charta[15] of the
religious liberty of Germany, (which scarcely needs any external
securities, now that most of those securities no longer exist, or at
least have been very materially altered in the forms under which they
formerly existed in the Confederation and in the Imperial courts of
Judicature), so strongly, I say, has this Magna Charta taken root both
in the public mind and state-policy of Germany, that the principle of
religious freedom no longer depends on the degree of population, or
the relation of numbers. Thus, for example, in the German Catholic
provinces of the Austrian Empire, the Protestants, though compared
with the rest of the population they form so very small a minority,
have been long in possession of the most unlimited religious freedom;
and in the country[16] which was the very cradle of Protestantism, the
fact that the royal dynasty and a very small minority of the nation
profess the Catholic religion, has been no obstacle to the most
cordial, deep, and solid attachment on the part of the people to their
old hereditary rulers--an attachment which has been evinced in the
most unequivocal and affecting manner by all classes of the nation at
every period of misfortune. If now we look to the other great states
and civilized countries of Europe, which like Germany were involved
for a century and more in the turmoil of religious wars, and consider
what issue these wars have had, what results they have produced, we
shall find that in England civil war indeed no longer rages. But how
the relations between the Anglican church on the one hand, which force
alone maintains in its political privileges and ascendancy, and the
Protestant dissenters (who have a different character from those in
Germany, or elsewhere, and are distinguished by a very violent
sectarian spirit) and the Catholic population of Ireland, on the
other; how these relations, I say, can be said to exhibit a state of
religious peace, I am at a loss to understand; for at no very remote
period the latter country was the theatre of a bloody civil war. We
must at least allow that a solid and permanent internal peace, a
perfect conciliation of minds, and an equitable adjustment of the
respective rights and claims of both parties, have apparently not yet
been brought to a quiet and satisfactory issue. Nay, to judge from
those great parliamentary discussions in England, wherein not
unfrequently and from passages the most obscure, and the least
observed by the superficial eye, the most secret motives, the deepest
springs of policy, and the most hidden thoughts and disquietudes of
the statesman come to light in that wonderful stage of public life; it
would appear that great self-apprehension reigned in the minds of
English politicians;--a fear which is the more likely to arise on
every serious retrospect that people take of the old abyss of their
civil contests; for more than any other nation, they are conversant
with their own annals, and have them ever before their eyes, and live
in the past with all the intense feelings of the present. Hence every
individual among them knows full well that the fearful and fermenting
elements of their great old civil commotion have never been perfectly
appeased, and finally allayed, but have been merely repressed from
time to time, and prevented from breaking out anew by means of a
Constitution, which on that account is reputed _glorious_. And
must not every Englishman ask himself the peremptory question, how a
country can be, or be termed free, when its Catholic inhabitants,
amounting to a third part of its entire population, are doomed to
undergo indescribable tyranny, and are in fact treated like a
conquered nation?[17]
In France there prevails on matters of religion an indifference of
feeling, rather than any party contentions, or violent animosities, at
least among the greater part of the nation; and so long as the matter
is not mixed up with political considerations, this feeling of
indifference will bend to one opinion or to the other. Even in former
times the religious wars, though violent enough, were not of so long
and uninterrupted a duration and so widely destructive a nature, as in
Germany, and comparatively speaking at least, were not attended with
such frightful circumstances, as in England. But on the other hand,
they did not lead to those mighty, definite and permanent results,
such as in Germany, a religious pacification--and in England, the
establishment of a free Constitution. And in the revocation of the
edict of Nantes, accomplished in defiance of all antecedent promises,
stipulations and rights, the victory of the Catholic majority of the
nation, unjust in itself, was merely apparent and illusive, for all
the great problems of moral life remained unsolved, and the hostile
and fermenting elements of Protestantism or a species of
semi-protestantism retained their full force; till a hundred years
after this arbitrary proceeding, an immense and formidable reaction
occurred in the breaking out of the great Revolution. That grand
conflict of the European nations which sprang out of this Revolution,
and attended its whole course, must be looked upon in no other light
than as a religious war; for a formal separation not only from the
church, but from all Christianity--a total abolition of the Christian
religion was an object of this Revolution which lasted nine years,
before a sort of religious peace was established, by which it seemed
to be acknowledged, that religion, for a time at least, was not an
absolutely superfluous want of the people; for the attempt of
theophilanthropy, or the public and legal establishment of a pure
rationalist religion had no success. But as respected persons, this
peace was not of long duration, as was but too soon apparent in the
ill-treatment and imprisonment of the head of the church. The drama of
the old Ghibelline times was renewed, and Ghibelline principles and
maxims of policy were openly avowed. If the military success of the
French had been of longer continuance, these principles would have
made incomparably greater progress, and would have been more clearly
unfolded, as there was a secret inclination to a certain Mahometan
junction of civil and ecclesiastical power in the hands of the same
person. It could not, however, have escaped the keen perception of
Buonaparte, how much the feelings and opinions of Europe, (whatever
indifference it may manifest about religion, and however easily it
may give its sanction to encroachments on spiritual power, from want
of knowledge or of interest in those matters,) are ever adverse to a
complete and anti-christian fusion of secular and ecclesiastical
authority. That fanatic and destructive character which distinguished
the Revolutionary struggle in its origin, remained the same, though
somewhat modified in its form during the time of the Imperial
conquests; and the general resistance of the nations of Europe, down
to the final triumph of the Allies, retained to the last the character
of a religious war, carried on in defence of all that was most sacred
to humanity. Thus that great struggle must be considered as a
five-and-twenty years' religious war, or rather perhaps in its origin,
a war of irreligion, though it is not worth while to dispute about a
word. For this reason, in the country where this mighty Revolution had
its birth, the restoration of monarchy is inseparably connected with
that of religion; and it is by a religious regeneration, that the
statesmen of that kingdom, who are well-wishers to their country, and
have in view its permanent well-being, and not the idle and transient
splendour of military glory, should endeavour to secure the future
destinies of France.
This universal and convulsive crisis of the world in latter times, now
that it has happily and entirely passed by, has created a mighty
chasm, and thrown up a wall of separation between the present age and
the eighteenth century. Now that the conflict is over, and all the
illusions incident to that state of struggle have passed away, the
eighteenth century, which bore that great Revolution in its womb, and
at last brought it into life, can be judged with greater impartiality
and historic freedom, and better understood, and more duly appreciated
in all its comprehensive bearings. For during the existence of any
struggle, it is apparently given to few mortals to form respecting
passing events a judgment which can be truly termed historical; as in
general, a certain distance of time is requisite to the formation of
just and accurate opinions. In this last section of universal history,
it would be idle and superfluous to enter into a minute detail of
facts so generally known. It is on that account the more important for
the due illustration and philosophic investigation of a period so near
to us, briefly to point out amid the multitude of well-known facts,
the leading and determining causes of all the events which occurred.
The leading and stirring principles of all occurrences and enterprises
in the eighteenth century, as the history of that age abundantly
proves, may be traced on the one hand, to the system of the Balance of
Power in the internal government and outward relations of states; and
on the other, to the principle of illuminism in the department of
morals, though this principle was not confined to the sphere of mind,
but exerted a great practical influence on real life, and finally
brought about a total revolution in the state. Both these
principles--the system of the balance of power, which was the
protestantism of state--and the principle of illuminism, which from
its negative character, agreed in the main with the Protestantism of
philosophy, and was only a natural consequence of that philosophy,--had
their origin chiefly in England, and there first, or more than
elsewhere, reached their development. For from the commencement of the
eighteenth century down to the mighty Revolution which closed it,
England was the state that took the lead in every occurrence and
transaction, gave the tone to the age, and formed the strong central
lever to the system of the Balance of Power. The plan of such a system
had indeed been openly avowed several centuries before, and had been
acted upon as a principle in many political enterprises and
negotiations; but the then existing circumstances of the world, which
required and admitted of a far higher law of adjudication, confined
the operation of this principle within very narrow limits. Thus it was
a far higher principle of Christian equity, which constituted the
basis of the holy Roman Empire of Germany in the middle age; and it
was only when that empire had been weakened and undermined by various
shocks, external and internal, that the system of the Balance of Power
began towards the latter part of the fifteenth century, to exert a
commanding influence. Italy was in general the theatre and arena for
the workings of that policy; Spain, France, and Austria, next Venice,
the Pope, and Switzerland, the active agents in that changeful
struggle; and Naples and Lombardy the subject of dispute, and the
prize of contention. But when the progress and success of the Turkish
arms from without, and the formidable, growing and fermenting elements
of religious strife from within, had threatened Europe with total
ruin, or at least with the most formidable danger, the new, inferior
principle of policy was compelled to yield to the urgent necessities
of the times, and to old opinions not yet totally extinct. Men felt
the absolute want of an Emperor and general Protector of Christendom,
invested as in ancient times, with power really adequate to his
dignity; and this was the motive which led to the election of the
Emperor Charles V. The extent of his empire, however, made his power
appear greater than it was in reality. If a decided and formidable
preponderance of power existed any where, we must look for it on the
side of the Turks, whose triumphant arms brought them ever nearer
towards Europe, and whose progress Charles was little able to arrest.
France, situated as she was in the centre of Europe, had nothing to
apprehend from the Turks, while she was sufficiently strong and
powerful to disregard danger from any quarter. Her rivalry with Spain,
and her perpetual wars with the Emperor, were exceedingly injurious to
Europe, as they cramped and impeded all the operations of the emperor
in behalf of Christendom, and all his exertions for providing for its
external and internal security. But to no country were those wars more
hurtful than to France herself, which had need of all her energies for
the maintenance of internal tranquillity, in order by her undivided
activity, to be able to allay and settle the various elements of
religious strife, which afterwards broke out with such fearful
violence. At that period, and even during the seventeenth century, the
wars of Turkey were generally considered as religious wars, partly
from the dreadful consequences which ensued to the Christian religion
in the conquered countries, where if it were not entirely extirpated,
it was at least doomed to the severest oppression; and partly from the
fanatic and sanguinary character of those wars themselves. The
alliances which France during the religious wars of the seventeenth
century, and contrary to the interests of her own creed, entered into
with Sweden and Turkey, under pretence of maintaining the Balance of
Power, were more than anything else prejudicial to the Catholic cause,
inflicted a deep wound on Christian principles, and contributed much
to mislead the opinion of the age. The final result of this policy was
the establishment of a decided preponderance on the part of France,
towards the end of the seventeenth century--a preponderance which then
at least must be ascribed to Lewis XIV. only.
Now that the religious wars were terminated, this appeared the period
proper for the establishment of the system of the Balance of Power--a
system which must ever be called into action, when every higher
principle of international adjudication has ceased to be
applicable--and which, as it was the source whence had emanated the
whole moral and intellectual culture of the eighteenth century,
attained now a more systematic form, and held a more brilliant and
dignified place, than at any former period of history. England was the
strong, central prop of the great lever for the European Balance of
Power, while Austria, which in every age has been true to a pacific
system of policy, (although her moral existence depended on far higher
principles of religion), formed on the Continent the other main stay
to the system of the Balance of Power, now become the universal
principle of international policy. And this firm alliance between the
two powers was in general, the external basis of this system,
independently of the many fluctuations which were inherent to its very
nature. We must not however confound this principle of policy with a
conservative and pacific system, acting according to existing and
acknowledged rights; for although the former system be much akin to
the latter, and both may easily and naturally co-operate in a common
resistance to an overgrown power, regardless of all right; still they
are far from being one and the same; and differ widely in many
characteristic properties, nay in their very nature. The fundamental
law of the conservative and pacific policy is Right--not an abstract
notion and pure ideal of absolute justice, by which the international
policy of states is to be fashioned and regulated; but rather (if for
the sake of greater clearness I may be allowed the use of a
mathematical phrase) an applied right, that is to say, an existing and
acknowledged right. For if we seek the first origin and ultimate
foundation of all right and all justice, we must seek it in God alone,
who is the eternal arbiter of the world, of states and nations as well
as of individuals, and who well knows how to requite every great
political injustice on his appointed day of retribution, to visit it
with unexpected punishment, and to reduce it to its own nothingness by
an often fearful award. But so soon as man, or any earthly power
presumes to lay its hand upon this work--to propose to itself absolute
justice, to judge and regulate all things by that standard, and to
model the world in conformity to it--the consequence is a total
Revolution in all the relations of society--an entire subversion of
all existing order; and it is this false idea which is the principle
or the pretext of all those fanatic attempts at universal conquest,
and of every Revolution not directed to the attainment of specific
rights, but aiming at sweeping, unqualified and universal change. It
is only when in the general system of existing and positive
international rights, some occurrence has produced a chasm--some
interstice appears--some particular question remains, or becomes anew,
open and debateable ground--that a pacific policy acting on the
principle I have mentioned, can and will in such special cases, revert
to the original, pure and eternal justice of God. But in the material
system of the Balance of Power, right and wrong are not the ultimate
object, nor the sole criterion of political estimation, nor the sole
rule of political negociations; but the great object is the prevention
or removal of any ascendancy which endangers or even threatens danger
to the general interests of the powers. Both systems of policy may
very well concur in their effects, and in most cases really do concur,
for the establishment of political ascendancy is generally founded on
the violation of existing rights, or may easily lead thereto. But this
is not absolutely necessary; cases may easily be conceived where right
is clearly on the side of ascendant might, as was once the case in the
middle of the eighteenth century, and as happened in another way
towards the beginning of the same age, when the cause of justice was
espoused by preponderant power only. And in such cases, with a total
disregard to justice, this system of the material Balance of Power
will fling its weight into the opposing scale, in order to impede the
progress of overgrown dominion. In another respect, also, the
character and ordinary tendency of this system differ widely from that
pacific policy, which aims at the preservation of all existing and
acknowledged rights. In the latter system, it is only the actual
disturbance and real violation of the general peace of nations, which
can lead to the declaration of war. But on the contrary, in the former
system it is merely a formidable preponderance of power--a mere
possibility of its abuse--a dread of future danger, which is deemed a
sufficient motive for engaging in hostilities--a motive by which a
state, where this is the exclusive principle of policy, is
undoubtedly, as has often been objected to England, more easily and
more quickly determined, than any other: and such a motive may operate
the more easily in a country like England, where those inducements for
entering into war with more haste than is expedient or desirable, are
strengthened by the fact, that an insular and naval state,
concentrated within itself, can carry on hostilities with all the
advantages of peace, and with the wonted activity of trade. England
during the eighteenth century acquired the highest glory, and in
general made a very beneficial use of her great power, in contributing
to the general aid, security and freedom of Europe; and in what is
here said, it is by no means intended to cast a slur on, or to
undervalue the old and well-acquired power of Great Britain, as such a
censure would be futile in itself, and extremely misplaced here. But
for the right understanding of the peculiar political character and
tendencies of an age, like the eighteenth century, so near to our own
times, it is necessary to observe that the system of the Balance of
Power is either merely the substitute for a higher principle, where
the latter is no longer susceptible of application, or in those cases
where the latter hath really force, the system of the Balance of Power
must be considered a mere supplement--a subordinate auxiliary for the
settlement of incidental questions. But with the great Revolution
which closed the eighteenth century, there commenced an epoch of
intellectual as well as political barbarism and desolation, to which
the mere negative principle of an equilibrium of power, however it
might be adequate to the ordinary relations of civilized states, was
no longer applicable; for now a higher principle of moral and social
reparation was needed. In no department of human activity can the
positive power of evil be overcome by a mere negative principle of
resistance, but solely by a principle of a homogeneous, though loftier
nature--a divine power acting within the same circle. A mighty
religious war, which has shaken all moral existence to its centre, and
convulsed it in all its depths, can be completely terminated only by a
true religious peace. But such a peace depends on the moral force of
principle, and not on the exact measurement of any physical
equilibrium. As during the late frightful Revolution, the political
relations of every state have been changed, and the whole Balance of
Power in Europe been disturbed, no force can now easily alter or
replace what has thus been established. Of this, England herself may
afford us an example. Certainly that great country in Southern
Asia--the richest of all the countries in the world--and which Great
Britain has annexed to her sway, by means of a navy that gives her the
empire of the seas, and whose population five or six times exceeds
that of the ocean-queen, and equals in numbers the best half of
Europe; has brought an accession of strength to England, which can not
possibly be measured, judged, or condemned according to the old narrow
rules of the system of the Balance of Power; since so many vast and
important results have accrued, and in all probability will yet accrue
to Europe and India herself from this most singular, and in the
history of the world, quite unprecedented connection; and since in
other respects, not only the internal administration of Hindostan, but
the entire conduct of the English in those transactions, has been at
once so wise and glorious. As the shallow, superficial notion of
illuminism, which during the greater part of the eighteenth century
was considered the all-ruling principle and highest object of all
science and speculation, is no longer adequate to the present views of
philosophy; in like manner the system of the Balance of Power has
ceased to be any longer applicable to the state of Europe in the late
general warfare, or to that state of things which it has given rise
to; and it is not from this system we can expect the final settlement
and adjustment of things, and the solution of the Gordian knot--the
great enigma of the world in our times.
After the system of the Balance of Power, the next leading and
characteristic principle in the history of the eighteenth century, is
the notion of illuminism, which exercised on the internal civilization
of all European nations the same influence which the former system
exerted on their external relations. People are so accustomed to
confound the principle of enlightenment with the abuse and false
application made of it during the last century, that in order to
represent this great epoch in all its historical bearings, I shall
endeavour to shew that to an impartial judge and observer, it offers
many and diverse points for consideration. For we must remember that
there was a true enlightenment by the side of a false one, and that
enlightenment was not every where of a negative character, precipitate
in its progress, and destructive in its effects. In its first obscure
beginnings, it had a solid, irreproachable, and very beneficial
character and tendency. During the public calamities, and general
anarchy of the seventeenth century, the natural sciences in all their
various branches, made silent but very extraordinary progress; and
numberless were the advantages of these new discoveries to all the
useful arts and sciences, especially in those commercial and maritime
states where such knowledge was mostly needed. A bold, enterprising
genius,[18] heir to the most splendid throne in the North, had as an
apprentice and artisan appropriated on the spot all these advantages
of modern civilization, and turned them to full account in navigation,
in the various mechanic arts, in the foundation of cities, and in the
general civilization of his subjects; and thus he became the founder
of the present greatness of Russia;--a greatness which is built on a
species of enlightenment, that so far from being of a futile and rash
nature, and of a destructive tendency, has exerted a gradual but
beneficial influence over the whole extent of an empire, which
stretches far into two continents of the globe. It was only by that
true and genuine improvement and civilization, which commenced under
Peter the Great, that Russia acquired the knowledge and mastery of her
own resources, and thus rose to a high and permanent grade in the
scale of nations.
The separation of the Russian church from the authority of the Greek
patriarch, who had now fallen under Turkish dependance, appeared a
necessary condition for opening a door in Russia to the moral and
intellectual civilization of Europe; nor when we consider that such a
step was but the continuation of an original schism, can we deem it a
subject of blame. It does not appear, however, that the system of a
_national church_, which has sprung out of this separation, has
been here as much abused as in the Anglican church, or in that system
of anti-papal opposition nearly akin to it, adopted in one or more
Catholic countries of Europe. The very system, however, of an
exclusively national religion, must ever be an object of the greatest
solicitude, for it is but too easily susceptible of an extension most
fatal to Christian government, which nothing so much impairs and
undermines as any leaning to the Mahometan confusion of spiritual and
temporal power in the hands of the same person.
Men have often blamed that harsh junction of opposites observable in
the sudden and artificial civilization of Russia; that is to say, the
contrast which there exists between the highest intellectual luxury,
and the most exquisite and fashionable refinement in thought and
manners among the higher classes, at the court and in the capital, and
the very low grade of civilization, the state of utter or at least
semi-barbarism, to which so large a portion of the population are
reduced. But no very prejudicial effects have resulted to society in
Russia, from this conjunction of elements, and from the obstacles
which so many vast masses have opposed to the progress of
civilization; and even that hurry and precipitancy in the career of
enlightenment, which was the great fault of almost all other European
countries, was by this means avoided, or rather prevented by the very
nature of things. The only thing here to be apprehended and guarded
against was this, that in copying the civilization of Europe, Russia
should not introduce along with it those negative and destructive
principles--those maxims of liberalism and irreligion which were
almost exclusively prevalent in European literature and science during
the eighteenth century; in a word that Protestantism, (in the wide and
comprehensive signification of that term,) should not become too
predominant in the public mind.
The first ground-work of the modern civilization of Russia, as laid
down by Peter the Great, was of a thoroughly practical nature,
directed in part to objects of commercial utility, after the manner of
the Dutch and English. The moral corruption occasioned by the French
philosophy introduced under Catherine II., was confined to a small
circle; and in the course of succeeding times, this philosophy came to
be considered as an exotic element of destruction, which so far from
being adequate to the exigencies of the age, struck at the very root
of society. In a more recent period, liberal and Revolutionary
theories of government, copied from constitutional countries, may at
most have led to a criminal enterprise; but have not exercised any the
least permanent influence on the bulk of the nation. But the great and
essential point for this European and Asiatic Empire,--the seat of a
progressive enlightenment,--as well as for the rest of Europe, is
still this--that this enlightenment, which is the basis on which this
empire is founded, should never take an irreligious course, but should
ever maintain a decidedly religious character. And in this respect
more than any other, a generous monarch[19] who became great in the
school of adversity, must be considered as the second founder of
Russian greatness, because he has stamped on this empire a strong,
permanent religious impress. I do not allude here of course to any
fanatic measure of coercion, but to the moral influence of
religion--to its firm establishment as the general principle of
European government in the present times.
The principle of illuminism, when properly conceived, has nothing at
all reprehensible in itself, or at variance with the Christian
religion. In the same way that Christianity, if not only its dogmas
were developed, but its general influence extended, and made
triumphant in the world, would soon supplant the existing human
Reformation, and be the true, the divine reformation of mankind, of
the world, and even of the visible creation; so it is itself the true
illumination, whereof Holy Writ speaketh: it is that light of eternal
light, which was in the beginning, and which was the life of men, (as
the words from the mouth of eternal Truth declare,) and in which men
are once more to find their life. But to descend from this lofty idea
into the world of historical experience, we should carefully
distinguish between a true, lasting, and vivifying illumination, and a
false, mimic, and illusive species of enlightenment. One thing is the
warm, genial light of the sun returning to the new-born spring, or the
fresh glow of morning after the lengthened night--and another the
transient glimmer of a bonfire, which after exciting a false alarm,
sinks rapidly again into darkness. One thing is the solitary midnight
lamp of silent meditation--and another the lightning which flashes
athwart the gloomy heavens, or the dark lantern of the murderer
stealing his way along in the night, or the torchlight in the robbers'
cave, where the spoil is divided, and new misdeeds are concerted.
For all these various significations of true and false illumination,
the eighteenth century in its real or pretended enlightenment may
furnish us with historical proofs. Thus without misapprehending or
disowning that true and divine light visible even in the progress of
science, or without rejecting, or contracting in too narrow bounds the
salutary and necessary light of human reason, still we must be careful
to distinguish from the former the light which is illusive, or
changeable, as well as that which is spurious, and counterfeited by
the powers of darkness.
In this consists the sign of a false enlightenment--if not merely in
its origin, and in its outward effects, but in its own nature as well
as undeviating course, it retains a negative character, and is
therefore hollow and superficial. But any system which is originally
destitute of a firm and solid foundation, may easily be driven into an
irregular and devious, and ultimately into a most fatal course. This
is in short the essential distinction observable in the progress of a
genuine and a spurious species of enlightenment. This illuminism
exercised so general an influence in the eighteenth century on church
and state, on science and on social life, on the relations of policy
and the course of public events, that even Spain and the Papal
territories were not exempt from its influence--an influence which was
perceptible on the one hand, in many useful reforms in the internal
administration of those states--and on the other hand, in the
expulsion of the Jesuits, which was first commenced by Portugal and
Spain, and to which the jealousy of other religious orders had
contributed. But the whole transaction must be ascribed to a
destructive party of Illuminati, that had secretly grown up in those
countries, and now expanded to public view, and appeared in full
power. To such a party those religious orders which had fallen into a
state of real degeneracy, inactivity, and ignorance, so far from being
objects of hatred, were exceedingly welcome for the promotion of their
secret views. But not so an order, which was distinguished for its
zeal and activity, its devotion to the interests of the church, its
scientific acquirements, and knowledge of the world. A critical
enquiry into the truth or falsehood of the several charges and
accusations against the Jesuits, must be reserved to a special history
of those countries I have named, or to a particular history of the
order. But their expulsion is here mentioned, as it is a very
characteristic circumstance in the history of that age of pretended
illumination. It may be generally thought that the determination which
Pope Ganganelli at last came to for the suppression of the order, was
extorted from him by the overruling influence of the secular powers.
But if such a supposition be really admissible, it is evident on the
other hand, that the restoration of the order was effected by the
virtuous Pontiff who ruled the church in the late period of
oppression, at the very moment when the iron yoke of military
despotism weighed heaviest on the nations of Europe.
The true progress of Christian enlightenment in the pursuits of
philosophy and science, I shall have occasion to mention afterwards.
The principle of toleration, which was solidly established by the
German treaty of religious peace, became an essential element of
social illumination. By degrees this principle was admitted throughout
almost all Europe--yet we must observe that its adoption cannot be
determined by one uniform, invariable rule in all countries, but that
local circumstances, respecting which it is often difficult for the
distant observer to come to a right judgment, must and ought to
produce numerous modifications in the application of the principle.
That wide toleration which in Holland and North America has for a long
time incorporated into the state a multitude of petty sects, would
not be practicable or expedient in other countries. The religious
liberty which in the Russian Empire is extended even to Mahometans,
and to certain tribes of Buddhists and Pagans, would not apply to the
circumstances of most other civilized countries. There are in the
deep-rooted habits of nations, and in the constitution of individual
states, very peculiar, and often apparently singular, circumstances
and combinations, which no man should judge of hastily, and according
to abstract principles, until he has obtained a close, accurate, and
deep insight into the historical condition and situation of a country.
Thus while England is intolerant in her Constitution at home, she
gives the fullest latitude in Canada to the North American principle
of religious freedom; and the whole British Empire in India is founded
on toleration--that is to say, on the principle of governing the
Indians according to their own laws, manners, customs, and opinions.
By this policy the English have become almost complete masters of this
great and fertile country; and their enlightened rule forms a strong
contrast to the earlier tyranny of the Mahometans, who hold the Indian
idolatry in the utmost abhorrence; although that idolatry, amid a
chaos of errors and fables, contains many better and higher vestiges
of ancient truth, than the mere negative and fanatic superstition of
Mahomet. Even the French, when they had a firm footing in India,
committed a capital fault in forming alliances more with the
Mahometans than with the native Indian powers.
In Europe, Norway alone, among the Protestant states, has maintained
down to our times laws of severe exclusion against every religion
differing from the established one--an exclusion which extends as well
to Jews as to Catholics; while Spain and Portugal only, among Catholic
countries, offer an example of similar intolerance. To abolish
suddenly without urgent and overpowering reasons, or some new
historical emergency, laws which have thus grown out of the general
circumstances of a country, which have existed for ages, and have
taken deep root in the manners and habits of life, provokes suspicion,
and may occasion danger. But we must not suppose that a severe and
exclusive system of legislation, like that existing in Spain, can
always counteract the occult and far more dangerous opposition of
secret sects and societies. This might be proved, or rendered probable
by many facts in the history of those countries during the eighteenth
century. In Italy this rigid and exclusive legislation was never
carried to the same unqualified extent. Intolerance there never
extended to the Jews, nor to the Greek schismatics, and in recent
times it does not, as formerly, affect the Protestants. In Germany,
toleration was legally established by the treaty of Westphalia, and
there the cause of toleration stood in no need of the modern principle
of illuminism--the all-stirring and animating principle of the
eighteenth century. But here illuminism in its first negative period
was directed against prejudices and abuses of another kind. In certain
Protestant countries in the North of Germany, this period of
illumination dates from the abolition of trials for witchcraft. And
against so modest a beginning not the slightest objection could be
urged; for in general the criminal law which the later and already
degenerate middle age bequeathed to modern times, afforded ample scope
for amelioration, and contained many barbarous edicts that deserved to
be abolished. The use of torture, and of un-christian and excruciating
modes of execution, were next the objects of Reform. The total
abolition of capital punishment, which this legal Reform soon aimed at
in its ulterior progress, the experience of mankind has not yet found
to be either possible or practicable. Who will be disposed to deny
that the many abuses which were now corrected, and the many vulgar
prejudices which were refuted or done away with, were especially at
the outset, in a great measure such as were truly deserving of that
name, and that very many of those reforms were useful and necessary,
just and wholesome. It appears, however, sometimes, that barbarous
abuses thus hastily and precipitately removed, soon reappear under
other forms and denominations. This may easily be the case, where
those useful and necessary reforms are confined to the outward
surface, and do not penetrate to the roots, and internal essence of
things.--It is worthy of remark, that in the absence of solid and
positive principles, the mere removal of abuses--a mere negative
course of conduct, will never alone attain the desired end, nor is it
in itself always safe and certain. Soon a rash and passionate
precipitancy will be apparent in the conduct of affairs--the standard
and real term of our exertions will be lost sight of, and things will
fall into a ruinous course; and such is the character of that period
of transition from the age of illuminism to the time of the French
Revolution. Was there a single object, not only in the questions
relating to humanity, but in the whole department of public life and
general belief, in religion and in government, which was not soon
regarded as a prejudice or an abuse?
In Germany, when the Empress Maria Theresa ascended the Imperial
throne, the long established peace of the empire, which it had once
cost such efforts to secure and preserve, appeared to the new school
of philosophy, a ridiculous prejudice of unenlightened, pedantic
Burghers of state. But fifty years afterwards, during the atheistic
and revolutionary period of the French philosophy, immediately prior
to the French Revolution, as well as at its commencement,
Christianity, and in fact all religion, was considered as a mere
prejudice of the infancy of the human mind, totally destitute of
foundation in truth, and no longer adapted to the spirit of the age;
monarchy and the whole civilization of modern Europe as abuses no
longer to be tolerated. It was only when men had reached this extreme
term of their boasted enlightenment, that a re-action took place. But
prior to this, towards the middle of the eighteenth century, and in
the ten years immediatedly subsequent, the spirit of the age bore all
before it in its irresistible progress. As in ancient times, monarchs
had competed for the title of Most Christian, or Most Catholic, so now
the potentates pre-eminent for power and understanding, were flattered
by the title of enlightened. It is not without a great shock to our
feelings, we contemplate the close intimacy which subsisted between a
monarch grown grey in the toils of war and the cares of state, a
powerful Empress of a Northern court, and the most depraved champions
of French infidelity. With respect to the third of those eminent
potentates of the age of illuminism, Joseph II., it has never been
denied by those most competent to form a correct opinion on this
subject, that among the various measures and regulations passed in the
short reign of that active emperor, although some are not entitled to
the same praise, yet many were really adapted to the exigencies of the
age, and have been attended with the most beneficial consequences to
industry and to intellectual cultivation. But the serious turn which
things afterwards took, the universal convulsion, and remodelling of
the world, have long fully demonstrated, that not one or two only, but
many of the most active and enlightened sovereigns of that age,
yielded far too much to the prevailing principles of the time, and
followed too readily the spirit of that age in its wild, rapid, and
all-destructive career.
To the many elements of internal ferment already existing in France,
the imitation of English manners under the Regent, which was soon
succeeded by an imitation of English literature and philosophy, added
a source of equal danger. For to maintain within certain prescribed
limits this English philosophy that reduces everything to the
experience of sensation, the French wanted that sense of equilibrium
innate in the English, and which their constitution had rendered
almost instinctive to them; and by means of which in philosophy, as in
their internal government, and in their relations with Foreign states,
they can keep within bounds; and with them a philosophy, however
unspiritual and ungodly, does not so rapidly rush into a headlong and
destructive course, as it did in France and in Europe during the
atheistical and revolutionary period of literature and science; for
the deadly influence of this spirit was not confined to France--the
land of its birth--but spread over every country. This is the
important and essential distinction between the philosophy of Locke or
of Hume for example, which I before designated as the Protestantism of
philosophy, in opposition to the thoroughly revolutionary philosophy
of French atheism--for though the former by its opposition to all
spiritual ideas is of a negative character, yet most of its partisans
and champions contrive to make some sort of capitulation with divine
faith, and to preserve a kind of belief in moral feeling. The French
philosophy was in fact a new Pagan idolatry of nature, and even the
most splendid discoveries of natural science, which might and ought to
have pointed to a higher principle, were not contemplated in their
true spirit, nor employed to proper advantage, but were even made the
instruments of a fanatic hostility towards the Deity. Even among the
comparatively better natural philosophers of France, materialism was
too generally the basis of their science, and a sensual enthusiasm for
nature too much the prevailing tone of their writings.
The more brilliant the talents which led the way in this new impious
and Revolutionary career of the European mind, the more generally
pernicious was the result. Such was the case with that scoffer, whose
genius could adapt itself to all the forms, moods, and styles of the
old French literature, and who wielding, as he did, with so masterly a
hand the weapon of a lawless wit, directed it without intermission
during his whole life against everything holy and venerable, of what
nature and kind soever. As those errors are the most dangerous, which
as containing a portion of truth, carry with them a greater power of
conviction; so Rousseau has perhaps exercised a more fatal influence
than that other spirit, who with his mockery polluted all things. We
cannot precisely term him un-christian--at least such an epithet
cannot be applied to him in the same unqualified and universal
extent--and when compared with the Atomical philosophy and the
Atheistical idolatry of nature, his fanatic worship of nature will be
found of a more spiritual cast. The great eloquence of this man
entitles him perhaps as clearly to the first rank among the orators of
his nation during the eighteenth century, as Bossuet with very
different religious principles holds in his own age. Eloquence less
powerful than Rousseau's could not well have sufficed to draw his age
into an admiration for that savage equality which he preached up--to
have excited its enthusiasm for the state of the Caribees and the
Iroquois, which, looking back with regret to man's original happiness
in the pure freedom of nature, he represented as his proper destiny,
utterly marred as he was, by European civilization. This was not a
mere idle freak of imagination, such as any false enchantment of
romance might display--but Rousseau endeavoured to demonstrate with
all the rigid deductions of mathematical proof, the happy equality of
the savage state; and with the most earnest conviction and blind
fanaticism, his system was applied to the actual relations of life.
The result was that period of godless freedom--freedom separated from
God and from every divine principle whether of conduct or belief, and
which, as usual, was soon succeeded by the false unity of a crushing
despotism, equally hostile to every heavenly and exalted motive of
human action. But such has been the frightfully accelerated march of
events in these latter times, that the former stages of the
Revolutionary course in ancient Rome--the attempt of the elder
Brutus--the establishment of a Republic--the wars with the rival
Carthage--the rapid career of military conquests--and the transition
to despotism, down to Tiberius or Dioclesian--have been here traversed
in the short period of scarcely one generation. It would be unjust
always to term this the French Revolution, or to consider it
exclusively as such--it was a general political malady--an universal
epidemic of the age. In Holland and Belgium a Revolution had
previously broken out--the Polish Revolution occurred about the same
time; but though the Belgian, and more particularly the Polish
Revolutions were of a totally different character from the French,
they still presented to the turbulent spirit of the age, one example
more of political commotion. But North America had been to France and
the rest of Europe, the real school and nursery of all these
Revolutionary principles. Natural contagion, or wilful propagation
spread this disorder over many other countries--but France continued
to be the centre and general focus of Revolution.
Even when the whole power of the Revolution had been concentrated in
the person of a single man, its general march was not materially
changed. With respect to Foreign states and countries, the French
Revolution produced a protracted religious war of twenty-one years;
for it was such not only from its origin, but from its Revolutionary
and destructive character, and from its fanatic opposition to
everything holy. There was a fixed principle at the bottom of this
modern Paganism. It was political idolatry--and it matters little what
may be the immediate object of this idolatry--what the idol of the
day, whether a Republic and the goddess of reason--the grande
nation--or the lust of conquest and the glory of arms. It is still the
same demon of political destruction--the same anti-Christian spirit of
government, which wishes to mislead the age, and control the world.
The great religious war, which has desolated all Europe, can be
finally terminated only by a new and general religious peace:--but the
great gulph of perdition to our age is that political idolatry,
whatever shape it may assume--whatever name it may bear. Until that
idolatry be abolished, until that abyss of ruin be closed up, the
house of the Lord, where peace and righteousness embrace each other,
can never be founded on a renovated earth.
[13] Prussia.
[14] Bavaria.
[15] The Treaty of Westphalia.
[16] Saxony.
[17] The passing of the Catholic Relief Bill has
happily rendered this observation obsolete.--_Trans._
[18] Peter the Great.
[19] The late Emperor Alexander.
END OF LECTURE XVII.
LECTURE XVIII.
On the general spirit of the age, and on the universal
Regeneration of Society.
"I come soon, and will renew all things."
There are in the history of the eighteenth century, many phenomena
which occurred so suddenly, so instantaneously, so contrary to all
expectation, that although on deeper consideration we may discover
their efficient causes in the past, in the natural state of things,
and in the general situation of the world, yet are there many
circumstances which prove that there was a deliberate, though secret,
preparation of events, as, indeed, in many instances has been actually
demonstrated. I must now say a few words on this secret and mysterious
branch of Illuminism, and on the progress it made during the period of
its sway, in order to complete the sketch of that period, and to shew
the influence of this principle, both in regard to the origin and
general spirit of the Revolution, (which in its fanaticism believed
itself a regeneration of the world), and in regard to the true
restoration of society founded on the basis of Christian justice. But
there is this peculiar circumstance in this historical enquiry, that
those who as eye-witnesses could best speak from their personal
experience, cannot always be considered the most credible vouchers;
for we never know, or can know what their particular views and
interests may lead them to say or conceal, to suppress wholly or in
part. However it has so happened, that in the universal convulsion and
overthrow of society, many things have come to light on this
mysterious and esoteric clue in modern history--things which when
combined together, furnish us with a not incorrect, and a tolerably
complete idea of this mighty element of the Revolution, and of
Illuminism both true and false, which has exercised so evident and
various an influence on the world. And it is only on such historical
grounds (which are quite sufficient for our purpose, and can alone be
made the matter of consideration here), I am at all competent to
pronounce an opinion on this subject, or, as I should rather say, to
give an account of this event; and it is from historical sources,
references and facts alone, that the following sketch has been taken.
As to the origin of this esoteric influence, the impartial historical
enquirer cannot doubt (whatever motives or views some may have to deny
the fact, or throw doubt on its authenticity), that the order of
Templars was the channel by which this society in its ancient and long
preserved form was introduced into the West. The religious
_Masonic_ symbols may be accounted for by the Solomonian
traditions connected with the very foundation of the order of
Templars; and indeed the occasion of these symbols may be traced in
other passages of Holy Writ, and in other parts of sacred history, and
they may very well admit of a Christian interpretation. Traces of
these symbols may be found in the monuments of the old German
architecture of the middle age. Any secret spiritual association,
however, diffused at once among Christians and Mahometans, cannot be
of a very Christian nature, nor long continue so. Nay the very idea of
an esoteric society for the propagation of any secret doctrines is not
compatible with the very principle of Christianity itself; for
Christianity is a divine mystery, which according to the intention of
its divine Founder, lies open to all, and is daily exposed on every
altar. For this reason, in a Revelation imparted to all alike, there
can be no secrecy, as in the Pagan mysteries, where by the side of the
popular mythology and the public religion of the state, certain
esoteric doctrines were inculcated to the initiated only. This would
be to constitute a church within a church--a measure to be as little
tolerated or justified, as an Imperium in Imperio; and in an age
where worldly interests and public or secret views of policy have far
greater ascendancy than religious opinions or sentiments, such a
secret parasitical church would unquestionably, as experience has
already proved, be very soon transformed into a secret directory for
political changes and Revolutions. That in this society the
un-christian principles of a negative Illuminism, veiled as they often
were in sentiments of universal philanthropy, were of a date tolerably
modern, all historical analogies would lead us to suppose. On the
other hand, the Christian opinions which survived in this order,
(though in our times, amid the innumerable factions which have
agitated this society by their contests, the adherents to Christian
principles form a small minority of its members,) the Christian
opinions surviving in this order partook, conformably to the
historical origin I have assigned, more of an oriental and Gnostic
character. The great, or at least, not inconsiderable influence which
this society exercises in politics, we may discover in those
Revolutions, which after having convulsed our quarter of the globe,
have rolled onwards to the new world, where the two principal
Revolutionary factions in one of those South American states, whose
troubles are not yet terminated, are called the Scots and the
Yorkists, from the two parties which divide the English Masonic
lodges. Who does not know, or who does not remember, that the ruler of
the world in the period just passed, made use of this vehicle in all
the countries he conquered, to delude and deceive the nations with
false hopes. And on this account he was styled by his partisans the
man of his age, and in fact he was a slave to the spirit of his age. A
society, from whose bosom, as from the secret laboratory of
Revolution, the Illuminés, the Jacobins, and the Carbonari, have
successively proceeded, cannot possibly be termed, or be in fact very
beneficial to mankind, politically sound, or truly Christian in its
views and tendency. Still I must here observe, that it has been the
fate of the oldest of all secret societies, that its venerable forms
which are known to all the initiated, should serve as a cloak to every
new conspiracy. In the next place, we must not forget that this order
itself appears to be split and divided into a multitude of different
sects and factions; and that on this account we must not suppose that
all those fearful aberrations, and wild excesses of impiety, all those
openly destructive or secretly undermining principles of Revolution
were universally approved of by this society. On the contrary, such a
supposition would be utterly false, or at least, very exaggerated. The
mere notice of all the highly estimable characters, mistaken but on
this point--of most distinguished and illustrious personages in the
eighteenth century, members of this association,--would suffice to
annul, or at least materially modify, this sweeping censure. From many
indications, we may consider it certain, or at least extremely
probable, that in no country did this esoteric society so well
harmonize with the state and the whole established order of things, as
in that country where all the conflicting elements of morals and
society are brought into a sort of strange and artificial equipoise--I
mean England. If now we turn our view to the Continent of Europe, and
even to those countries which were the chief theatre of the
Revolution, we shall see that there, among many other factions, a
Christian party had sprung up in this society--a party which, though
it formed a very small minority in point of numbers, possessed by its
profounder doctrines, and the interesting fragments of ancient
tradition it had preserved, a great moral ascendancy; and this many
historical facts, and many written documents, which have since
obtained publicity, place beyond the shadow of a doubt. Instead of
bringing forward the names of some German writers less generally
known, I prefer to allege, in confirmation of what I have said, the
example of a French writer, who well denotes the internal and more
hidden character of the Revolution. The Christian theosophist, St.
Martin, who was a disciple of this school, stands in his age quite
apart from the other organs of the then prevailing Atheistical
philosophy. He was however a most decided Revolutionist, (but a
disinterested fanatic, guided entirely in his conduct by high and
moral motives), from his utter contempt and abhorrence for the whole
moral and political system of Europe, as it then stood--a contempt in
which, if we cannot entirely agree with him, we cannot in many
instances withhold from him at least a sort of negative
approbation--and, secondly, he was a Revolutionist by his enthusiastic
hope of a complete Christian regeneration of society, conceived indeed
according to his own views, or the views of his party. Among the
French writers of the Restoration, none have so thoroughly understood
this remarkable philosopher, and so well known how to appreciate him
in all the depths of his errors, as well as in the many excellent
things which his writings contain, and to apply to him the necessary
corrections, as Count Maistre.
This secret clue in the history of the Revolution must not be
overlooked, if we would wish to form a due estimate of its character;
for it greatly contributed to the illusion of many, by no means
ill-intentioned persons, who saw or wished to see in the Revolution
but the inevitable, necessary, though in its origin, harsh and severe,
regeneration of Christian states and nations, then so widely gone off
from their original destination. This illusive notion of a false
restoration of society was particularly prevalent during the Imperial
sway of that extraordinary man, whose true biography--I mean the high
moral law of his destiny, or the theological key to his life--seems
still to exceed the critical powers of our age. Seven years were
allotted him for the growth of his power--for fourteen years the
world was delivered over into his hands; and seven years were left him
for solitary reflection, the first of which he misemployed in
embroiling the world anew. On the use he made of the extraordinary
power that had been imparted to him---of that formidable dominion
which had fallen to his lot, history has long pronounced her sentence.
Never is such power permitted but in the period of, and with a view
to, some awful reckoning, and a still more fearful probation of
mankind. But if his Restoration--that is to say, the Restoration which
his infatuated partisans attributed to him, was most certainly a false
one;--the question naturally occurs, whether the Restoration attempted
by his successors has been perfectly sound, or at least quite
complete; and what may be the defects in the new system, and how they
may be supplied?
A mere treaty of territorial arrangements could not and can never
constitute a great religious and international pacification for the
whole of Europe. The re-establishment of subverted thrones--the
Restoration of exiled sovereigns and dynasties, will not in themselves
have any security nor permanence, unless based on moral principles and
maxims. After the severe unexpected lesson again inflicted on Europe,
religion was at last made the basis of European policy; and we must
not make it a matter of reproach, that this principle still retained
so indefinite a character; for this was necessary at the beginning at
least, in order to remove any misconception, or any possible suspicion
of interested views. And not only doth the stability and future
existence of the whole Christian and civilized world depend on this
bond of religious confederacy,--which we can only hope may be ever
more and more firmly knit--but every great power in particular is more
especially called upon to take a part therein. That the moral strength
and stability of the Russian Empire mainly depends on religion--that
every departure from its sacred spirit must have the most fatal
effects on its whole system, has already been declared by her late
monarch, distinguished alike in adverse and in prosperous fortune, an
axiom of state-policy, and can scarcely ever be again forgotten. But
in that country, where the elements of Protestantism (to use that word
in its most comprehensive signification) obtained such weight in the
outset of its literary refinement, and are so incorporated with the
whole political system of the state, the toleration extended to every
form of worship, should not be withheld from that church, which is the
mother-church of the rest of Europe, and of Poland inclusively;[20]
nor should the religious liberty of individuals be in that respect at
all restricted.
It is equally evident that in that country of Europe where monarchy
has been restored, the restoration of religion must go hand in hand
with that of monarchy, and that the latter would lose all security
were the former removed. In the pacific monarchy,[21] unchangeably
attached as she is to her ancient principles, religion has ever been,
more than any other principle, the recognised basis of her existence.
As to the fifth[22] Germanico-European monarchy recently created, the
solid maintenance of religion is the only means to allay the disquiet
incident to such a state, and to secure its future existence. Any act
of even indirect hostility towards the Catholic body--one half of the
nation[23]--any infringement on the liberty of individuals in that
sacred concern--a liberty which must be guaranteed not only by the
letter of the law, but by real, effective and practical
measures--would not only be in utter opposition to those religious
principles, rapidly spreading as they are in all Europe, and
particularly in Germany; but would violate and render insecure the
great fundamental and long established principle of toleration; as has
hitherto been acknowledged. It is only in England that Anglicanism has
raised her doubts as to the utility of a religious fraternity among
the Christian states and nations--doubts which are connected with the
still exclusively Protestant character of the English Constitution,
and which on many occasions may lead England to a sort of schismatical
rupture with the rest of Europe. On several occasions we must
contemplate with regret, how that mighty England, in the eighteenth
century so brilliant and so powerful by the sway she exerted over the
whole European mind, no longer seems to feel herself at home in the
nineteenth century, nor to know where to find her place in the new
order of things.
But as respects Europe at large, the maxims and principles of
liberalism are only a partial return to the Revolution--they can have
no other tendency but to Revolution. Liberalism will never obtain a
majority among the well-thinking persons of any of the European
states, except by some gross error--some singular degeneracy in that
party, which really does not constitute a party, and ought not to be
called such--I mean the men who in politics are attached to monarchy,
and in religion to Christianity.
The mere principle of a mechanical Balance of Power to serve as a
negative check on overgrown dominion--a system which emanated from
England, and was in the eighteenth century universally received--has
ceased to be applicable, or to be of service to the existing state of
things in Europe; for all the remedies which it can offer, tend only
to aggravate the evil when it has once occurred. In religion alone are
to be found the remedies and the safeguards, the emancipation and
consolidation of the whole civilized world, as well as of every
particular state. The most imminent danger to our age, and the
possible abuse of religion itself, are the excesses of the absolute.
Great is the danger, when in a vindictive spirit of re-action, a
revolutionary conduct is adopted by the party of legitimacy; when
passion itself is consecrated into a maxim of reason, and held up as
the only valid and just mode of proceeding; and when, the sacredness
of religion itself is hawked about as some fashionable opinion; as if
the world-redeeming power of faith and truth consisted in the mere
dead letter, and in the recited formula. True life can spring only
from the vivifying spirit of eternal truth. In science the absolute is
the abyss which swallows up the living truth, and leaves behind only
the hollow idea, and the dead formula. In the political world the
absolute in conduct and speculation is that false spirit of time,
opposed to all good and to the fulness of divine truth, which in a
great measure rules the world, and may entirely rule it, and lead it
for ever to its final ruin. As errors would not be dangerous or
deceptive, and would have little effect, unless they contained a
portion or appearance of truth; this false spirit of time which
successively assumes all forms of destruction, since it has abandoned
the path of eternal truth, consists in this--it withdraws particular
facts from their historical connection, and holds them up as the
centre and term of a system, without any limitation, and without any
regard to historical circumstances. The true foundation, and the right
term of things, in the history of society as in the lives of
individuals, cannot be thus severed from their historical connection,
and their place in the natural order of events. In any speculation or
enterprise conducted by this passionate spirit of exaggeration, the
living spirit must evaporate, and only the dead and deadening formula
survive. What idols may successively be worshipped by the changing
spirit of time which easily bounds from one extreme to another, cannot
be determined before-hand. It is even possible that for a while
eternal truth itself may be profaned and perverted to such an idol of
the day--I mean the counterfeit form of truth;--for the spirit of
time, however it may assume the garb, can never attain the inward
essence and living energy of truth. Whatever may be the alternate
idol, and the reigning object of its worship, or of its passionate
rhetoric, it still remains essentially the same--that is to say, the
absolute, alike deadening to intellect, and destructive to life. In
science, the absolute is the idol of vain and empty systems, of dead
and abstract reason.
The Christian faith has the living God and his revelation for its
object, and is itself that revelation; hence every doctrine taken from
this source is something real and positive. The defence of truth
against error will then only be attended with permanent success, when
the divine doctrine, in whatever department it may be, is represented
with intellectual energy as a living principle; and at the same time
placed in its historical connection, with a due regard to every other
historical reality. This calm, historical judgment of things--this
acute insight into subjects, whether they be real facts or
intellectual phenomena--is the invariable concomitant of truth, and
the indispensable condition to the full knowledge of truth. This is
the more so, indeed, as religion, which forms the basis of all truth,
and of all knowledge, naturally traces with attentive eye the
mysterious clue of Divine Providence and Divine permission through the
long labyrinth of human errors and human follies, be they of a
practical or a speculative nature. Error, on the other hand, is always
unhistorical; the spirit of time almost always passionate; and both
consequently untrue. The conflict against error cannot be brought to a
prompter and more successful issue, than by separating in every system
of moral and speculative error, and according to the standard of
divine truth, the absolute, which is the basis of such systems, into
its two component parts of truth and falsehood. For when we
acknowledge and point out the truth to be found in those systems,
there only remains error, whose inanity it requires little labour,
little cost of talent, or time to expose and make evident to every
eye. But in real life the struggle of parties often ceases to be
purely intellectual--their physical energy is displayed in violent
commotions; and in proportion as all parties become absolute, so their
struggle becomes one of violent and mutual destruction--a circumstance
which most fatally impedes the great work of religious regeneration--the
mighty problem of our age, which so far from being brought to a
satisfactory termination, is not yet even solved. In this respect it
is no doubt a critical fact, that in certain quarters of European
life, nay even in some entire countries, parties and governments
should be more and more carried away by the spirit of absolutism. For
this is not a question of names, and it is very evident that not those
parties, which are called, or call themselves absolute, are the most
so in reality; since now, as in all periods of violent party
struggles, a whimsical mistake in names, a great disorder of ideas,
and a Babel confusion of tongues, occur even in those languages
otherwise distinguished for their clearness and precision.
Fixedness of principle, consistency in reasoning, firmness of
character, and the severe, dogmatic precision of faith, as these are
the qualities which form the best test of man in the intercourse of
life, so they ought by no means to be confounded with absolutism
either in conduct or speculation; for all these qualities are very
compatible with the calm historical judgment of things, and a
conscientious regard for all historical circumstances. Among the
French writers of recent times who have devoted themselves to the task
of the religious regeneration of the public mind, no one possesses the
above-named qualities in a higher, or in so remarkable a degree, as
Count Maistre; and yet of all the writers of this class, he is the
least open to the charge of promoting a passionate spirit of reaction;
and in my own opinion, he must be entirely acquitted of such an
imputation. Some more rhetorical defenders, however, of religion in
France, cannot certainly be entirely absolved from the charge of
favouring this absolute and exaggerated spirit of re-action; and so
they unquestionably, even more than their opponents, injure the cause
which they wish to defend. But many imputations of this sort which
party spirit has alleged, are entirely without foundation; as when the
opposition in the country I speak of, extends to the government, and
to all the different ministries since the Restoration, the charge of
political absolutism, and of a spirit of re-action; every one must
clearly see that no cause has really been given for such imputations.
And that in a country where the most hostile parties and all
conceivable opinions are tolerated, a small number of Jesuits should
partake of the general toleration, is a circumstance that can excite
blame, jealousy and hypocritical alarm, only in the breasts of men
animated by the unjust and vindictive spirit of faction. To the
distant and impartial observer, the greatest and most imminent danger
to France appears to be a relapse to Revolution by means of
liberalism.[24]
The dogmatic decision and definiteness of Catholic faith on the one
hand, and the firmly rooted private convictions of Protestantism on
the other, are very compatible with an historical judgment of
historical events. Difficult as this may appear to the absolute spirit
of our age, it is this very historical impartiality which must prepare
the way for the complete triumph of truth, and the consummate glory of
Christianity. And it is in this consists the great distinction between
true toleration and the fatal indifferentism of our age, and of the
age immediately preceding. True toleration is founded on the humble
and consequently religious principle and firm hope, that while one
leaves in quiet what has already an historical existence, God will
conduct and arrange all things, and bring them to their appointed end.
This is widely remote from that pretended equality of all religions,
provided they inculcate but a good morality--a system which strikes at
the root of all religion. Intolerance, on the other hand, is grounded
in the proud, and therefore impious opinion, that it can mould all
things to what it fancies they ought to be, without any regard to the
limits of human weakness--and without reflecting that what is put
down by outward force, not unfrequently grows up in secret in an
altered, though still more dangerous, form. Of this truth, it would
not be difficult to adduce many historical proofs.
In the absolute spirit of our age, and in the absolute character of
its factions, there is a deep-rooted intellectual pride, which is not
so much personal or individual, as social, for it refers to the
historical destiny of mankind, and of this age in particular. Actuated
by this pride, a spirit exalted by moral energy, or invested with
external power, fancies it can give a real existence to that which can
only be the work of God: as from him alone proceed all those mighty,
and real regenerations of the world, among which Christianity--a
revolution in the high and divine sense of the word--occupies the
first place; and in these plastic moments, every thing is possible
that man can wish or dare to hope, if in what he adds on his own part,
he mars not much in what the bounteous monarch of the universe, from
the overflowings of his ineffable love, outpours upon his earth. For
the last three hundred years this human pride has been at work--a
pride that wishes to originate events, instead of humbly awaiting
them, and of resting contented with the place assigned to it among
those events, and of making the best and most charitable use of those
circumstances which Providence has decreed.
What I said before with regard to the Reformation may be equally
applied to the principle and period of Illuminism. The idea itself is
perfectly blameless, and it is unfair to pronounce on it an
indiscriminate censure, and to treat it as an unqualified abuse. It
was indeed but a very small portion of this illuminism of the
eighteenth century, that was really derived from the truths of
Christianity, and the pure light of Revelation. The rest was the mere
work of man, consequently vain and empty, or at least defective,
corrupt in parts, and, on the whole, destitute of a solid foundation,
and therefore devoid of all permanent strength and duration.
But when once, after the complete victory of truth, the divine
Reformation shall appear;--then that human Reformation, which till now
hath existed, will sink to the ground, and disappear from the world.
Then by the universal triumph of Christianity, and the thorough
religious regeneration of the age, of the world, and of governments
themselves, will dawn the era of a true Christian _Illuminism_.
This period is not perhaps so remote from our own, as the natural
indolence of the human mind, which after every great occurrence, loves
to sink again into the death-sleep of ordinary life, would be disposed
to believe. Yet must this exalted religious hope--this high historical
expectation be coupled with great apprehension, as to the full display
of divine justice in the world. For how is such a religious
regeneration possible, until every species, form, and denomination of
political idolatry be eradicated, and entirely extirpated from the
earth?
Never was there a period that pointed so strongly, so clearly, so
generally towards the future, as our own. On this account we should
endeavour clearly and accurately to distinguish between what on the
one hand man may by slow, progressive, but unweared exertions--by the
pacific adjustment of all disputed points--and by the cultivation of
his intellectual qualities, contribute towards the great work of the
religious regeneration of government and science--and what on the
other hand he should look for in silent awe from a higher
Providence--from the new creative fiat of a last period of
consummation, unable as he is to produce or call it forth. We are
directed much more towards the future than towards the past;--but in
order to comprehend in all its magnitude the problem of our age, it
sufficeth not that we should seek this social regeneration in the
eighteenth century--an age in no respect entitled to praise--or in the
reign of Lewis the Fourteenth, and his times of false national glory.
The birth of Christianity must be the great point of survey to which
we must recur, not to bring back, or counterfeit the forms of ages
past, which are no longer applicable to our own; but clearly to
examine what has remained incomplete, what has not yet been attained.
For unquestionably, all that has been neglected in the earlier periods
and stages of Christian civilization, must be made good in this true,
consummate regeneration of society. If truth is to obtain a complete
victory--if Christianity is really to triumph on the earth--then must
the state become Christian, and science become Christian. But these
two objects have never been generally, nor completely realized;
although during the many ages mankind have been Christian, they have
struggled for the attainment of both; and though this political
struggle and this intellectual aspiration form the purport of modern
history. The Roman Empire, even after the true religion had become
predominant, was too thoroughly and radically corrupt, ever to form a
truly Christian state. The sound, unvitiated natural energy of the
Germanic nations, seemed far better fitted for such a destiny, after
they had received from Christianity a high religious consecration for
this purpose. There was, if we may so speak, in the interior of each
state, as well as in the general system of Christendom, a most
magnificent foundation laid for a truly Christian structure of
government. But this ground-work remained unfinished, after the
internal divisions in the state, then the divisions between church and
state, and lastly, the divisions in the church and in religion itself,
had interrupted the successful beginnings of a most glorious work.
The ecclesiastical writers of the first ages furnish a solid
foundation for all the future labours of Christian science; but their
science does not comprehend all the branches of human knowledge. In
the middle age, undoubtedly, this foundation of a Christian science,
laid down by the early fathers, was slowly prosecuted and in detail;
but on the whole, many hurtful influences of the time had reduced
science and speculation to a very low ebb, when suddenly in the
fifteenth century all the literary treasures of ancient Greece, and
all the new discoveries in geography and physics, were offered to
philosophy. Scarcely had philosophy begun to examine these mighty
stores of ancient and modern science, in order to give them a
Christian form, and to appropriate them to the use of religion and
modern society, when the world again broke out into disputes; and this
noble beginning of a Christian philosophy was interrupted, and has
since remained an unfinished fragment for a later and a happier
period. Such then is the two-fold problem of a real and complete
regeneration which our age is called upon to solve;--on one hand, the
further extension of Christian government, and of Catholic principles
of legislation, in opposition to the Revolutionary spirit of the age,
and to the anti-Christian principle of government hitherto so
exclusively prevalent; and on the other hand the establishment of a
Christian philosophy, or Catholic science. As I before characterized
the political spirit of the eighteenth century by the term--Protestantism
of state (taking that word in a purely philosophic sense, and not as a
religious designation)--a system which found its one main support in
an old Catholic Empire;[25] and as I characterized the intellectual
spirit of the same age by the term Protestantism of science;--a
science which made the greatest progress and exerted the widest
influence in another[26] great Catholic country; systems in which
nothing irreligious was originally intended, but which became so by
their too exclusive or negative bearing: so I may here permit myself
to say, in like manner, that the destiny of this age--the peculiar
want of the nineteenth century, is the establishment of those Catholic
principles of government, and the general construction of a Catholic
system of science. This expression is used in a mere scientific sense,
and refers to all that is positively and completely religious in
thought and feeling. In the certain conviction that this cannot be
misunderstood in an exclusive or polemical sense, I will expressly add
that this foundation of Catholic legislation for the future political
existence of Europe may be laid by one, or more than one, non-catholic
power; and that I even cherish the hope, that it is our own Germany,
one half whereof is Protestant, which more than any other country is
destined to complete the fabric of Catholic science, and of a true
Christian philosophy in all the departments of human knowledge.
The religious hope of a true and complete regeneration of the age, by
a Christian system of government and a Christian system of science,
forms the conclusion to this Philosophy of History. The bond of a
religious union between all the European states will be more closely
knit, and be more comprehensive, in proportion as each nation advances
in the work of its own religious regeneration, and carefully avoids
all relapse to the old revolutionary spirit--all worship of the false
idols of mistaken freedom, or illusive glory, and rejects every other
new form or species of political idolatry. For it is the very nature
of political idolatry to lead to the mutual destruction of parties,
and consequently it can never possess the elements of stability.
Philosophy, as it is the vivifying centre of all other sciences, must
be the principal concern and the highest object of the labours of
Christian science. Yet history, which is so closely and so variously
connected with religion, must by no means be forgotten, nor must
historical research be separated from philosophic speculation. On the
contrary, it is the religious spirit and views already pervading the
combined efforts of historical learning and philosophic speculation,
that chiefly distinguish this new era of a better intellectual
culture, or as I should rather express myself, this first stage of a
return to the great religious restoration. And I may venture to assert
that this spirit, at least in the present century, has become ever
more and more the prevailing characteristic of German science, and on
this science, in its relation to the moral wants, and spiritual
calling of the nineteenth century, I have now a few observations to
make. Like an image reflected in a mirror, or like those symptoms
which precede and announce a crisis in human events, the centre-point
of all government, or the religious basis of legislation, is sure to
be reflected in the whole mental culture, or in the most remarkable
intellectual productions of a nation. In England, the equilibrium of a
constitution that combines in itself so many conflicting elements, is
reflected in its philosophy. The revolutionary spirit was prevalent in
the French literature of the eighteenth century long before it broke
out in real life; and the struggle is still very animated between the
intellectual defenders and champions of the monarchical and religious
Restoration, and of the newly awakened liberal opposition. In like
manner, as the German people were, and still are, half Catholic and
half Protestant, it is religious peace which in all literature, and
particularly in philosophy, forms the basis of their modern
intellectual culture. The mere æsthetic part of German letters, as
regards art and poetry,--that artist-like enthusiasm peculiar to our
nation--the struggles which convulsed the infancy of our
literature--the successive imitation and rejection of the French and
English models--the very general diffusion of classical learning--the
newly enkindled love for our native speech, and for the early history
of our country, and its elder monuments of art--all these are subjects
of minor interest in the European point of view we here take, and form
but the prelude and introduction to that higher German science and
philosophy, which is now more immediately the subject of our
enquiries. Historical research should never be separated from any
philosophy, still less from the German; as historical erudition is the
most effectual counterpoise to that absolute spirit, so prevalent in
German science and German speculation.
Art and poetry constitute that department of intellect wherein every
nation should mostly follow the impulse of its own spirit, its own
feelings, and its own turn of fancy; and we must regard it as an
exception when the poetry of any particular nation, (such, for
instance, as that of the English at the present day), is felt and
received by other nations as an European poetry. On the other hand,
history is a sort of intellectual common open to all European nations.
The English, who in this department were ever so active and
distinguished, have, in very recent times, produced works on their own
national history, which really merit the name of classical monuments
of the new religious restoration. Science in general, and philosophy
in particular, should never be exclusive or national--should never be
called English or German--but should be general and European. And if
this is not so entirely the case as in the nature of things it ought
to be--we must ascribe it to the defects of particular forms. Of this
truth the example of the French language may convince us; for no one
will deny the metaphysical profundity of Count Maistre, or the
dialectic perspicacity of the Viscount De Bonald. Although those
absolute principles which appear to characterize the European nations
at this time, have much less influence on real life and on the social
relations in Germany than in any other country; yet the false spirit
of the absolute seems to be quite native to German science and
philosophy; and for a long period, has been the principal cause which
has cramped the religious spirit and feelings so natural to the German
character, or at least has given them a false direction.
With regard to religious opinions, Protestantism in Germany has not
been split into a multitude of new, various, and jarring sects, as in
other countries, such as England, Holland, and North America, where it
was exclusively or for the most part predominant; for even the
Hernhutters were not properly a sect. It is only very recently the
Pietists have formed themselves into a party opposed to the
Rationalists--but their doctrines are not sufficiently precise and
determinate to constitute them a sect, according to the proper
signification of that word. Pietism consists rather in a deep, though
vague, sentiment of religion, and in a fusion of various and opposite
religious views and doctrines. Undoubtedly this moral fusion of
opinions, as well as that outward complication of the interests and
doctrines of Catholicism and Protestantism, and of so many private
views in matters of religion, produced many wild and fanciful
abortions peculiar to the age; many pure idiosyncrasies among the
Protestants, whether they made half advances towards the Catholic
church, or pursued the opposite path of absolute individualism--or
among the Catholics still more monstrous amalgamations--Protestant or
semi-Protestant innovations in doctrine aimed at by
individuals--innovations which originated in the principles of
Illuminism, and were countenanced by the well-known policy of certain
sovereigns. Much as we may feel disposed, or are even bound to oppose
with all our might, such moral abortions, when the question regards
their practical operation--yet I do not think we ought to pronounce
an absolutely unfavourable judgment on their general intellectual
tendency. The real primary evil of the eighteenth century--an utter
indifference for all religious doctrines and concerns,--the dangerous
spirit of complete indifferentism, from whose contagion many purely
Catholic countries did not escape, took less strong hold in Germany,
and obtained less general diffusion than in any other country. A deep,
indelible religious feeling still continued to characterize the German
nation, and to give a tone to its philosophical speculations. We should
not pay too much attention to some transient and partial paradoxes:--I
well recollect the words of an old, very experienced, pious, and
enlightened ecclesiastic, who well understood the German character,
and who used to say; "If we don't give a religion to the Germans, they
will make one out for themselves."
Even in the greatest errors of their philosophy, a certain religious
bearing and tendency can easily be pointed out. However in a country
like Germany, where religious opinions and interests are so various
and so intermixed, a long time must elapse before a profound
philosophy, which would satisfy these yearnings of religious desire,
can attain its full moral developement, or assume a clear outward
tangible form. If I before said of the English, in reference to the
struggle going on between the conflicting elements of their
government--a struggle which in one form or other every great European
nation has to settle in its own interior, and to bring to a successful
issue--that it would appear by many expressions in their parliamentary
proceedings, from those in particular at the head of affairs, and who
are best acquainted with them, that a secret self-apprehension besets
the minds of English politicians;--so I may now say of our German
nation, among whom the conflict lies principally, or more immediately
in the sphere of religion and philosophy; that more than all other
nations the Germans are destitute of self-knowledge and of mutual
concord; and the cause of this must be sought for in the unfulfilment
of their religious and philosophical destiny, and in the yet unallayed
discord between opposite elements of faith and various systems of
science.
In the first period of German literature, the Protestants had quite
the preponderance; but since then, the balance, at least in science,
has been completely restored. I speak here of internal religious
principles, and not of outward confessions of faith, which cannot be
made the criterion for a philosophic classification. For otherwise by
descending into details, I might cite, among the few quite irreligious
organs of German philosophy, some writers (happily rare exceptions)
who belonged to Catholic Germany; and on the other hand, among those
foremost and most distinguished in reviving the pure Platonic
philosophy, and whose profound religious conceptions have given quite
a Christian form to natural philosophy itself, I might adduce the
names of men who were members of the Protestant church. Philosophy
itself has not to determine, nor to illustrate religious dogmas, nor
does it stand in immediate connection with them. The main point to
which I wish to direct attention, and which is necessary to render
philosophy Christian; is that an internal harmony or unison should be
preserved between faith and science; next that the principle of
divine revelation should be regarded as the basis, not only of
theology but of every other science; and lastly, that even nature
herself should be studied and investigated by this high religious
light, and thus made to receive from science a new and transparent
lustre. The modern German philosophy even in its infancy, when it was
yet pretty closely allied to the English school, and mostly started
with the same problems (though it gave to these a deeper and a wider
solution), aimed at this harmony between faith and science. It
understood both indeed in the very limited sense of a mere faith of
reason and science of reason, influenced as it was by the Rationalism
then so generally diffused, not only in Protestant but even in
Catholic countries, and notably in Catholic Germany. But at the same
time other profound thinkers sought another and higher foundation for
philosophy in the idea of revelation; a revelation which some
understood in a mere general and speculative, though not irreligious,
sense--and others in the Christian sense of positive faith and pious
feeling. The capital vice of German philosophy is the absolute--the
philosophic reflection of the general vice of the spirit of the age,
which exerts an absolute influence on life itself--whether this vice
of German philosophy assume the form of the absolute ego,[27] or that
of the Pantheistic naturalism,[28] or that of absolute reason.[29] It
is this which originally gave to the natural philosophy of the Germans
a false Pantheistic direction, for the real materialism which has
found so many advocates among the French Naturalists, has from the
very ideal tendency of the German mind, experienced little favour in
Germany. Yet this foreign influence was not of long continuance--German
physics became deeply imbued with a religious spirit, and the German
natural philosophy is now in the hands of its first representatives
decidedly Christian. And this progress in the great work of the
religious regeneration of science, I must consider as the noblest
triumph of genius, for it is precisely in the department of physics
the problem was the most difficult; and all that rich and boundless
treasure of new discoveries in nature, which are ever better
understood when viewed in connection with the high truths of religion,
must be looked upon as the property of Christian science. The various
systems of philosophic Rationalism, mutually subversive, as they are,
of each other, will fall to the ground, and the vulgar Rationalism
which is but an emanation of the higher, and which still prevails in
some particular schools, and in many of the lower walks of German
literature, will finally disappear; in proportion as German philosophy
becomes imbued with the spirit of religion, and German science becomes
thoroughly Christian, or Catholic. In the firm hope that this will
certainly happen, I have given publicity to these first essays of a
philosophy I had long in secret prepared; and of which the first part,
"the Philosophy of Life," treats of consciousness, or of the inward
man: the second, "this Philosophy of History," which I now have here
brought to a close, considers the outward man, or the progress of
states and nations through all ages of the world.
That in this progress of mankind, a divine Hand and conducting
Providence are clearly discernible; that earthly and visible power has
not alone co-operated in this progress, and in the opposition which
has impeded it; but that the struggle has been in part carried on
under divine, and against invisible might;--is a truth, I trust, which
if not proved to mathematical evidence, (an evidence here neither
appropriate nor applicable), has still been substantiated on firm and
solid grounds. We may conclude our work, by a retrospective view of
society, considered in reference to that invisible world and higher
region, from which the operations of this visible world proceed, in
which its great destinies have their root, and which is the ultimate
and highest term of all its movements.
Christianity is the emancipation of the human race from the bondage of
that inimical spirit, who denies God, and, as far as in him lies,
leads all created intelligences astray. Hence the Scripture styles
him, "the Prince of this world;" and so he was in fact, but in ancient
history only, when among all the nations of the earth, and amid the
pomp of martial glory, and the splendour of Pagan life, he had
established the throne of his domination. Since this divine era in the
history of man, since the commencement of his emancipation in modern
times, this spirit can no longer be called the prince of this world,
but the _spirit of time_, the spirit opposed to divine influence,
and to the Christian religion, apparent in those who consider and
estimate time and all things temporal, not by the law and feeling of
eternity, but for temporal interests or from temporal motives, change,
or undervalue, and forget the thoughts and faith of eternity.
In the first ages of the Christian church, this spirit of time
appeared as a beguiling sectarian spirit. This spirit obtained its
highest triumph in the new and false faith of a fanatic Unitarianism,
utterly opposed to the religion of love, and which severed from
Christianity so large a portion of the Eastern church, and whole
regions of Asia. In the middle ages this spirit displayed itself, not
so much in hostile sects, as in scholastic disputes, in divisions
between church and state, and in the internal disorders of both. At
the commencement of the new era of the world, the spirit of time
claimed as an urgent want of mankind, full freedom of faith; a claim
of which the immediate consequence was only a bloody warfare, and a
fatal struggle of life and death protracted beyond a century. When
this struggle was terminated, or rather appeased, it was succeeded by
an utter indifference for all religions, provided only their morality
were good; and the spirit of time proclaimed religious _indifferentism_,
as the order of the day. This apparent calm was followed by the
revolutionary tempest, and now that this has passed away, the spirit
of time has in our days become absolute--that is to say, it has
perverted reason to party--passion, or exalted passion, to the place
of reason; and this is the existing form and last metamorphosis of the
old evil spirit of time.
Turning now to that Divine aid which has supported mankind in their
ever-enduring struggle against their own infirmities, against all the
obstacles of nature, and natural circumstances, and against the
opposition of the evil spirit; I have endeavoured to shew, that in the
first thousand years of Primitive History, Divine Revelation, although
preserved in its native purity but in the one original source, still
flowed in copious streams through the religious traditions of the
other great nations of that pristine epoch; and that troubled as the
current might be by the admixture of many errors, yet was it easy to
trace it in the midst of this slime and pollution, to its pure and
sacred source. And with such a belief must commence every religious
view of universal history. And it is only with this religious belief,
and perception of the traces of divine revelation, we can rightly
comprehend and judge this primitive epoch of history. We shall prize
with deeper, more earnest, and more solid affection, the great and
divine era of man's redemption and emancipation (occurring as it does
in the middle-point of human history), the more accurately we
discriminate between what is essentially divine and unchangeably
eternal in this revelation of love, and the elements of destruction
which man has opposed thereto, or intermingled therewith. And it is
only in the spirit of love, the history of Christian times can be
rightly understood and accurately judged. In later ages, when the
spirit of discord has triumphed over love, historical hope is our only
remaining clue in the labyrinth of history. It is only with sentiments
of grateful admiration, of amazement, and awe, we trace in the special
dispensations of providence, for the advancement of Christianity and
the progress of modern society, the wonderful concurrence of events
towards the single object of divine love, or the unexpected exercise
of divine justice long delayed; such as I have in the proper places
endeavoured to point out. With this faith in Primitive Revelation, and
in the glorious consummation of Christian love, I cannot better
conclude this "Philosophy of History," than with the religious hope I
have more than once expressed, and which is more particularly
applicable to these times--the dawn of an approaching era:--that by
the thorough religious regeneration of the state, and of science, the
cause of God and Christianity may obtain a complete triumph on the
earth.
[20] What a melancholy foreboding is contained in these
words!--_Trans._
[21] Austria.
[22] Prussia.
[23] Schlegel here conveys an indirect censure on the
Prussian government, for some acts of an intolerant
nature towards its Catholic subjects.--_Trans._
[24] This was spoken exactly two years before the
French Revolution of July, 1830.--_Trans._
[25] Austria.
[26] France.
[27] Schlegel alludes to the philosophy of Fichte,
which was _an ideal subjective Pantheism_.
[28] The author here alludes to the philosophy of
Schelling, which was more a material and objective
Pantheism, not unlike the system of Spinoza.
[29] This last expression contains, I believe, an
allusion to the philosophy of Hegel.--_Trans._
FINIS.
B. BENSLEY, PRINTER.
Transcriber's Note:
Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and moved to the end
of the lecture in which the related anchor appears. Words in
italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_.
The items listed below were considered printer's errors and were
corrected as noted. Obsolete and archaic words and other spelling
errors were not changed.
Unprinted periods were added at end of sentences and abbreviations.
deleted duplicate 'being' ... hope of being able ...
'Seuvi' to 'Suevi' ... those of the Suevi and the Saxons,...
'vegetion' to 'vegetation' ... and blooming vegetation spread ...
'Asyrian' to 'Assyrian' ... the Assyrian Venus ...
'decended' to 'descended' ... light had descended ...
capitalized 'Latin' ... barbarous Latin,...
'and' to 'a' ... firmly to establish a new model society ...
moved comma inside close parenthesis ... of despotism,) will ...
'goverment' to 'government' ... the Christian government ...
two instances of 'Charlemange' to 'Charlemagne'
'constition' to 'constitution' ...peculiar nature and constitution ...
'aud' to 'and' ... and so active was their ...
'Christain' to 'Christian' ... manners and Christian institutions;...
removed hyphen from 'party-strife' ... a watch-word for party strife ...
'ecclesiastal' to ecclesiastical' ... ecclesiastical excommunication ...
'althongh' to 'although' ... although that idolatry,...
'inteterests' to 'interests' ... complication of the interests ...
'harmouy' to 'harmony' ... aimed at this harmony between ...
Footnote [6], added open quote to beginning of second paragraph.
capitalized 'Systema' ... Systema Theologicum of Leibnitz,...
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