sense of the Christian princes, who viewed with a smile of contempt the last struggles of superstition and despair. 65 But the Imperial laws which prohibited the sacrifices and ceremonies of Paganism were rigidly executed; and every hour contributed to destroy the influence of a religion which was supported by custom rather than by argument. The devotion of the poet or the philosopher may be secretly nourished by prayer, meditation, and study; but the exercise of public worship appears to be the only solid foundation of the religious sentiments of the people, which derive their force from imitation and habit. The interruption of that public exercise may consummate, in the period of a few years, the important work of a national revolution. The memory of theological opinions cannot long be preserved without the artificial helps of priests, of temples, and of books.66 The ignorant vulgar, whose minds are still agitated by the blind hopes and terrors of superstition, will be soon persuaded by their superiors to direct their vows to the reigning deities of the age; and will insensibly imbibe an ardent zeal for the support and propagation of the new doctrine, which spiritual hunger at first compelled them to accept. The generation that arose in the world after the promulgation of the Imperial laws was attracted within the pale of the catholic church: and so rapid, yet so gentle, was the fall of Paganism, that only twenty-eight years after the death of Theodosius the faint and minute vestiges were no longer visible to the eye of the legislator.67

The worship of the Christian

The ruin of the Pagan religion is described by the sophists as a dreadful and amazing prodigy, which covered the earth with darkness and restored the ancient dominion of chaos martyrs. and of night. They relate in solemn and pathetic strains that the temples were converted into sepulchres, and that the holy places, which had been adorned by the statues of the gods, were basely polluted by the relics of Christian martyrs. "The monks" (a race of filthy animals, to whom Eunapius is tempted to refuse the name of men)" are the authors of the new worship, which, in the

65 Yet the Pagans of Africa complained that the times would not allow them to answer with freedom the City of God; nor does St. Augustin (v. 26) deny the charge. 66 The Moors of Spain, who secretly preserved the Mahometan religion above a century, under the tyranny of the Inquisition, possessed the Koran, with the peculiar use of the Arabic tongue. See the curious and honest story of their expulsion in Geddes (Miscellanies, vol. i. p. 1-198).

67 Paganos qui supersunt, quanquam jam nullos esse credamus, &c. Cod. Theodos. 1. xvi. tit. x. leg. 22, A.D. 423. The younger Theodosius was afterwards satisfied that his judgment had been somewhat premature."

The statement of Gibbon is much too strongly worded. M. Beugnot has traced the vestiges of Paganism in the West, after this period, in monuments and

inscriptions, with curious industry. Compare likewise note, p. 422, on the more tardy progress of Christianity in the rural districts.-M.

66

place of those deities who are conceived by the understanding, has "substituted the meanest and most contemptible slaves. The heads, "salted and pickled, of those infamous malefactors, who for the "multitude of their crimes have suffered a just and ignominious "death; their bodies, still marked by the impression of the lash and "the scars of those tortures which were inflicted by the sentence of "the magistrate; such" (continues Eunapius)" are the gods which "the earth produces in our days; such are the martyrs, the supreme "arbitrators of our prayers and petitions to the Deity, whose tombs "are now consecrated as the objects of the veneration of the "people."68 Without approving the malice, it is natural enough to share the surprise of the sophist, the spectator of a revolution which raised those obscure victims of the laws of Rome to the rank of celestial and invisible protectors of the Roman empire. The grateful respect of the Christians for the martyrs of the faith was exalted, by time and victory, into religious adoration; and the most illustrious of the saints and prophets were deservedly associated to the honours of the martyrs. One hundred and fifty years after the glorious deaths of St. Peter and St. Paul, the Vatican and the Ostian road were distinguished by the tombs, or rather by the trophies, of those spiritual heroes.69 In the age which followed the conversion of Constantine, the emperors, the consuls, and the generals of armies devoutly visited the sepulchres of a tentmaker and a fisherman ;70 and their venerable bones were deposited under the altars of Christ, on which the bishops of the royal city continually offered the unbloody sacrifice." The new capital of the Eastern world, unable to produce any ancient and domestic trophies, was enriched by the spoils of dependent provinces. The bodies of St. Andrew, St. Luke, and St. Timothy had reposed near three hundred years in the obscure graves from whence they were transported, in solemn pomp, to the church of the apostles, which the magnificence of Constantine had founded on the banks of the Thracian Bosphorus.72 About fifty years afterwards the same

68 See Eunapius, in the Life of the sophist Ædesius; in that of Eustathius he foretels the ruin of Paganism, καί τι μυθῶδες, καὶ ἀειδὲς σκότος τυραννήσει τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς κάλ

λίστα.

69 Caius (apud Euseb. Hist. Eccles. 1. ii. c. 25), a Roman presbyter, who lived in the time of Zephyrinus (A.D. 202-219), is an early witness of this superstitious practice. 70 Chrysostom. Quod Christus sit Deus. Tom. i. nov. edit. N° 9. I am indebted for this quotation to Benedict the XIVth's pastoral letter on the Jubilee of the year 1750. See the curious and entertaining letters of M. Chais, tom. iii.

....

71 Male facit ergo Romanus episcopus? qui, super mortuorum hominum, Petri & Pauli, secundum nos, ossa veneranda . . . . offert Domino sacrificia, et tumulos eorum, Christi arbitratur altaria. Jerom. tom. ii. advers. Vigilant. p. 153. [Tom. ii. p. 395, ed. Vallars.]

72 Jerom (tom. ii. p. 122 [contra Vigilant. c. 5, tom. ii. p. 391, ed. Vallars.]) bears witness to these translations, which are neglected by the ecclesiastical historians, The passion of St. Andrew at Patræ is described in an epistle from the clergy of

banks were honoured by the presence of Samuel, the judge and prophet of the people of Israel. His ashes, deposited in a golden vase, and covered with a silken veil, were delivered by the bishops into each other's hands. The relics of Samuel were received by the people with the same joy and reverence which they would have shown to the living prophet; the highways, from Palestine to the gates of Constantinople, were filled with an uninterrupted procession; and the emperor Arcadius himself, at the head of the most illustrious members of the clergy and senate, advanced to meet his extraordinary guest, who had always deserved and claimed the homage of kings.73 The example of Rome and Constantinople confirmed the faith and discipline of the catholic world. The honours of the saints and martyrs, after a feeble and ineffectual murmur of profane reason, 74 were universally established; and in the age of Ambrose and Jerom something was still deemed wanting to the sanctity of a Christian church, till it had been consecrated by some portion of holy relics, which fixed

General reflections.

I. Fabulous

and inflamed the devotion of the faithful. In the long period

of twelve hundred years, which elapsed between the reign of Constantine and the reformation of Luther, the worship of saints and relics corrupted the pure and perfect simplicity of the Christian model : and some symptoms of degeneracy may be observed even in the first generations which adopted and cherished this pernicious innovation. I. The satisfactory experience that the relics of saints were more valuable than gold or precious stones75 stimulated the martyrs and clergy to multiply the treasures of the church. Without much regard for truth or probability, they invented names for skeletons, and actions for names. The fame of the apostles, and of the holy men who had imitated their virtues, was darkened by religious fiction. To the invincible band of genuine and primitive martyrs they added myriads of imaginary heroes, who had never existed, except in the fancy of crafty or credulous legendaries; and there is reason to suspect that Tours might not be the only diocese in which the bones of a malefactor were adored instead of those of

relics.

Achaia, which Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 60, N° 34) wishes to believe, and Tillemont is forced to reject. St. Andrew was adopted as the spiritual founder of Constantinople (Mém. Ecclés. tom. i. p. 317-323, 588-594).

73 Jerom (tom. ii. p. 122 [1. c. ed. Vallars.]) pompously describes the translation of Samuel, which is noticed in all the chronicles of the times.

The presbyter Vigilantius, the protestant of his age, firmly, though ineffectually, withstood the superstition of monks, relics, saints, fasts, &c., for which Jerom compares him to the Hydra, Cerberus, the Centaurs, &c., and considers him only as the organ of the Dæmon (tom. ii. p. 120-126 [tom. ii. p. 387-402, ed. Vallars.]. Whoever will peruse the controversy of St. Jerom and Vigilantius, and St. Augustin's account of the miracles of St. Stephen, may speedily gain some idea of the spirit of the Fathers. 75 M. de Beausobre (Hist. du Manichéisme, tom. ii. p. 648) has applied a worldly sense to the pious observation of the clergy of Smyrna, who carefully preserved the relics of St. Polycarp the martyr.

a saint.76 A superstitious practice, which tended to increase the temptations of fraud and credulity, insersibly extinguished the light of history and of reason in the Christian world.

II. But the progress of superstition would have been much less rapid and victorious if the faith of the people had not been II. Miracles. assisted by the seasonable aid of visions and miracles to ascertain the authenticity and virtue of the most suspicious relics. In the reign of the younger Theodosius, Lucian," a presbyter of Jerusalem, and the ecclesiastical minister of the village of Caphargamala, about twenty miles from the city, related a very singular dream, which, to remove his doubts, had been repeated on three successive Saturdays. A venerable figure stood before him, in the silence of the night, with a long beard, a white robe, and a gold rod; announced himself by the name of Gamaliel; and revealed to the astonished presbyter, that his own corpse, with the bodies of his son Abibas, his friend Nicodemus, and the illustrious Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian faith, were secretly buried in the adjacent field. He added, with some impatience, that it was time to release himself and his companions from their obscure prison; that their appearance would be salutary to a distressed world; and that they had made choice of Lucian to inform the bishop of Jerusalem of their situation and their wishes. The doubts and difficulties which still retarded this important discovery were successively removed by new visions; and the ground was opened by the bishop, in the presence of an innumerable multitude. The coffins of Gamaliel, of his son, and of his friend, were found in regular order; but when the fourth coffin, which contained the remains of Stephen, was shown to the light, the earth trembled, and an odour such as that of Paradise was smelt, which instantly cured the various diseases of seventy-three of the assistants. The companions of Stephen were left in their peaceful residence of Caphargamala; but the relics of the first martyr were transported, in solemn procession, to a church constructed in their honour on Mount Sion; and the minute particles of those relics, a drop of blood,78 or the scrapings of a bone, were acknow

76 Martin of Tours (see his Life, c. 8, fession from the mouth of the dead man. discovery is supposed to be miraculous. most frequently?

by Sulpicius Severus) extorted this conThe error is allowed to be natural; the Which of the two was likely to happen

Lucian composed in Greek his original narrative, which has been translated by Avitus, and published by Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 415, N° 7-16). The Benedictine editors of St. Augustin have given (at the end of the work De Civitate Dei) two several copies, with many various readings. It is the character of falsehood to be loose and inconsistent. The most incredible parts of the legend are smoothed and softened by Tillemont (Mém. Ecclés. tom. ii. p. 9, &c.).

78 A phial of St. Stephen's blood was annually liquefied at Naples till he was superseded by St. Januarius (Ruinart. Hist. Persecut. Vandal. p. 529).

ledged, in almost every province of the Roman world, to possess a divine and miraculous virtue. The grave and learned Augustin,79 whose understanding scarcely admits the excuse of credulity, has attested the innumerable prodigies which were performed in Africa by the relics of St. Stephen; and this marvellous narrative is inserted in the elaborate work of the City of God, which the bishop of Hippo designed as a solid and immortal proof of the truth of Christianity. Augustin solemnly declares that he has selected those miracles only which were publicly certified by the persons who were either the objects, or the spectators, of the power of the martyr. Many prodigies were omitted or forgotten; and Hippo had been less favourably treated than the other cities of the province. And yet the bishop enumerates above seventy miracles, of which three were resurrections from the dead, in the space of two years, and within the limits of his own diocese.80 If we enlarge our view to all the dioceses, and all the saints, of the Christian world, it will not be easy to calculate the fables, and the errors, which issued from this inexhaustible source. But we may surely be allowed to observe that a miracle, in that age of superstition and credulity, lost its name and its merit, since it could scarcely be considered as a deviation from the ordinary and established laws of nature.

of poly

theism.

III. The innumerable miracles, of which the tombs of the martyrs III. Revival were the perpetual theatre, revealed to the pious believer the actual state and constitution of the invisible world; and his religious speculations appeared to be founded on the firm basis of fact and experience. Whatever might be the condition of vulgar souls in the long interval between the dissolution and the resurrection of their bodies, it was evident that the superior spirits of the saints and martyrs did not consume that portion of their existence in silent and inglorious sleep. It was evident (without presuming to

81

79 Augustin composed the two-and-twenty books de Civitate Dei in the space of thirteen years, A.D. 413-426. (Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés. tom. xiv. p. 608, &c.)" His learning is too often borrowed, and his arguments are too often his own; but the whole work claims the merit of a magnificent design, vigorously, and not unskilfully, executed.

So See Augustin de Civitat. Dei, 1. xxii. c. 22, and the Appendix, which contains two books of St. Stephen's miracles, by Evodius, bishop of Uzalis. Freculphus (apud Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. viii. p. 249) has preserved a Gallic or Spanish proverb, "Whoever pretends to have read all the miracles of St. Stephen, he lies."

81 Burnet (de Statû Mortuorum, p. 56-84) collects the opinions of the Fathers, as far as they assert the sleep or repose of human souls till the day of judgment. He afterwards exposes (p. 91, &c.) the inconveniences which must arise if they possessed a more active and sensible existence.b

a

According to Clinton he was a still longer time engaged upon its composition, A.D. 411-428. Fast. Rom. vol. ii. p. 465.

-S.

b The notion that the soul after death fell into a state of sleep till the day of judgment is said to have been of Arabian origin. It was entertained at one time