A History of Rome to 565 A. D Part 32

*The origin of monasticism.* Monasticism (from the Greek _monos_, "single"), which became so marked a feature of the religious life of the Middle Ages, had its origin in the ascetic tendencies of the early Christian church, which harmonized with the eastern religious and philosophic ideal of a life of pure contemplation. The chief characteristics of early Christian asceticism were celibacy, fasting, prayer, surrender of worldly goods, and the adoption of a hermit's life.

This renouncement of a worldly life was practised by large numbers of both men and women, especially in Egypt. It was there that organized monastic life began early in the fourth century under the influence of St. Anthony in northern and Pachomius in southern Egypt.

*Anthony and Pachomius in Egypt.* Anthony was the founder of a monastic colony, which was a direct development from the eremitical life. He laid down no rule for the guidance of the lives of the monks, but permitted the maximum of individual freedom. It was Pachomius who first established a truly cen.o.bitical monastery, in which the monks lived a common life under the direction of a single head, the abbot, according to a prescribed rule with fixed religious exercises and daily labor. The organization of convents for women accompanied the foundation of the monasteries. However, the Antonian type of monkhood continued to be the more popular in Egypt, where monasticism flourished throughout the fourth, but began to decline in the fifth, century.

*Eastern monasticism.* From Egypt the movement spread to Palestine, but in Syria and Mesopotamia there was an independent development from the local eremitical ideals. Characteristic of Syrian asceticism were the pillar hermits who pa.s.sed their lives upon the top of lofty pillars. The founder of the Greek monasticism was Basil (c. 360 A. D.), who copied Pachomius in organizing a fully cen.o.bitical life. He discouraged excessive asceticism and emphasized the value of useful toil. The eastern monks were noted for their fanaticism and they took a very prominent part in the religious disorders of the time. The abuses of the early, unregulated monastic life led to the formulation of monastic rules and the subjection of the monks to the authority of the bishops.

*Monasticism in the west: Benedict.* Monasticism was introduced in the West by Athanasius, who came from Egypt to Rome in 339. From Italy it spread to the rest of western Europe. The great organizer of western monasticism was Benedict, who lived in the early sixth century, and founded the monastery at Monte Ca.s.sino about 520 A. D. His monastic rule definitely abandoned the eremitical ideal in favor of the cen.o.bitical. In addition to worship and work, the Benedictine rule made reading a monastic duty. This stimulated the collection of libraries in the monasteries and made the monks the guardians of literary culture throughout the Middle Ages.

As yet no distinct monastic orders had developed, but each monastery was autonomous under the direction of its own abbot.

V. LITERATURE AND ART

*General characteristics.* The period between the accession of Diocletian and the death of Justinian saw the gradual disappearance of the ancient Graeco-Roman culture. In spite of Diocletian's reestablishment of the empire, there was a steady lowering of the general cultural level. This was due chiefly to the progressive barbarization of the empire and to the decline of paganism which lay at the roots of ancient civilization. The one creative force of the time was Christianity, but, save in the fields of religion and ethics, it did little to stem the ebbing tide of old world culture.

*Literature.* The dying out of this culture is clearly to be seen in the history of the Greek and Roman literatures of the period, each of which shows the same general traits. In the fourth century, under the impulse of the restoration of Diocletian, there is a brief revival of productivity in pagan literature. But this is characterized by archaism and lack of creative power. The imitation of the past produces not only an artificiality of style, but also of language, so that literature loses touch with contemporary life and the language of the literary world is that of previous centuries, no longer that of the people. Rhetorical studies are the sole form of higher education, and are in part responsible for the archaism and artificiality of contemporary literature, owing to the emphasis which they laid upon literary form to the neglect of substance. In the fifth century, following the complete triumph of Christianity, pagan literature comes to an end.

The recognition of Christianity as an imperial religion by Constantine, its subsequent victorious a.s.sault upon paganism, and the intensity of sectarian strife gave to Christian literature a freshness and vigor lacking in the works of pagan writers, and produced a wealth of apologetic, dogmatic and theological writings. But the Christian authors followed the accepted categories of the pagan literature, and while producing polemic writings, works of translation and of religious exegesis, they entered the fields of history, biography, oratory and epistolography. Thus arose a profane, as well as a sacred, Christian literature. And since Christian writers were themselves men of education and appealed to educated circles, their works are dominated by the current rhetorical standards of literary taste. Yet in some aspects, in particular in sacred poetry and popular religious biography, they break away from cla.s.sical traditions and develop new literary types.

But after the first half of the fifth century originality and productivity in Christian literature also are on the wane. This is in part due to the effects of the struggle of the empire with barbarian peoples; in part to the suppression of freedom of religious thought by the orthodox church.

Even after the extinction of paganism the cla.s.sical literatures of Greece and Rome afforded the only material for a non-religious education. And since they no longer const.i.tuted a menace to Christianity, the church became reconciled to their use for purposes of instruction, and it was to the church, and especially to the monasteries, that the pagan literature owes its preservation throughout the Dark Ages.

A symptom of the general intellectual decline of the later empire is the dying out of Greek in the western empire. While up to the middle of the third Christian century the world of letters had been bi-lingual, from that time onwards, largely as a result of the political conditions which led to a separation of the eastern and western parts of the empire, the knowledge of Greek began to disappear in the West until in the late empire it was the exception for a Latin-speaking man of letters to be versed in the Greek tongue.

*Pagan Latin literature.* A wide gulf separated the pagan Latin literature of the fourth century from that of the early princ.i.p.ate. Poetry had degenerated to learned tricks, historical writing had taken the form of epitomies, while published speeches and letters were but empty exhibitions of rhetorical skill. The influence of rhetorical studies made itself felt in legal phraseology, which now lost its former clarity, directness and simplicity. Still there are a few outstanding literary figures who deserve mention because they are so expressive of the tendencies of the time or because they have been able to attain a higher level.

*Ausonius and Symmachus (c. 345405 A. D.).* The career of Ausonius, a professor of grammar and rhetoric at Bordeaux, whose life covers the fourth century, shows how highly rhetorical instruction was valued. His ability procured him imperial recognition, and he became the tutor of Gratian, from whom he received the honor of the consulate in 379. His poetical works are chiefly clever verbal plays, but one, the _Mosella_, which describes a voyage down the river Moselle, is noteworthy for its description of contemporary life and its appreciation of the beauty of nature. Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, city prefect, and the leader of the pagan party in Rome under Gratian and Valentinian II, is a typical representative of the educated society of the time which strove to keep alive a knowledge of cla.s.sical literature. He left a collection of orations and letters, poor in thought, but rich in empty phrase.

*Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, fl. 350400 A. D.* A man of far different stamp was Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, by birth a Greek of Antioch, and an officer of high rank in the imperial army. Taking Tacitus as his model, he wrote in Latin a history which continued the former's work for the period from 96 to 378 A. D. Of this only the part covering the years 353 to 378 has survived.

His history is characterized by sound judgment and objectivity, but is marred by the introduction of frequent digressions extraneous to the subject in hand and by a strained rhetorical style. However, it remains the one considerable pagan work in Latin prose from the late empire.

*Claudius Claudia.n.u.s and Rutilius Namatia.n.u.s (both fl. 400 A. D.).* The "last eminent man of letters who was a professed pagan" in the western empire was Claudius Claudia.n.u.s. Claudian was by birth an Egyptian Greek who took up his residence in Rome about 395 A. D. and attached himself to the military dictator, Stilicho. He chose to write in Latin, and composed hexameter epics which celebrated the military exploits of his patron. He also wrote mythological epics and elegiacs. Claudian found his inspiration in Ovid and reawakened the charm of Augustan poetry. A contemporary of Claudian, and, like him a pagan, was Rutilius Namatia.n.u.s, who was a native of southern Gaul but a resident of Rome where he attained the highest senatorial offices. His literary fame rests upon the elegiac poem in which he described his journey from Rome to Gaul in 416 A. D., and revealed the hold which the imperial city still continued to exercise upon men's minds.

*Christian Latin literature: Lactantius (d. about 325 A. D.).* It is among the writers of Christian literature that the few great Latin authors of the time are to be found. At the beginning of the fourth century stood Lactantius, an African, who became a teacher of rhetoric in Nicomedia, where he was converted to Christianity. His chief work was the _Divinae Inst.i.tutiones_, an introduction to Christian doctrine, which was an attempt to create a philosophical Christianity. His purity of style has caused him to be called the "Christian Cicero."

*Ambrose, (d. 397 A. D.).* Ambrose, the powerful bishop of Milan, who exercised such great influence with Gratian and Theodosius the Great, also displayed great literary activity. In general, his writings are developments of his sermons, and display no very great learning. Their power depended upon the strength of his personality. More important from a literary standpoint are the hymns which he composed for use in church services to combat in popular form the Arian doctrines. In his verses Ambrose adhered to the cla.s.sic metrical forms, but in the course of the next two centuries these were abandoned for the use of the rhymed verse, which itself was a development of the current rhetorical prose.

*Jerome, 335420 A. D.* The most learned of the Latin Christian writers of antiquity was Jerome (Hieronymus), a native of northern Bosnia, whose retired, studious life was in striking contrast to the public, official career of Ambrose. A Greek and Hebrew scholar, in addition to his dogmatic writings he made a Latin translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew (the basis of the later _Vulgate_), and another of the Greek _Church History_ of Eusebius.

*Augustine, 354430 A. D.* The long line of notable literary figures of the African church is closed by Augustine, the bishop of Hippo who died during the siege of his city by the Vandals in 430 A. D. In his early life a pagan, he found inspiration and guidance in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. But while Jerome was still dominated by Greek religious thought, Augustine was the first Latin Christian writer to emanc.i.p.ate himself from this dependence and display originality of form and ideas in his works. Of these the two most significant are the _Confessions_ and _On the City of G.o.d_. The _Confessions_ reveal the story of his inner life, the struggle of good and evil in his own soul. The work _On the City of G.o.d_ was inspired by the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 and the accusation of the pagans that this was a punishment for the abandonment of the ancient deities. In answer to this charge Augustine develops a philosophical interpretation of history as the conflict of good and evil forces, in which the Heavenly City is destined to triumph over that of this world. His work prepared the way for the conception of the Roman Catholic Church as the city of G.o.d.

*Boethius (d. 524 A. D.) and Ca.s.siodorus (c. 480575 A. D.).* Between the death of Augustine and the death of Justinian the West produced no ecclesiastical literary figure worthy of note. However, under the Ostrogothic regime in Italy, profane literature is represented by two outstanding personalities-Boethius and Ca.s.siodorus. The patrician Boethius while in prison awaiting his death sentence from Theoderic composed his work _On the Consolation of Philosophy_, a treatise embued with the finest spirit of Greek intellectual life. Ca.s.siodorus, who held the posts of quaestor and master of the offices under Theoderic, has left valuable historical material in his _Variae_, a collection of official letters drawn up by him in the course of his administrative duties. His chief literary work was a history of the Goths, of which unfortunately only a few excerpts have remained. In his later years Ca.s.siodorus retired to a monastery which he founded and organized according to the Benedictine rule. There he performed an inestimable service in fostering the preservation of secular as well as ecclesiastical knowledge among the brethren, thus giving to the Benedictine monks the impulse to intellectual work for which they were so distinguished in medieval times.

*Greek Christian literature; Religious prose.* It was in the fourth century that Greek Christian prose literature reached its height. Among its leading representatives were Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria who fought the Arian heresy; Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, the founder of church history; Gregory of n.a.z.ianzus, church orator and poet; and Basil, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, the organizer of Greek monasticism.

Above them all in personality and literary ability stood John Chrysostom (the Golden-mouth), patriarch of Constantinople under Arcadius. With the fifth century came a decline in theological prose; men resorted to excerpts and collections. But at this time began the development of the popular monastic narratives and lives of the saints which served as the novels and romances of the time.

*Religious poetry.* It was subsequent to the fourth century also that Christian religious poetry attained its bloom. Here a break was made with cla.s.sical tradition in the adoption of accentual in place of quant.i.tative verse. This was in harmony with the disappearance of distinctions of syllabic quant.i.ty from popular speech. The use of rhythm in verse was introduced by Gregory of n.a.z.ianzus, but the chief and most productive representative of the new poetry was Roma.n.u.s, a converted Syrian Jew whose activity falls in the reign of Justinian.

*Greek profane literature.* Contemporary profane Greek literature exhibits less originality and interest. Historical writing was continued in strict imitation of cla.s.sical models by both Christian and pagan writers. Of exceptional historical value are the works of Procopius, the historian of the wars of Justinian, who like Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus shared in an official capacity in the events which he described. A more popular form of historical writing was the compilation of chronicles of world history, collections of excerpts put together for the most part by men who failed to understand their sources. The profane verse of the time is represented by narrative poems, such as the _Dionysiaca_ and the metrical version of the Gospel of St. John composed by Nonnus in Egypt (c. 400 A. D.), and by a rich epigrammatic literature.

In the eastern empire literary productivity continued, although on the decline, slightly longer than in the West, but by the middle of the sixth century there also it had come to an end.

*Art.* The art of the late empire exhibits the same general characteristics as the literature. Not only was there a general lack of originality and creative capacity, but even the power of imitating the masterpieces of earlier times was conspicuously lacking. The Arch of Constantine erected in 312 A. D. affords a good ill.u.s.tration of the situation. Its decoration mainly consists of sculptures appropriated from monuments of the first and second century, beside which the new work is crude and unskilful. A comparison of the imperial portraits on the coins of the fourth century with those of the princ.i.p.ate up to the dynasty of the Severi reveals the same decline in taste and artistic ability.

In the realm of art as in literature Christianity supplied a new creative impulse, which made itself felt in the adaptation of pagan artistic forms to Christian purposes. The earliest traces of Christian art are to be found in the mural paintings of the underground burial vaults and chapels of the Roman catacombs, and in the sculptured reliefs which adorned the sarcophagi of the wealthy. These were popular branches of contemporary art and the influence of Christianity consisted in the artistic representation of biblical subjects and the employment of Christian symbolical motives.

These forms of Christian art decayed with the general cultural decline that followed the third century.

The most important and original contribution of Christianity to the art of the late empire was in the development of church architecture. To meet the needs of the Christian church service, which included the opportunity to address large audiences, there arose the Christian basilica, which took its name from the earlier profane structures erected to serve as places for the conduct of public business, but which differed considerably from them in its construction. In general the basilica was a long rectangular building, divided by rows of columns into a central hall or nave and two side halls or aisles. The walls of the nave rose above the roof of the aisles, and allowed s.p.a.ce for windows. The roof was flat or gabled, and, like the wall s.p.a.ces, covered with paintings or mosaics. The rear of the structure was a semicircular apse which held the seats of the bishop and the lower clergy. To the original plan there came to be added the transept, a hall at right angles to the main structure between it and the apse. This gave the basilica its later customary crosslike form.

While the basilica became the almost universal form of church architecture in Italy and the West, in the East preference was shown for round or polygonal structures with a central dome, an outgrowth of the Roman rotunda, which was first put to Christian uses in tombs and grave chapels.

A rich variety of types, combining the central dome with other architectural features arose in the cities of Asia and Egypt. The masterpiece of this style was the church of St. Sophia erected by Justinian in Constantinople in 537 A. D. Another notable example from the same period is the church of San Vitale at Ravenna.

In the mosaics which adorn these and other structures of the time are to be seen the traces of a Christian h.e.l.lenistic school of painting which gave pictorial expression to the whole biblical narrative. These mosaics and the miniature paintings employed in the illuminated ma.n.u.scripts survived as prominent features of Byzantine art.

EPILOGUE

*The Lombard and Slavic invasions.* In 568 A. D., three years after the death of Justinian, the Lombards descended upon Italy from Pannonia and wrested from the empire the Po valley and part of central Italy. The Romans were confined to Ravenna, Rome, and the southern part of the peninsula. Towards the close of the sixth century (after 581 A. D.) occurred the migrations of the Bulgars and Slavs across the Danube which resulted in the Slavic occupation of Illyric.u.m and the interposition of a barbarous, heathen people between the eastern empire and western Europe.

Early in the seventh century the Roman possessions in Spain were lost to the Goths.

*The papacy and the Holy Roman Empire.* The weakness of the imperial authority in the West led to the strengthening of the papacy and its acquisition of political power in Italy. It was the papacy also which kept alive in western Europe the ideal of a universal imperial church, for the whole of western Christendom came to acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman see. Nor was the conception of a reestablished western empire lost to view; and it was destined to find realization in the Holy Roman empire of Charlemagne and his successors. Of great importance for the future development of European civilization was the fact that the western part of the Roman empire had pa.s.sed under the control of peoples either already Christianized or soon to become so, and that the church, chiefly through the monasteries, was thus enabled to become the guardian of the remnants of ancient culture.

*The Byzantine empire.* The loss of the western provinces and Illyric.u.m transferred the center of gravity in the empire from the Latin to the Greek element and accelerated the transformation of the eastern Roman empire into an essentially Greek state-the Byzantine empire. The Byzantine empire inherited from the Roman its organization and the name _Romaioi_ (Romans) for its citizens, but before the close of the sixth century Greek had supplanted Latin as the language of government. This transformation further accentuated the religious differences between East and West, which led ultimately to the separation of the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches.

*The Mohammedan invasion.* Before the middle of the seventh century Egypt and Syria were occupied by the Saracens, whose conquest was facilitated by the animosity of the monophysite native populations towards the rule of an orthodox emperor. However, the loss of these territories gave fresh solidarity to the empire in the East by restricting its authority to the religiously and linguistically h.o.m.ogeneous, and thoroughly loyal, population of Asia Minor and the eastern Balkan peninsula. This solidarity enabled the Byzantine empire to fulfill its historic mission of forming the eastern bulwark of Christian Europe against the Turk throughout the Middle Ages.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

NOTE. Owing to the uncertainty of the chronological record of early Roman history it must be admitted that little reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of most of the traditional dates prior to 281 B. C. For this period I have followed, in the main, Diodorus.

B. C. ? Paleolithic Age.

? Neolithic Age. Ligurian settlement in Italy.

25002000 Beginning of the Age of Bronze. Palafitte Lake Villages. Terramare villages.

1000 Beginning of the Iron Age.

IXVIII cent. Etruscan settlement in Etruria.