11 Chapter 11.The Darkest Period of the Dark Ages.A.D. 800-1000.
Chapter 11. The Darkest Period of the Dark Ages.
A.D. 800-1000.
It is cheering to the heart, depressed by the contemplation of the church during the period which we have been considering, to be able to record that, in spite of increasing darkness on all hands, the gospel was not entirely hid. It is an irrefragable principle, which may be traced throughout all the dispensations of God, that He never leaves Himself without a witness. We see it in Noah and his family preserved from the flood; we see it in the 7000 who had not bowed the knee to Baal; we see it in the solitary four who refused to touch the king’s meat or worship the golden image of Nebuchadnezzar; and, blessed be God, we see it even in these degenerate times when the professing church was steeped in vice, and ’honeycombed and gangrened with falsehood.’ In the West, where the darkness was deepest (though not in the vicinity of Rome), a true work for Christ was going on, owing not a little to the christian zeal of Charlemagne’s successor, his son Louis the Meek. Lewis was a true Christian; but too gentle for his soldiers, and too pious for his priests: and the reforms which he contemplated were opposed both by the military and ecclesiastical powers. His position, for manifold reasons, was not a happy one. All attempts to purify the court were frustrated by the evil examples and rebellious conduct of his sons: the soldiers, who subsisted by plunder and violence, liked not the checks which he put upon their thieving and lecherous habits: the bishops, proud of their swords and spurs, resented his action in depriving them of these warlike appendages: while the personal piety of the good king made him the common butt of all classes. When his sons, Pepin, Louis, and Lothaire, rose in open rebellion against him, a pope (Gregory IV.) was not lacking to countenance the wicked and unfilial act; and the clergy, whose true office would have been to counsel and console him, united with the rest in the effort to dethrone him. False charges of the gravest nature were lodged against him, and having been summoned to appear before an assembly at Compiegne, he was there subjected to the most painful insults and humiliation. A paper containing the list of his pretended crimes was placed in his hands, and some sort of a confession having been extorted from him, he was made to do penance in the following manner: A coarse mat was placed before the altar, on which he was commanded to kneel, and divest himself in turn of his bald-rick, sword, and royal vestments, assuming in their place the sackcloth covering of a penitent. A form of psalm-singing and laying on of priestly hands was then gone through in order to give an odour of sanctity to the crime, and the degraded monarch was conducted to the cell in which it had been ordained that he should end his days. But the nobles and people, disgusted with this act of priestly assumption, demanded his restoration; and the popular clamour at length became so loud, that the king was removed from the cloister, and re-instated on the throne. In the year 840 death put an end to his gentle but unhappy reign; and the jaded spirit of the pious king found rest in a country more peaceful than that which it had been his misfortune to rule over.
Yet the christian efforts of Louis, though barren of good results in his own kingdom, bore fruit in other parts; and the introduction of the gospel into Denmark and Sweden, which was brought about in the following manner, was undoubtedly due to him. In a dispute for the throne of Denmark, between Heriold, the rightful king, and Godfrid, the former had to take refuge at the court of Louis, and where the kindliness of his reception encouraged him to solicit the help of his royal host. But Louis would only consent to this on condition that Heriold embraced Christianity, and agreed to allow the preaching of the gospel in his dominions. The king consented to this, and was accordingly baptised at Mentz, together with his queen and many of the court, in the year 826. On his return to Denmark he took with him two missionary monks, Ansgarius and Aubert, the latter of whom died within a few months of his arrival, but not before he had seen some results from his preaching. Ansgarius laboured on for awhile, and then crossed to Sweden, where the word was much blessed and many were converted. He was afterwards made archbishop of Hamburg and all the North by Gregory IV., and entered into his rest, full of honours, in the year 865. The sphere of his labours embraced the territories of the Danes, the Cimbrians and the Swedes; but we are sorry to add, that the work which he commenced, already hampered by much that was superstitious and unscriptural, was almost buried beneath the rubbish of Romanism during the next century. The gospel was also carried, with more or less success, to the Russians, Poles, and Hungarians; owing in no small degree to the conversions of their respective princes, which seem in some cases to have been real, and accompanied with a saving faith. It is very interesting to notice the various means which were used of God, in opening the territories of the barbarians to the gospel message: sometimes it was by the instrumentality of a zealous monk — as Ansgarius or Aubert; sometimes by the union of a heathen prince with a christian princess as Vladimir, prince of the Russians, with Anna, the sister of the Greek Emperor; sometimes by a plague or famine — the means which were instrumental in opening up the way to Bulgaria.
Great Britain also, being so far removed from Rome, had few hindrances to the preaching of the gospel, though the pure light was much clouded by monkishness and superstition. The story of king Alfred’s glorious reign is too well-known to be repeated here. The piety of this truly christian king was as conspicuous as his prowess, and amid the cares of state, and anxieties caused by the incursions of the Danes, his pen was not idle in a better cause. In addition to the composition of some poems of a moral and religious character, he translated the gospels into the Saxon tongue, and this may be justly spoken of as his great work. The subjoined passage from his translation may not be unacceptable, as it forms an interesting example of the language spoken in this country during the period in question. The reader will recognise it as the Lord’s prayer. "Faeder ure thu the earth on heafenum, si thin nama gehalgod, to become thin rice, gewurthe thin willa on earthen swa swa on heafenum, urne ge dgwanlican hlaf syle us to doeg; and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgivath urum gyltendum, and ne geladde thu us on consenung ac alyse us of yfle (si it swa)." In Scotland the people were much indebted, through the goodness of God, to the faithful ministry of a monk named Clement, who preached a gospel remarkable for its clearness and purity; but his faithfulness drew down upon him the enmity of Boniface, the archbishop of the German churches; and at his instigation Clement was summoned or enticed to Rome, where he suddenly disappeared.
Ireland boasts the honour of giving birth to Duns Scotus Erigena, a christian philosopher of this period, who is regarded by Hallam* as one of the two remarkable men of the Dark Ages. He says, however, that the extracts from his writings which he has met with contain "unintelligible rhapsodies of mysticism;" though whether he would include in this condemnation the following extract, we are not in a position to say. It is quoted by D’Aubigne and runs thus: O Lord Jesus, I ask no happiness of Thee, but to understand, unmixed with deceitful theories, the word that Thou hast inspired by Thy Holy Spirit! Shew Thyself to those who seek for Thee alone." If this is mysticism, would that there were more of it, even in the church to-day!
{*Literature of Europe in the 15th and 16th Centuries." (Chap. i. 11.)}
Arnulph, bishop of Orleans, seems to have been a man of some piety, but very little is known of him. One of his discourses throws a ghastly light on the condition of Rome in his day. "O deplorable Rome!"he exclaims, "who, in the days of our forefathers, didst produce so many burning and shining lights, thou hast brought forth in our times only dismal darkness, worthy of the detestation of posterity!" Of the pope he says, "what think you, reverend fathers, of this man, placed on a lofty throne, shining in purple and gold? Whom do you account him? If destitute of love, and puffed up with the pride of knowledge only, he is antichrist, sitting in the temple of God."
But, perhaps, the most remarkable man of this period is Claude, the bishop or metropolitan of Turin; who was advanced to that dignity (’the burden of a bishopric’ he called it) by Louis the Meek, about the year 816. He has been described as "the protestant of the ninth century," and deserves the title. He differed from the church of Rome on many points, and there is no mincing matters in the way he speaks his mind. On his elevation to the bishopric he says that he "found all the churches at Turin stuffed full of vile and accursed images," and forthwith began to destroy "what all were sottishly worshipping. Therefore it was that all opened their mouths to revile me; and forsooth, had not the Lord helped me, they would have swallowed me up quick." He speaks in scathing language of the adoration of the cross, which God commanded men to bear and not to worship, and complains that some, who would bear it neither corporeally nor spiritually, were bent on worshipping it. "If," argued the bishop, "we ought to adore the cross because Christ was fastened to it why not adore mangers and old clouts, because He was laid in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes? Why not adore fishing boats and asses, because he slept in the one and rode on the other?" But this was answering the fool according to his folly, and the bishop continues, "all these things are ridiculous; rather to be lamented than set forth in writing: but we are forced to set them down." Those who had departed from the truth had fallen in love with vanity, and he follows them with an earnest cry of warning. "Why do you crucify again the Son of God, and expose Him to open shame; and by this means make souls by troops to become the companions of devils, estranging them from their Creator by the horrible sacrilege of your images and likenesses, and precipitating them into everlasting damnation?" Going from this to the subject of pilgrimages to Rome, which many were teaching was equivalent to repentance, he shrewdly inquires how they could keep so many poor souls to serve them in the monasteries instead of sending them to Rome to get forgiveness of their sins. What had they to say against that sentence, "Whosoever shall lay a stone of stumbling before any of these little ones, it were better for him that a millstone were hung about his neck, and be cast into the bottom of the sea?" He then proceeds to explain, that these pilgrimages to Rome were utterly worthless, and shewed a spiritual destitution on the part of those who undertook them, which could only belong to the very ignorant. Some also were putting their confidence in the merits or the intercession of saints, but it only shewed that they were walking in darkness, for if the saints on whom they called were as holy and righteous as Noah, Daniel, or Job, there would still be no hope or deliverance from such a quarter. Even the pope was but a fallible man, and in spite of his title of apostolic lord, was only apostolic in so far as he shewed himself the keeper and guardian of the apostle’s doctrine. The mere fact of his being seated in the apostle’s chair proved nothing: the scribes and Pharisees sat in Moses’ chair. But it must not be inferred from this that Claude was merely a controversialist. He was naturally more inclined to learn than to teach or correct others, and his writings breathe a true spirit of humility and christian love. Witness his beautiful description of truth, which we extract from his address to a friend, inserted at the close of one of his commentaries: "For this beauty of the eternal truth and wisdom (God grant I may always have a constant will to enjoy her, for the love of whom we have also undertaken this work) doth not exclude those that come unto her, because of the great number of hearers she hath; she grows not old by length of time; she minds not high places; she does not suffer herself to be overtaken by night; she does not shut up herself in shadows, and doth not expose herself to our bodily senses; she is near unto all those that turn themselves to her from all parts of the world; and who love her indeed; she is eternal to all; she is not limited by any places, she is everywhere; she advertises abroad, she instructs within, she changes and converts those who behold her; she does not suffer herself to be violated by any person; no man can judge of her, nobody can judge well without her." The influence of Claude, however, was only felt over a very limited area; and, in the midst of so much darkness, it is hardly to be expected that his followers would become numerous. Yet they were sufficiently numerous to attract the attention and to draw down upon their heads the anathemas of the pope. He incited the lay princes against them; and so we find that they were hunted from the open country and compelled to take refuge among the neighbouring mountains, where they were shut off from papal influences, and there throve as they had never done.
Happy condition this for the little remnant, when all around was so dark and spiritless! Happy to be thus shut in with God among the mountains, whose snowy peaks were always pointing heavenwards, at a time when the plains were so swaddled up in earthly mists and vapours! These were the Christians of Piedmont, another accession to the Vaudois church, to which we have already made a passing reference: we shall meet with them again later on. But how dark was all around! It was a darkness that might be felt: but who was there to feel it? The condition was natural to most of them; and they loved it more than the light, because their deeds were evil. How evil we may learn by contemporary records and the decisions of their own councils. At the council of Pavia, in the year 850, it was necessary to enjoin sobriety on the bishops, and to prohibit them from keeping "hounds and hawks for hunting, and having gaudy dresses for vain show." At two separate councils the complaint was raised, that "the inferior clergy kept women in their houses, to the great scandal of the ministry;" and it was said of the presbyters that they "turn bailiffs, frequent taverns, practise usury . . . . and do not blush to indulge in revelry and drunkenness." Lacrius, a Carthusian, speaks of the period as "the worst of times;" lamenting that charity had grown cold, iniquity abounded, and "truth was rendered scarce by the sons of men." Waltrun, bishop of Naumburg, after giving a graphic and deplorable picture both of the internal and external condition of the Romish church, civil war at that moment raging between the pope and the emperor, quotes the prophet Hosea to this effect, "There is no truth and there is no pity, and there is no knowledge of God upon the earth. Cursing and lying and murder and theft and adultery have inundated it, and blood toucheth blood." Hervey, archbishop of Rheims, another contemporary, laments that every one is given up to his passions, the human and divine laws are alike despised, and that the plunder of ecclesiastical possessions is universal. "The bishops," he says, "are bishops only in name; neglecting preaching, falling into sin, abandoning God, and binding heavy burdens on the people which they will not touch with the ends of their fingers." Another, himself a bishop, affirms that "one could scarce find a man fit to be ordained a bishop, or a bishop fit to ordain others." Of the popes (passing over the story of pope Joan, a woman who is said to have occupied the papal chair for two years) it is sufficient to say: that one (Stephen VII.) was strangled, his death occasioning the remark that, "he had entered the fold like a thief, and it was fit that he should die by the halter;" that another (Sergius III.) — we have it on the testimony of a cardinal — was "the slave of every vice and the most wicked of men;" that another (John X.) was raised to the throne by the interest of the prostitute Theodora, and was afterwards murdered through the influence of the woman’s daughter; and lastly, that a youth of eighteen, having forced his way to the papal chair, and taken the title of John XII. "turned the Lateran into a brothel, carried on amours with various women; was given to hunting; put out the eyes of his godfather; drank to the health of the devil; swore by the heathen gods while playing dice," and was killed in a midnight brawl in the year 964.
Another feature of the period was the lying wonders of various kinds, which were exhibited in many of the churches. Thus we hear of a feather from the wing of the angel Gabriel;’ a piece of Noah’s ark; the ’chemise of the blessed Virgin;’ some of the coals that roasted St. Laurence; a little soot from the furnace of the three young men; the mark of the breath of Joseph on a glove that belonged to Nicodemus; and the parings of St. Antony’s toes.* The period is also remarkable for the perpetration of a monstrous fraud; which, while it increased the power of Rome, added to the growing darkness. A collection of forged decretals was issued, called the "Decretals of Isidore," which purported to be the decrees of the Roman bishops on important ecclesiastical questions from Clemens downwards. "In this collection the contemporaries of Tacitus and Quintilian, are made to speak the barbarous Latin of the ninth century. The customs and institutions of the Franks are gravely attributed to the Romans at the time of the emperors. Popes are therein made to quote the Bible in the words of the Latin translation written by St. Jerome, who lived one, two or three centuries after them; and Victor, the bishop of Rome in the year 192, is found writing to Theophilus, who was archbishop of Alexandria in 385." For a long time these decretals were generally believed in, and did not a little mischief in the church, in spite of the clumsiness of the forgeries and the many internal proofs of their spuriousness. The pope, of course, adopted them, and did not scruple to assure the hesitating bishops of France that they had lain for years in the Roman archives. So true is it that a lying spirit is in the mouth of popery.
{*Eleven of the convents in England exhibited girdles belonging to the Virgin one exhibited the ear of Malchus! another, the one-winged image of an angel which had flown to England with the spear-head that pierced our Saviour while the teeth of St. Apollonia (said to be an infallible cure for the tooth-ache) were so numerous that they weighed more than a ton!} But the credulity of the people was imposed upon in other ways by the clergy; and to this period belongs the institution of the rosary and crown of the Virgin Mary. The rosary (from rosarium, a bed of roses) consists of a string of beads on which the possessor counts the prayers which he repeats. Fifteen repetitions of the Lord’s Prayer and a hundred and fifty salutations of the blessed Virgin complete the rosary; and the crown consists, as a rule, of seven repetitions of the same prayer and seventy salutations. Moreover, an absurd belief that the archangel Michael celebrated mass in the court of heaven every Monday, was very general; and the clergy were not slow to profit by the ignorance of the people, who crowded the churches dedicated to St. Michael, in order to obtain his intercession.
Another of the inventions of the period was the doctrine of transubstantiation. It originated with a monk, named Paschasius Radbert; but it was not placed among the settled doctrines of Rome till nearly three centuries later. Paschasius asserted that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are actually converted into the body and blood of Christ, and built his novel doctrine on a strictly literal interpretation of the Lord’s words, "Take eat, this is my body," and similar scriptures. Yet to take the words in that sense is a manifest absurdity, and involves one in a labyrinth of absurdities. A recent writer has forcibly remarked: Christ could say, "’This is my body which is broken,’ when it was not broken at all, and while He held the bread in His own hand alive; ’This is the Lord’s passover,’ when God was no longer passing over at all; ’I am the true vine,’ and so of a thousand others. It enters into all language. I say of a picture: ’That is my mother.’ Nobody is misled by it, but those who choose to be misled ’We are buried with Christ by baptism unto death,’ yet we are not buried and we do not die; that is certain. Hence we find in scripture, in a general way, the use of language as to the Lord’s Supper."* In Rome, however, there are, and ever were, many who choose to be misled, and it is therefore simple to understand that the dogma of transubstantiation was presently received as a leading and essential doctrine.
{*Lady Jane Grey, in her cross-examination by Fecknam, reasoned in much the same way, When Fecknam put the question: "Doth not Christ speak these words? Doth He not say it is His body?"the lovely martyr replied: "I grant He doth, and so He saith, ’I am the vine,’ ’I am the door;’ but He is never the more the door nor the vine," etc. But we must hasten on. It might be asked, Could it be possible that things would grow darker and more dismal that the minds of men choked by the weeds of sloth, and blinded by the web of superstition, would sink to even lower depths of morbidness and misery? Alas! it was but too possible. As the thousandth year of the church’s history drew near, terror was added to superstition; and a panic, such as has doubtless never been known before or since, seized upon the people. Had not the Lord said, that after the thousand years Satan should be loosed out of his prison, and should go out to deceive the nations in the four quarters of the earth?* Surely then the end of the world was at hand!
{*Revelation xx.}
Taking this for his text a hermit of Thuringia, named Bernhard, had gone forth in the year 960, preaching the coming doom. There was a show of reason in the doctrine, and the superstitious of every rank were wrought upon by the delusion. Monks and hermits took up the cry, and long before the year commenced it had rung its dreadful knell through all Europe. People crowded to Palestine, leaving lands and houses behind them, or bequeathing them, by way of expiation for their sins, to churches and monasteries; nobles sold their estates, and even princes and bishops joined the pilgrim train, and prepared themselves for the appearing of the Lamb on Mount Zion. An eclipse of the sun and other phenomena in the heavens contributed to the general terror and misery, and thousands fled from the cities to take refuge in the dens and caves of the earth. Truly there were ghastly reasons for the act; for it was expected that a convulsion of nature would usher in the awful moment, and many felt it would be better to be destroyed by the falling mountains than by the wrath of Him that sitteth upon the throne. The awful premonitions that were to usher in the day of judgment, seemed actually to be fulfilled; there were "signs in the sun and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which (were) coming upon the earth." (Luke xxi. 25-26.) That year the houses of rich and poor were left unrepaired, the lands untilled, the vineyards uncultivated. No harvests were gathered in because no seed had been sown; no new churches or monasteries were erected, because in a few months there would be no human beings to frequent them. At length the final day of the terrible year began. When night closed in, few were in a condition to seek their beds: the vestibules and porches of the churches were thronged with anxious, fearful watchers. It was a sleepless night for all Europe. But day dawned. The sun rose in the heavens as of yore, and shone down upon an unconsumed though famine-stricken world; there were no portentous signs in the skies above — no tremors in the earth below — all things continued as they were. A sigh of relief arose from all hearts. The deluded multitudes returned to their several homes, and resumed their accustomed avocations. The Year of Terror had passed away, and the eleventh century of the church’s history had begun.