The Roman and the Teuton Part 10

The story has become world-famous from its horror: but I suppose I must tell it you in its place.--How she went to Helmichis the s.h.i.+eld-bearer, and he bade her get Peredeo the Kemper-man to do the deed: and how Peredeo intrigued with one of her bower-maidens, and how Rosamund did a deed of darkness, and deceived Peredeo; and then said to him, I am thy mistress; thou must slay thy master, or thy master thee. And how he, like Gyges in old Herodotus's tale, preferred to survive; and how Rosamund bound the king's sword to his bedstead as he slept his mid-day sleep, and Peredeo did the deed; and how Alboin leapt up, and fought with his footstool, but in vain. And how, after he was dead, Rosamund became Helmichis' leman, as she had been Peredeo's, and fled with him to Ravenna, with all the treasure and Alpswintha, Alboin's daughter by the Frankish wife; and how Longinus the exarch persuaded her to poison Helmichis, and marry him; and how she gave Helmichis the poisoned cup as he came out of the bath, and he saw by the light of her wicked eyes that it was poison, and made her drink the rest; and so they both fell dead.

And then how Peredeo and the treasure were sent to the Emperor at Constantinople; and how Peredeo slew a great lion in the theatre; and how Tiberius, when he saw that he was so mighty a man of his hands, bade put his eyes out; and how he hid two knives in his sleeves, and slew with them two great chamberlains of the Emperor; and so died, like Samson, says old Paul, having got good weregeld for the loss of his eyes--a man for either eye.

And old Na.r.s.es died at Rome, at a great age; and they wrapt him in lead, and sent him to Byzant with all his wealth. But some say that while he was still alive, he hid his wealth in a great cistern, and slew all who knew of it save one old man, and swore him never to reveal the place. But after Na.r.s.es' death that old man went to Constantinople to Tiberius the Caesar, and told him how he could not die with that secret on his mind; and so Tiberius got all the money, so much that it took many days to carry away, and gave it all to the poor, as was his wont.

A myth--a fable: but significant, as one more attempt to answer the question of all questions in a Teuton's mind--What had become of the Nibelungen h.o.a.rd? What had become of all the wealth of Rome?

LECTURE VIII--THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN

I asked in my first lecture, 'What would become of the forest children, unless some kind saint or hermit took pity on them?'

I used the words saint and hermit with a special purpose. It was by the influence, actual or imaginary, of such, that the Teutons, after the destruction of the Roman empire, were saved from becoming hordes of savages, destroying each other by continual warfare.

What our race owes, for good and for evil, to the Roman clergy, I shall now try to set before you.

To mete out to them their due share of praise and blame is, I confess, a very difficult task. It can only be fulfilled by putting oneself, as far as possible, in their place, and making human allowance for the circ.u.mstances, utterly novel and unexpected, in which they found themselves during the Teutonic invasions. Thus, perhaps, we may find it true of some of them, as of others, that 'Wisdom is justified of all her children.'

That is a hard saying for human nature. Justified of her children she may be, after we have settled which are to be her children and which not: but of all her children? That is a hard saying. And yet was not every man from the beginning of the world, who tried with his whole soul to be right, and to do good, a child of wisdom, of whom she at least will be justified, whether he is justified or not? He may have had his ignorances, follies, weaknesses, possibly crimes: but he served the purpose of his mighty mother. He did, even by his follies, just what she wanted done; and she is justified of all her children.

This may sound like optimism: but it also sounds like truth to any one who has fairly studied that fantastic page of history, the contrast between the old monks and our own heathen forefathers. The more one studies the facts, the less one is inclined to ask, 'Why was it not done better?'--the more inclined to ask, 'Could it have been done better?'

Were not the celibate clergy, from the fifth to the eighth centuries, exceptional agents fitted for an exceptional time, and set to do a work which in the then state of the European races, none else could have done?

At least, so one suspects, after experience of their chronicles and legends, sufficient to make one thoroughly detest the evil which was in their system: but sufficient also to make one thoroughly love many of the men themselves.

A few desultory sketches, some carefully historical, the rest as carefully compiled from common facts, may serve best to ill.u.s.trate my meaning.

The monk and clergyman, whether celibate or not, worked on the heathen generally in one of three capacities: As tribune of the people; as hermit or solitary prophet; as colonizer; and in all three worked as well as frail human beings are wont to do, in this most piecemeal world.

Let us look first at the Hermits. All know what an important part they play in old romances and ballads. All are not aware that they played as important a part in actual history. Scattered through all wildernesses from the cliffs of the Hebrides to the Sclavonian marches, they put forth a power, uniformly, it must be said, for good.

Every one knows how they appear in the old romances.--How some Sir Bertrand or other, wearied with the burden of his sins, stumbles on one of these Einsiedler, 'settlers alone,' and talks with him; and goes on a wiser and a better man. How he crawls, perhaps, out of some wild scuffle, 'all-to bebled,' and reeling to his saddlebow; and 'ever he went through a waste land, and rocks rough and strait, so that it him seemed he must surely starve; and anon he heard a little bell, whereat he marvelled; and betwixt the water and the wood he was aware of a chapel, and an hermitage; and there a holy man said ma.s.s, for he was a priest, and a great leech, and cunning withal. And Sir Bertrand went in to him and told him all his case--how he fought Sir Marculf for love of the fair Ellinore, and how the king bade part them, and how Marculf did him open shame at the wineboard, and how he went about to have slain him privily, but could not; and then how he went and wasted Marculf's lands, house with byre, kine with corn, till a strong woman smote him over the head with a quern-stone, and all-to broke his brain-pan;' and so forth--the usual story of mad pa.s.sion, drink, pride, revenge.

'And there the holy man a-read him right G.o.dly doctrine, and shrived him, and gave him an oath upon the blessed Gospels, that fight he should not, save in his liege lord's quarrel, for a year and a day. And there he abode till he was well healed, he and his horse.'

Must not that wild fighting Bertrand have gone away from that place a wiser and a better man? Is it a matter to be regretted, or otherwise, that such men as the hermit were to be found in that forest, to mend Bertrand's head and his morals, at the same time? Is it a matter to be regretted, or otherwise, that after twenty or thirty years more of fighting and quarrelling and drinking, this same Sir Bertrand--finding that on the whole the l.u.s.t of the flesh, the l.u.s.t of the eye, and the pride of life, were poor paymasters, and having very sufficient proof, in the ends of many a friend and foe, that the wages of sin are death--'fell to religion likewise, and was a hermit in that same place, after the holy man was dead; and was made priest of that same chapel; and died in honour, having succoured many good knights, and wayfaring men'?

One knows very well that it would not be right now; that it is not needed now. It is childish to repeat that, when the question is, was it right then--or, at least, as right as was possible then? Was it needed then--or, at least, the nearest thing to that which was needed?

If it was, why should not wisdom be justified of all her children?

One hopes that she was; for certainly, if any men ever needed to be in the right, lest they should be of all men most miserable, it was these same old hermits. Praying and preaching continually, they lived on food which dogs would not eat, in dens in which dogs ought not to live. They had their reasons. Possibly they knew their own business best. Possibly also they knew their neighbour's business somewhat; they knew that such generations as they lived in could not be taught, save by some extravagant example of this kind, some caricature, as it were, of the doctrines which were to be enforced. Nothing less startling, perhaps, could have touched the dull hearts, have convinced the dull brains, of fierce, ignorant, and unreasoning men.

Ferocity, lawlessness, rapine, cruelty, and--when they were glutted and debauched by the spoils of the Roman empire--sensuality, were the evils which were making Europe uninhabitable for decent folk, and history--as Milton called it--a mere battle of kites and crows. What less than the example of the hermit--especially when that hermit was a delicate and high-born woman--could have taught men the absolute superiority of soul to body, of spiritual to physical force, of spiritual to physical pleasure, and have said to them, not in vain words, but solid acts--'All that you follow is not the way of life. The very opposite to it is the way of life. The wages of sin are death; and you will find them so,--in this life the victims of your own pa.s.sions, and of the foes whom your crimes arouse, and in life to come of h.e.l.l for ever. But I tell you I have no mind to go to h.e.l.l. I have a mind to go to heaven; and I know my mind right well. If the world is to be such as this, and the rulers thereof such as you, I will flee from you. I will not enter into the congregation of sinners, neither will I cast in my lot with the bloodthirsty. I will be alone with G.o.d and His universe. I will go to the mountain cave or to the ocean cliff, and there, while the salt wind whistles through my hair, I will be stronger than you, safer than you, richer than you, happier than you. Richer than you, for I shall have for my companion the beatific vision of G.o.d, and of all things and beings G.o.d- like, fair, n.o.ble, just, and merciful. Stronger than you, because virtue will give me a power over the hearts of men such as your force cannot give you; and you will have to come to my lonely cell, and ask me to advise you, and teach you, and help you against the consequences of your own sins. Safer than you, because G.o.d in whom I trust will protect me: and if not, I have still the everlasting life of heaven, which this world cannot give or take away. So go your ways, fight and devour one another, the victims of your own l.u.s.ts. I am minded to be a good man; and to be that, I will give up--as you have made all other methods impossible for me--all which seems to make life worth having'? Oh! instead of finding fault with such men; instead of, with vulturine beak, picking out the elements of Manichaeism, of conceit, of discontent, of what not human frailty and ignorance, which may have been in them, let us honour the enormous moral force which enabled them so to bear witness that not the mortal animal, but the immortal spirit, is the Man; and that when all which outward circ.u.mstance can give is cast away, the Man still lives for ever, by G.o.d, and in G.o.d.

And they did teach that lesson. They were good, while other men were bad; and men saw the beauty of goodness, and felt the strength of it, and wors.h.i.+pped it in blind savage admiration. Read Roswede's Vitae Patrum Eremiticorum; read the legends of the hermits of the German forests; read Colgan's Lives of the Irish Saints; and see whether, amid all fantastic, incredible, sometimes immoral myths, the goodness of life of some one or other is not the historic nucleus, round which the myths, and the wors.h.i.+p of the saint, have crystallized and developed.

Take, for instance, the exquisite hymn of St. Bridget, which Colgan attributes to the sixth century: though it is probably much later; that has nothing to do with the argument:--

'Bridget, the victorious, she loved not the world; She sat on it as a gull sits on the ocean; She slept the sleep of a captive mother, Mourning after her absent child.

She suffered not much from evil tongues; She held the blessed faith of the Trinity; Bridget, the mother of my Lord of Heaven, The best among the sons of the Lord.

She was not querulous, nor malevolent; She loved not the fierce wrangling of women; She was not a backbiting serpent, or a liar; She sold not the Son of G.o.d for that which pa.s.ses away.

She was not greedy of the goods of this life; She gave away without gall, without slackness; She was not rough to wayfaring men; She handled gently the wretched lepers.

She built her a town in the plains (of Kildare); And dead, she is the patroness of many peoples.'

I might comment much on this quotation. I might point out how St.

Bridget is called the mother of the Lord, and by others, the Mary of the Irish, the 'Automata coeli regina,' and seems to have been considered at times as an avatar or incarnation of the blessed Virgin. I might more than hint how that appellation, as well as the calling of Christ 'the best of the sons of the Lord,' in an orthodox Catholic hymn, seems to point to the remnants of an older creed, possibly Buddhist, the transition whence towards Catholic Christianity was slow and imperfect. I might make merry over the fact that there are many Bridgets, some say eleven; even as there are three or four St. Patricks; and raise learned doubts as to whether such persons ever existed, after that Straussian method of pseudo-criticism which cometh not from above, from the Spirit of G.o.d, nor yet indeed from below, from the sound region of fact, but from within, out of the naughtiness of the heart, defiling a man. I might weaken, too, the effect of the hymn by going on with the rest of it, and making you smile at its childish miracles and portents; but I should only do a foolish thing, by turning your minds away from the broad fact that St. Bridget, or various persons who got, in the lapse of time, ma.s.sed together under the name of St. Bridget, were eminently good women.

It matters little whether these legends are historically correct. Their value lies in the moral of them. And as for their real historical correctness, the Straussian argument that no such persons existed, because lies are told of them, is, I hold, most irrational. The falsehood would not have been invented unless it had started in a truth.

The high moral character ascribed to them would never have been dreamed of by persons who had not seen living instances of that character. Man's imagination does not create; it only reproduces and recombines its own experience. It does so in dreams. It does so, as far as the moral character of the saint is concerned, in the legend; and if there had not been persons like St. Bridget in Ireland, the wild Irish could never have imagined them.

Therefore it matters little to a wise man, standing on the top of Croagh Patrick, the grandest mountain perhaps, with the grandest outlook, in these British isles, as he looks on the wild Irish there on pattern days, up among the Atlantic clouds, crawling on bare and bleeding knees round St. Patrick's cell,--it matters little, I say, to the wise man, whether St. Patrick himself owned the ancient image which is wors.h.i.+pped on that mountain peak, or the ancient bell which till late years hung in the sanctuary,--such a strange oblong bell as the Irish saints carried with them to keep off the demons--the magic bells which appear (as far as I am aware) in the legends of no country till you get to Tartary and the Buddhists;--such a bell as came (or did not come) down from heaven to St.

Senan; such a bell as St. Fursey sent flying through the air to greet St.

Cuanady at his devotions when he could not come himself; such a bell as another saint, wandering in the woods, rang till a stag came out of the covert, and carried his burden for him on his horns. It matters as little to the wise man whether that bell belonged to St. Patrick, as whether all these child's dreams are dreams. It matters little to him, too, whether St. Patrick did, or did not stand on that mountain peak, 'in the spirit and power of Elias' (after whom it was long named), fasting, like Elias, forty days and forty nights, wrestling with the demons of the storm, and the snakes of the fen, and the Peishta-more (the monstrous Python of the lakes), which a.s.sembled at the magic ringing of his bell, till he conquered not by the brute force of a Hercules and Theseus, and the monster-quellers of old Greece, but by the spiritual force of which (so the text was then applied) it is written, 'This kind cometh not out but by prayer and fasting,' till he smote the evil things with 'the golden rod of Jesus,' and they rolled over the cliff, in hideous rout, and perished in the Atlantic far below. But it matters much to a wise man that under all these symbols (not childish at all, but most grand, to the man who knows the grand place of which they are told), there is set forth the victory of a good and beneficent man over evil, whether of matter or of spirit. It matters much to him that that cell, that bell, that image are tokens that if not St. Patrick, some one else, at least, did live and wors.h.i.+p on that mountain top, in remote primaeval times, in a place in which we would not, perhaps could not, endure life a week. It matters much to him that the man who so dwelt there, gained such a power over the minds of the heathen round him, that five millions of their Christian descendants wors.h.i.+p him, and G.o.d on account of him, at this day.

St. Ita, again. It matters little that she did not--because she could not--perform the miracles imputed to her. It matters little whether she had or not--as I do not believe her to have had--a regularly organized convent of nuns in Ireland during the sixth century. It matters little if the story which follows is a mere invention of the nuns in some after- century, in order to make a good t.i.tle for the lands which they held--a trick but too common in those days. But it matters much that she should have been such a person, that such a story as this, when told of her, should have gained belief:--How the tribes of Hy-Connell, hearing of her great holiness, came to her with their chiefs, and offered her all the land about her cell. But she, not wis.h.i.+ng to be entangled with earthly cares, accepted but four acres round her cell, for a garden of herbs for her and her nuns. And the simple wild Irish were sad and angry, and said, 'If thou wilt not take it alive, thou shalt take it when thou art dead. So they chose her then and there for their patroness, and she blessed them with many blessings, which are fulfilled unto this day; and when she migrated to the Lord they gave her all the land, and her nuns hold it to this day, the land of Hy-Connell on the east Shannon bank, at the roots of Luachra mountain.'

What a picture! One hopes that it may be true, for the sake of its beauty and its pathos. The poor, savage, half-naked, and, I fear, on the authority of St. Jerome and others, now and then cannibal Celts, with their saffron scarfs, and skenes, and darts, and glibs of long hair hanging over their hypo-gorillaceous visages, coming to the prophet maiden, and asking her to take their land, for they could make no decent use of it themselves; and look after them, body and soul, for they could not look after themselves; and pray for them to her G.o.d, for they did not know how to pray to Him themselves. If any man shall regret that such an event happened to any savages on this earth, I am, I confess, sorry for him.

St. Severinus, again, whom I have mentioned to you more than once:--none of us can believe that he made a dead corpse (Silvinus the priest, by name) sit up and talk with him on its road to burial. None of us need believe that he stopped the plague at Vienna by his prayers. None of us need attribute to anything but his sagacity the Divine revelations whereby he predicted the destruction of a town for its wickedness, and escaped thence, like Lot, alone; or by which he discovered, during the famine of Vienna, that a certain rich widow had much corn hidden in her cellars: but there are facts enough, credible and undoubted, concerning St. Severinus, the apostle of Austria, to make us trust that in him, too, wisdom was justified of all her children.

You may remark, among the few words which have been as yet said of St.

Severinus, a destruction, a plague, and a famine. Those words are a fair sample of St. Severinus's times, and of the circ.u.mstances into which he voluntarily threw himself. About the middle of the fifth century there appears in the dying Roman province of Noric.u.m (Austria we now call it) a strange gentleman, eloquent and learned beyond all, and with the strangest power of melting and ruling the hearts of men. Who he is he will not tell, save that his name is Severinus, a right n.o.ble name without doubt. Gradually it oozes out that he has been in the far East, through long travels and strange dangers, through many cities and many lands; but he will tell nothing. He is the servant of G.o.d, come hither to try to be of use. He certainly could have come for no other reason, unless to buy slaves; for Austria was at that time the very highway of the nations, the centre of the human Mahlstrom, in which Huns, Gepiden, Allmannen, Rugen, and a dozen wild tribes more, wrestled up and down round the starving and beleaguered Roman towns of that once fertile and happy province. A man who went there for his own pleasure, or even devotion, would have been as wise as one who had built himself last summer a villa on the Rappahannock, or retired for private meditation to the orchard of Hougoumont during the battle of Waterloo.

Nevertheless, there Severinus stayed till men began to appreciate him; and called him, and not unjustly, Saint. Why not? He preached, he taught, he succoured, he advised, he fed, he governed; he turned aside the raids of the wild German kings; he gained a divine power over their hearts; he taught them something of G.o.d and of Christ, something of justice and mercy; something of peace and unity among themselves; till the fame ran through all the Alps, and far away into the Hungarian marches, that there was a prophet of G.o.d arisen in the land; and before the unarmed man, fasting and praying in his solitary cell on the mountain above Vienna, ten thousand knights and champions trembled, who never had trembled at the sight of armed hosts.

Who would deny that man the name of saint? And who, if by that sagacity which comes from the combination of intellect and virtue, he sometimes seemed miraculously to foretell coming events, would deny him the name of prophet also?

If St. Severinus be the type of the monk as prophet, St. Columba may stand as the type of the missionary monk; the good man strengthened by lonely meditation; but using that strength not for selfish fanaticism, but for the good of men; going forth unwillingly out of his beloved solitude, that he may save souls. Round him, too, cl.u.s.ter the usual myths. He drives away with the sign of the cross a monster which attacks him at a ford. He expels from a fountain the devils who smote with palsy and madness all who bathed therein. He sees by a prophetic spirit, he sitting in his cell in Ireland, a great Italian town destroyed by a volcano. His friends behold a column of light rising from his head as he celebrates ma.s.s. Yes; but they also tell of him, 'that he was angelical in look, brilliant in speech, holy in work, clear in intellect, great in council.' That he 'never pa.s.sed an hour without prayer, or a holy deed, or reading of the Scriptures (for these old monks had Bibles, and knew them by heart too, in spite of all that has been written to the contrary), that he was of so excellent a humility and charity, bathing his disciples' feet when they came home from labour, and carrying corn from the mill on his own back, that he fulfilled the precept of his Master, 'He that will be the greatest among you, let him be as your servant.'

They also tell of him (and this is fact and history) how he left his monastery of Derm Each, 'the field of oaks,' which we call Derry, and went away at the risk of his life to preach to the wild Picts of Galloway, and founded the great monastery of Iona, and that succession of abbots from whom Christianity spread over the south of Scotland and north of England, under his great successor Aidan.

Aidan has his myths likewise. They tell of him how he stilled the sea- waves with holy oil; how he turned back on Penda and his Saxons the flames with which the heathen king was trying to burn down Bamborough walls. But they tell, too (and Bede had heard it from those who had known Aidan in the flesh) of 'his love of peace and charity, his purity and humility, his mind superior to avarice or pride, his authority, becoming a minister of Christ, in reproving the haughty and powerful, and his tenderness in relieving the afflicted, and defending the poor.' Who, save one who rejoiceth in evil, instead of rejoicing in the truth, will care to fix his eyes for a moment upon the fairy tales which surround such a story, as long as there s.h.i.+nes out from among them clear and pure, in spite of all doctrinal errors, the grace of G.o.d, the likeness of Jesus Christ our Lord?

Let us look next at the priest as Tribune of the people, supported usually by the invisible, but most potent presence of the saint, whose relics he kept. One may see that side of his power in Raphael's immortal design of Attila's meeting with the Pope at the gates of Rome, and recoiling as he sees St. Peter and St. Paul floating terrible and threatening above the Holy City. Is it a myth, a falsehood? Not altogether. Such a man as Attila probably would have seen them, with his strong savage imagination, as incapable as that of a child from distinguis.h.i.+ng between dreams and facts, between the subjective and the objective world. And it was on the whole well for him and for mankind, that he should think that he saw them, and tremble before the spiritual and the invisible; confessing a higher law than that of his own ambition and self-will; a higher power than that of his brute Tartar hordes.

Raphael's design is but a famous instance of an influence which wrought through the length and breadth of the down-trodden and dying Roman Empire, through the four fearful centuries which followed the battle of Adrianople. The wild licence, the boyish audacity, of the invading Teutons was never really checked, save by the priest and the monk who wors.h.i.+pped over the bones of some old saint or martyr, whose name the Teutons had never heard.

Then, as the wild King, Earl, or Comes, with his wild reiters at his heels, galloped through the land, fighting indiscriminately his Roman enemies, and his Teutonic rivals--harrying, slaughtering, burning by field and wild--he was aware at last of something which made him pause.

Some little walled town, built on the ruins of a great Roman city, with its Byzantine minster towering over the thatched roofs, sheltering them as the oak shelters the last night's fungus at its base. More than once in the last century or two, has that same town been sacked. More than once has the surviving priest crawled out of his hiding-place when the sound of war was past, called the surviving poor around him, dug the dead out of the burning ruins for Christian burial, built up a few sheds, fed a few widows and orphans, organized some form of orderly life out of the chaos of blood and ashes, in the name of G.o.d and St. Quemdeusvult whose bones he guards; and so he has established a temporary theocracy, and become a sort of tribune of the people, magistrate and father--the only one they have. And now he will try the might of St. Quemdeusvult against the wild king, and see if he can save the town from being sacked once more. So out he comes--a bishop perhaps, with priests, monks, crucifixes, banners, litanies. The wild king must come no further. That land belongs to no mortal man, but to St. Quemdeusvult, martyred here by the heathen five hundred years ago. Some old Kaiser of Rome, or it may be some former Gothic king, gave that place to the saint for ever, and the saint will avenge his rights. He is very merciful to those who duly honour him: but very terrible in his wrath if he be aroused. Has not the king heard how the Count of such a place, only forty years before, would have carried off a maiden from St. Quemdeusvult's town; and when the bishop withstood him, he answered that he cared no more for the relics of the saint than for the relics of a dead a.s.s, and so took the maiden and went? But within a year and a day, he fell down dead in his drink, and when they came to lay out the corpse, behold the devils had carried it away, and put a dead a.s.s in its place.

All which the bishop would fully believe. Why not? He had no physical science to tell him that it was impossible. Morally, it was in his eyes just, and therefore probable; while as for testimony, men were content with very little in those days, simply because they could get very little. News progressed slowly in countries desolate and roadless, and grew as it pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth, as it did in the Highlands a century ago, as it did but lately in the Indian Mutiny; till after a fact had taken ten years in crossing a few mountains and forests, it had a.s.sumed proportions utterly fantastic and gigantic.

So the wild king and his wild knights pause. They can face flesh and blood: but who can face the quite infinite terrors of an unseen world?