(BRITISH MUSEUM)

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 twentyeight years after the death of Theodosius the faint and minute vestiges were no longer visible to the eye of the legislator.74

ship of the

Martyrs

The ruin of the Pagan religion is described by the sophists as The wora dreadful and amazing prodigy which covered the earth with Christian darkness and restored the ancient dominion of chaos 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 place of one 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." 75 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,

74 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.

75 See Eunapius, in the life of the sophist Edesius [p. 65, ed. Commelin]; in that of Eustathius he foretells the ruin of Paganism, καί τι μυθώδες, καὶ ἀειδὲς σκότος τυραννήσει τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς κάλλιστα,

77

the Vatican and the Ostian road were distinguished by the tombs, or rather by the trophies, of those spiritual heroes.76 In the age which followed the conversion of Constantine, the emperors, the consuls, and the generals of armies devoutly visited the sepulchres of a tent-maker and a fisherman; " and their venerable bones were deposited under the altars of Christ, on which the bishops of the royal city continually offered the unbloody sacrifice.78 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 sent, in solemn pomp, to the church of the Apostles, which the magnificence of Constantine had founded on the banks of the Thracian Bosphorus.79 About fifty years afterwards, the same 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. The example of Rome and Constantinople confirmed the faith and

76 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.

77 Chrysostom. Quod Christus sit Deus. Tom. i. nov. edit. No. 9. I am indebted for this quotation to Benedict the XIV.th's pastoral letter on the jubilee of the year 1750. See the curious and entertaining letters of M. Chais, tom. iii.

78 Male facit ergo Romanus episcopus ? qui, super mortuorum hominum, Petri et Pauli, secundum nos, ossa veneranda . offert Domino sacrificia, et tumulos eorum Christi arbitratur altaria. Jerom. tom. ii. advers. Vigilant. p. 153 [c. 8, ed. Migne, ii. p. 346].

79 Jerom (tom. ii. p. 122 [c. Vigil. c. 5]) bears witness to these translations, which are neglected by the ecclesiastical historians. The passion of St. Andrew at Patra is described in an epistle from the clergy of Achaia, which Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 60, No. 35) wishes to believe and Tillemont is forced to reject. St. Andrew was adopted as the spiritual founder of Constantinople (Mém. Ecolés. tom. i. p. 317-323, 588-594).

80 Jerom (tom. ii. p. 122) pompously describes the translation of Samuel, which is noticed in the chronicles of the times.

discipline of the Catholic world. The honours of the saints and martyrs, after a feeble and ineffectual murmur of profane reason,81 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 and inflamed the devotion of the faithful.

reflection

In the long period of twelve hundred years which elapsed General 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.

lous

and relics

I. The satisfactory experience that the relics of saints were 1. Fabumore valuable than gold or precious stones 82 stimulated the martyrs 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 a saint.83 A superstitious practice, which tended to increase the temptations of fraud and credulity, insensibly extinguished the light of history and of reason in the Christian world.

II. But the progress of superstition would have been much II. Miracles 81 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). 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. [For a striking passage in illustration of the growth of the veneration of relics, see Gregory of Nyssa, Encomium of St. Theodore, in Migne, P. G. 46, 736, ei dè kaì nóVIY TIS δοίη, κ.τ.λ.]

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.

Martin of Tours (see his Life, c. 8, by Sulpicius Severus) extorted this confession from the mouth of the dead man. The error is allowed to be natural; the discovery is supposed to be miraculous. Which of the two was likely to happen most frequently?