The events of the time, the little happenings of the moment, glide into his sermons. At the same time as the service in church to-day, there is going to be horse-racing at the circus, and fights of wild beasts or gladiators at the arena. In consequence, there will not be many people in the Basilica. "So much the better," says Augustin. "My lungs will get some rest." Another time, it is advertised through the town that most sensational attractions will be offered at the theatre—there will be a scene representing the open sea. The preacher laughs at those who have deserted the church to go and see this illusion: "They will have," says he, "the sea on the stage; but we, brothers—ah, we shall have our port in Jesus Christ." This Saturday, while he is preaching, some Jewish women set themselves to dance and sing on the terraces of the near houses, by way of celebrating the Sabbath. In the basilica, the bashing of the crotolos can be heard, and the thuds of the tambourines. "They would do better," says Augustin, "to work and spin their wool."

He dwells upon the catastrophes which were then convulsing the Roman world. The news of them spread with wonderful rapidity. Alaric's Barbarians have taken Rome and put it to fire and sword. At Jerusalem has been an earthquake, and the bishop John organizes a subscription for the sufferers throughout Christendom. At Constantinople, globes of fire have been seen in the sky. The Serapeum of Alexandria has just been destroyed in a riot....

All these things follow each other in lively pictures, without any apparent order, throughout Augustin's sermons. It is not he who divides his discourse into three parts, and refrains from passing to the second till he has learnedly expounded the first. Whether he comments upon the Psalms or the Gospels, his sermons are no more than explanations of the Scriptures which he interprets, sometimes in a literal sense, and sometimes in an allegoric. Let us acknowledge it—his allegoric discourses repel us by their extreme subtilty, sometimes by their bad taste; and when he confines himself to the letter of the text, he stumbles among small points of grammar which weary the attention. We follow him no longer. We think his audience was very obliging to listen so long—and on their feet—to these endless dissertations.... And then, suddenly, a great lyrical and oratorical outburst which carries us away—a wind which blows from the high mountains, and in the wink of an eye sweeps away like dust all those fine-spun reasonings.

He is fond of certain commonplaces, and also of certain books of the Bible—for instance, The Song of Songs and the Gospel of St. John, the one satisfying in him the intellectual, and the other the mystic of love. He confronts the verse of the Psalm: "Before the morning star have I begotten thee," with the sublime opening of the Fourth Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word." He lingers upon the beauty of Christ: Speciosus forma prae filiis hominum, "Thou art fairer than the children of men." This is why he is always repeating with the Psalmist: "Thy face, Lord, have I sought"—Quaesivi vultum tuum, Domine. And the orator, carried away by enthusiasm, adds: "Magnificent saying! Nothing more divine could be said. Those feel it who truly love." Another of his favourite subjects is the kindness of God: Videte et gustate quam mitis sit Dominus—"O taste and see that the Lord is good." Naught can equal the pleasure of this contemplation, of this life in God. Augustin conceives it as a musician who has fathomed the secret of numbers. "Let your life," he said, "be one prolonged song.... We do not sing only with the voice and lips when we intone a canticle, but in us is an inward singing, because there is also in us Some One who listens...."

To live this rhythmic and divine life we must get free of ourselves, give ourselves up utterly in a great outburst of charity.

"Why," he cries—"Oh, why do you hesitate to give yourselves lest you should lose yourselves? It is rather by not giving yourselves that you lose yourselves. Charity herself speaks to you by the mouth of Wisdom and upholds you against the terror which fills you at the sound of those words: 'Give yourself.' If some one wanted to sell you a piece of land, he would say to you: 'Give me your gold.' And for something else, he would say: 'Give me your silver, give me your money.' Listen to what Charity says to you by the mouth of Wisdom: 'My son, give me thy heart.' 'Give me,' quoth she. Give what? 'My son, give me thy heart.'... Thy heart was not happy when it was governed by thee, and was thine, for it turned this way and that way after gawds, after impure and dangerous loves. 'Tis from there thy heart must be drawn. Whither lift it up? Where to place it? 'Give me thy heart,' says Wisdom, 'let it be mine, and it will belong to thee for always.'"

After the chant of love, the chant of the Resurrection. Cantate mihi canticum novum—"Sing to me a new song!" Augustin repeats these words over and over again. "We wish to rise from the dead," cry souls craving for eternity. And the Church answers: "Verily, I say unto you, that you shall rise from the dead. Resurrection of bodies, resurrection of souls, ye shall be altogether reborn." Augustin has explained no dogma more passionately. None was more pleasing to the faithful of those times. Ceaselessly they begged to be strengthened in the conviction of immortality and of meeting again brotherlike in God.

With what intrepid delight it rose—this song of the Resurrection in those clear African basilicas swimming in light, with all their brilliant ornamentation of mosaics and marbles of a thousand colours! And what artless and confident language those symbolic figures spoke which peopled their walls—the lambs browsing among clusters of asphodels, the doves, the green trees of Paradise. As in the Gospel parables, the birds of the field and farmyard, the fruits of the earth, figured the Christian truths and virtues. Their purified forms accompanied man in his ascension towards God. Around the mystic chrisms, circled garlands of oranges and pears and pomegranates. Cocks, ducks, partridges, flamingoes, sought their pasture in the Paradisal fields painted upon the walls of churches and cemeteries.

Those young basilicas were truly the temples of the Resurrection, where all the creatures of the Ark saved from the waters had found their refuge. Never more in the centuries to follow shall humanity know this frank joy at having triumphed over death—this youth of hope.



III

THE BISHOP'S BURTHEN

Augustin is not only the most human of all the saints, he is also one of the most amiable in all the senses of that hackneyed word—amiable according to the world, amiable according to Christ.

To be convinced of this, he should be observed in his dealings with his hearers, with his correspondents, even with those he attacks—with the bitterest enemies of the faith. Preaching, the administration of property, and sitting in judgment were but a part of that episcopal burthen, Sarcina episcopatus, under which he so often groaned. He had furthermore to catechize, baptize, direct consciences, guard the faithful against error, and dispute with all those who threatened Catholicism. Augustin was a light of the Church. He knew it.

Doing his best, with admirable conscientiousness and charity he undertook these tasks. God knows what it must have cost this Intellectual to fulfil precisely all the duties of his ministry, down to the humblest. What he would have liked, above all, was to pass his life in studying the Scriptures and meditating on the dogmas—not from a love of trifling with theories, but because he believed such knowledge necessary to whoever gave forth the Word of God. Most of the priests of that age arrived at the priesthood without any previous study. They had to improvise, as quick as they could, a complete education in religious subjects. We are left astounded before the huge labour which Augustin must have given to acquire his. Before long he even dominated the whole exegetical and theological knowledge of his time. In his zeal for divine letters, he knew sleep no more.

And yet he did not neglect any of his tasks. Like the least of our parish priests, he prepared the neophytes for the Sacraments. He was an incomparable catechist, so clear-sighted and scrupulous that his instructions may still be taken as models by the catechists of to-day. Neither did he, as an aristocrat of the intelligence, only trouble himself with persons of culture, and leave to his deacons the care of God's common people. All had a right to his lessons, the simple peasants as well as the rich and scholarly. One day, a farmer he was teaching walked off and left him there in the middle of his discourse. The poor man, who had fasted, and now listened to his bishop standing, was faint from hunger and felt his legs tremble under him. He thought it better to run away than to fall down exhausted at the feet of the learned preacher.

With his knowledge of men, Augustin carefully studied the kind of people his catechumens were, and adapted his instructions to the character of each. If they were city folk, Carthaginians, used to spending their time in theatres and taverns, drunken and lazy, he took a different tone with them from what he used with rustics who had never left their native gourbi. If he were dealing with fashionable people who had a taste for literature, he did not fail to exalt the beauties of the Scripture, although, he would say, they had there a very trifling attraction compared to the truths contained in it. Of all the catechumens, the hardest to deal with, the most fearsome in his eyes, were the professors—the rhetoricians and the grammarians. These men are bloated with vanity, puffed up with intellectual pride. Augustin knew something about that. It will be necessary to rouse them violently, and before anything else, to exhort them to humility of mind.

The good saint goes further. Not only is he anxious about the souls, but also about the bodies of his listeners. Are they comfortable for listening? As soon as they feel tired they must not hesitate to sit down, as is the usage in the basilicas beyond seas.

"Would not our arrogance be unbearable," he asked, "if we forbade men who are our brothers to sit down in our presence, and, much more, men whom we ought to try with all possible care to make our brothers?..."

If they are seen to yawn, "then things ought to be said to them to awaken their attention, or to scatter the sad thoughts which may have come into their minds." The catechist should shew, now a serene joy—the joy of certainty; now a gaiety which charms people into belief; "and always that light-heartedness we should have in teaching." Even if we ourselves are sad from this reason or that, let us remember that Jesus Christ died for those who are listening to us. Is not the thought of bringing Him disciples enough to make us joyful?

Bishop Augustin set the example for his priests. It is not enough to have prepared the conversion of his catechumens with the subtlety of the psychologist, and such perfect Christian charity; but he accompanies them to the very end, and charges them once more before the baptismal piscina.

How he is changed! One thinks of the boon-fellow of Romanianus and of Manlius Theodorus, of the young man who followed the hunts at Thagaste, and who held forth on literature and philosophy in a select company before the beautiful horizons of the lake of Como. Here he is now with peasants, slaves, sailors, and traders. And he takes pleasure in their society. It is his flock. He ought to love it with all his soul in Jesus Christ. What an effort and what a victory upon himself an attitude so strange reveals to us! For really this liking for mean people was not natural to him. He must have put an heroic will-power into it, helped by Grace.

A like sinking of his preferences is evident in the director of consciences he became. Here he was obliged to give himself more thoroughly. He was at the mercy of the souls who questioned him, who consulted him as their physician. He spends his time in advising them, and exercises a never-failing supervision of their morals. It is an almost discouraging enterprise to bend these hardened pagans—above all, these Africans—to Christian discipline. Augustin is continually reproaching their drunkenness, gluttony, and lust. The populace were not the only ones to get drunk and over-eat themselves. The rich at their feasts literally stuffed till they choked. The Bishop of Hippo never lets a chance go by to recall them to sobriety.

Oftener still, he recalls them to chastity. He writes long letters on this subject which are actual treatises. The morals of the age and country are fully disclosed in them. Husbands are found loudly claiming a right to free love for themselves, while they force their wives to conjugal fidelity. The adultery they allow themselves, they punish with death in their wives. They make an abusive practice of divorce. Upon the most futile reasons, they send the wife the libellus repudii—the bill repudiating the marriage—as the various peoples of Islam do still. This society in a state of transition was always creating cases of conscience for strict Christians. For example: If a man cast off his wife under pretext of adultery, might he marry again? Augustin held that no marriage can be dissolved as long as both parties are living. But may not this prohibition provoke husbands to kill their adulterous wives, so as to be free to take a new wife? Another problem: A catechumen divorced under the pagan law and since remarried, presents himself for baptism. Is he not an adulterer in the eyes of the Church? A man who lives with a woman and does not hide it, who even declares his firm intention of continuing to live with his concubine—can he be admitted to baptism? Augustin has to answer all these questions, and go into the very smallest details of casuistry.

Is it forbidden to eat the meats consecrated to idols, even when a man or woman is dying of hunger? May one enter into agreements with native camel-drivers and carriers who swear by their gods to keep the bargain? May a lie be told in certain conditions?—say, so as to get among heretics in pretending to be one of themselves, and thus be able to spy on them and denounce them? May adultery be practised with a woman who promises in exchange to point out heretics?... The Bishop of Hippo severely condemns all these devious or shameful ways, all these compromises which are contrary to the pure moral teaching of the Gospel. But he does this without affecting intolerance and rigidity, and with a reminder that the evil of sin lies altogether in the intention, and in the consent of the will. In a word, one must tolerate and put up with what one is powerless to hinder.

Other questions, which it is quite impossible to repeat here, give us a strange idea of the corruption of pagan morals. Augustin had all he could do to maintain the Christian rule in such surroundings, where the Christians themselves were more or less tainted with paganism. But if this troop of sinners and backsliders was hard to drive, the devout were perhaps harder. There were the continents—the widowers and widows who had made a vow of chastity and found this vow heavy; the consecrated virgins who lived in too worldly a fashion; the nuns who rebelled against their spiritual director or their superior; the monks, either former slaves who did not want to do another stroke of work, or charlatans who played upon public credulity in selling talismans and miraculous ointments. Then, the married women who refused themselves to their husbands; and those who gave away their goods to the poor without their husbands' consent; and also the proud virgins and widows who despised and condemned marriage.

Then came the crowd of pious souls who questioned Augustin on points of dogma, who wanted to know all, to clear up everything; those who thought they should be able here below to see God face to face, to know how we shall arise, and who asked if the angels had bodies.... Augustin complains that they are annoying, when he has so many other things to trouble him, and that they take him from his studies. But he tries charitably to satisfy them all.

Besides all this, he was obliged to keep up a correspondence with a great number of people. In addition to his friends and fellow-bishops, he wrote to unknown people and foreigners; to men in high place and to lowly people; to the proconsuls, the counts and the vicars of Africa; to the very mighty Olympius, Master of the Household to the Emperor Honorius; or again, "to the Right Honourable Lady Maxima," "to the Illustrious Ladies Proba and Juliana," "to the Very Holy Lady Albina"—women who belonged either to the provincial nobility, or to the highest aristocracy of Rome. To whom did he not write?...

And what is admirable in these letters is that he does not answer negligently to get rid of a tiresome duty. Almost all of them are full of substantial teaching, long thought over. Many were intended to be published—they are practically charges. And yet, however grave the tone of them may be, the cultivated man of the world he had been may be traced. His correspondents, after the fashion of the time, overwhelm the bishop with the most fulsome praises. These he accepts, with much ceremony indeed, but he does accept them as evidence of the charity of his brethren. Ingenuously, he does his best to return them. Let us not grow over-scandalized because our men of letters of to-day have debased the value of complimentary language by squandering and exaggerating it. The most austere cotemporaries of Augustin, and Augustin himself, outdid them by a long way in the art and in the abuse of compliments.

Paulinus of Nola, always beflowered and elegant, wrote to Augustin: "Your letters are a luminous collyrium spread over the eyes of my mind." Augustin, who remonstrated with him upon the scarcity of his own letters, replies in language which our own Precieuses would not have disowned: "What! You allow me to pass two summers—and two African summers!—in such thirst?... Would to God that you would allow enter to the opulent banquet of your book, the long fast from your writings which you have put me upon during all a year! If this banquet be not ready, I shall not give over my complaints, unless, indeed, that in the time between, you send me something to keep up my strength." A certain Audax, who begged the honour of a special letter from the great man, calls him "the oracle of the Law"; protests that the whole world celebrates and admires him; and finally, at the end of his arguments, conjures him in verse to "Let fall upon me the dew of thy divine word." Augustin, with modesty and benignity, returns his compliments, but not without slipping into his reply a touch of banter: "Allow me to point out to you that your fifth line has seven feet. Has your ear betrayed you, or did you want to find out if I was still capable of judging these things?"... Truly, he is always capable of judging these things, nor is he sorry to have it known. A young Greek named Dioscorus, who is passing through Carthage, questions him upon the philosophy of Cicero. Augustin exclaims at any one daring to interrupt a bishop about such trifles. Then, little by little, he grows milder, and carried away by his old passion, he ends by sending the young man quite a dissertation on this good subject.

Those are among his innocent whimsicalities. Then, alongside of letters either too literary, or erudite, or profound, there are others which are simply exquisite, such as the one he wrote to a young Carthage girl called Sapida. She had embroidered a tunic for her brother. He was dead, and she asked Augustin kindly to wear this tunic, telling him that if he would do this, it would be a great comfort for her in her grief. The bishop consented very willingly. "I accept this garment," he said to her, "and I have begun to wear it before writing to you...." Then gently he pities her sorrow, and persuades her to resignation and hope.

"We should not rebuke people for weeping over the dead who are dear to them.... When we think of them, and through habit we look for them still around us, then the heart breaks, and the tears fall like the blood of our broken heart...."

At the end, in magnificent words, he chants the hymn of the Resurrection:

"My daughter, your brother lives in his soul, if in his body he sleeps. Does not the sleeper wake? God, who has received his soul, will put it again in the body He has taken from him, not to destroy it—oh, no, but some day to give it to him back."

* * * * *

This correspondence, voluminous as it is, is nothing beside his numberless treatises in dogma and polemic. These were the work of his life, and it is by these posterity has known him. The theologian and the disputer ended by hiding the man in Augustin. To-day, the man perhaps interests us more. And this is a mistake. He himself would not have allowed for a moment that his Confessions should be preferred to his treatises on Grace. To study, to comment the Scriptures, to draw more exact definitions from the dogmas—he saw no higher employment for his mind, or obligation more important for a bishop. To believe so as to understand, to understand the better to believe—it is a ceaseless movement of the intelligence which goes from faith to God and from God to faith. He throws himself into this great labour without a shade of any attempt to make literature, with a complete sinking of his tastes and his personal opinions, and in it he entirely forgets himself.

One single time he has thought of himself, and it is precisely in the Confessions, the spirit of which modern people understand so ill, and where they try to find something quite different from what the author intended. He composed them just after he was raised to the bishopric, to defend himself against the calumnies spread about his conduct. It seems as if he wanted to say to his detractors: "You believe me guilty. Well, I am so, and more perhaps than you think, but not in the way you think." A great religious idea alters this personal defence. It is less a confession, or an excuse for his faults, in the present sense of the word, than a continual glorification of the divine mercy. It is less the shame of his sins he confesses, than the glory of God.

After that, he never thought again of anything but Truth and the Church, and the enemies of Truth and the Church: the Manichees, the Arians, the Pelagians—the Donatists, above all. He lets no error go by without refuting it, no libel without an answer. He is always on the breach. He might well be compared, in much of his writings, to one of our fighting journalists. He put into this generally thankless business a wonderful vigour and dialectical subtlety. Always and everywhere he had to have the last word. He brought eloquence to it, yet more charity—sometimes even wit. And lastly, he had a patience which nothing could dishearten. He repeats the same things a hundred times over. These tiresome repetitions, into which he was driven by the obstinacy of his opponents, caused him real pain. Every time it became necessary, he took up again the endless demonstration without letting himself grow tired. The moment it became a question of the Truth, Augustin could not see that he had any right to keep quiet.

In Africa and elsewhere they made fun of what they called his craze for scribbling. He himself, in his Retractations, is startled by the number of his works. He turns over the Scripture saying which the Donatists amusingly opposed to him: Vae mullum loquentibus—"Woe unto them of many words." But calling God to witness, he says to Him: Vae tacentibus de te—"Woe unto those who keep silent upon Thee." In the eyes of Augustin, the conditions were such that silence would have been cowardly. And elsewhere he adds: "They may believe me or not as they will, but I like much better to read than to write books...."

In any case, his modesty was evident. "I am myself," he acknowledges, "almost always dissatisfied with what I say." To the heretics he declares, with a glance back at his own errors, "I know by experience how easy it is to be wrong." When there is some doubt in questions of dogma, he does not force his explanations, but suggests them to his readers. How much intellectual humility is in that prayer which ends his great work on the Trinity: "Lord my God, one Trinity, if in these books I have said anything which comes from Thee, may Thou and Thy chosen receive it. But if it is from me it comes, may Thou and Thine forgive me."

And again, how much tolerance and charity in those counsels to the faithful of his diocese who, having been formerly persecuted by the Donatists, now burned to get their revenge:

"It is the voice of your bishop, my brothers, sounding in your ears. He implores you, all of you who are in this church, to keep yourselves from insulting those who are outside, but rather to pray that they may enter with you into communion."

Elsewhere, he reminds his priests that they must preach at the Jews in a spirit of friendliness and loving-kindness, without troubling to know if they listen with gratitude or indignation. "We ought not," said he, "to bear ourselves proudly against these broken branches of Christ's tree."...

This charity and moderation took nothing from the firmness of his character. This he proved in a startling way in the discussion he had with St. Jerome over a passage In the Epistle to the Galatians, and upon the new translation, of the Bible which Jerome had undertaken. The solitary of Bethlehem saw a "feint" on the part of St. Paul in the disputed passage: Augustin said, a "lie." What, then, would become of evangelic truth if in such a place the Apostle had lied? And would not this be a means of authorizing all the exegetical fantasies of heresiarchs, who already rejected as altered or forged all verses of the holy books which conflicted with their own doctrines?...

As to the new translation of the Bible, it would bring about trouble in the African churches, where they were accustomed to the ancient version of the Septuagint. The mistranslations, pointed out by Jerome in the old version, would upset the faithful and lead them to suspect that the entire Scripture was false. In this double matter, Augustin defended at once orthodoxy and tradition from very praiseworthy reasons of prudence.

Jerome retorted in a most aggressive and offensive tone. He flatly accused the Bishop of Hippo of being jealous of him and of wishing to cut out a reputation for learning at his expense. In front of his younger and more supple adversary, he took on the air of an old wrestler who was still capable of knocking out any one who had the audacity to attack him. He hurled at Augustin this phrase heavy with menaces: "The tired ox stands firmer than ever on his four legs."

For all that, Augustin stuck to his opinion, and he confined himself to replying gently: "In anything I say, I am not only always ready to receive your observations upon what you find wounding and contrary to your feelings, but I even ask your advice as earnestly as I can."...



IV

AGAINST "THE ROARING LIONS"

One day (this was soon after he became bishop) Augustin went to visit a Catholic farmer in the suburbs of Hippo, whose daughter had been lessoned by the Donatists, and had just enrolled herself among their consecrated virgins. The father at first had shouted at the deserter, and flogged her unmercifully by way of improving her state of mind. Augustin, when he heard of the affair, condemned the farmer's brutality and declared that he would never receive the girl back into the community unless she came of her own free will. He then went out to the place to try and settle the matter. On the way, as he was crossing an estate which belonged to a Catholic matron, he fell in with a priest of the Donatist Church at Hippo. The priest at once began to insult him and his companions, and yelled:

"Down with the traitors! Down with the persecutors!"

And he vomited out abominations against the matron herself who owned the land. As much from prudence as from Christian charity, Augustin did not answer. He even prevented those with him from falling upon the insulter.

Incidents of this kind happened almost every day. About the same time, the Donatists of Hippo made a great noise over the rebaptizing of another apostate from the Catholic community. This was a good-for-nothing loafer who beat his old mother, and the bishop severely rebuked his monstrous conduct.

"Well, as you talk in that tone of voice," said the loafer, "I'm going to be a Donatist."

Through bravado, he continued to ill-treat the poor old woman, and to make the worst kind of threats. He roared in savage fury:

"Yes, I'll become a Donatist, and I'll have your blood."

And the young ruffian did really go over to the Donatist party. In accordance with the custom among the heretics, he was solemnly rebaptized in their basilica, and he exhibited himself on the platform clad in the white robe of the purified. People in Hippo were much shocked. Augustin, full of indignation, addressed his protests to Proculeianus, the Donatist bishop. "What! is this man, all bloody with a murder in his conscience, to walk about for eight days in white robes as a model of innocence and purity?" But Proculeianus did not condescend to reply.

These cynical proceedings were trifling compared to the vexations which the Donatists daily inflicted on their opponents. Not only did they tamper with Augustin's people, but the country dwellers of the Catholic Church were continually interfered with on their lands, pillaged, ravaged, and burned out by mobs of fanatical brigands who organized a rule of terror from one end of Numidia to the other. Supported in secret by the Donatists, they called themselves "the Athletes of Christ." The Catholics had given them the contemptuous name of "Circoncelliones," or prowlers around cellars, because they generally plundered cellars and grain-houses. Troops of fanaticized and hysterical women rambled round with them, scouring the country like your true bacchantes, clawing the unfortunate wretches who fell into their hands, burning farms and harvests, broaching barrels of wine and oil, and crowning these exploits by orgies with "the Athletes of Christ." When they saw a haystack blazing in the fields, the country-folk were panic-stricken—the "Circoncelliones" were not far off. Soon they appeared, brandishing their clubs and bellowing their war cry: Deo laudes!—"Praise be to God." "Your shout," said Augustin to them, "is more dreaded by our people than the roaring of lions."

Something had to be done to quell these furious monsters, and to resist the encroachments and forcible acts of the heretics. These, by way of frightening the Catholic bishops, told them roundly:

"We don't want any of your disputes, and we are going to rebaptize just as it suits us. We are going to lay snares for your sheep and to rend them like wolves. As for you, if you are good shepherds, keep quiet!"

Augustin was not a man to keep quiet, nor yet to spend his strength in small local quarrels. He saw big; he did not imprison himself within the limits of his diocese. He knew that Numidia and a good part of Africa were in the hands of the Donatists; that they had a rival primate to the Catholic primate at Carthage; that they had even sent a Pope of their community to Rome. In a word, they were in the majority. Everywhere a dissenting Church rose above the orthodox Church, when it did not succeed in stifling it altogether. At all costs the progress of this sect must be stopped. In Augustin's eyes there was no more urgent work. For him and his flock it was a question of insuring their lives, since they were attacked even in their fields and houses. From the moment he first came to Hippo, as a simple priest, he had thrown himself intrepidly into this struggle. He never ceased till Donatism was conquered and trampled underfoot. To establish peace and Catholic unity everywhere was the great labour of his episcopate.

Who, then, were these terrible Donatists whom we have been continually striking against since the beginning of this history?

It would soon be a century since they had been disturbing and desolating Africa. Just after the great persecution of Diocletian, the sect was born, and it increased with amazing rapidity. During this persecution, evidence had not been wanting of the moral slackness in the African Church. A large number of lay people apostatized, and a good number of bishops and priests handed over to the pagan authorities, besides the devotional objects, the Scriptures and the muniments of their communities. In Numidia, and especially at Constantine, scandalous scenes took place. The cowardice of the clergy was lamentable. Public opinion branded with the names of traditors, or traitors, those who had weakened and given over the sacred books to the pagans.

The danger once over, the Numidians, whose behaviour had been so little brilliant, determined to redeem themselves by audacity, and to prove with superb impudence that they had been braver than the others. So they set themselves to shout traditor against whoever displeased them, and particularly against those of Carthage and the Proconsulate. At bottom it was the old rivalry between the two Africas, East and West.

Under the reign of Constantine a peace had been patched up, when it fell out that a new Bishop of Carthage had to be elected, and the Archdeacon Caecilianus, whose name was put forward, was accused of preventing the faithful from visiting the martyrs in their prisons. The zealots contended that in collusion with his bishop, Mensurius, he had given up the Holy Scriptures to the Roman authorities to be burned. The election promised to be stormy. The supporters of the Archdeacon, who feared the hostility of the Numidian bishops, did not wait for their arrival. They hurried things over. Caecilianus was elected and consecrated by three bishops of the district, of whom one was a certain Felix of Abthugni.

At once the opposite clan, backed up by the Numidians, objected. At their head was a wealthy Spanish woman named Lucilla, an unbalanced devotee, who, it seemed, always carried about her person a bone of a martyr, and a doubtful one at that. She would ostentatiously kiss her relic before receiving the Eucharist. The Archdeacon Caecilianus forbade this devotion as superstitious, and thus made a relentless enemy of the fanatical Spaniard. All the former accusations were renewed against him, and it was added that Felix of Abthugni, who had consecrated him, was a traditor. Hence the election was void, by the single fact of the unworthiness of the consecrating bishops. Lucilla, having bribed a section of the bishops assembled in council, Caecilianus was deposed, and the deacon Majorinus elected in his room. He himself was soon after succeeded by Donatus, an active, clever, and energetic man, who organized resistance so ably, and who represented so well the spirit of the sect, that he left it his name. Henceforth, Donatism enters into history.

But Caecilianus had on his side the bishops overseas and the Imperial Government. The Pope of Rome and the Emperor recognized him as legitimately elected. Besides that, he cleared himself of all the grievances urged against him. Finally, an inquiry, conducted by laymen, proved that Felix of Abthugni was not a traditor. The Donatists appealed to Constantine, then to two Councils convoked successively at Rome and Arles. Everywhere they were condemned. Moreover, the Council of Arles declared that the character of him who confers the Sacraments has no influence whatever on their validity. Thus, baptism and ordination, even conferred by a traditor, were canonically sound.

This decision was regarded as an abominable heresy by the Donatists. As a matter of fact, there was an old African tradition, accepted by St. Cyprian himself, that an unworthy priest could not administer the Sacraments. The local prejudice would not yield: all were rebaptized who had been baptized by the Catholics—that is to say, by the supporters of the traditors.

The theological question was complicated with a question of property which was all but insoluble. Since the Donatist bishops were resolved to separate from the Catholic communion, did they mean to give up, with their title, their basilicas and the property belonging to their churches? Supposing that they themselves were disinterested, they had behind them the crowd of clients and land-tillers who got their living out of the Church, and dwelt on Church property. Never would these people allow a rival party to alter the direction of the charities, to plant themselves in their fields and their gourbis, to expel them from their cemeteries and basilicas. Other reasons, still deeper perhaps, induced the Donatists to persevere in the schism. These religious dissensions were agreeable to that old spirit of division which at all times has been the evil genius of Africa. The Africans have always felt the need of segregating themselves from one another in hostile cofs. They hate each other from one village to another—for nothing, just, for the pleasure of hating and felling each other to the ground.

At bottom, here is what Donatism really was: It was an extra sharp attack of African individualism. These rebels brought in nothing new in dogma. They would not even have been heretics without their claim to rebaptize. They limited themselves to retain a position gained long ago; to keep their churches and properties, or to seize those of the Catholics upon the pretence that they were themselves the legitimate owners. With that, they affected a respect for tradition, an austerity in morals and discipline, which made them perfect puritans. Yes, they were the pure, the irreconcilables, who alone had not bent before the Roman officials. All this was very pleasing to the discontented and quarrelsome, and caressed the popular instinct in its tendency to particularism.

That is why the sect became, little by little, mistress of almost the whole country. Then it subdivided, crumbled up into little churches which excommunicated each other. In Southern Numidia, the citadels of orthodox Donatism, so to speak, were Thimgad and Bagai. Carthage, with its primate, was the official centre. But in the Byzacena and Tripolitana Regio, there were the Maximianists, and the Rogatists in Mauretania, who had cut themselves off from the Great Church. These divisions of the schism corresponded closely enough to the natural compartments of North Africa. There must be some incompatibility of temper between these various regions. To this day, Algiers prides itself on not thinking like Constantine, which does not think like Bona or like Tunis.

Are we to see in Donatism a nationalist or separatist movement directed against the Roman occupation? That would be to transport quite modern ideas into antiquity. No more in Augustin's time than in our own was there such a thing as African nationality. But if the sectaries had no least thought of separating from Rome, it is none the less true that they were in rebellion against her representatives, temporal as well as spiritual. Supposing that Rome had yielded to them—an impossible event, of course—that would have meant a surrender to the claims of Africans who wished to be masters of their property as well as of their religious beliefs in their own country. What more could they have wanted? It little mattered to them who was the nominal master, provided that they had the realities of government in their hands. Altogether, Donatism is a regionalist revindication, very strongly characterized. It is a remarkable fact that it was among the indigenous population, ignorant of Latin, that the most of its adherents were recruited.

* * * * *

Such was the position of the Church in Africa when Augustin was named Bishop of Hippo. He judged it at once, with his clear-sightedness, his strong good sense, his broad outlook of a Roman citizen freed from the smallnesses of a local spirit, his Christian idealism which took no heed of the accidents or considerations of worldly prosperity. What! was Catholicism to become an African religion, a restricted sect, wretchedly tied to the letter of tradition, to the exterior practices of worship? To reign in a little corner of the world—did Christ die for that? Never! Christ died for the wide world. The only limits of His Church are the limits of the universe. And besides, in this resolution to exclude, what becomes of the great principle of Charity? It is by charity, above all, that we are Christians. Faith without love is a faith stagnant and dead....

Augustin also foresaw the consequences of spiritual separation; he had them already under his eyes. The Church is the great spring, not only of love, but of intelligence. Once cut away from this reviving spring, Donatism would become dry and stunted like a branch stripped from a tree. The deep sense of its dogmas would become impoverished as its works emptied themselves of the spirit of charity. Obstinacy, narrowness, lack of understanding, fanaticism, and cruelty—there you had the inevitable fruits of schism. Augustin knew the rudeness and ignorance of his opponents, even of the most cultivated among them: he might well ask himself in anguish what would become of the African Church deprived of the benefit of Roman culture, isolated from the great intellectual current which united all the churches beyond seas. Finally, he knew his fellow-countrymen; he knew that the Donatists, even victorious, even sole masters of the land, would turn against themselves the fury they now satisfied against the Catholics, and never stop tearing each other in pieces. Here was now nearly a hundred years that they had kept Africa in fire and blood. This meant before very long a return to barbarism. Separated from Catholicism, they would really separate from the Empire and even from civilization. And so it was that in fighting for Catholic unity, Augustin fought for the Empire and for civilization.

Confronted with these barbarians and sectaries, his attitude could not be doubtful for a single moment. He must do his best to bring them back to the Church. It was only a matter of hitting upon the most effectual means.

Preaching, for an orator such as he was, should be an excellent weapon. His eloquence, his dialectic, his profane and sacred learning, gave him an immense superiority over the defenders of the opposite side. He certainly kept in the Church many Catholics who were ready to apostatize. But before the crowd of schismatics, all these high gifts were as good as lost. The people were in no wise anxious to know upon which side truth was to be found. They were Donatists, as they were Numidians or Carthaginians, without knowing why—because everybody about them was. Many might have answered like that grammarian of Constantine, who told the Inquisitors with astute simplicity:

"I am a professor of Roman literature, a teacher of Latin grammar. My father was a decurion at Constantine; my grandfather was a soldier and had served in the guard. Our family is of Moorish blood.... As for me, I am quite ignorant about the origin of the schism: I am just one of the ordinary faithful of the people called Christians. When I was at Carthage, Bishop Secundus came there one day. I heard tell that they found out that Bishop Caecilianus had been ordained irregularly by I don't know who, and they elected another bishop against him. That's how the schism began at Carthage. I have no means of knowing much about the origin of the schism, because there has never been more than one church in our city. If there has been a schism here, we know nothing about it."

When a grammarian talked thus, what could have been the thoughts of agricultural labourers, city workmen, and slaves? They belonged to an estate, or a quarter of a town, where no other faith than theirs had ever been professed. They were Donatists like their employers, like their neighbours, like the other people of the cof to which they had belonged from father to son. The theological side of the question left them absolutely indifferent. If Augustin tried to debate with them, they refused to listen and referred him to their bishops. That was the word of command.

The bishops, on their side, avoided all discussion. Augustin tried in vain to arrange an argument with Proculeianus, his Donatist colleague at Hippo. And if some of them shewed themselves more obliging, the evasions and reticences of the antagonist, and sometimes outside circumstances, made the debate utterly futile. At Thubursicum the audience raised such a noise in the place where Augustin was debating with the bishop Fortunius, that they were no longer able to hear each other. At other times, the meeting sank to an oratorical joust, wherein they tired themselves out passading against words, instead of attacking the matters at issue. Augustin felt that he was losing his time. Besides, the Donatist bishops presented an obstinate front against which everything smashed.

"Leave us in our errors," they said ironically. "If we are lost in your eyes, why follow us about? We don't want to be saved."

And they prohibited their flocks from saluting Catholics, from speaking to them, from going into their churches or into their houses, from sitting down in the midst of them. They laid an interdict on their adversaries. Primanius, the Donatist Primate of Carthage, upon being invited to a conference, answered proudly:

"The sons of the martyrs can have nothing to do with the race of traitors."

This being the state of the case, no method of pacification was left but written controversy. Augustin shewed himself tireless at it. It was chiefly in these letters and treatises against the Donatists that he was not afraid to repeat himself. He knew that he was dealing with the deaf, and with the deaf who did not want to hear: he was obliged to raise his voice. With admirable self-denial he reiterated the same arguments a hundred times over, a hundred times took up the history of the quarrel from the beginning, spreading such a light over the quibbles and refinings of his contradictors, that it should have brought conviction to the bluntest minds. "No," he repeated, "Caecilianus was not a traditor, nor Felix of Abthugni either who consecrated him bishop. The documents are there to prove this. And even supposing they were, can the fault of a single man be charged to the whole Church?... Then why do you baptize the Catholics under the pretence that their priests are traditors and as such unworthy to administer the Sacraments? It is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and not the virtue of the priest which renders baptism efficacious. If it were otherwise, what was the good of the Redemption? It is the fact that by the voluntary death of Christ, all men have been called to salvation. Salvation is not the privilege of Africans only. Being Catholic, the Church should take in the whole world...."

In the long run, these continual repetitions end by seeming wearisome to modern readers: for us there arises out of all these discussions a dense and intolerable boredom. But let us remember that all this was singularly living for Augustin's cotemporaries, that these thankless developments were read with passion. And then, too, it was a question of the unity of the Church which involved, as we cannot too often repeat, the interest of the Empire and civilization.

Against so persuasive a power the Donatists opposed a conspiracy of silence. Their bishops forbade the people to read what Augustin wrote. They did more—they concealed their own libels so that it was impossible to reply to them. But Augustin used all his skill to unearth them. He refuted them, and had his refutations recopied and posted on the walls of the basilicas. The copies circulated through the province and the whole Roman world.

This would have had an excellent result if the quarrel had been entirely over questions of theory. But immense property interests came into it, and rancours and terrible hates. Augustin was forced to pass from verbal polemics to direct action—defensive action, at first, and then attack.

While he and his fellow-bishops did their utmost to preach peace, the Donatist bishops urged their followers to the holy war. Augustin even received threats on his life. During one of his visitations, he was nearly assassinated. Men in ambush lay in wait for him. By a providential chance, he took the wrong road, and owed his life to this mistake. His pupil Possidius, who was then Bishop of Guelma, was not so lucky. Brought to bay in a house by the Donatist bishop Crispinus, he defended himself desperately. They set fire to the house to turn him out. When there was nothing else left but to be burned alive, he did come out. The band of Donatists seized him, and would have beaten his brains out, if Crispinus himself, fearing a prosecution for murder, had not interfered. But the assailants sacked the property and slaughtered all the horses and mules in the stables. At Bagai, Bishop Maximianus was stabbed in his basilica. A furious mob smashed the altar and began to strike the victim with the fragments, and left him for dead on the flags. The Catholics lifted up his body, but the Donatists plucked him out of their hands and flung him from the top of a tower, and he fell on a dunghill which broke the fall. The unhappy man still breathed, and by a miracle he recovered.

Meanwhile, the Circoncelliones, armed with their bludgeons, continued to pillage and burn the farms. They tortured the owners to extract their money from them. They made them toil round the mill-path like beasts of burthen, while they lashed at them with whips. At their back, the Donatist priests invaded the Catholic churches and lands. There and then they rebaptized the labourers. These doings were, indeed, very like the practices of the African Mussulmans to-day, who, in like circumstances, always begin by converting the Christian farm-hands by main force. Then they purified the basilicas by scraping down the walls and washing the floors with big douches of water; and after demolishing the altar, they scattered salt where it had stood. It was a perfect disinfection. The Donatists treated the Catholics like the plague-stricken.

Such acts cried out for vengeance. Augustin, who up till this time had recoiled from asking the public authorities to prosecute, who, as an observer of the apostolic tradition, did not recognize the interference of the civil power in Church matters—well, Augustin had to give way to circumstances, and also to the pressure brought to bear on him by his colleagues. Councils assembled at Carthage petitioned the Emperor to take exceptional measures against the Donatists, who laughed at all the laws directed against heretics. When they were summoned before the courts they demonstrated to the judges, who were often pagans incompetent to decide in these questions, that it was they who really belonged to the only orthodox Church. Something must be done to end this equivocal position, and to bring about once for all a categorical condemnation of the schism. Augustin, acting in concert with the primate Aurelius, was the ruling spirit of these meetings.

Let us not judge his conduct by modern ideas, or be in a hurry to exclaim against his intolerance. He and the Catholic bishops, in acting thus, were complying with the old tradition which had influenced all the pagan governments. Rome, particularly, though it recognized all the local sects, all the foreign religions, never allowed any of its subjects to refuse to fall in with the official religion. The persecutions of the Christians and the Jews had no other motive. Now that it was become the State religion, Christianity, willingly or unwillingly, had to summon people to the same obedience. The Emperors made a special point of this from political reasons easy to understand—to prevent riots and maintain public order. Even if the bishops had refrained from all complaint, the Imperial Government would have acted without them and suppressed the disturbances caused by the heretics.

Just look at the situation and the men as they were at that moment in Africa. It was the Catholics who were persecuted, and that with revolting fury and cruelty. They were obliged to defend themselves. In the next place, the distribution of property in those countries made conversions in batches singularly easy. Multitudes of farm tenants, workmen, and agricultural slaves, lived upon the immense estates of one owner. Without any interest in dogmatic questions, they were Donatists simply because their master was. To change these devouring wolves into tranquil sheep, it was often quite enough if the master got converted. The great blessing of peace depended upon pressure being brought to bear on certain persons. When all day and every day there was a risk of being murdered or burned out by irresponsible ruffians, the temptation was very strong to fall back on such a prompt and simple remedy. Augustin and his colleagues ended by making up their minds to do so. For that matter, they had no choice. They were bound to strike, or be themselves suppressed by their enemies.

However, before resorting to rigorous measures, they resolved to send forth a supreme appeal for reconciliation. The Catholics proposed a meeting to the Donatists in which they would loyally examine one another's grievances. As personal or material questions made the great bar to an understanding, they promised that every Donatist bishop who turned convert should keep his see. In places where a schismatic and an orthodox bishop were found together, they would come to a friendly agreement to govern the diocese by turns. Where it was impossible for this to be done, it was proposed that the Catholic should resign in favour of the other. Augustin lent all his eloquence to carry this motion, which was sufficiently heroic for a good number of bishops who were not so detached as he from the goods of this world. And one must allow that it was difficult to go much further in the way of self-denial.

After a good deal of skirmishing and hesitation on the side of the schismatics, the Conference met at Carthage in June of the year 411, under the presidency of an Imperial commissioner, the tribune Marcellinus. Once again, the Donatists saw themselves condemned. Upon the report of the commissioner, a decree of Honorius classed them definitely among heretics. They were forbidden to rebaptize or to assemble together, under penalties of fine and confiscation. Refractory countrymen and slaves would be liable to corporal punishment, and as for the clerics, they would be banished.

The effect of these new laws was not long in appearing, and it fully answered the wishes of the orthodox bishops. Many populations returned, or pretended to return, to the Catholic communion. This result was largely the work of Augustin, who for twenty years had worked to bring it about by preaching and controversy. But, as might be expected, he did not overdo his triumph. Without delay, he set himself to preach moderation to the conquerors. Nor had he waited till the enemy was defeated to do that. Ten years before, while the Donatists were besetting the Catholics everywhere, he said to the priests of his communion:

"Remember this, my brothers, so as to practise and preach it with never-varying gentleness. Love the men; kill the lie! Lean on truth without pride; fight for it without cruelty. Pray for those whom you chide, and for those to whom you shew their error."

However, the victory of the party of peace was not so thorough as it had seemed at first. A good many fanatics here and there grew obstinate in their resistance. The Circoncelliones, maddened, distinguished themselves by a new outbreak of ravages and cruelties. They tortured and mutilated all the Catholics who fell into their hands. They had invented an unheard-of refinement of torture, which was to cover with lime diluted with vinegar the eyes of their victims. The priest Restitutus was assassinated in the suburbs of Hippo. A bishop had his tongue and his hand cut off. If the towns were pretty quiet, terror began to reign once more in the country places.

The Roman authorities exerted themselves to put an end to these bloody scenes. They heavily chastised the offenders whenever they could catch them. In his charity, Augustin interceded for them with the judges. He wrote to the tribune Marcellinus:

"We would not that the servants of God should be revenged by hurts like to those they suffered. Surely, we are not against depriving the guilty of the means to do harm, but we consider it will be enough, without taking their lives or wrenching any limb from them, to turn them from their senseless tumult by the restraining power of the laws, in bringing them back to calm and reason; or, in a last resort, to take away the opportunity for criminal actions by employing them in some useful work.... Christian judge, in this matter fulfil the duty of a father, and while repressing injustice, do not forget humanity."

This compassion of Augustin was shewn particularly in his meeting with Emeritus, the Donatist Bishop of Cherchell (or as it was then called, Mauretanian Caesarea), one of the most stubborn among the irreconcilables. His attitude in dealing with this uncompromising enemy was not only humane, but courteous, full of graciousness, and of the most sensitive charity.

This fell out in the autumn of the year 418, seven years after the great Conference at Carthage. Augustin was sixty-four years old. How was it that he who had always had such feeble health undertook at this age the long journey from Hippo to Caesarea? We know that the Pope, Zozimus, had entrusted him with a mission to the Church of that town. With his tireless zeal, always ready to march for the glory of Christ, the old bishop doubtless saw in this journey a fresh opportunity for an apostle. So he started off, in spite of the roads, which were very unsafe in those troublous times, in spite of the crushing heat of the season—the end of September. He travelled six hundred miles across the endless Numidian plain and the mountainous regions of the Atlas, preaching in the churches, halting in the towns and the hamlets to decide questions of private interest, ever pursued by a thousand business worries and by the squabbles of litigants and the discontented. At last, after many weeks of fatigue and tribulation, he reached Cherchell, where he was the guest of Deuterius, the metropolitan Bishop of Mauretania.

Now Emeritus, the deposed bishop, lived mysteriously in the suburbs, in constant fear of some forcible action on the part of the authorities. When he learned the friendly intentions of Augustin, he came out of his hiding-place and shewed himself in the town. In one of the squares of Caesarea the two prelates met. Augustin, who had formerly seen Emeritus at Carthage, recognized him, hurried over to him, saluted him, and at once suggested a friendly talk.

"Let us go into the church," he said. "This square is hardly suitable for a talk between two bishops."

Emeritus, flattered, agreed. The conversation continued in such a cordial tone that Augustin was already rejoicing upon having won back the schismatic. Deuterius, following the line of conduct which the Catholic bishops had adopted, spoke of resigning and handing over the see to the other. It was agreed that within two days Emeritus should come to the cathedral for a public discussion with his colleague of Hippo. At the appointed hour he appeared. A great crowd of people gathered to hear the two orators. The basilica was full. Then Augustin, turning to the impenitent Donatist, said to him mildly:

"Emeritus, my brother, you are here. You were also at our Conference at Carthage. If you were beaten there, why do you come here now? If, on the other hand, you think that you were not beaten, tell us what leads you to believe that you had the advantage...."

What change had Emeritus undergone in two days? Whatever it was, he disappointed the hopes of Augustin and the people of Caesarea. He returned only ambiguous phrases to the most pressing and brotherly urging. Finally, he took refuge in an angry silence from which it was found impossible to draw him.

Augustin went home without having converted the heretic. No doubt he was sorely disappointed. Nevertheless, he shewed no resentment; he even took measures to ensure the safety of the recalcitrant, in a charitable fear less the roused people might do him a bad turn. With all that, when he looked back at the results of nearly thirty years of struggle against schism, he might well say to himself that he had done good work for the Church. Donatism, in fact, was conquered, and conquered by him. Was he at last to have a chance to rest himself, with the only rest suitable to a soul like his, in a steady meditation and study of the Scriptures? Henceforth, would he be allowed to live a little less as a bishop and a little more as a monk? This was always the strong desire of his heart....

But new and worse trials awaited him at Hippo.



THE SIXTH PART

FACE TO FACE WITH THE BARBARIANS

Et nunc veniant omnes quicumque amant Paradisum, locum quietis, locum securitatis, locum perpetuae felicitatis, locum in quo non pertimescas Barbarum.

"And now let all those come who love Paradise, the place of quiet, the place of safety, the place of eternal happiness, the place where the Barbarian need be feared no more."

Sermon upon the Barbarian Persecution, vii, 9.



I

THE SACK OF ROME

During June of the year 403, an astonishing event convulsed the former capital of the Empire. The youthful Honorius, attended by the regent Stilicho, came there to celebrate his triumph over Alaric and the Gothic army, defeated at Pollentia.

The pageantry of a triumph was indeed a very astonishing sight for the Romans of that period. They had got so unused to them! And no less wonderful was the presence of the Emperor at the Palatine. Since Constantine's reign, the Imperial palaces had been deserted. They had hardly been visited four times in a century by their master.

Rome had never got reconciled to the desertion of her princes. When the Court was moved to Milan, and then to Ravenna, she felt she had been uncrowned. Time after time the Senate appealed to Honorius to shew himself, at least, to his Roman subjects, since political reasons were against his dwelling among them. This journey was always put off. The truth is, the Christian Caesars did not like Rome, and mistrusted her still half-pagan Senate and people. It needed this unhoped-for victory to bring Honorius and his councillors to make up their minds. The feeling of a common danger had for the moment drawn the two opposing religions together, and here they were apparently making friends in the same patriotic delight. Old hates were forgotten. In fact, the pagan aristocracy had hopes of better treatment from Stilicho. On account of all these reasons, the triumphant Caesar was received at Rome with delirious joy.

The Court, upon leaving Ravenna, had crossed the Apennines. A halt was called on the banks of the Clitumnus, where in ancient times the great white herds were found which were sacrificed at the Capitol during a triumph. But the gods of the land had fallen; there would be no opiman bull this time on their altars. The pagans felt bitter about it.

Thence, by Narnia and the Tiber valley, they made their way down into the plain. The measured step of the legions rang upon the large flags of the Flaminian way. They crossed the Mulvius bridge—and old Rome rose like a new city. In anticipation of a siege, the regent had repaired the Aurelian wall. The red bricks of the enclosure and the fresh mason-work of the towers gleamed in the sun. Finally, striking into the Via lata, the procession marched to the Palatine.

The crowd was packed in this long, narrow street, and overflowed into the nearest alleys. Women, elaborately dressed, thronged the balconies, and even the terraces of the palace. All at once the people remarked that the Senate was not walking before the Imperial chariot. Stilicho, who wished to conciliate their good graces, had, contrary to custom, dispensed them from marching on foot before the conqueror. People talked with approval of this wily measure in which they saw a promise of new liberties. But applause and enthusiastic cheers greeted the young Honorius as he passed by, sharing with Stilicho the honour of the triumphal car.

The unequalled splendour of his trabea, of which the embroideries disappeared under the number and flash of colour of the jewels, left the populace gaping. The diadem, a masterpiece of goldsmith's work, pressed heavily on his temples. Emerald pendants twinkled on each side of his neck, which, as it was rather fat, with almost feminine curves, suggested at once to the onlookers a comparison with Bacchus. They found he had an agreeable face, and even a soldierly air with his square shoulders and stocky neck. Matrons gazed with tender eyes on this Caesar of nineteen, who had, at that time, a certain beauty, and the brilliance, so to speak, of youth. This degenerate Spaniard, who was really a crowned eunuch, and was to spend his life in the society of the palace eunuchs and die of dropsy—this son of Theodosius was just then fond of violent exercise, of hunting and horses. But he was even now becoming ponderous with unhealthy fat. His build and bloated flesh gave those who saw him at a distance a false notion of his strength. The Romans were most favourably impressed by him, especially the young men.

But the army, the safeguard of the country, was perhaps even more admired than the Emperor. The legions, following the ruler, had almost deserted the capital. The flower of the troops were almost unknown there. In consequence, the march past of the cavalry was quite a new sight for the people. A great murmur of admiration sounded as the cataphracti appeared, gleaming in the coats of mail which covered them from head to foot. Upon their horses, caparisoned in defensive armour, they looked like equestrian, statues—like silver horsemen on bronze horses. Childish cries greeted each draconarius as he marched by carrying his ensign—a dragon embroidered on a long piece of cloth which flapped in the wind. And the crowd pointed at the crests of the helmets plumed with peacock feathers, and the scarfs of scarlet silk flowing over the camber of the gilded cuirasses....

The military show poured into the Forum, swept up the Via Sacra, and when it had passed under the triumphal arches of the old emperors, halted at the Palace of Septimus Severus. In the Stadium, the crowd awaited Honorius. When he appeared on the balcony of the Imperial box, wild cheering burst out on all the rows of seats. The Emperor, diadem on head, bowed to the people. Upon that the cheers became a tempest. Rome did not know how to express her happiness at having at last got her master back.

On the eve of the worst catastrophes she had this supreme day of glory, of desperate pride, of unconquerable faith in her destiny. The public frenzy encouraged them in the maddest hopes. The poet Claudian, who had followed the Court, became the mouthpiece of these perilous illusions. "Arise!" he cried to Rome, "I prithee arise, O venerable queen! Trust in the goodwill of the gods. O city, fling away the mean fears of age, thou who art immortal as the heavens!..."

For all that, the Barbarian danger continued to threaten. The victory of Pollentia, which, moreover, was not a complete victory, had settled nothing. Alaric was in flight in the Alps, but he kept his eye open for a favourable chance to fall back upon Italy and wrench concessions of money and honours from the Court of Ravenna. Supported by his army of mercenaries and adventurers in the pay of the Empire like himself, his dealings with Honorius were a kind of continual blackmail. If the Imperial Government refused to pay the sums which he protested it owed him for the maintenance of his troops, he would pay himself by force. Rome, where fabulous riches had accumulated for so many centuries, was an obvious prey for him and his men. He had coveted it for a long time; and to get up his courage for this daring exploit, as well as to work upon his soldiers, he pretended that he had a mission from Heaven to chastise and destroy the new Babylon. In his Pannonian forests it would seem he had heard mysterious voices which said to him: "Advance, and thou shalt destroy the city!"

This leader of clans had nothing of the conqueror about him. He understood that he was in no wise cut out to wear the purple; he himself felt the Barbarian's cureless inferiority. But he also felt that neither was he born to obey. If he asked for the title of Prefect of the City, and if he persisted in offering his services to the Empire, it was as a means to get the upper hand of it more surely. Repulsed, disdained by the Court, he tried to raise himself in his own eyes and in the eyes of the common people by giving himself the airs of an instrument of justice, a man designed by fate, who marches blindly to a terrible purpose indicated by the divine wrath. It often happened that he was duped by his own mummery. This turbid Barbarian soul was prone to the most superstitious terrors.

Notwithstanding his rodomontades, it is certain that in his heart he was scared by Rome. He hardly dared to attack it. In the first place, it was not at all a convenient operation for him. His army of mercenaries had no proper implements to undertake the siege of this huge city, of which the defence lines were thrown out in so wide a perimeter. He had to come back to it twice, before he could make up his mind to invest it seriously. The first time, in 408, he was satisfied with starving the Romans by cutting off the food supply. He had pitched his camp on the banks of the Tiber in such a way as to capture the shipping between the capital and the great store-houses built near the mouth of the river. From the ramparts, the Romans could see the Barbarian soldiers moving about, with their sheepskin coats dyed to a crude red. Panic-stricken, the aristocracy fled to its villas in Campania, or Sicily, or Africa. They took with them whatever they were able to carry. They sought refuge in the nearest islands, even in Sardinia and Corsica, despite their reputation for unhealthiness. They even hid among the rocks of the seashore. The terror was so great that the Senate agreed to everything demanded by Alaric. He was paid an enormous indemnity which he claimed as a condition of his withdrawal.

The following year he used the same method of intimidation to force on the people an emperor he had chosen, and to get conferred on him the title of Prefect of the City which he had desired so long. Finally, in the year 410, he struck the supreme blow.

The Barbarian knew what he was about, and that he did not risk much in blockading Rome. Famine would open the gates to him sooner or later. All who were able had left the city, especially the rich. There was no garrison to defend it. Only a lazy populace remained behind the walls, unused to arms, and still more enfeebled by long starvation. And yet this wretched and decimated population, in an outburst of patriotism, resisted with desperate energy. The siege was long. Doubtless it began before the spring; it ended only at the end of the summer. In the night of the twenty-fourth of August, 410, amid the glare of lightning and crashes of thunder, Alaric entered Rome by the Salarian gate. It is certain that he only managed it even then by treachery. The prey was handed to him.

The sack of Rome seems to have lasted for three days and three nights. Part of the town was burned. The conquered people underwent all the horrors which accompany such events—violent and stupid destruction, rapes, murders of individuals, wholesale slaughter, torture, and mutilation. But in reality the Barbarians only wanted the Roman gold. They acted like perfect highway robbers. If they tortured their victims without distinction of age or sex, it was to pluck the secret of their treasure-houses out of them. It is even said that in these conditions the Roman avarice produced some admirable examples of firmness. Some let themselves be tortured to their last gasp rather than reveal where their treasures were hid. At last, when Alaric decided that his army was gorged enough with spoil, he gave the order to evacuate the city, and took to the roads with his baggage-waggons full.

Let us be careful not to judge these doings after our modern notions. The capture of Rome by Alaric was not a national disaster. It was plundering on a huge scale. The Goth had no thought at all of destroying the Empire. He was only a mercenary in rebellion—an ambitious mercenary, no doubt—but, above all, a looter.

As a consequence of this attack on the Eternal City, one after another caught the disease of plunder, which contaminated even the functionaries and the subjects of Rome. Amid the general anarchy, where impunity seemed certain, nobody restrained himself any longer. In Africa especially, where the old instinct of piracy is always half-awake, they applied themselves to ransack the fugitive Romans and Italians. Many rich people were come there, seeking a place of safety in the belief that they would be more secure when they had put the sea between themselves and the Barbarians. The report of their riches had preceded them, exaggerated out of all measure by popular rumour. Among them were mentioned patricians such as the Anicii, whose property was so immense and their palaces so splendid that they could not find purchasers. These multi-millionaires in flight were a miraculous windfall for the country. They were bled without mercy.

Quicker than any one else, the military governor of Africa, Count Heraclianus, was on the spot to pick the pockets of the Italian immigrants. No sooner were they off the boat than he had very distinguished ladies seized, and only released them when he had extorted a large ransom. He sold those unable to pay to the Greek and Syrian slave-merchants who provided human flesh for the Oriental harems. When the example came from such a height, the subordinates doubtless said to themselves that they would be very wrong to have the least shame. From one end of the province to the other, everybody struggled to extract as much as possible from the unfortunate fugitives. Augustin's own parishioners at Hippo undertook to tear a donation from one of those gorgeous Anicii, whose lands stretched further than a kite could fly—from Pinian, the husband of St. Melania the younger. They wanted to force him to be ordained priest in spite of himself, which, as has been explained, involved the handing over of his goods to the Catholic community. Augustin, who opposed this, had to give in to the crowd. There was almost a riot in the basilica.

Such were the far-off reverberations of the capture of Rome by Alaric. Carthaginians and Numidians pillaged the Romans just like the Barbarians.

Now, how did it come about that this monstrous loot took on before the eyes of contemporaries the magnitude of a world-catastrophe? For really nothing was utterly lost. The Empire remained standing. After Alaric's retreat, the Romans had come back to their city and they worked to build up the ruins. Ere long, the populace were crying out loud that if the circus and amphitheatre games were given back to them, they would look upon the descent of the Goths as a bad dream.

It is no less certain that this sensational occurrence had struck the whole Mediterranean world into a perfect stupor. It seized upon the imaginations of all. The idea that Rome could not be taken, that it was integral and almost sacred, had such a hold on people's minds, that they refused to credit the sinister news. Nobody reflected that the sack of Rome by the Barbarians should have been long ago foreseen—that Rome, deprived of a garrison, abandoned by the Imperial army, was bound to attract the covetousness of the Goths, and that the pillage of a place without defence, already enfeebled by famine, was not a very glorious feat, very difficult, or very extraordinary. People only saw the brutal fact: the Eternal City had been captured and burned by the mercenaries. All were under the influence of the shock caused by the narratives of the refugees. In one of his sermons, Augustin has transmitted to us an echo of the general panic:

"Horrible things," said he, "have been told us. There have been ruins, and fires, and rapine, and murder, and torture. That is true; we have heard it many times; we have shuddered at all this disaster; we have often wept, and we have hardly been able to console ourselves."

This capture of Rome was plainly a terrible warning for the future. But party spirit strangely exaggerated the importance and meaning of the calamity. For pagans and Christians alike it became a subject for speeches, a commonplace of religious polemic. Both saw the event as a manifestation of the wrath of Heaven.

"While we sacrificed to our gods," the pagan said, "Rome was standing, Rome was happy. Now that our sacrifices are forbidden, you see what has become of Rome...."

And they went about repeating that Christianism was responsible for the ruin of the Empire. On their side, the Christians answered: In the first place, Rome has not fallen: it is always standing. It has been only chastised, and this happened because it is still half pagan. By this frightful punishment (and they heightened the description of the horrors committed), God has given it a warning. Let it be converted, let it return to the virtues of its ancestors, and it will become again the mistress of nations.

There is what Augustin and the bishops said. Still, the flock of the faithful were only half convinced. It was all well enough to remonstrate to them that the Christians of Rome, and even a good number of pagans, had been spared at the name of Christ, and that the Barbarian leader had bestowed a quite special protection and respect upon the basilicas of the holy apostles; it was impossible to prevent their thinking that many Christians had perished in the sack of the city, that consecrated virgins had experienced the last outrages, and that, as a matter of fact, all the inhabitants had been robbed of their property.... Was it thus that God protected His chosen? What advantage was there in being Christian if they had the same treatment as the idolaters?

This state of mind became extremely favourable for paganism to come back again on the offensive. Since the very hard laws of Theodosius, which forbade the worship of the ancient gods, even within the house, the pagans had not overlooked any chance to protest against the Imperial severity. At Carthage there were always fights in the streets between pagans and Christians, not to say riots. In the colony of Suffetula, sixty Christians had been massacred. The year before the capture of Rome, there had been trouble with the pagans at Guelma. Houses belonging to the Church were burned, a monk killed in a brawl. Whenever the Government inspection relaxed, or the political situation appeared favourable, the pagans hurried to proclaim their belief. Only just lately, in Rome beleaguered by Alaric, the new consul, Tertullus, had thought fit to revive the old customs. Before assuming office, he studied gravely the sacred fowls in their cages, traced circles in the sky with the augur's wand, and marked the flight of birds. Besides, a pagan oracle circulated persistently among the people, promising that after a reign of three hundred and sixty-five years Christianity would be conquered. The centuries of the great desolation were fulfilled; the era of revenge was about to begin for the outcast gods.

These warlike symptoms did not escape Augustin's vigilance. His indignation no longer arose only from the fact that paganism was so slow in dying; he was now afraid that the feebleness of the Empire might allow it to take on an appearance of life. It must be ended, as Donatism had been ended. The old apostle was summoned to a new campaign, and in it he would spend the best of his strength to the eve of his death.



II

THE CITY OF GOD

For thirteen or fourteen years, through a thousand employments and a thousand cares, amid the panics and continual alarums which kept the Africans on the alert in those times, Augustin worked at his City of God, the most formidable machine of war ever directed against paganism, and also the arsenal fullest of proofs and refutations which the disputants and defenders of Catholicism have ever had at their disposal.

It is not for us to examine the details of this immense work, for our sole aim is to study Augustin's soul, and we quote scarcely anything from his books save those parts wherein a little of this ardent soul pulsates—those which are still living for us of the twentieth century, which contain teachings and ways of feeling still likely to move us. Now, Augustin's attitude towards paganism is one of those which throw the greatest light on his nature and character. And it may even yet come to be our own attitude when we find opposed to us a conception of life and the world which may indeed be ruined for a time, but is reborn as soon as the sense of spirituality disappears or grows feeble.

"Immortal Paganism, art thou dead? So they say. But Pan scoffs under his breath, and the Chimaera laughs." [1]

[Footnote 1: Sainte-Beuve.]

Like ourselves, Augustin, brought up by a Christian mother, knew it only through literature, and, so to speak, aesthetically. Recollections of school, the emotions and admirations of a cultivated man—there is what the old religion meant for him. Nevertheless, he had one great advantage over us for knowing it well: the sight of the pagan customs and superstitions was still under his eyes.

That the lascivious, romantic, and poetic adventures of the ancient gods, their statues, their temples, and all the arts arising from their religion, had beguiled him and filled him with enthusiasm before his conversion, is only too certain. But all this mythology and plastic art were looked upon as secondary things then, even by pagans. The serious, the essential part of the religion was not in that. Paganism, a religion of Beauty, is an invention of our modern aesthetes; it was hardly thought of in that way in Augustin's time.

Long before this, the Roman Varro, the great compiler of the religious antiquities of paganism, made a threefold distinction of the doctrine concerning the gods. The first—that of the theatre, as he calls it, or fabulous mythology, adapted to poets, dramatists, sculptors, and jesters. Invented by these, it is only a fantasy, a play of imagination, an ornament of life. The third is civil theology, serious and solid, which claims the respect and piety of all. "It is that which men in cities, and chiefly the priests, ought to be cunning in. It teaches which gods to worship in public, and with what ceremonies and sacrifices each one must be served." Finally, the second, physical or metaphysical theology, is reserved for philosophers and exceptional minds; it is altogether theoretical. The only important and truly religious one, which puts an obligation on the believer, is the third—the civil theology.

Now, we never take account of this. What we persist in regarding as paganism is what Varro himself called "a religion for the theatre"—matter of opera, pretext for ballets, for scenery, and for dance postures. Transposed into another key by our poets, this mythology is inflated now and then by mysticism, or by a vague symbolism. Playthings of our pretty wits! The living paganism, which Augustin struggled against, which crowds defended at the price of their blood, in which the poor believed and the wisest statesmen deemed indispensable as a safeguard of cities—that paganism is quite another matter. Like all religions which are possible, it implied and it enforced not only beliefs, but ritual, sacrifices, festivals. And this is what Augustin, with the other Christians of that time, spurned with disgust and declared to be unbearable.

He saw, or he had seen with his own eyes, the reality of the pagan worship, and the most repellent of all to our modern delicacy—the sacrifices. At the period when he wrote The City of God, private sacrifices, as well as public, were forbidden. This did not prevent the devout from breaking the law whenever a chance offered. They hid themselves more or less when they sacrificed before a temple, a chapel, or on some private estate. The rites could not be carried out according to all the minute instructions of the pontifical books. It was no more than a shadow of the ceremonies of former times. But in his childhood, in the reign of Julian, for instance, Augustin could have attended sacrifices which were celebrated with full pomp and according to all the ritual forms. They were veritable scenes of butchery. For Heaven's sake let us forget the frieze of the Parthenon, and its sacrificers with their graceful lines! If we want to have a literal translation of this sculpture, and find the modern representation of a hecatomb, we must go to the slaughter-houses at La Villette.

Among the heaps of broken flesh, the puddles of blood, the mystic Julian was attacked by a kind of drunkenness. There were never enough beasts strangled or slaughtered to suit him. Nothing satisfied his fury for sacred carnage. The pagans themselves made fun of this craze for sacrificing. During the three years his reign lasted the altars streamed with blood. Oxen by hundreds were slain upon the floors of the temples, and the butchers throttled so many sheep and other domestic animals that they gave up keeping count of them. Thousands of white birds, pigeons or sea-gulls, were destroyed day by day by the piety of the prince. He was called the Victimarius, and when he started upon his campaign against the Persians, an epigram was circulated once more which had been formerly composed against Marcus Aurelius (the philosophic emperor!) who was equally generous of hecatombs: "To Marcus Caesar from the white oxen. It will be all over with us if you come back a conqueror." People said that Julian, on his return, would depopulate stables and pasture-lands.

The populace, who gathered their very considerable profit from these butcheries, naturally encouraged such an excess of devotion. At Rome, under Caligula, more than a hundred and sixty thousand victims were immolated in three months—nearly two thousand a day. And these massacres took place upon the approaches of the temples; in the middle of the city; on the forums; in narrow squares crowded with public buildings and statues. Just try to call up the scene in summer, between walls at a white heat, with the smells and the flies. Spectators and victims rubbed against one another, pressed close in the restricted space. One day, Caligula, while he was attending a sacrifice, was splashed all over by the blood of a flamingo as they cut its neck. But the august Caesar was not so fastidious; he himself operated in these ceremonies armed with a mallet and clad in the short shirt of the killers. The ignominy of all this revolted the Christians, and whoever had nerves at all sensitive. The bloody mud in which passers slipped, the hissing of the fat, the heavy odour of flesh, were sickening. Tertullian held his nose before the "stinking fires" on which the victims were roasting. And St. Ambrose complained that in the Roman Curia the senators who were Christians were obliged to breathe in the smoke and receive full in the face the ashes of the altar raised before the statue of Victory.

The manipulations of the haruspicina seemed an even worse abomination in the eyes of the Christians. Dissection of bowels, examination of entrails, were practices very much in fashion in all classes of society. The pagans generally took more or less interest in magic. One was scarcely a philosopher without being a miracle-worker. In this there was a kind of perfidious rivalry to the Christian miracles. The ambitious or the discontented opened the bellies of animals to learn when the Emperor was going to die, and who would succeed him. But although it did not pretend to magic, the haruspicina made an essential part of the sacrifices. As soon as the dismemberment was done, the diviners examined the appearance of the entrails. Consulting together, they turned them over frequently with anxious attention. This business might continue for a long time. Plutarch relates that Philip, King of Macedonia, when sacrificing an ox on the Ithomaea, with Aratus of Sicyon and Demetrius of Pharos, wished to inquire out from the entrails of the victim concerning the wisdom of a piece of strategy. The haruspex put the smoking mass in his hands. The King shewed it to his companions, who derived contradictory presages from it. He listened to one side and the other, holding meanwhile the ox's entrails in his hands. Eventually, he decided for the opinion of Aratus, and then tranquilly gave the handful back to the sacrificer....

No doubt in Augustin's time these rites were no longer practised openly. For all that, they were of the first importance in the ancient religion, which desired nothing better than to restore them. It is easy to understand the repulsion they caused in the author of The City of God. He who would not have a fly killed to make sure of the gold crown in the contest of poets, looked with horror on these sacred butchers, and manglers, and cooks. He flung the garbage of the sacrifices into the sewer, and shewed proudly to the pagans the pure oblation of the eucharistic Bread and Wine.