Christianity

Justinian, 527-565.

While all these years with their storms and convulsions had come and gone in the West, little of world-wide interest had oc curred in the history of Greek Christianity. The prinin the East. cipal support of heathenism, which was propagated in secret, was the New Platonic school at Athens. Under Justinian, the lectures were forbidden and the school broken up. The teachers fled to Persia, hoping to find a place there for themselves and their religious ideas. But Parsism was as distasteful to them as Christianity. They returned from their exile, only to sink into obscurity. Thus it was that scarcely two hundred years after the conversion of Constantine the power of paganism had vanished. The ancient religions of the peoples united under Rome had given way to a better faith. The superstitions of the barbarians, who had found homes in the empire, had been exchanged for a more wholesome belief. But Christianity had done more than this. It had extended its influence to the distant East and South, to Abyssinia, and the tribes of the Syrian and Lybian deserts, to Armenia, Persia, and India.

Zoroastrian

In Persia it had peculiar difficulties to overcome. ism, with its two divine principles-Ormuzd, the good, and AhriChristianity man, the evil-was a more powerful foe than the grosser in Persia. forms of heathenism. The Persians accused the Christians of blasphemy, since they made the good God the creator of that which is evil. They were also offended because the monks seemed to despise riches and children, which in their estimation were the special gifts of Ormuzd. Moreover, the Persian government suspected Christians of being disaffected citizens and favorable to Roman pretensions. In 343, it began a fierce persecution which aimed at their complete extermination. From this time the Persian Church had little rest until after the Nestorian controversy had separated it from the orthodox Church of the Greek empire, and thus had relieved it from political suspicion.

It is probable that during this time merchants and refugees from Persia carried the gospel to India. Cosmas Indicopleustes, a traveller of the sixth century, found three churches there one in Ceylon, one on the Malabar coast, and one

India.

at Calcutta. The Armenians received Christianity more universally than the Persians. It had been introduced among them as early as the second century. At the beginning of the fourth, Gregory, "The Illuminator," diffused it more widely. Tiridates, the king, as well as great numbers of his subjects, were

Armenia.

converted. Later, in their struggles to resist the aggressions and persecutions of the Persians, they defended their Christian faith with fortitude and perseverance. Despite the rapid progress of Christianity in this period, the great countries to the north of the Rhine and the Danube, as well as Teutonic Britain, had not yet received the light of the gospel. To carry the gospel to them was the work of succeeding centuries.

CHAPTER II.

CHANGES OF ORGANIZATION : ADVANCEMENT OF THE ROMAN SEE.

Church and

THE purity of Christianity and the simplicity of its nature had been obscured in the preceding period by the growth of the theocratic idea. It was now exposed to new dangers from State. its alliance with worldly power and its subjection to imperial influence. The accession of Constantine found the Church so firmly organized under the hierarchy that it could not lose its identity by being absolutely merged in the state. But since there was no clearly understood principle defining the respective spheres of Church and State, the first Christian emperor and his successors exercised a large measure of control in ecclesiastical affairs. They assumed to fill, on their own authority, the highest episcopal offices. They convoked general councils, and presided over them by their representatives, and published conciliar decrees as laws of the empire. Some of the later Greek emperors even went so far as to exercise the right to decide on disputed points of doctrine. Such usurpations were made possible by the ardent de sire of each theological party to enlist the political power on its side and thus to overwhelm its opponents.

The Eastern

ern Churches.

The Eastern Church, by its character and situation, was mors exposed to these evils. It was in close contact with the schemes and officials of the court. Its strength was exhausted and the West by incessant conflicts and intestine doctrinal divisions. The minds of the clergy became infected with ambition and servility. They resorted to the methods of political intrigue to further their worldly interests. The Church in the West had more sobriety and firmness of character. It had a stronger and more consistently developed hierarchical organization, which, in conjunction with its distance from Constantinople, protected it from some of the dangers of imperial favor. Hence, in this period,

the Western Church, on the whole, grew more independent, while the Eastern Church gradually became enslaved to the state.

The emperors favor the

The emperors endeavored to promote the interests of Christianity by their personal influence, and by giving to the Church and its clergy new legal rights, somewhat analogous to those previously enjoyed by the heathen priesthood. A few of Church. the churches which Constantine built, received revenues from the public funds, while to others were given the treasures of confiscated temples. Ecclesiastical property now rapidly accumulated. The Church was made the heir of all clergymen who died without leaving wills. The right to receive legacies became, on account of the piety and superstition of the times, a fruitful source of wealth. This right was, however, so abused that Valentinian I. (364-375) found it necessary to make a law protecting women and minors from the avarice of the monks and the clergy. The offices of the Church were turned by many into a means of personal en

richment.

Laws respecting the appointing of the clergy.

The relief from burdensome civil duties, and from various forms of taxation, which Constantine granted to the clergy, led a multitude of individuals of the higher classes, who were possessed of wealth, to assume a clerical office, even though it were of a subordinate rank. Constantine, seeing the danger of this practice to the state, provided that new clergymen should be appointed only in place of those dying; and these recruits were not to be taken from the noble families nor from families of wealth. Such a law was necessarily as hurtful to the Church as the previous law was to the state. Therefore, in 383, a new law was enacted, which allowed anyone to enter the clerical office, but provided that those who were obliged by their wealth and rank to bear civil burdens should first resign their property to others. The jurisdiction which, voluntarily conceded, the Church and its bishops had exercised over church members was now put on a legal basis. In ecclesiastical affairs, and in civil cases referred to them by the consent of both parties, as well as in all causes between clergymen, the decisions of the bishops were made final. These multiplying duties threatened to become an intolerable burden to conscientious prelates. Some of them complained that they were compelled to spend too much of their time merely in settling disputes; while others, more worldlyminded, enjoyed their increasing influence in secular affairs. There was a growing tendency to establish the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts over all cases in which a clergyman was in

The legal ju. risdiction of

bishops.