pressed by the Huns, came to the Danube and implored to be taken as subjects by the emperor. After mature deliberation, the Council of Valens granted the prayer, and some five hundred thousand Germans were cantoned in Mœsia. The intention of the government was to scatter this multitude through the provinces as coloni, or to draft them into the legions; but the detachment detailed to handle them was too feeble, the Goths mutinied, cut the guard to pieces, and having ravaged Thrace for two years, defeated and killed Valens at Hadrianople. In another generation the disorganization of the Roman army had become complete, and Alaric gave it its deathblow in his campaign of 410.
Alaric was not a Gothic king, but a barbarian deserter, who, in 392, was in the service of Theodosius. Subsequently, he sometimes held imperial commands, and sometimes led bands of marauders on his own account, but was always in difficulty about his pay. Finally, in the revolution in which Stilicho was murdered, a corps of auxiliaries mutinied and chose him their general. Alleging that his arrears were unpaid, Alaric accepted the command, and with this army sacked Rome.
During the campaign the attitude of the Christians was more interesting than the strategy of the soldiers. Alaric was a robber, leading mutineers, and yet the orthodox historians did not condemn him. They did not condemn him because the sacred class instinctively loved the barbarians whom they could overawe, whereas they could make little impression on the materialistic intellect of the old centralized society. Under the Empire the priests, like all other individuals, had to obey the power which paid the police; and as long as a revenue could be drawn from the provinces, the Christian hierarchy were subordinate to the monied bureaucracy who had the means to coerce them.
“It was long since established, as a fundamental maxim of the Roman constitution, that every rank of citizens were alike subject to the laws, and that the care of religion was the right as well as duty of the civil magistrate.”81
Their conversion made little change in the attitude of the emperors, and Constantine and his successors continued to exercise a supreme jurisdiction over the hierarchy. The sixteenth book of the Theodosian Code sufficiently sets forth the plenitude of their authority. In theory, bishops were elected by the clergy and the people, but in practice the emperor could control the patronage if it were valuable; and whether bishops were elected or appointed, as long as they were created and paid by laymen, they were dependent. The priesthood could only become autocratic when fear of the miracle exempted them from arrest; and toward the middle of the fifth century this point was approaching, as appears by the effect of the embassy of Leo the Great to Attila.
In 452 the Huns had crossed the Alps and had sacked Aquileia. The Roman army was demoralized; Aëtius could not make head against the barbarians in the field; while Valentinian was so panic-stricken that he abandoned Ravenna, which was thought impregnable, and retreated to the capital, which was indefensible. At Rome, finding himself helpless in an open city, the emperor conceived the idea of invoking the power of the supernatural. He proposed to Leo to visit Attila and persuade him to spare the town. The pope consented without hesitation, and with perfect intrepidity caused himself to be carried to the Hun’s tent, where he met with respect not unalloyed by fear. The legend probably reflects pretty accurately the feeling of the time. As the bishop stood before the king, Peter and Paul appeared on either side, menacing Attila with flaming swords; and though this particular form of apparition may be doubted, Attila seems beyond question to have been oppressed by a belief that he would not long survive the capture of Rome. He therefore readily agreed to accept a ransom and evacuate Italy.
From the scientific standpoint the saint and the sorcerer are akin; for though the saint uses the supernatural for man’s benefit, and the sorcerer for his hurt, both deal in magic. The mediæval saint was a powerful necromancer. He healed the sick, cast out devils, raised the dead, foretold the future, put out fires, found stolen property, brought rain, saved from shipwreck, routed the enemy, cured headache, was sovereign in child-birth, and, indeed, could do almost anything that was asked of him, whether he were alive or dead. This power was believed to lie in some occult property of the flesh, which passed by contact. The woman in the Bible said, “If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.” Moreover, this fluid was a substance whose passage could be felt, for “Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?”82
Anything which came in contact with the saint was likely to have been impregnated with this magical quality, and thus became a charm, or relic, whose value depended primarily on the power of the man himself, and secondly, on the thoroughness with which the material had been charged.
The tomb, which held the whole body, naturally stood highest; then parts of the body, according to their importance – a head, an arm, a leg, down to hairs of the beard. Then came hats, boots, girdles, cups, anything indeed which had been used. The very ground on which a great miracle-worker had stood might have high value.
The Holy Grail, which had held Christ’s blood, would cure wounds, raise the dead, and fill itself with choice food, at the command of the owner. The eucharist, though not properly a relic, and which only became God through an incantation, would, in expert hands, stop fires, cure disease, cast out devils, expound philosophy, and detect perjury by choking the liar.
Every prize in life was to be obtained by this kind of magic. When the kings of France made war, they carried with them the enchanted banner of Saint Denis, and Froissart has told how even in the reign of Charles VI. it decided the battle of Roosebeke.83
Disease was treated altogether by miracle, and the Church found the business so profitable that she anathematized experimental practitioners. In the thirteenth century Saint Thomas of Canterbury and Saint James of Compostello were among the most renowned of healers, and their shrines blazed with the gifts of the greatest and richest persons of Europe. When Philip Augustus lay very ill, Louis the Pious obtained leave to visit the tomb of Saint Thomas, then in the height of the fashion, and left as part of his fee the famous regal of France, a jewel so magnificent that three centuries and a half later Henry VIII. seized it and set it in a thumb ring. Beside this wonderful gem, at the pillage of the Reformation, “the king’s receiver confessed that the gold and silver and precious stones and sacred vestments taken away … filled six-and-twenty carts.”84 The old books of travel are filled with accounts of this marvellous shrine.
“But the magnificence of the tomb of Saint Thomas the Martyr, Archbishop of Canterbury, is that which surpasses all belief. This, notwithstanding its great size, is entirely covered with plates of pure gold; but the gold is scarcely visible from the variety of precious stones with which it is studded, such as sapphires, diamonds, rubies, balas-rubies, and emeralds … and agates, jaspers and cornelians set in relievo, some of the cameos being of such a size, that I do not dare to mention it; but everything is left far behind by a ruby, not larger than a man’s thumb-nail, which is set to the right of the altar… They say that it was the gift of a king of France.”85
But beside these shrines of world-wide reputation, no hamlet was too remote to possess its local fetish, which worked at cheap rates for the peasantry. A curious list of these was sent to the Government by two of Cromwell’s visitors in the reign of Henry VIII.
The nuns of Saint Mary, at Derby, had part of the shirt of Saint Thomas, reverenced by pregnant women; so was the girdle of Saint Francis at Grace Dieu. At Repton, a pilgrimage was made to Saint Guthlac and his bell, which was put on the head for headache. The wimple of Saint Audrede was used for sore breasts, and the rod of Aaron for children with worms. At Bury Saint Edmund’s, the shrine of Saint Botulph was carried in procession when rain was needed, “and Kentish men … carry thence … wax candles, which they light at the end of the field while the wheat is sown, and hope from this that neither tares nor other weeds will grow in the wheat that year.”
Mark v. 28, 30.
