by Will Durant
The Church was the educator, as well as the administrator, of Germany in this age. Monastic schools—really colleges—were opened at Fulda, Tegernsee, Reichenau, Gandersheim, Hildesheim, and Lorsch. Rabanus Maurus (776?–856), after studying under Alcuin at Tours, became abbot of the great monastery at Fulda in Prussia, and made its school famous throughout Europe as the mother of scholars and of twenty-two affiliated institutions. He extended the curriculum to include many sciences, and reproved the super stitions that ascribed natural events to occult powers.85 The library at Fulda grew to be one of the largest in Europe; to it we owe Suetonius, Tacitus, and Ammianus Marcellinus. An uncertain tradition attributes to Rabanus the majestic hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus, which is sung at the consecration of popes, bishops, or kings.86 St. Bruno, who was both the Duke of Lorraine and the Archbishop of Cologne, and became imperial chancellor under Otto the Great, opened a school in the royal palace to train an administrative class; he brought scholars and books from Byzantium and Italy, and himself taught Greek and philosophy.
The German language had as yet no literature; nearly all writing was done by clerics, and in Latin. The greatest German poet of the age was Walafrid Strabo (809-49), a Swabian monk at Reichenau. For a time he was tutor to Charles the Bald in the palace of Louis the Pious at Aachen; he found an enlightened patron in Louis’ wife, the beautiful and ambitious Judith. Returning to Reichenau as its abbot, he gave himself to religion, poetry, and gardening; and in a delightful poem De cultura hortorum—On the Care of Gardens—he described one by one the herbs and flowers that he tended so fondly.
His greatest rival in the literature of Germany in these centuries was a nun. Hroswitha was only one of many German women who in this age were distinguished for culture and refinement. Born about 935, she entered the Benedictine convent at Gandersheim. The standard of instruction must have been higher than we should have expected, for Hroswitha became familiar with the poets of pagan Rome, and learned to write Latin fluently. She composed some lives of saints in Latin hexameters, and a minor epic about Otto the Great. But the works that make her memorable are six Latin prose comedies in the manner of Terence. Her purpose, she tells us, was “to make the small talent vouchsafed her by Heaven give forth, under the hammer of devotion, a faint sound to the praise of God.”87 She mourns the pagan indecency of Latin comedy, and proposes to offer a Christian substitute; but even her plays turn on a profane love that hardly conceals a warm undercurrent of physical desire. In the best of her brief dramas, Abraham, a Christian anchorite leaves his hermitage to care for an orphaned niece. She elopes with a seducer, is soon deserted, and becomes a prostitute. Abraham traces her, disguises himself, and enters her chamber. When she kisses him she recognizes him, and recoils in shame. In a tender and poetic colloquy he persuades her to abandon her life of sin, and return to their home. We do not know whether these dramatic sketches were ever performed. The modern drama developed not out of such echoes of Terence, but out of the ceremonies and “mysteries” of the Church, crossed with the farces of wandering mimes.
As the Church gave a home to poetry, drama, and historiography, so she provided subjects and funds for art. German monks, stirred by Byzantine and Carolingian examples, and helped by the patronage of German princesses, produced in this age a hundred illuminated manuscripts of high excellence. Bernewald, Bishop of Hildesheim from 993 to 1022, was almost a summary of the culture of his age: a painter, a calligrapher, a metalworker, a mosaicist, an administrator, a saint. He made his city an art center by assembling artists of diverse provenance and skills; with their help, but also with his own hands, he fashioned jeweled crosses, gold and silver candlesticks chased with animal and floral forms, and a chalice set with antique gems, one of which represented the three Graces in their wonted nudity.88 The famous bronze doors which his artists made for his cathedral were the first historiated metal doors of the Middle Ages to be solidly cast instead of being composed of flat panels affixed to wood. Domestic architecture showed no signs yet of the lovely forms that would grace German cities in the Renaissance; but church architecture now graduated from wood to stone, imported from Lombardy Romanesque ideas of transept, choir, apse, and towers, and began the cathedrals of Hildesheim, Lorsch, Worms, Mainz, Trier, Speyer, and Cologne. Foreign critics complained of flat timbered ceilings and excessive external decoration in this “Rhenish Romanesque”; but these churches well expressed the solid strength of the German character, and the spirit of an age laboriously struggling up to civilization.
CHAPTER XXI
Christianity in Conflict
529–1085
I. ST. BENEDICT: C. 480–543
THE year 529, which saw the closing of the Athenian schools of philosophy, saw also the opening of Monte Cassino, the most famous monastery in Latin Christendom. Its founder, Benedict of Nursia, was born at Spoleto, apparently of the dying Roman aristocracy. Sent to Rome for an education, he was scandalized by the sexual license there, or, some say, he loved and lost.1 At the age of fifteen he fled to a remote spot five miles from Subiaco, in the Sabine hills; made his cell in a cave at the foot of a precipice; and lived there for some years as a solitary monk. The Dialogues of Pope Gregory I tell how Benedict fought valiantly to forget the woman
the memory of whom the wicked spirit put into his mind, and by that memory so mightily inflamed with concupiscence the soul of God’s servant… that, almost overcome with pleasure, he was of a mind to forsake the wilderness. But suddenly, assisted by God’s grace, he came to himself; and seeing many thick briers and nettle bushes growing hard by, off he cast his apparel, and threw himself into the midst of them, and there wallowed so long that when he rose up all his flesh was pitifully torn; and so by the wounds of his body he cured the wounds of his soul.2
After he had lived there for some years, and his steadfastness had won him fame, he was importuned by the monks of a nearby monastery to be their abbot. He warned them that his rule would be severe; they persisted, and he went with them; after a few months of his stern regimen they put poison in his wine. He resumed his solitary life; but young devotees came to live near him and solicit his guidance; fathers brought their sons, even from Rome, to be taught by him; by 520 twelve little monasteries, each with twelve monks, had risen round his cave. When of even these monks many found his rule too strict, he removed with the most ardent of his followers to Monte Cassino, a hill 1715 feet above sea level, overlooking the ancient town of Casinum, forty miles northwest of Capua. There he demolished a pagan temple, founded (c. 529) a monastery, and formulated that Benedictine Rule which was to guide most monasteries in the West.
The monks of Italy and France had erred in imitating the solitary asceticism of the East; both the climate and the active spirit of Western Europe made such a regimen discouragingly difficult, and led to many relapses. Benedict did not criticize the anchorites, nor condemn asceticism, but he thought it wiser to make asceticism communal, not individual; there should be no show or rivalry in it; at every step it was to be under an abbot’s control, and stop short of injury to health or mind.
Hitherto, in the West, no vows had been demanded of those who entered the monastic life. Benedict felt that the aspirant should serve a novitiate, and learn by experience the austerities to be required of him; only after such a trial might he take the vows. Then, if he still wished, he was to pledge himself, in writing, to “the perpetuity of his stay, the reformation of his manners, and obedience”; and this vow, signed and witnessed, was to be laid upon the altar by the novice himself in a solemn ritual. Thereafter the monk must not leave the monastery without the abbot’s permission. The abbot was to be chosen by the monks, and was to consult them on all matters of importance; but the final decision was to rest with him, and they were to obey him in silence and humility. They were to speak only when necessary; they were not to jest or laugh loudly; they were to walk with their eyes on the ground. They were to own nothing, “neither a book, nor tablets, nor a pen—nothing at all…All things shall be held in
common.”3 Conditions of previous wealth or slavery were to be ignored and forgotten. The abbot
shall make no distinction of persons in the monastery…. A freeborn man shall not be preferred to one coming from servitude, unless there be some other and reasonable cause. For whether we are bond or free, we are all one in Christ…. God is no respecter of persons.4
Alms and hospitality were to be given within the means of the monastery, to all who asked for it. “All guests who come shall be received as though they were Christ.”5
Every monk must work—in the fields or shops of the monastery, in the kitchen, about the house, copying manuscripts…. Nothing was to be eaten till noon, and in Lent not till sundown. From mid-September to Easter there was to be but one meal a day; in the summer months, two, for then the days were long. Wine was allowed, but no flesh of any four-footed beast. Work or sleep was to be frequently interrupted with communal prayer. Influenced by Eastern exemplars, Benedict divided the day into “canonical hours”—hours of prayer as established by canon or rule. The monks were to rise at two A.M., repair to the chapel, and recite or sing “nocturns”—scriptural readings, prayers, and psalms; at dawn they gathered for “matins” or “lauds”; at six for “prime”—the first hour; at nine for “tierce”—the third; at noon for “sext”—the sixth; at three for “none”—the ninth; at sunset for vespers—the evening hour; at bedtime for “compline”—the completion. Bedtime was nightfall; the monks almost dispensed with artificial light. They slept in their clothes, and seldom bathed.6
To these specific regulations Benedict added some, general counsels of Christian perfection:
1. In the first place, to love the Lord God with the whole heart, the whole soul, the whole strength. 2. Then one’s neighbor as oneself. 3. Then not to kill … nor commit adultery … nor steal… nor covet … nor bear false witness…. 8. To honor all men…. 11. To chasten the body… 13. To love fasting. 14. To relieve the poor. 15. To clothe the naked. 16. To visit the sick…. 30. Not to do injuries, and to bear them patiently…. 31. To love one’s enemies. … 53. Not to be fond of much talking. … 61. Not to desire to be called a saint… but to be one…. 71. After a disagreement to be reconciled before the going down of the sun. 72. And never to despair of the mercy of God.7
In an age of war and chaos, of doubt and wandering, the Benedictine monastery was a healing refuge. It took dispossessed or ruined peasants, students longing for some quiet retreat, men weary of the strife and tumult of the world, and said to them: “Give up your pride and freedom, and find here security and peace.” No wonder a hundred similar Benedictine monasteries rose throughout Europe, each independent of the rest, all subject only to the pope, serving as communistic isles in a raging individualistic sea. The Benedictine Rule and order proved to be among the most enduring creations of medieval man. Monte Cassino itself is a symbol of that permanence. Lombard barbarians sacked it in 589; the Lombards retired; the monks returned. The Saracens destroyed it in 884; the monks rebuilt it; earthquake ruined it in 1349; the monks restored it; French soldiery pillaged it in 1799; the shells and bombs of the Second World War leveled it to the ground in 1944. Today (1948) the monks of St. Benedict, with their own hands, are building it once more. Succisa virescit: cut down, it blooms again.
II. GREGORY THE GREAT: 540?-604
While Benedict and his monks peacefully worked and prayed at Monte Cassino, the Gothic War (536-53) passed up and down Italy like a withering flame, leaving disorder and poverty in its wake. Urban economy was in chaos. Political institutions lay in ruins; in Rome no secular authority survived except that of imperial legates weakly supported by unpaid and distant troops. In this collapse of worldly powers the survival of ecclesiastical organization appeared even to the emperors as the salvation of the state. In 554 Justinian promulgated a decree requiring that “fit and proper persons, able to administer the local government, be chosen as governors of the provinces by the bishops and chief persons of each province.”8 But Justinian’s corpse was hardly cold when the Lombard invasion (568) subjected northern Italy again to barbarism and Arianism, and threatened the whole structure and leadership of the Church in Italy. The crisis called forth a man, and history once more testified to the influence of genius.
Gregory was born at Rome three years before Benedict’s death. He came of an ancient senatorial family, and his youth was spent in a handsome palace on the Caelian Hill. On the death of his father he fell heir to a large fortune. He rose rapidly in the ordo honorum, or sequence of political plums; at thirty-three he was prefect—as we should say, mayor—of Rome. But he had no taste for politics. Having finished his year of office, and apparently convinced by the condition of Italy that the ever-heralded end of the world was at hand,9 he used the greater part of his fortune to found seven monasteries, distributed the rest in alms to the poor, laid aside all vestiges of his rank, turned his palace into the monastery of St. Andrew, and became its first monk. He subjected himself to extreme asceticism, lived for the most part on raw vegetables and fruits, and fasted so often that when Holy Saturday came, on which fasting was pre-eminently enjoined, it seemed that another day of abstinence would kill him. Yet the three years that he spent in the monastery were always recalled by him as the happiest of his life.
Out of this peace he was drawn to serve Pope Benedict I as “seventh deacon”; and in 579 he was sent by Pope Pelagius II as ambassador to the imperial court at Constantinople. Amid the wiles of diplomacy and the pomp of palaces he continued to live like a monk in habit, diet, and prayer;10 nevertheless he gained some helpful experience of the world and its chicanery. In 586 he was recalled to Rome, and became Abbot of St. Andrew’s. In 590 a terrible bubonic plague decimated the population of Rome; Pelagius himself was a victim; and at once the clergy and people of the city chose Gregory to succeed him. Gregory was loath to leave his monastery, and wrote to the Greek emperor asking him to refuse confirmation of the election; the city prefect intercepted the letter; and as Gregory was preparing flight he was seized and brought by force to St. Peter’s, and there was consecrated Pope; or so we are told by another Gregory.11
He was now fifty, and already bald, with large head, dark complexion, aquiline nose, sparse and tawny beard; a man of strong feeling and gentle speech, of imperial purposes and simple sentiment. Austerities and responsibilities had ruined his health; he suffered from indigestion, slow fever, and gout. In the papal palace he lived as he had in the monastery—dressed in a monk’s coarse robe, eating the cheapest foods, sharing a common life with the monks and priests who aided him.12 Usually absorbed in problems of religion and the state, he could unbend into words and deeds of paternal affection. A wandering minstrel appeared at the gate of the palace with organ and monkey; Gregory bade the man enter, and gave him food and drink.13 Instead of spending the revenues of the Church in building new edifices, he used them in charity, in gifts to religious institutions throughout Christendom, and in redeeming captives of war. To every poor family in Rome he distributed monthly a portion of corn, wine, cheese, vegetables, oil, fish, meat, clothing, and money; and every day his agents brought cooked provisions to the sick or infirm. His letters, stern to negligent ecclesiastics or to political potentates, are jewels of sympathy to persons in distress: to a peasant exploited on Church lands, to a slave girl wishing to take the veil, to a noble lady worried about her sins. In his conception the priest was literally a pastor, a shepherd caring for his flock, and the good Pope had every right to compose his Liber pastoralis curae (590), a manual of advice to bishops, which became a Christian classic. Though always ailing and prematurely old, he spent himself in ecclesiastical administration, papal politics, agricultural management, military strategy, theological treatises, mystic ecstasies, and a solicitous concern with a thousand details of human life. He chastened the pride of his office with the humility of his creed; he called himself, in the first of his extant epistles, servus servorum Dei, “servant of the servants of God”; and the greatest popes have accepted the noble p
hrase.
His administration of the Church was marked by economic wisdom and stern reform. He struggled to suppress simony and concubinage in the clergy. He restored discipline in the Latin monasteries, and regulated their relations with the secular clergy and the pope. He improved the canon of the Mass, and perhaps contributed to the development of “Gregorian” chant. He checked exploitation on the papal estates, advanced money to tenant farmers, and charged no interest. But he collected due revenues promptly, slyly offered rent reductions to converted Jews, and received, for the Church, legacies of land from barons frightened by his sermons on the approaching end of the world.14
Meanwhile he met the ablest rulers of his day in political duels, won often, sometimes lost, but in the end left the power and prestige of the papacy, and the “Patrimony of Peter” (i.e., the Papal States in central Italy) immensely extended and enhanced. He formally acknowledged, but in practice largely ignored, the sovereignty of the Eastern emperor. When the duke of Spoleto, at war with the Imperial exarch of Ravenna, threatened Rome, Gregory signed a peace with the duke without consulting the exarch or the emperor. When the Lombards besieged Rome Gregory shared in organizing defense.