Chapter XVI: Found at Last! (4)

Amurath was so alarmed by this defeat—not, perhaps, so much from what he had to fear on the side of the immediate victors, but from the encouraging effects it might have in leaguing the Christian princes against him—that he wrote a letter from Adrianople, offering Scanderbeg peace on certain conditions. But when these were discussed in the council at Croia, they were declared unjust and humiliating, and Scanderbeg was advised to reject every sort of condition and insist on the complete independence of Albania. The answer to this letter announced his intention of holding out to the last extremity, and began with these valiant words: “From our camp near Croia, August 12, 1445. George Castriot, surnamed Scanderbeg, soldier of Jesus Christ and Prince of the Epirotes, to Othman, Prince of the Turks, greeting.” A second army under Fizour, and a third and larger one under Mustapha, were successively defeated, but not without considerable loss in men and damage to the country. During the inroads of these fierce barbarians into Albania they perpetrated the most horrible massacres without regard to age or sex, and heaped the most brutal outrages upon the inhabitants. The handsomest girls were seized for the seraglios of the sultan and his wealthy minions, the prettiest boys were kept to minister to their unnatural lusts, while youths of a maturer age or less attractive appearance were circumcised, educated in the Mohammedan religion, and drafted into the Janizaries. Others who were not butchered on the smoking ruins of their homes were driven in chains to the slave markets, while many were made eunuchs and set to guard the harems of their masters in Asia Minor.

Mustapha Pasha, although he had been defeated, was entrusted with another army, but with a similar result, and even worse; for he himself was taken prisoner. Twenty-five thousand golden ducats were paid for his ransom. Scanderbeg now made a _razzia_ on a large scale into Macedonia and returned laden with an immense booty of every description. His fame was so solidly established by these victories that the republic of Venice sent a magnificent embassy to compliment him and convey to him the news of his appointment as governor-general of all the Italian possessions along the Adriatic and in the interior, where the important cities of Scutari and Alessio were situated. His name was enrolled in the Golden Book at the head of the list of Venetian nobles.

The revolt of the Janizaries having obliged Amurath to leave his luxurious retreat at Magnesia and once more resume the management of public affairs, he determined to conduct in person the war against Scanderbeg. He soon appeared at the head of a formidable army before Sfetigrad, which surrendered after a gallant resistance. During the siege the Turks lost in one of the assaults six thousand men. Satisfied, apparently, with this single victory, the slothful sultan retired into Macedonia after leaving a strong garrison in the captured fortress. Scanderbeg hovered on his flanks and rear, making many prisoners and taking a large amount of stores and war material; then, after seeing him well out of the country, he turned towards Sfetigrad and sat down before it on September 20, 1445, with eighteen thousand men, among whom were adventurers from almost every country in Europe, Germans, French, and Italians being the most numerous. For want of artillery no regular siege could be conducted, and Scanderbeg was repulsed with heavy loss in his attacks on the place. Hearing that Amurath was preparing to return, he hastily concentrated his available troops around Croia, which was provisioned for a long resistance. Some large, unwieldy pieces of cannon, directed by Frenchmen, added to the strength of the capital. The sultan was slow in his movements, and did not appear as soon as was expected. In the meanwhile Scanderbeg was encouraged by receiving congratulatory letters from Pope Nicholas V., which were brought to him by two Franciscans, one of whom was a bishop. The winter of 1449-50 had been passed by him in the saddle inspecting every fortress, going into every part of his dominions to encourage the people and hasten the levy of troops. The coming tempest was naturally expected to assail the capital; and to make its neighborhood a howling wilderness, the whole country around Croia was ravaged by his order, for a distance of from fifteen to eighteen miles, so completely that not a house or a bridge was left standing, and not a road passable; every growing and living thing was either destroyed or removed. The enemy could find no shelter there.

On April 15, 1450, the sultan appeared before the city with an army of one hundred and sixty thousand fighting men and a host of camp-followers. Uranocontes commanded inside and repelled numerous assaults, while Scanderbeg, with a force of five thousand picked cavalry, hovered about the outskirts of the enemy, inflicting considerable loss in men and stores, but above all annoying the long line of communications by which the army drew its daily supplies. Amurath finally tired of the siege, and, being convinced that the mountains and valleys of Epirus were not worth his time, his trouble, or his money while richer conquests awaited him, charged a certain Yousouf to leave the camp and seek Scanderbeg, to try and induce him to accept the single condition of an annual tribute of only ten thousand ducats. After a two days’ search he was found, but instantly rejected even this almost nominal condition attached to the independence of his country. Knowing that he could not take Croia by assault or maintain his army any longer in such a country, the sultan slowly retreated and died soon afterwards at Adrianople, on February 5, 1451. He was succeeded by his son, Mohammed II., who renewed his father’s offer, but with no better result.

The news of Amurath’s ill-success before Croia made a great noise in Italy, and even beyond. The kings of Hungary and Aragon, and Philip, Duke of Burgundy, sent complimentary missions to the Albanian hero, and presents of money and provisions. King Alphonsus of Aragon, who was also King of Sicily and Naples, sent him four hundred thousand bushels of grain. Among other rich presents that he received from this magnificent monarch was a helmet or casque of the finest Spanish steel, lined on the inside with Cordovan leather and soft silk, and covered on the outside with the purest gold artistically chased and embossed by an Italian jeweller and studded with precious stones. Scanderbeg was very proud of this really regal headgear, and ranked it along with his famous sword, a veritable _Excalibur_, the blade of which was of perfect Damascus workmanship, and the handle a blaze of Oriental gems set with exquisite skill by a Persian lapidary. This weapon was a present from Amurath on giving him his first command. With it he killed at least two thousand Turks in his war of independence, and it was looked upon by his enemies with a species of superstitious awe. During one of the informal truces between the Turks and Christians Sultan Mohammed begged to see the blade of which he had heard so much. It was sent to him and tried by the best swordsmen of his army, but not one of them could perform the feats that its owner had been seen to do with it; and when it was returned, the sultan told him this and asked the reason. “I sent your highness the sword,” said Scanderbeg, “but not the limb that wields it!” When he went into battle, it was always with his right arm bare and his shoulder perfectly free. He was so tall and strong that a few years later, when he went over to Italy to assist King Ferdinand, and had occasion to meet the commander of the enemy’s troops—the famous _condottiére_ Count Piccinino, whose stature, it is true, was small, but still that of a grown person—he took him by the belt with one hand, and, slowly raising him up, impressed a courtly kiss upon the forehead and as gently set him down again. He looked so brave and handsome that even his foes applauded.

“His haughtie helmet, horrid all with gold,
Both glorious brightnesse and great terrour bredd:
For all the crest a dragon did enfold
With greedie pawes, and over all did spredd
His golden winges; his dreadfull hideous hedd,

Close couchèd on the bever, seemed to throw
From flaming mouth bright sparcles fiery redd,
That suddeine horrour to faint hartes did show;
And scaly tayle was stretcht adowne his back full low.”
—_Spenser._

In May, 1451, Scanderbeg married the Princess Donica, daughter of Arrianites Thopia, one of the most influential lords of Albania, and connected on his mother’s side with the imperial family of the Comneni. He received at this time from King Alphonsus five hundred arquebusiers, the same number of expert crossbow-men, and a few pieces of artillery with their cannoniers. We have only space to mention the events of the next years: how successive armies of Turks were defeated; how Scanderbeg himself was repulsed with a loss of five thousand men in an attack on Belgrade; and how, during a lull in the war, he was invited over to Italy by Pope Pius II. to the assistance of King Ferdinand, son of his old friend Alphonsus, who was hard pressed by his rival, John of Anjou. (_Raynald. Annales Eccl. ad an._ 1460, num. lx.) He contributed greatly to the victory won at Troja on Aug. 18, 1462, and for his services was created Duke of San Pietro, in the kingdom of Naples. He remained in Italy a little over a year. Recalled to Albania by the appearance of the Turks, he repulsed Sultan Mohammed from Croia; but his own losses and the new plans of the enemy, which consisted in sending only small armies under experienced generals—one of whom, Balaban Badera, was an Albanian renegade—with orders to avoid battle if possible, but to remain in the country at all hazards, made him feel that his cause was failing, and that, unless relieved from the west, he must sooner or later succumb. In this emergency he went to Rome and appealed to the pope and cardinals to preach a new crusade. The example of the broken-hearted Pius II. showed how fruitless it would have been for them to do so. Paul, indeed, wrote to all the Christian princes, but he got nothing but fair words in return. The great schism had lamentably diminished the prestige of the Papacy, and a multitude of heretics more or less openly preluded that Reformation which would soon divide Christendom itself into hostile camps. The pope gave him three thousand golden florins and conferred upon him the insignia of the cap and sword which is annually blessed by the pontiff on the vigil of Christmas for presentation to the prince who has deserved best of the church. Scanderbeg lodged while in Rome in a house which, although rebuilt in 1843, still retains over the door his portrait in fresco and the laudatory inscription set up soon after his death. The street and an adjoining little _piazza_ under the Quirinal gardens have long perpetuated his name as the _Via di Scanderbeg_. He left Rome in disappointment and sorrow.

“Ah! what though no succor advances,
Nor Christendom’s chivalrous lances
Are stretched in our aid? Be the combat our own!
And we’ll perish or conquer more proudly alone;
For we’ve sworn by our country’s assaulters,
By the virgins they’ve dragged from our altars,
By our massacred patriots, our children in chains,
By our heroes of old, and their blood in our veins,
That, living, we shall be victorious,
Or that, dying, our deaths shall be glorious.”
—_Campbell._

On his way back to Albania he was allowed to recruit in the Venetian territories a force of thirteen thousand men, which he commanded in person. His former little army in the field was captained by his faithful friend Tanusios, and after planning together the two generals attacked the Turks around Croia on two different points, while a vigorous sortie was made by the besieged, during which Balaban, the Turkish commander, was killed. His death and the suddenness and vigor of the triple attack threw the enemy into confusion, and they were completely routed. We pass over other battles and victories, by which Scanderbeg’s resources were finally exhausted. The end had come. During the winter of 1466-7 he was making a tour of inspection, and while in the city of Alessio, or Lissa, as it is sometimes called, where the ambassador of Venice and the confederate chiefs of Albania had convened to meet him and combine for one last and desperate effort, he was seized by a fever which proved fatal. After addressing a solemn and pathetic discourse to his principal officers, he embraced them one by one, and gave orders to his only son John to cross over to his Neapolitan fiefs with his mother, and there wait until some favorable occasion might present itself to return and put himself at the head of his countrymen as his father had done. He died during the night of January 17, 1467, after having received the Viaticum and Extreme Unction, and was buried in the cathedral church of Alessio. His death caused a profound sensation throughout Europe. Mohammed exulted over the loss of one whom he called the sword and buckler of the Christians, and immediately poured his troops into Albania; but it was not until the year 1478, when Croia surrendered on conditions which were afterwards basely violated, that the war ended. Since that time the infamous Turks have lorded it over the land made glorious in legendary lore by the son of Achilles, in history by King Pyrrhus, and in modern times by Scanderbeg. The presence of those barbarous Asiatics in any part of Europe is one of the foulest stains upon the moral sense and the politics of Christian governments.

When Alessio was captured the infidels dug up the remains of the great warrior and divided his bones among the soldiers, to be worn in rich reliquaries as amulets of courage. His countrymen still sing of him as their national hero, and the Turks frighten naughty children with his terrible name.

After Scanderbeg’s death many Albanians emigrated to Italy, either in the suite of his son or independently. The most remarkable colony was in Calabria, where as late as 1780 their descendants, numbering about one hundred thousand, retained the dress, manners, and language of their ancestors. Another colony, not so numerous, is scattered about the Abruzzi. The last lineal descendant of the hero was the Marquis of Sant’Angelo, who was killed at the battle of Pavia by the hand (as Paulus Jovius says) of Francis I.

Most of the Albanians remained Christians until the middle of the seventeenth century, when the majority conformed, outwardly at least, to the Mohammedan religion. The popes have tried hard to keep alive the Catholic faith among the population, and, under the circumstances, with considerable success. Pope Clement XI., of the (now) princely family of Albani which emigrated from Albania in the sixteenth century, and settled at Urbino, established a purse of four thousand scudi in 1708 for the support of three students from that country in the Propaganda College. The Catholics there do not now number more than ninety thousand. There are two archbishoprics, Antivari united with Scutari, and Durazzo, and three bishoprics, Alessio, Pulati, and Sappa. These sees are usually filled by Franciscans, who, with a few Propagandists (with one of whom, now bishop of Alessio, we have the honor of being acquainted), are the only missionaries in the country. We conclude our article with a bibliographical notice of the subject, because, as Dr. Johnson used to say, a great part of knowledge consists in knowing _where_ knowledge is to be found.

The original source of information upon which all subsequent writers, whether with or without acknowledgment, have drawn is a work by Marino Barlezio, a priest of Scutari, who, besides being a native of the country about which he wrote, was an almost constant companion of Scanderbeg and an eye-witness of most of the events which he relates. He was a scholar and penned very excellent Latin, which greatly adds to the charm of his narrative. We give the full title: _De Vita et Moribus ac Rebus præcipuè adversus Turcas gestis Georgii Castrioti clarissimi Epirotarum Principis, qui propter celeberrima facinora Scanderbegus, hoc est Alexander Magnus, cognominatus fuit. Libri xiii._ It is not certain where this curious book was first published. Some say at Rome as early as 1506, but this is extremely doubtful; others at Frankfort in 1537 (in folio). A German translation by Pinicianus was published in 1561 in 4to, with woodcuts; and a French one, the language of which is quaint and racy, by Jacques de Lavardin, in 1597. Independent biographies have been written in Latin by an anonymous author at Rome in 1537 or earlier, in folio; in Italian by T. M. Monardo, Venice, 1591, and almost immediately translated into Spanish and Portuguese; in French by Du Poncet (Paris, 1709, in 12mo), a Jesuit, who took upon himself to refute the calumny of Machiavelli and Helvetius, that Christian principles and practices can never develop the qualities of a perfect soldier, a hero. Other French biographies are those of Chevilly (Paris, 1732, 2 vols. 12mo), and Camille Paganel (_ibid._ 1855, 1 vol. 8vo), which is the best we have read. In English there is one by Clement C. Moore, an American (New York, 1850), and another by Robert Bigsby, an Englishman (London, 1866); while we have also, from the graceful pen of Benjamin Disraeli, _The Rise of Iskander_, a tale founded on Scanderbeg’s revolt against the Turks (London, 1833). A _Summarium_ or epitome of his life is preserved among the MSS. of the Royal Library at Turin; and the Grand Ducal one at Weimar treasures among its rarities a MS. parchment called _The Book of Scanderbeg_, composed of three hundred and twenty-five leaves, each of which is beautifully illustrated with figures in india-ink representing scenes from civil and military life in the fifteenth century. It was a present to the Albanian hero from Ferdinand of Aragon. Two Latin poems have been published about him, one by a German named Kökert at Lubec, 1643, and the other by a French Jesuit, Jean de Bussières, at Lyons, 1662, in eight books; finally, one in Italian, called _La Scanderbeide_, by a lady named Margherita Sarrocchi, without date or place of publication; but it sometimes turns up in book-sales at Rome.

Scanderbeg’s large gilt cuirass, damaskeened with designs of Eastern pattern, is found in the Belvedere collection at Vienna. It is supposed to have been one of his trophies captured in Anatolia.

[78] It was a common boast of the more ambitious
sultans that they would some day feed their horses at
the tomb of St. Peter.

[79]
The good and brave beget the brave;
… Fierce eagles breed not harmless doves.

The family standard of the Castriots, which Scanderbeg
carried in his battles, was a black, double-headed eagle
on a red field.

THE CHURCH AND LIBERTY.

Men are governed more by their sympathies than by reason. Weak arguments are strong enough when supported by prejudice which is able to withstand even the most conclusive proofs. We do not pretend to say that this is wholly wrong. Our feelings are in general sincerer than our thoughts; spring more truly from our real selves; are less the product of artificial culture and more of those common principles of our nature which make the whole world akin. But since in rational beings the feelings cannot be purely instinctive, it follows that they are more or less modifiable by the action of the intellect, which in turn is also subject to their influence. Prejudice, therefore, may be either intellectual or moral, or the one and the other; the most obstinate, however, is that which is enrooted in feeling and springs from sympathies and antipathies; and this is usually the character of religious prejudice. The tendency to make religion national, which is a remarkable feature in the history of mankind, together with the fact that states have always been founded and peoples welded into unity by a common faith, has as a rule thrown upon the side of religion the whole force of national prejudice, which, though it does not touch the deep fountains of immortal life and of the infinite, revealed by faith, is yet an immense power, more than any other aggressive and defiant. As the Catholic Church is non-national, it is not surprising that she should often be brought into conflict with the spirit of nationalism.

Christ was himself opposed by this spirit; on the one side he was attacked by the religious nationalism of the Jews, and on the other by that of the Romans. These enemies surrounded the early church. There was the internal struggle to free herself from the bonds of Judaism, a purely national faith; and there was the open battle with the Roman Empire for the liberty of the soul and her right to exist as a Catholic and non-national religion. Heresies and schisms have invariably been successful in proportion as they have been able to rouse national prejudice against the universal church. To pass over those of more ancient date, we may safely affirm that but for this Luther’s quarrel with Tetzel would never have given birth to Protestantism. The conflicts during the middle ages between popes and emperors and kings, together with schisms and scandals, had accustomed the public mind, especially in Germany and England, to look upon the successor of St. Peter as a foreign potentate; nor was it easy, in the state of things which then existed, to draw the line between his spiritual and his temporal authority. He came more and more to be considered an Italian sovereign who had usurped undue power, and thus in Germany and England Italians grew to be both hated and despised; and this more, probably, than kings and parliaments helped on the cause of Protestantism.

The Catholic faith was made to appear, not as the religion of Christ, but as popery, a foreign idolatrous superstition, which had by artful means insinuated itself amongst the various nations of German blood; and to throw off the yoke of Italian despotism was held to be both political and religious disenthralment. The specific doctrines of Luther and the other heresiarchs had merely an incidental influence. In England, where the separation from the church was more complete than elsewhere, there was the least doctrinal departure from Catholic teaching; which is of itself proof how little any desire for a so-called purer faith had to do with the movement. The appeal to the Scriptures was popular because it was an appeal from the pope. That the Reformation was not an intellectual revolt, at least primarily, there is abundant evidence in the indisputable fact that the most enlightened and learned people of that age—the Italians—remained firm in their attachment to the old faith; and even in Germany, which was comparatively rude and barbarous, the cultivators of the new classical learning, which had been revived in Italy, were for the most part repelled by the coarseness and ignorance of the preachers of Protestantism, who in England found no favor with men like More and Wolsey, scholars, both of them, and patrons of letters.

As Protestantism did not spring from intellectual convictions, but from passion and prejudice—national antagonisms, which had been intensified by ages of conflict and strife, and which became the potent allies of the ambition and rapacity of kings and princes—it is but natural that Protestants, continuing the traditions of their fathers, should still be influenced in their opinions of the Catholic Church more by their antipathies than by reason, and that these antipathies should invariably run with the current of national prejudice. Hence the objections to the church which really influence men are not religious but social. A Protestant who accepts the Bible as the word of God, and receives in the literal sense all that is there narrated, could not with any show of reason make difficulty about believing the teachings of the church; nor can one who trusts to himself alone for his creed feel great confidence that those who are supported by the almost unanimous consent of all Christians for fifteen hundred years, and of the great majority even down to the present day, are less certain of salvation than himself. But when he comes to consider the social influence of the church, he finds it less difficult to justify his dislike of Catholic institutions; for in this direction he is upheld most strongly by traditional prejudice. That the church fosters ignorance and immorality is to his mind axiomatic. He still thinks that the darkness, the scandals, and crimes of the middle ages, which he always exaggerates, are to be ascribed to her and not to the barbarians. The labors of the learned have long since shown the old Protestant theory, that the church sought to keep the people in ignorance, to be not only groundless, but the reverse to be true; and that not less false is the charge that she encouraged immorality, however corrupt some who have held high ecclesiastical positions may have been. But as we have quite recently discussed these questions,[80] we turn to the subject of the relative influence of the church and of Protestantism upon civil liberty. Discussions of this kind, though not new, are nevertheless full of actual interest. The subject of social liberty profoundly influences the practical controversies of the age, and bids fair to become of still more vital moment in the future. The adversaries of the Catholic Church never feel so secure as when they attack her in the name of freedom. She is supposed to be the fatal foe of all liberty, intellectual, religious, and social.

For the present we shall put aside the controversies concerning liberty of thought and discussion, and confine ourselves to the examination of the relation of the church to social freedom. And it will be necessary, in order to institute a comparison between her action and that of Protestantism, to go back to the first ages to study her early efforts in behalf of human rights.

Those great battles for human liberty were fought, not by Christianity, but by the Christian Church. The religion of Christ was from the beginning corporate and organized; and it was through its organization that it exerted its influence upon individuals and upon society. To understand, therefore, the true relation of the church to liberty, we must study her history in the past as well as in the present. In fact, it is only in the light of the past that the present can be understood. The clear perception of her spirit and action during the centuries which preceded the advent of Protestantism will enable us to see how far and in what respect the politico-religious revolution of the sixteenth century was favorable to social freedom.

Human society, like the heavenly bodies, is guided by two forces, the natural tendencies of which are antagonistic, but whose combined action, when properly harmonized, produces order. Authority and Liberty are the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the social world; but, unlike those which govern the motions of the planets, they are indefinitely modifiable by free human agency. To regulate these two powers is the eternal political problem, which is never solved because the factors of the equation are ever varying and consequently never known. The exaggeration of the principle of authority is tyranny; of that of liberty, anarchy; and the excess of the one is followed by a reaction of the other, so that, whichever preponderates, the resulting evils are substantially the same. Tyranny is anarchical, and anarchy is tyrannical; and both are equally destructive of authority and liberty.

Though authority and liberty, as applied to human society, are relative terms, they presuppose the absolute, and therefore have as their only rational basis the existence of a personal God; and hence the social order is, in its very constitutive elements, religious. In view of this fact it is not surprising that the state, which is the symbol of secular society, should be drawn to usurp the functions of the church, the symbol of the spiritual order. As a result of this tendency, pre-christian history shows us a universal subordination of religion to the temporal government, or, what is practically the same, the identification of the two powers; since, where both are united, that which regards man’s present, visible, and urgent wants will always preponderate.

The direct consequence of this was the destruction of liberty; indirectly it also undermined authority. The state was absolute, and under the most favorable circumstances, as in the Græco-Roman civilization, recognized the rights of the citizen, but not those of man; and even the citizen had rights only in so far as the state saw fit to grant them. The logical development of the absorption of all power by the state may be seen in imperial Rome, in which the ruler was at once emperor, supreme pontiff, and God.

When the Christian, though willing to obey Cæsar in temporal matters, reserved to himself a whole world upon which he would permit no human authority to trespass, he asserted, together with the supremacy of his spiritual nature, the principle to which modern nations owe their liberties. It would indeed be difficult to exaggerate the influence of this assertion of the sovereign rights of the individual conscience. It contains the principles of all rights and the essential elements of progress and civilization; it is the necessary preamble to every declaration of human liberties; the logical justification of all resistance to tyranny, and of every reaction against brute force and consecrated wrong. It is the impregnable stronghold of freedom, without which the sentiment of personal independence which the barbarians brought with them into European life would have been powerless to found free institutions. That sentiment was as strong in the North American Indians; in the Tartar and Turkish hordes which swept down from the table-lands of Asia upon fairer and more fertile regions; and yet with them it only subserved the cause of despotism. It is, indeed, inherent in human nature. To be self-conscious is to wish to be free and to take delight in the possession of liberty. This feeling finds a sanctuary in the heart of every boy who roams the forest, or plunges through the stream, or beholds the eagle cleave the blue heavens. It was as active in the breasts of the early Greeks and Romans as in the barbarians who rushed headlong upon a falling empire. The love of liberty was, in fact, with them a sublime passion, and yet they were unable to found free institutions because the state, absorbing the whole man, made itself absolute.

They lacked, moreover, that of which the barbarians were also deprived—the knowledge of the worth and dignity of human nature. Man, as man, was not honored; to have any rights did not come of our common nature, but of the accident of citizenship. Slavery was consecrated as being not only just but necessary; and the slave was outside the pale of the law. Woman was degraded and infant life was not held sacred. In nothing is the contrast between modern and ancient civilizations more striking than in their manner of regarding human life. With us the life of the unborn child is under the protection of conscience, of public opinion, and of the law equally with that of the highest and noblest. Its value to the state, to society, to the world, is not considered; we think of it only as a creature of God, endowed by him with rights which men may not violate. But this doctrine is unknown to paganism. In Rome the father was free either to bring up his child or to murder it; even the laws of Romulus grant him this privilege, with the nominal restriction of obtaining the consent of the nearest of kin; but under the empire his right to kill his newly-born infant was fully recognized. The abandonment of children by their parents was a universal custom, and one of which the Emperor Augustus approved in the case of the infant of his niece Julia. If child-murder was not a crime, abortion, of course, was no offence at all, and was universally practised, especially among the rich. The contempt in which human life was held is seen also in the public games—in which hundreds of men were made to butcher one another merely for the amusement of the spectators—as well as in the power of life and death of the master over his slave.

It has been maintained quite recently that those who gave their approval and lent the countenance of their presence to these inhumanities were not therefore cruel; that, on the contrary, many of them were kind-hearted and benevolent; but this, if we grant it, makes our argument all the stronger, since it proves that the system was more vicious than the men. A social state which does not respect life is incompatible with liberty. It would be vain to seek for the origin of our free institutions in any supposed peculiarities of our barbarous ancestors. Nothing short of a radical revolution of thought as to what man is could have made civil liberty possible. It was necessary to re-endow the individual with absolute and inviolable rights in the presence of the state. Man had to be taught that he is more than the state; that to be man is godlike, to be a citizen is human; but this he could not learn so long as he remained helplessly under the absolute power of the state; nor could he, with the conviction that the state is the highest and that he exists for it, make any effort to break the bonds of his servitude. Before this could be possible he had to be received into a society distinct from, and independent of, the state; he had to be made fully conscious that he is a child of God, in whose sight slaves have equal rights with kings. It was necessary to bring out man’s personal destiny in strong contrast to the pagan view, which took in only his social mission, and this narrowly and imperfectly.

This is what the Christian religion did: it created a personal self-consciousness which made heroes of the commonest natures. The Roman died for his country; the Christian died for God and for his own soul’s sake. He was not led to brave death by the majesty of the city, of the empire, or by the memory of the victories which had borne his country’s arms in triumph through the world, but by his own individual faith and duty as a man with a personal and immortal destiny. When the Christian appealed from emperors and senates and armies, from the power and force of the whole world, to God, it was the single human soul asserting itself as something above and beyond this visible universe. Never before had the eternal and the infinite come so near to man; never before had he so felt his own immortal strength. He was lifted up into the heaven of heavens, stood face to face with the everlasting verities of God, became a dweller in the world that is, and the garments of space and time fell from his new-born soul. He was free; strong in the liberty with which Christ had clothed him, he defied all tyrannies. “As we have not placed our hope,” said Justin to the Emperor Antoninus, “on things which are seen, we fear not those who take away our lives; death being, moreover, unavoidable.” The pagan Roman knew, indeed, how to die; but his death, though full of grandeur and dignity, was sombre and hopeless; he died as the victim of fate. To the Christian death came as the messenger of life; he died as one who is certain of eternity, as one whose soul is free and belongs to himself and God. This sense of a personal destiny which is eternal, of infinite responsibility, gave to the individual a strength and independence of character for which we will seek in vain among the religions of paganism. It is a feeling wholly distinct from the barbarian’s dislike of restraint. The love of wild and adventurous life neither fits men for the enjoyment of liberty nor predisposes them to grant it to others.

The more we study the history of Christian nations, the more profound is our conviction that without their religion they could never have won their liberties, which even now without this divine support could not be maintained. It is to our religion that we are indebted for the creation of popular free speech. Before Christ gave the divine commission to the apostles, philosophers had discoursed to their chosen disciples, and orators had declaimed to citizens, on the interests of the state; but no one had spoken to the people as moral beings with duties and responsibilities which lift them into the world of the infinite and eternal. There were priesthoods, but they were mute before the people, intent upon hiding from them all knowledge of their mysteries. Religious eloquence did not exist; it first received a voice on the shores of the Lake of Genesareth and on the hills of Judea, in the preaching of Jesus, who remains for ever its highest exponent, speaking as one who had authority with godlike liberty on whatever most nearly touches the dearest interests of men; speaking chiefly to the people, bringing back to their minds the long-forgotten truths which prove them the royal race of God. The preaching of God’s word with the liberty of Heaven, which no earthly authority might lessen, became the great school of the human race; it was the first popular teaching, and like an electric thrill it ran through the earth. It belongs exclusively to the religion of Christ. Mahomet, who sought to borrow it, was able to catch only its feeble echo. This free Christian public speech is unlike all other oratory; it possesses an incommunicable characteristic, through which it has exercised the most beneficent influence upon the destinies of mankind. It is essentially spiritual, lifts the soul above the flesh, and creates new ideals of life; inspiring contempt for whatever is low and passing, it begets enthusiasm for the divine and eternal. It is a voice whose soul-thrill is love, the boundless love of God and of men, who are the children of this love, and therefore brothers. This voice cannot be bought, it cannot be silenced. _Currit verbum_, said St. Paul, and again from his prison-cell: “But the word of God is not fettered.” On innumerable lips it is born ever anew; and always and everywhere it is a protest against the brutality of power, an appeal in the name of God, our Father in heaven, in behalf of the poor, the oppressed, the disinherited of humanity. Men may still be tyrants, may still crush the weak and sacrifice truth and justice to their lustful appetites; but the voice of God, threatening, commanding, rebuking, shall be silent nevermore.

Festus will tremble before Paul; at the bidding of Ambrose Theodosius will repent; and before Hildebrand the brutal Henry will bow his head. At the sound of this voice all Europe shall rouse itself, shall rush, impelled by some divine instinct, into the heart of Asia, to strike the mighty power which threatened to blight the budding hope of the world. If we would understand the relations of the church to liberty, we must consider the influence of this free speech, which, without asking the permission of king or people, impelled by a divine necessity, made itself heard of the whole earth. Over the door of his Academy Plato had inscribed: “None but geometers enter here”; over the portals of the church was written the word of Christ: “Come to me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden.” “All you,” exclaimed St. Augustine, “who labor, who dig the earth, who fish in the sea, who carry burdens, or slowly and painfully construct the barks in which your brothers will dare the waves—all enter here, and I will explain to you not only the γνῶθι σεαυτόν of Socrates, but the most hidden of mysteries—the Trinity.” This new eloquence was as large as the human race; it was for all, and first of all for the poor and the oppressed. It was not artistic, in the technical meaning; it did not captivate the senses; it was not polished. There was no showy marshalling of words and phrases, no sweet and varied modulation of voice, no graceful and commanding gesture. Around the altar were gathered the slave, the beggar, the halt, and the blind—the oppressed and suffering race of men. If with them were found the rich and high-born, they were there as brothers—their wealth and noble birth entered not into the church of Christ. Here there was neither freeman nor slave—all were one. Thus in every Christian assembly was typed the humanity which was to be when all men would be brothers and free. To this new race the apostle of Christ spoke: “My brothers,” he said, or “My children”; and though all history and all society shrieked out against him, his hearers felt and knew that his words were God’s truth. The heart is not deceived in love. “I seek not yours,” he said, “but you; for God is my witness how I long after you all in the heart of Jesus Christ.… I could wish that myself were accursed, if only my brethren be saved.” And then, with the liberty which love alone can inspire, he threatened, rebuked, implored, laid bare the hidden wounds of the soul, nor feared to become an enemy for speaking the truth. To the great and rich he spoke in the plainest and strongest manner, reminding them of their duties, denouncing their indifference, their cruelty, their injustice; and then, in words soft as oil, he breathed hope and courage into the hearts of those who suffer, showing them beyond this short and delusive life the certain reward of their struggles and sorrows. He taught them that the soul is the highest, that purity is the best, that only the clean of heart see God; that man’s chief worth lies in that which is common to all, derived from God and for him created. Human life was perishing, wastefully poured through the senses on every carnal thing. No love of beauty or truth or justice was left. The mind was darkened, the heart was paralyzed. The great, strong human passions that bore the people of Rome in triumph through the earth were dead; everywhere, in religion, in art, in manners, was the deadly blight of materialism; a kind of delirium hurried all men into animal indulgences fatal alike to soul and body. To a race thus glued to the earth by carnal appetites came the voice of the apostle, preaching Christ and him crucified; telling of the divine love that had bowed the heavens and brought down to men God’s own Son to suffer, to labor, to die for them. He was poor, he was meek and humble, he fasted, he prayed; he comforted the sorrowful, gave hope to the despairing; he offered up his life for men. Such as he was those who believe in him must be. To serve the lusts of the flesh, to be heartless, to be cruel, to be unjust, is to have no part with him. The greed of gold and of pleasure had reduced the masses of men to slavery and beggary; those who would follow God’s Son in the perfect way were to sell what they had, to give to the poor. The whole race of men was fallen, sunk in sin; the disciples of Christ were bidden to separate themselves from a world which had denied God, that, having received faith, hope, and love through union with him, they might bring to the dying peoples a new life.

The Christian religion turned the mind’s eye from the contemplation of beauty of form to the inner life of the soul; from thoughts of power and success to principles of right and justice. All the forces of society had been brought together to develop in its highest potency the passion of patriotism, which, bending to its purpose all the powers of individual life, had created mighty states, embellished them with art, crowned them with victory, made them eternal in literature that cannot die; but on the altar of all this glory man had been sacrificed. Patriotism had failed, hopelessly failed, to satisfy the unutterable longings of an immortal race. It was based upon false principles and perverted instincts. Man’s end is not more fulfilled in citizenship in a great and prosperous state than in the possession of vast wealth. The religion of patriotism was a low and material creed without eternal verities upon which to rest. Power was its divinity, and it was therefore without mercy; success was its justification, and it consequently trampled upon right. It is not surprising that such principles should have created states whose chief business was to prey upon the human race, and which, when conquest was no longer possible, were brought to ruin by the viciousness of their essential constitutions. In fact, patriotism, as understood by the pre-christian states, was a denial of the principles out of which the common law of Christendom has grown. It placed the interests of the nation above those of the race, and thereby justified all inhumanity if only it tended to the particular good of the state.

In contradiction of this unjust and narrow spirit, the Christian preacher declared that man’s first duty is to God, as his first aim should be to seek God’s kingdom by purifying and developing his own moral nature. He declared that man is more than the state, as God is more than the world; inspiring in another form those views of the paramount worth of the individual soul without which there could be no successful reaction against the slavery and degradation of paganism. “The world,” said Tertullian, “is the common country and republic of all men.”

These principles gradually worked their way, through “the foolishness of preaching,” into the minds and hearts of the masses and became the leaven of a new society. Let us examine their action more specially. In the church the brotherhood of the race was from the earliest day not only taught but recognized as a fact. “There is neither Jew nor Greek,” said St. Paul, “neither bond nor free, neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This doctrine is stated in various places in the New Testament with such emphasis as to leave no doubt of its true meaning. It is equally certain, however, that the apostles did not proclaim the emancipation of the slaves. “Let those who are servants under the yoke,” said the same apostle who declared that in Christ there was neither bond nor free, “count their masters worthy of all honor, lest the name of the Lord and his doctrines be blasphemed.”

It was not the spirit of the Christian faith to encourage visionary schemes or to awaken wild dreams of liberty; but rather to subdue and chasten the heart, to make men content to bear worthily the ills of life by giving to suffering a meaning and a blessing.

The misery of the pagan slave was extreme, but it was also hopeless. He believed himself the victim of relentless fate, from whose power death was the only deliverance, and he therefore rushed wildly into all excess, giving little thought to whether he should live to see the morrow. Suffering for him was without meaning—a remediless evil, a blind punishment inflicted by remorseless destiny. For this reason also his wretchedness excited no pity. Even as late as the time of St. Ambrose the pagans were accustomed to say: “We care not to give to people whom the gods must have cursed, since they have left them in sorrow and want.”

But with the preaching of Christ, and him crucified, came the divine doctrine of expiatory suffering—of suffering that purifies, regenerates, ennobles, begets the unselfish temper and the heroic mood. When the Christian suffered he was but filling up the measure of the sufferings of Christ. The slave, laboring for his master, was not seeking to please men; he was “the servant of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart”; “knowing that whatsoever good any man shall do, the same shall he receive from the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” Masters in turn were taught to treat their slaves kindly and gently, even as brothers; “knowing that the Lord both of them and of you is in heaven, and with him there is no respect of persons.”

Thus, without attempting to destroy slavery by schemes that must have been premature, the Christian religion changed its nature by diffusing correct notions concerning the mutual rights and duties implied in the relations of master and slave. The slave as a brother in Christ is separated by a whole world from the slave who is a tool or chattel. Who can read St. Paul’s Epistle to Philemon, written in behalf of the fugitive slave Onesimus, without perceiving the radical revolution which Christianity was destined to make in regard to slavery? “I beseech thee for my son, Onesimus: … receive him as my own heart; no longer as a slave, but as a most dear brother. If he hath wronged thee in anything, or is in thy debt, put it to my account.”

This is after all but the application of the teaching of Christ: I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was sick, I was a captive, and ye fed me, ye gave me to drink, ye visited me; for inasmuch as ye have done this for the least of my brethren, ye have done it for me. In every suffering and wronged human being there is the Christ to be honored, to be loved, to be served. Whosoever refuses to take part in this ministry places himself outside the kingdom of God.

Slavery, from the Christian point of view, is but one of the thousand ills entailed upon the human race by the transgression of Adam; it is enrooted, not in nature, but in sin; and as Christ died to destroy sin, his religion must tend to diminish and gradually abolish its moral results. The freedom of all men in Christ which the great apostle so boldly proclaims must in time find its counterpart in the equality of all men before the law. Indeed, the admission of the slave into the Christian brotherhood logically implied the abolition of slavery. It so raised the individual by giving him the knowledge of his true dignity, and so softened the master’s treatment, that the moral elevation of the whole class was the inevitable result. In this way the church made the slave worthy to be free, and from this to liberty there is but a step. “We teach the slaves,” said Origen, “how they may beget in themselves a noble spirit, and so become free”; and it need not surprise us, therefore, when Lactantius testifies that among Christians already in his day the difference between master and slave was but formal; in spirit both were brothers and fellow-servants of Christ. Nor is it remarkable that as evidence of this moral regeneration we should find the slaves among the early martyrs. There is an example of the sentiments which Christians entertained for their slaves in the self-reproaches of St. Paulinus in his letter to Sulpicius Severus: “He has served me,” he wrote; “he has been my slave. Woe to me, who have suffered that he who has never been a slave to sin should serve a sinner. Every day he washed my feet, and, had I permitted it, would have cleansed my sandals; eager to render every service to the body, that he might gain dominion over the soul. It is Jesus Christ himself whom I venerate in this youth; for every faithful soul comes from God, and every one who is humble of heart proceeds from the very heart of Christ.” Men who felt so lovingly and so deeply for their fellows could not long consent to hold them in bondage. “We have known,” wrote Pope Clement to the Corinthians, “many of the faithful to become bondsmen that they might ransom their brethren.”