quirements by the rule of Christian duty; for if solemn charges of this sort were enough to secure their own fulfilment, we should have heard nothing under the Christian law of bad kings or bishops, or monks, or clergy; and that many abbots were tyrants we have abundant evidence from monkish chronicles. Nor will the condition that the abbot's commands be agreeable to Christ's Law afford any safeguard; for who was to be the judge of this? Nay, was Benedict's rule itself unquestionably conformable to the Divine Law in every respect? The rule of monastic obedience, therefore, might impose much hardship on those who were subject to it, without allowing them any redress. But the chief objection to it is, that, even if willingly fulfilled, it made the grievous mistake of interposing a human will between the soul and God-of erecting a capricious standard as more perfect than that of the Gospel-of teaching that the highest religious life could not be led, except by submission to particular rules which professed to have improved on and developed the broad precepts of the New Testament. There was the pernicious error of teaching men and women to fancy that, instead of regarding themselves as directly answerable to God for their acts, they might throw their responsibility on some intermediate person or thing-on a monastic rule or a monastic superior-a doctrine which, by substituting a visible for an invisible authority, tended altogether to do away with the principle of faith. How the details of the rule pressed on the Benedictines, we know from their frequent attempts to relax it by explaining it away in certain points. And as a witness against the principle of obedience illustrated in the 'Vita Patrum,' and incorporated in the Benedictine rule, we may even cite St. Bernard himself, who laughs at a monk as modern Paul the Simple,'* because in the case of a disputed election to the Papacy he pleaded the duty of following his abbot in adhesion to the cause of which Bernard disapproved. † It is possible, therefore, that on this point the biographer of St. Bernard may find himself at issue with the Saint of Clairvaux himself.

a

The next great monastic hero is Pope Gregory the First-a man who takes his place with Leo the Great, with Nicolas I.,

Paul the Simple was a famous Egyptian monk, for whom see the 'Historia Lausiaca,' gc. 23-4, in Rosweyd. We must, however, allow that in St. Bernard's own time, and later, the old Egyptian idea of monastic obedience continued to be enforced and illustrated by tales like those of the Vita Patrum.' Thus, in the Life of Stephen, Abbot of Obaize, we are told of a monk, who, while drawing wine from a cask, was summoned to wait on his abbot, and obeyed at once, carrying the spigot in his hand. In reward for this obedience he not only found that none of the wine had run out during his absence, but the cask was fuller than before! Baluz. Miscellanea, iv. 153, 8vo. edit.

Bern. Ep. vii. c. 12.

with Gregory VII., and with Innocent III., in the foremost rank of those Popes who have contributed to advance the power of their see, while he is perhaps the only one of them all that a Protestant, at least, can regard with any affection. For Englishmen, in particular, his name has an interest, on account of the mission which he set on foot to this island, and to which the revival of Christianity in the southern part of it is due. That Gregory was a monk is certain; we may still visit the monastery which he founded in honour of St. Andrew in his family mansion on the Cœlian Hill, and which, like many other religious houses, has since taken the name of its founder instead of that of its original patron. There we may see, in addition to older memorials of the connexion with England, some interesting monuments of English Romanists since the Reformation—especially that of Queen Mary's ambassador, Sir Edward Karne, who, after the accession of Elizabeth, preferring his religion to his country, lived and died at Rome; and in the monastic church the devout Romanist will find provided for his use a prayer, that the work of Gregory and Augustine may be repeated by the conversion of the noble English nation' from the errors of false doctrine and schism. But whether Gregory's monachism, and, consequently, that of the missionaries whom he sent forth to convert the English, was of the Benedictine kind, has been a matter of great and learned controversy. The Apostleship of the Benedictines in England' is maintained by Reynerius, in a formidable folio printed at Douay in 1626; and, for the glory of St. Benedict, the same doctrine has been strenuously upheld by the great Mabillon and other members of his order, although denied by Pagi* and other eminent writers of the Roman communion, as well as by many learned Protestants-who, indeed, are in such a matter to be regarded as the most impartial judges. M. de Montalembert, as might be expected, takes the Benedictine side of the question (ii. 90), and in this he is countenanced by so much of evidence and authority as is sufficient to render his opinion at least not improbable. We cannot, however, say as much of other passages in which he adheres to the traditional Roman views, with a lofty contempt of later criticism. We find him, for instance, reproducing the story of Gregory's having seen an angel on the top of Hadrian's Mole. He cites as genuine the privileges for monasteries at Autun, in which 'the direct subordination of the temporal to the spiritual power is, for the first time, precisely stated' t-documents which are altogether out of keeping with the time of Gre

* In Baron., ed. Mansi, t. x. p. 368.

tii. 133; Greg. Epp. xiii. 8, 9; Append. ad Epistolas, in Migne, lxvii. 1330-3. Vol. 110.-No. 219.

E

gory

gory the Great, and were most likely forged nearly five centuries later, in the age of Hildebrand, by whom they are for the first time cited. * He treats with scorn, not only the medieval fable that Gregory destroyed the Palatine library, but the certain fact that in his letter to Desiderius of Cahors he expressed a detestation of pagan literature.†

6

There is the story of the Lombard Queen Theodelinda having been a Bavarian Princess, and, as such, a Christian from her infancy, although Rettberg has shown that it is very doubtful whether the Bavarians were in that age converted, and that Theodelinda was probably a Frank. There is the statement that Gregory impressed the seal of humility on the papacy itself, by being the first among the Popes to take, in the heading of his official acts, that beautiful name of Servant of the servants of God, which has become the distinctive title of his successors' (ii. 114); the fact being, we believe, that it had long before his time been used by bishops, and even by secular princes, and that it was not appropriated by the Popes until five centuries later. § There is the assertion that Gregory's rival, John, Patriarch of Constantinople, claimed the title of Universal Bishop in the same sense in which it has been used by later Popes of Rome (although Gregory himself declared it to be unfit for any Christian); whereas there can be no doubt that, as the style of ecumenical or universal originated in the fondness of the Greeks for inflated titles, so it ought to be interpreted by the Greek usage, which did not attach to it any exclusive sense, but would have admitted an Ecumenical Patriarch' at Rome, as well as another at Constantinople. But while in these matters M. de Montalembert must be charged with a somewhat uncritical following of the old Roman track, there is one point of Gregory's history in which he rises conspicuously above the feeble or impudent artifices of his predecessors-we mean the Pope's behaviour towards the detestable Phocas, who, by the deposition of Gregory's ancient friend the Emperor Maurice, and by the barbarous extermination of the Imperial family, had raised himself to the throne of Constantinople. In reporting the flattering congratulations which Gregory addressed to the usurper, writers of the Roman communion have sorely racked their ingenuity for some justification.

*Greg. VII. ap. Hardouin. Concilia, vi., 1470. See Gieseler, II., ii. 8.

tii. 151; Greg. ep. xi. 54. See Lau's Gregor der Grosse,' 20.

Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands,' ii, 180.

§ See Ducange, s. vv. Servus Servorum Dei; Schröckh, xvii. 78-9; Gieseler, I., ii. 414.

See The whole Evidence against the Claims of the Roman Church,' by the Rev. Sanderson Robins, p. 199, for much valuable information on this subject.

'Some

'Some suggest that Gregory meant to indicate to Phocas what his conduct ought to be; that he did not suspect his hypocrisy, or foresee his misconduct, &c. Dom Pitra goes to the Iliad for a justification"S'il descend à la louange officielle envers l'assassin de Maurice, souvenons-nous de Priam aux pieds d'Achille" (!). But M. Rohrbacher settles the question more boldly, and to his own perfect satisfaction. After quoting Gregory's letter to Phocas, "C'est ainsi,” says the Abbé, "que le chef de l'Eglise universelle, le chef de l'univers Chrétien, juge l'Empereur qui n'est plus, et admoneste celui qui le remplace!"

M. de Montalembert, on the contrary, relates Gregory's behaviour without any attempt at disguise or palliation, and is even careful to point out that the Pope cannot be excused on the plea of haste, inasmuch as, at the date of his flattering letter to Phocas, many months had passed since the murder of Maurice and his family. The only thing that is said by way of mitigation is, that the frequent disputes which had taken place between Gregory and Maurice on ecclesiastical affairs may serve in some degree to account for the Pope's conduct, although not to excuse it (ii. 120-1). In short, our author, however unwillingly, finds himself obliged in this affair to give up his hero; but whether the grief which he must have felt at doing so was altogether without consolation, our readers may judge from the following passage:

It is true that in this same letter, and in another, he points out to Phocas the duties of his office, he exhorts him to put an end to all the disorders of past reigns, and entreats him so to act that under his reign every one may enjoy his property and his liberty in peace. "For," says he, "there is this difference between the barbarian kings and the emperors of our state, that the former command over slaves, and the latter over freemen." It was exactly the reverse of the truth; and, moreover, it was a sad and blameable homage addressed to a man who was to be one of the most hateful tyrants of his age, and who had just acquired the empire by an attentat unexampled even in the annals of that abominable history.'-ii. 123.

Was there no thought here of any later emperor who had gained his power in a questionable way, or of bishops who had offered to such a potentate a nauseous mixture of advice and adulation? That there are, in M. de Montalembert's opinion, among the Frenchmen of the present time people servile enough to flatter Phocas himself if they had the opportunity, may be inferred from a sentence a little further on, where he describes the Roman empire as an 'absolute domination exercised by monsters or adventurers, and admired in our days by base souls

Robertson's 'Church History,' ii. 12, note.

E 2

who

who would have deserved to live under Caracalla or Arcadius'

(ii. 126).

We must not, however, dwell on matters which, although they belong to the biography of Gregory, have nothing to do with the history of monasticism. The most remarkable circumstance of his pontificate in relation to this was that he may be regarded as the principal author of that practice of exempting monasteries from the control of bishops, which, although at first intended as a necessary protection against the oppression and rapacity of some bishops, and accompanied by limitations agreeable to this character, was carried by some of Gregory's successors to a length which enabled all considerable monasteries to defy the episcopal authority, while it secured them to the Papal despotism as immediate dependents and unfailing allies.

From the biography of Gregory-passing over for the present the history of Augustine's mission to England-M. de Montalembert proceeds to the contemporary history of monachism in Spain, where the Visigoths had renounced the Arian heresy in 589. He sketches the lives of eminent Spanish prelates; and we are told (as M. Guizot had already pointed out) that the influence of the clergy in the mixed assemblies of temporal and spiritual dignitaries gave to the Spanish legislation of those days a marked and peculiar character a tone somewhat savouring of the pulpit, but honourably distinguished by a spirit of gentleness and humanity (ii. 218). But here again we meet with a significant passage. The mixed assemblies of Spain, it is said—

'Make the laws and the kings. They regulate the conditions of the elective royalty, too often disregarded in practice through the sanguinary violence of pretenders, or of the successors designated for the throne. And, although the accomplished facts which they found it good to sanction, too often substituted violence for right, they always in principle proscribe every candidate whose claims should not be founded on an election made by the nobles and the clergy, on the purity of his Gothic origin, and on the probity of his character.'ii. 213.

From Spain M. de Montalembert returns to France, and in a chapter on monasticism under the Merovingian kings, we find ourselves going over that tangled story for which Gregory of Tours is the great authority, and to which Augustin Thierry, in his Récits,' is the ablest and most popular of later guides. The corruption of a society in which barbarism had adopted the vices of an effete civilisation was frightful; the secular clergy

* ii. 160; Gieseler, I. ii. 426. Something of the kind had been before practised in Africa, as appears from the Acts of Carthaginian Councils in 525 and 534.

were