Curiosities of Christian History Part 12

When Genseric, King of the Vandals, was secretly invited by the Empress Eudoxia to deliver her from the brutal treatment of the Emperor Maximus, the African galleys brought an army to the mouth of the Tiber. Maximus being, meanwhile, slain in a tumult of his subjects, the Vandals advanced at once to the gates of Rome; but instead of meeting an army, saw only a procession of clergy, headed by the bishop, who by his venerable appearance sought to mitigate the ferocity of the conqueror. Some show of mercy was promised; but the conquerors, nevertheless, were allowed to pillage the city, which they did for fourteen days and nights. Vast spoils were collected, including the splendid relics of the temples, both Pagan and Christian. Magnificent furniture, sideboards of ma.s.sy plate, and jewels stripped from the persons of the Empress and her daughters were collected and stowed in the s.h.i.+ps. Amongst others, the holy instruments of the Jewish wors.h.i.+p, the gold table and the gold candlestick with seven branches, originally framed by the direction of G.o.d Himself, and which were placed in the sanctuary of His Temple, had been displayed to the Roman people by t.i.tus, and afterwards deposited in the Temple of Peace.

These spoils of Jerusalem at the end of four hundred years were transferred from Rome to Carthage by the Vandals. It has been related that the vessel which transported the relics of the Capitol was the only one of the fleet which suffered s.h.i.+pwreck. Thousands of Romans of both s.e.xes, and mostly those skilled in the arts, were included among the captives; and the Bishop of Carthage generously sold the gold and silver plate of his church to relieve them.

JUSTINIAN DRIVING OUT THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS (526).

Though Julian the Apostate, in his zeal to re-establish Paganism, made no great impression, the schools of the Greek philosophers, with their dreamy morality, were not allowed to expire like a worn-out veteran in peaceful dignity. The impatient zeal of the Emperor Justinian in 526 led him to forcibly expel the remnant of the old philosophers from the ancient groves and porches of Athens. Seven followers of Proclus were obliged to find a retreat in Persia; but the Magi there were still more intolerant than the Christians. Philosophy found no resting-place; it found itself supplanted by a new faith, which now domineered over the human mind. Justinian governed the Roman Empire for thirty-eight years (527-565), and great and curious events occurred in his time. The Empress Theodora was daughter of an official called the Master of the Bears, and took to the stage in her youth. Her forte was not to sing or dance or play on the flute, but to act in pantomime and buffoonery, her eyes being bright, and her agile and elegant form drawing down endless applause. She captivated the nephew of the Emperor Justin, young Justinian, whom she married, and she maintained an ascendency over him to the last. She developed into a rapacious and cruel tyrant, and yet patronised many charitable schemes; and her influence and power with the Emperor were unbounded, and many a courtier fell a victim to her caprice. Her physicians at last warned her that her health required her to use the Pythian warm baths. She went there attended by a splendid train of four thousand officials. Highways and palaces were repaired and made ready during the progress. In pa.s.sing through Bithynia she distributed liberal alms to the churches, the monasteries, and hospitals that they might implore Heaven for the restoration of her health. At last in 548, the twenty-second year of her reign, she was carried away by a cancer.

MAHOMET'S KNOWLEDGE OF CHRISTIANITY (632).

Mahomet's knowledge of and connection with Christianity are inferred from the fact that his favourite slave Zeyd leaned to the Christian faith. And the monk Bahari, who conversed with Mahomet on his first journey with the camel-drivers, who professed to foresee and welcome the future greatness of the prophet, may have communicated many of the traditions of the faith. Though Mahomet was not well acquainted with the canonical gospels, yet the apocryphal gospels with the current traditions of the time were familiar to him. He adopted the legend of the Seven Sleepers at Ephesus, and of the Wandering Jew. Many incidents of ecclesiastical history have a.n.a.logies in the Koran. There is a priesthood in the sense of men devoted to the interpretation of the Koran. The saints are also venerated, and pilgrims make annual visitations. The ceremonial rites are even more mechanical than are to be found in any portion of the Christian Church.

THE OAK OF GEISMAR DEMOLISHED (724).

When St. Boniface was sent as a missionary by the Pope in 724 to convert the Germans, they were found grovelling in Pagan superst.i.tion, putting their faith in sacred groves and fountains. The missionary, when made a bishop, determined to strike a blow at this creed. There was an old and venerable oak of immense size in the grove of Geismar, in Upper Hesse, hallowed for ages to Thor, the thunder-G.o.d. Attended by all the clergy, Boniface, who felt that one visible ark of sacred confidence must be replaced by another, went publicly forth to fell this tree. The Pagans a.s.sembled in mult.i.tudes to behold a trial of strength between the rival G.o.ds. They awaited the issue in profound silence, some expecting that the sacrilegious axe would recoil on the impious Christians. But only a few blows had been struck when a sudden wind was heard in the groaning branches, and down it came toppling, and split into four pieces. The shuddering Pagans at once bowed before the superior might of Christianity.

Boniface at once built out of the wood a chapel dedicated to St. Peter.

After this churches and monasteries sprang up, and zealous labourers from England flocked to help in civilising the Teutonic race. Eadberga, the abbess of Minster, in the isle of Thanet, sent presents of clothes and books. Boniface was then made a metropolitan, with his throne at Mentz, on the Rhine, and Christianity spread from that time throughout that district, and it was by his hand that Pepin the Little was anointed king.

In his old age Boniface descended the Rhine in a boat towards the Zuyder Zee. He took with him a shroud, in which his body might be wrapped and sent back to Fulda in Hesse in case of accident. It proved that the Pagan priests attacked him, and then, laying his head upon a volume of the gospels, he received the fatal blow, being killed in 755, and his seventy-fifth year.

THE POPE DEFENDING ROME AGAINST FOREIGNERS (742).

When Luitprand, the Lombard King, was conquering Italy in 742, and was approaching Rome, Pope Zacharias went and met him at Terni, surrounded with a courtly array of bishops. He chose the church of St. Valentine for the place of meeting; and the Pope, availing himself of the solemnity of the building, and reminding the king of the last account and the d.a.m.nation that must await him, made such an impression that the king was overawed and agreed to a treaty, making the concessions asked; and the Pope, after a solemn service in church, ended by inviting the king to a banquet. But ten years later another Pope (Stephen) was less successful with the next Lombard king, Astolph. The Pope's amba.s.sadors were received and listened to, but nothing more. The king did not stay his career, but approached Rome. Not all the Litanies, not all the solemn processions to the most revered altars of the city, in which the Pope himself with naked feet bore the cross and the whole people followed with ashes on their heads, and with a wild howl of agony implored the protection of G.o.d against the blaspheming Lombards, arrested for an instant his progress. The Pope appealed to Heaven by tying a copy of the treaty violated by Astolph to the holy cross. Astolph entered notwithstanding; and, strange to say, while he remained he busied himself digging up the bodies of saints, not for insult, but as the most precious trophies, and carried them off as tutelar deities to Lombardy. At the same time the Pope was making a journey to King Pepin of France, and there met with a warm reception, which led to many future favours from that quarter.

THE FORGED DECRETALS ABOUT CONSTANTINE (795).

Pope Adrian I., who died 795, in his troubles with emperors and kings, finding Charlemagne a rising power, wrote a letter to him exhorting him to imitate the liberality and revive the name of the great Constantine. He used for that purpose a legend for which he vouched, and which was to this effect: The first of the Christian emperors was healed of the leprosy, and purified in the waters of baptism by St. Sylvester, the Roman bishop, and the physician was gloriously recompensed, for that emperor withdrew from the seat and patrimony of St. Peter, declared his resolution of founding a new capital in the East, and resigned to the Popes the free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West. By this plausible story it was made to appear that the Popes were made by the best of t.i.tles supreme; and such were the ignorance and credulity of the times, that this absurd fable was received with equal reverence in Greece and France. It turned out that the story was a forgery concocted near the end of the eighth century by one Isidore, a scribe. It was, nevertheless, accepted and handed down as a _magna charta_ of papal rights, until some opposition to its authenticity proceeded from a Sabine monastery about 1100. In the revival of letters, an eloquent critic and Roman patriot, named Laurentius Valla, who died 1457, completed the exposure of the forgery, to the amazement of his contemporaries, and before the end of the next age the imposture was rejected with the contempt of all the historians. But it served its purpose. As Gibbon observes, "The Popes themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar, but a false obsolete t.i.tle still sanctifies their reign; and by the same fortune which has attended these forged decretals, and the Sibylline oracles, the edifice has subsisted after the foundations have been undermined."

POPE NICOLAS AND THE FALSE DECRETALS (867).

One of the clever stratagems by which Pope Nicolas I., who died in 867, tried to establish his supremacy over the whole world in all things spiritual was the promulgation of the false decretals. This Pope was said to have tamed kings and tyrants, and to have ruled the world like a sovereign. A rebel Transalpine prelate, Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, had disputed the jurisdiction of the Pope, but was compelled to submit. On a sudden, at the nick of time, there was promulgated a new code, including thirty-nine (false) decrees of Popes and councils. These not only a.s.serted the supremacy of the Pope, his dignity and privileges, but included a whole system of Church discipline on Church property, sacraments, festivals, rites, and ceremonies. The whole is composed with an air of profound piety and reverence, and a specious purity of tone. But for the too manifest design, the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of the whole clergy in subordination to the See of Rome; but for the monstrous ignorance of history, which betrayed itself in glaring anachronisms, and in the utter confusion of the order of events and the lives of distinguished men--the former awakening keen and jealous suspicion, the latter making the detection of the spuriousness of the whole easy, clear, irrefragable--the false decretals might still have maintained their place in ecclesiastical history. They are now given up by all; not a voice is raised in their favour. The utmost done is to palliate the guilt of the forger, who fortunately is unknown.

SEPARATION OF THE GREEK AND LATIN CHURCHES (1054).

The restoration of the Western Empire by Charlemagne was speedily followed by the permanent separation of the Greek and Latin Churches. About 850 Photius, an ambitious layman and captain of the guards, was promoted to the office of Patriarch of Constantinople, thereby superseding Ignatius, who had a large following. Both appealed to Pope Nicolas I., a proud and aspiring pontiff, who embraced the welcome opportunity of judging and condemning his rival of the East. The patriarch had the aid of his own court, and deposed the Pope; but in turn he and his patrons lost ground, and the original patriarch, Ignatius, was restored. Thereafter the feud continued more or less fiercely, till at last, in 1054, the then patriarch was excommunicated in Constantinople by the Pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema, which enumerated seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and consigned the Eastern Church, its teachers and sectaries, to everlasting d.a.m.nation. Though the forms of civility thereafter were sometimes maintained, the Greeks never recanted the errors and the Popes never repealed their sentence. This aversion of the Greeks and Latins was nourished and manifested in the three first expeditions to the Holy Land.

The Eastern Christians never gave a cordial welcome to the Crusaders, and rather treated them as schismatics, and sometimes took part in thwarting them. In 1183 the Greeks carried out a ma.s.sacre, in which the Latins were slaughtered in houses and streets, their clergy burnt in the churches, and the sick in their hospitals. The Greek monks and priests actually chanted a thanksgiving to the Lord when the head of a Roman cardinal, the Pope's legate, was severed from his body, fastened to the tail of a dog, and dragged in savage mockery through the city.

EARLY CONTENTIONS OF JEW AND CHRISTIAN.

In the fourth century, after miraculous powers ceased to attend the progress of Christianity, and a system of wonder-working was established, the Jews, who had long watched with jealousy the advance of their rivals, began to think that they could also become adepts in pious frauds. Next one party took to magical arts as weapons of superiority. A conference is said to have taken place in the presence of Constantine and the devout empress-mother Helena between the Jews and the Christians. Pope Sylvester had already triumphed in argument over his infatuated opponents, when the Jews had recourse to magic. A noted enchanter commanded an ox to be brought forward; he whispered into the ear of the animal, which instantly fell dead at the feet of Constantine. The Jews shouted in triumph, for it was the word _Ham-semphorash_, the ineffable name of G.o.d, at the sound of which the awestruck beast had expired. Sylvester, with some shrewdness, observed, "As he who whispered the name must be well acquainted with it, why does not he fall dead in like manner?" The Jews answered contemptuously, "Let us have no more verbal disputations; let us come to actions." "So be it," said Sylvester; "and if this comes to life again at the name of Christ, will ye believe?" They all a.s.sented. Sylvester then raised his eyes to heaven, and said with a loud voice, "If _He_ be the true G.o.d whom I preach, in the name of Christ arise, you ox, and stand on your feet." The ox sprang up and began to move and feed. The legend then adds that the whole a.s.sembly was baptised.

JULIAN INCITING THE JEWS TO REBUILD THE TEMPLE.

Sozomen says that, though Julian the Apostate hated and oppressed the Christians, he was benevolent to the Jews merely in order to spite the Christians. He commanded the Jews to rebuild their Temple at Jerusalem, and gave them money to do so. They entered on the undertaking without reflecting that according to their holy prophets it could not be accomplished. They sought the most skilful artisans, collected materials, cleared the ground, and entered so earnestly on the task that even the women carried heaps of earth and sold their ornaments towards defraying the expense. Yet when they cleared the ground an earthquake occurred, and stones were thrown up from the earth, wounding those near, and houses were thrown down. After the earthquake the workmen returned to the task; and instead of regarding the unexpected wonder as a manifest indication that G.o.d was opposed to the re-creation of the Temple, they were consumed by a fire which burst from the foundations. This fact is related by all the contemporaries, who agree that the fire burst out either from the foundations or from the bowels of the earth. A still more extraordinary prodigy occurred, for the sign of the cross appeared on the garments of the workmen. These crosses were disposed like stars, and appeared the work of art. Many were hence led to confess that Christ was G.o.d, and repented and were baptised.

CHRISTIANS HATING THE JEWS.

Southey says, "That the primitive Christians should have regarded the Jews with hostile feelings as their first persecutors was but natural, and that that feeling should have been aggravated by a just and religious horror for the crime which has drawn upon this unhappy nation its abiding punishment. But it is indeed strange that during so many centuries this enmity should have continued to exist, and that no sense of compa.s.sion should have mitigated it. For the Jews to have inherited the curse of their fathers was in the apprehension of ordinary minds to inherit their guilt; and the cruelties which man inflicted upon them were interpreted as proofs of the continued wrath of Heaven, so that the very injuries and sufferings which in any other case would have excited commiseration served in this to close the heart against it. Being looked on as G.o.d's outlaws, they were everywhere placed, as it were, under the ban of humanity. And while these heart-hardening prepossessions subsisted against them in full force, the very advantages of which they were in possession rendered them more especial objects of envy, suspicion, and popular hatred."

THE GOLDEN AGE OF JUDAISM (A.D. 800).

The Jews seemed never to be so prosperous as in the age of Pepin and Charlemagne (about 768-800). The laws were not enforced against them, and they were practically free from restrictions, except as to keeping Christian slaves and following the law of dower. Bishops, abbots, and abbesses were only prevented by heavy penalties from pledging or selling to the circ.u.mcised the costly vestments, rich furniture, and precious vessels of the churches. Jews became physicians, ministers of finance to n.o.bles and monarchs; and when Charlemagne sent an emba.s.sy to Caliph Haroun al Raschid, a Jew was sent with two Christian counts as amba.s.sadors, and as they died on the road he conducted the business and brought back costly presents, including an enormous elephant, which the monks of the period described as a wonder of the world. The monks also described the accomplishments of a Jew physician named Zedekiah, who was a confidential adviser of Louis the Debonnaire or the Pious. They relate that he could swallow a whole cart of hay and fly in the air. The toleration and equal treatment of Jews and Christians greatly shocked Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, who issued edicts to his people prohibiting their intercourse. But on appeal the king ordered an inquiry, and the edicts were withdrawn. About the same time in Spain, from the conquest by the Moors till the end of the tenth century, the Jews enjoyed nearly equal laws; and one Moses, their rabbi, became wealthy and influential; and when his grandson Nathan enjoyed a drive in the groves near Cordova, seven hundred chariots joined in the procession that followed him.

THE POPE AND THE JEWS (1140).

Various Christian countries for centuries maintained laws making it necessary that Jews should wear a particular dress or badge to distinguish them. They were always viewed by Christian communities with suspicion. One of the common accusations against them was that of crucifying children, after scourging them and crowning them with thorns; and this they were suspected of doing annually. This was said to be done out of hatred to the Christian religion, and it was even alleged that the Jews received the heart of the sacrificed child at their own Communion. The Jews were also accused of scourging crucifixes and profaning images and crosses. These and other imputations were adroitly used as pretexts for confiscating the wealth of the Jews. One remarkable badge of subjection and suspicion took its rise in the twelfth century--namely, the conduct of the Jews at the installation of a new Pope. They are obliged to wait for the Pontiff on the road to St. John de Lateran, and there on their knees they present him with a copy of their Law. On receiving this, the Pope thus addresses them: "I revere the law which G.o.d gave to Moses, but condemn the false sense you give it by vainly expecting the Messiah who has been long come, and whom the Church believes to be Jesus Christ our Lord." This custom took its rise when Pope Innocent II., on his retreat to France, made his entry into Paris, on which occasion the Jews went to meet him with great solemnity, and in a very respectful manner presented him with the holy books of their Law.

THE JEWS OF YORK DEFENDING THEMSELVES (1189).

A time of monstrous persecution and cruelty towards the Jews was the coronation of Richard I. in 1189. One Benedict, a York Jew, to save his life had submitted to baptism in London, but died of injuries received during a riot there. The people of York, equally excited, attacked Benedict's house there, and his wife and children took refuge in the Castle with their valuable effects. Other Jews being with them, all at last suspected that the governor was in treaty with their enemies to surrender them, and while the governor was temporarily absent they shut the gates against him. This made the populace frantic, and eager to enter and despatch them. A canon urged the mob on; and at last a rabbi, seeing the hopelessness of their situation, addressed his fellow Jews as follows: "Men of Israel, the G.o.d of our fathers calls upon us to die for our Law.

Death is inevitable, but we may yet choose whether we will die speedily and n.o.bly, or ignominiously, after horrible torments. My advice is that we shall voluntarily render up our souls to our Creator, and fall by our own hands. The deed is both reasonable and according to the Law, and is sanctioned by the example of our most ill.u.s.trious ancestors." The old man sat down in tears. The a.s.sembly was divided, but debated; and finally, while a few left the place, the great majority made up their minds to die.

They collected their precious effects into a pile and burnt them. They then cut the throats of their wives and children. The rabbi and Joachim were the last to suffer; but one slew the other and then himself. Next morning the mob broke in, only to find the fire burning in all quarters, and they took care to have all the bonds and obligations and money securities of the dead men burned in an enormous bonfire. No proper punishment was ever inflicted on the ringleaders who thus caused the death of seven or eight hundred persons, though some of the ringleaders were arrested.

JEWS ATTEMPTING TO CRUCIFY AN ENGLISH BOY.

Matthew Paris says: "About 1240 the Jews circ.u.mcised a Christian boy at Norwich, and after he was circ.u.mcised they called him Jurnim; they then kept him to crucify him, in contempt of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The father of the boy, however, from whom the Jews had stolen him, after a diligent search at length discovered him confined in custody of the Jews, and with a loud cry he pointed out his son, whom he believed lost, shut up in a room of one of the Jews' houses. When this extraordinary crime came to the knowledge of William de Kele, the bishop, a wise and circ.u.mspect prelate, and of some other n.o.bles, in order that such an insult to Christ should not be pa.s.sed over unpunished through the neglect of the Christians, all the Jews of that city were made prisoners; and when they wished to place themselves under the protection of the royal authority, the bishop said, 'These matters belong to the Church; and when the question raised is concerning circ.u.mcision and insult to religion, it is not to be decided by the King's Court.' Four of the Jews therefore, having been found guilty of the aforesaid crime, were first dragged at the tails of horses, and afterwards hung on a gibbet, where they breathed forth the wretched remains of life."

JEWS CRUCIFYING AN ENGLISH BOY (1255).

Matthew Paris also says that in 1255 some Jews of Lincoln stole a boy of eight years, shut him up in a room, fed him on milk, and then sent to all the cities in England where Jews lived to come and be present at a sacrifice to take place at Lincoln, when a boy was to be crucified. A great many Jews attended, and one was appointed to take the place of Pilate, who subjected the boy to divers tortures. They beat him till blood flowed and he was quite livid; they crowned him with thorns, derided him, and spat upon him. Then he was pierced by each of them with a wood knife, was made to drink gall, was overwhelmed with reproaches and blasphemies, and was repeatedly called "Jesus, the false prophet," by his tormentors, who surrounded him, grinding and gnas.h.i.+ng their teeth. At last they crucified him, and pierced him to the heart with a lance, took down his body from the cross, disembowelled him, and used his body to practise magical operations, and then threw it into a well. The boy's mother began tracing the boy to a Jew's house, and excited the compa.s.sion of the citizens by her suspicions. A wise man, John of Lexington, encouraged the hue and cry with his eloquence, and one or two Jews were arrested, and a pardon offered if confession were made. One Jew professed then to confess that the Jews crucified a boy every year as an insult to the name of Jesus. The boy's body was afterwards found in the well, and exposed to the gaze of the citizens. The canons of the cathedral inquired into it, and the king was informed. The Jew who confessed was tied to a horse's tail and dragged to the gallows; and at a later day eighteen wealthy Jews were also hanged, and others imprisoned to await a like fate, though it was said that some indiscreet minor brethren interceded for them.

JEWS BLAMED FOR THE BLACK DEATH IN 1347.

The disease known as the Black Death first appeared at Constantinople in 1347, and soon spread along the north of the Black Sea, then to Sicily, Ma.r.s.eilles, France, Italy, and Spain. The black patches on the skin and the pestilential breath of the sick, who spat blood, carried contagion far and near. There were also atmospheric disturbances, deluges of rain, and earthquakes. In England in 1349 the Parliament was prorogued on account of this plague. The Princess Joan, daughter of Edward III., then on her way to marry the eldest son of the King of Castile, caught the disease at Bordeaux and died. Wicliff, then a student at Oxford, wrote a book on "The Last Age of the Church," in which it was predicted that the end of the world would be in 1400 at latest. The effect on people was twofold. Some lived more temperately, while others gave themselves up to revelling and drinking. The Flagellants, as a new religious order, went about scourging and being scourged, as a means of propitiating Heaven, and singing psalms and ringing bells. Some started the theory that the Jews were the cause of this disease, and many were put to death (as was mentioned _ante_, p. 90).

Labourers, from the scarcity, demanded higher wages, and under Wat Tyler many joined in a local rebellion.

JEWS STEALING THE HOST TO INSULT IT (1350).

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the German Jews were subject to frequent spoliations and ma.s.sacres. The sect of Flagellants, who, with mad enthusiasm, pa.s.sed through the cities of Germany, preceded by a crucifix and scourging their naked and bleeding backs, used, as they said, to atone for their own transgressions by plundering and murdering as many Jews as they could in Frankfort and other places. The Jews were thus hunted through all Germany, Silesia, Brandenburg, Bohemia, Lithuania, and Poland.

As a justification for this systematic cruelty, the following legend was circulated and believed in most countries: A certain Jew, named Jonathan of Enghien, desired to possess himself of the consecrated Host in order to treat it with sacrilegious insult. He bribed a desperado, named John of Louvain, to procure the sacred symbol. John mounted by night into the chapel of St. Catherine, stole the pyx, with the sacred contents, and conveyed it to Jonathan. The latter a.s.sembled his friends, who most impiously met and blasphemed and pierced it with knives. At that time Jonathan was advised for safety to migrate to Brussels; and there, in the synagogue, the Jews treated the Host with every insult, piercing it with knives, and though blood flowed forth the obdurate unbelievers, unmoved, continued their insults. They next sent the treasure to Cologne for similar treatment; but having entrusted it to a woman whose conscience smote her, she betrayed them to the clergy. The consequence was that the Jews were arrested, put to the torture, convicted, and sentenced to be torn with red-hot pincers and then burnt alive. This memorable act of vengeance was said to be justified by many miracles that were worked in Brussels, the place of punishment.

BANQUETING WITH THE JEWS (1478).