The aristocracy, on the contrary, went on increasing in power, and eventually became masters of the situation. It was through them that the emperor, theoretically absolute, practically carried on his administration; but he was no longer either strong or a divinity, and possessed Absorption of land and power by the aristocracy of Gaul. nothing but the semblance of omnipotence. His official despotism was opposed by the passive but invincible competition of an aristocracy, more powerful than himself because it derived its support from the revived relation of patron and dependants. But though the aristocracy administered, yet they did not govern. They suffered, as did the Empire, from a general state of lassitude. Like their private life, their public life, no longer stimulated by struggles and difficulties, had become sluggish; their power of initiative was enfeebled. Feeling their incapacity they no longer embarked on great political schemes; and the army, the instrument by which such schemes were carried on, was only held together by the force of habit. In this society, where there was no traffic in anything but wealth and ideas, the soldier was nothing more than an agitator or a parasite. The egoism of the upper classes held military duty in contempt, while their avarice depopulated the countryside, whence the legions had drawn their recruits. And now come the barbarians! A prey to perpetual alarm, the people entrenched themselves behind those high walls of the oppida which Roman security had razed to the ground, but imperial impotence had restored, and where life in the middle ages was destined to vegetate in unrestful isolation.
Amidst this general apathy, intellectual activity alone persisted. In the 4th century there was a veritable renaissance in Gaul, the last outburst of a dying flame, which yet bore witness also to the general decadence. The agreeable versification of an amateur like Ausonius, the refined Intellectual decadence of Gaul. panegyrics of a Eumenius, disguising nullity of thought beneath elegance of form, already foretold the perilous sterility of scholasticism. Art, so widespread in the wealthy villas of Gaul, contented itself with imitation, produced nothing original and remained mediocre. Human curiosity, no longer concerned with philosophy and science, seemed as though stifled, religious polemics alone continuing to hold public attention. Disinclination for the self-sacrifice of active life and weariness of the things of the earth lead naturally to absorption in the things of heaven. After bringing about the success of the Asiatic cults of Mithra and Cybele, these same factors now assured the triumph over exhausted paganism of yet another oriental religion—Christianity—after a duel which had lasted two centuries.
This new faith had appeared to Constantine likely to infuse young and healthy blood into the Empire. In reality Christianity, which had contributed not a little to stimulate the political unity of continental Gaul, now tended to dissolve it by destroying that religious unity which Christianity in Gaul. had heretofore been its complement. Before this there had been complete harmony between Church and State; but afterwards came indifference and then disagreement between political and religious institutions, between the City of God and that of Caesar. Christianity, introduced into Gaul during the 1st century of the Christian era by those foreign merchants who traded along the coasts of the Mediterranean, had by the middle of the 2nd century founded communities at Vienne, at Autun and at Lyons. Their propagandizing zeal soon exposed them to the wrath of an ignorant populace and the contempt of the educated; and thus it was that in A.D. 177, under Marcus Aurelius, the Church of Lyons, founded by St Pothinus, suffered those persecutions which were the effective cause of her ultimate victory. These Christian communities, disguised under the legally authorized name of burial societies, gradually formed a vast secret cosmopolitan association, superimposed upon Roman society but incompatible with the Empire. Christianity had to be either destroyed or absorbed. The persecutions under Aurelian and Diocletian almost succeeded in accomplishing the former; the Christian churches were saved by the instability of the existing authorities, by military anarchy and by the incursions of the barbarians. Despite tortures and martyrdoms, and thanks to the seven apostles sent from Rome in 250, during the 3rd century their branches extended all over Gaul.
The emperors had now to make terms with these churches, which served to group together all sorts of malcontents, and this was the object of the edict of Milan (313), by which the Church, at the outset simply a Jewish institution, was naturalized as Roman; while in 325 Triumph of Christianity in Gaul. the Council of Nicaea endowed her with unity. But for the security and the power thus attained she had to pay with her independence. On the other hand, pagan and Christian elements in society existed side by side without intermingling, and even openly antagonistic to each other—one aristocratic and the other democratic. In order to induce the masses of the people once more to become loyal to the imperial form of government the emperor Julian tried by founding a new religion to give its functionaries a religious prestige which should impress the popular mind. His plan failed; and the emperor Theodosius, aided by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, preferred to make the Christian clergy into a body of imperial and conservative officials; while in return for their adhesion he abolished the Arian heresy and paganism itself, which could not survive without his support. Thenceforward it was in the name of Christ that persecutions took place in an Empire now entirely won over to Christianity.
In Gaul the most famous leader of this first merciless, if still
perilous crusade, was a soldier-monk, Saint Martin of Tours.
Thanks to him and his disciples in the middle of the
4th century and the beginning of the 5th many of the
towns possessed well-established churches; but the
Organisation of
the Church.
militant ardour of monks and centuries of labour
were needed to conquer the country districts, and in the meantime
both dogma and internal organization were subjected to
important modifications. As regards the former the Church
adopted a course midway between metaphysical explanations
and historical traditions, and reconciled the more extreme
theories; while with the admission of pagans a great deal of
paganism itself was introduced. On the other hand, the need for
political and social order involved the necessity for a disciplined
and homogeneous religious body; the exercise of power, moreover,
soon transformed the democratic Christianity of the earlier
churches into a federation of little conservative monarchies.
The increasing number of her adherents, and her inexperience of
government on such a vast and complicated scale, obliged her to
comply with political necessity and to adopt the system of the
state and its social customs. The Church was no longer a
fraternity, on a footing of equality, with freedom of belief and
tentative as to dogma, but an authoritative aristocratic hierarchy.
The episcopate was now recruited from the great families
in the same way as the imperial and the municipal public services.
The Church called on the emperor to convoke and preside over
her councils and to combat heresy; and in order more effectually
to crush the latter she replaced primitive independence and local
diversity by uniformity of doctrine and worship, and by the
hierarchy of dioceses and ecclesiastical provinces. The heads of
the Church, her bishops, her metropolitans, took the titles
of their pagan predecessors as well as their places, and their
jurisdiction was enforced by the laws of the state. Rich and
powerful chiefs, they were administrators as much as priests:
Germanus (Germain), bishop of Auxerre (d. 448), St Eucherius
of Lyons (d. 450), Apollinaris Sidonius of Clermont (d. c. 490)
assumed the leadership of society, fed the poor, levied tithes,
administered justice, and in the towns where they resided,
surrounded by priests and deacons, ruled both in temporal and
spiritual matters.
But the humiliation of Theodosius before St Ambrose proved
that the emperor could never claim to be a pontiff, and that the
dogma of the Church remained independent of the
sovereign as well as of the people; if she sacrificed
her liberty it was but to claim it again and maintain
The Church’s independence
of the Empire.
it more effectively amid the general languor. The
Church thus escaped the unpopularity of this decadent
empire, and during the 5th century she provided a refuge for
all those who, wishing to preserve the Roman unity, were terrified
