The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume
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I knew him the offspring of Zeus, whom we prayed to of old, as was meet.
“Lord of the triple moon,” I cried, “averter of woe,
Ever a lord hast thou been, and behold, in the dust thou art low.”
But at night with a smile on his lips the god stood by me sublime,
And said, “A god though I be, I serve, and my master is Time.”97
Throughout the fifth century Athens was the headquarters of what may be called higher paganism. The Stoic and Epicurean schools had died out in the third century, and in the fourth the most distinguished savants of the university like Proaeresius and Himerius were sophists, not philosophers. But the Platonic Academy continued to exist, independent of State grants, for it had its own private property producing a revenue of more than £600 a year.98 Its scholarchs, however, were not men of much talent or distinction, until the office was filled by Priscus,99 a Neoplatonist and a friend of Julian, after that Emperor’s death. Priscus inaugurated the reign of Neoplatonism at Athens; with him the revival of the university, as a centre of philosophic study, began, and vastly increased under his successor Plutarch. Towards the end of the fourth century, Synesius had spoken in disparaging words of Athens and her teachers: her fame, he said, rests with her bee-keepers. He was jealous for the reputation of Alexandria, and with good reason, for under Plutarch and his successors Syrianus and Proclus Athens was to eclipse the Egyptian city. These Platonists attracted students from all parts of the East, and some who had begun their studies, like Proclus himself, at Alexandria, completed them at Athens.100
The Athenian professors had always regarded themselves as the champions of Hellenism, but when the Neoplatonic philosophy became ascendant, the Hellenism of Athens was a more serious danger. At this time Neoplatonism was the most formidable rival of Christian theology among educated men of a speculative turn of mind. Augustine recognised this; we know how it attracted him.101 The Neoplatonists taught a system fundamentally differing from the current Christian theology as to the position which was assigned to the creator of the world. According to Plotinus, Nous or Reason, the creator, emanated from and was subordinate to the absolute One, and Soul again emanated from Nous. His successors developed his principles by multiplying and dividing the emanations, and the growth of the philosophy culminated in the system which Proclus constructed by means of a dialectic which Hegel himself has described as “extremely tiring.”102 In all these phases, the Demiurge or Creator is subordinated to the One of which no divine attributes could be predicted, and thus an apparently impassable gulf was fixed between the later Platonic philosophers and Christian theologians. There was, indeed, at Alexander another school of Platonism, which held closer here and there to the teaching of Plato himself, and men who were trained in this school found the transition to Christian doctrine comparatively easy. We know something of the system of Hierocles, a leading Platonist at Alexandria in the fifth century.103 In his system there was no One or any other higher principle above God the creator and legislator, who was above, and in no sense co-ordinate with, the company of sidereal gods; and he, like the Christian Deity, created the world out of nothing. Some of the pupils of Hierocles became Christians. It is a curious circumstance that Hierocles should have been condemned to exile at Constantinople on grounds which are unknown to us.104 It can hardly have been for his teaching, seeing that far more anti-Christian Platonists, who had their stronghold at Athens, were tolerated.
But the danger and offence of the later Neoplatonists did not lie in their mystical metaphysics, but in the theurgy and pagan practices to which they were almost always addicted. Proclus in his public lectures as scholarch confined himself, doubtless, to the interpretation of Plato in the Neoplatonic sense, and to problems of dialectic, but he reserved for his chosen disciples esoteric teaching in theurgy, and venerated the gods as beneficent beings worthy of worship, though occupying a subordinate place in the hierarchy of existences. He believed that by fasting and purifications on certain days it was possible to get into communication with supernatural beings, and he recognised the gods of other nations as well as those of Greece. He said that the philosopher should not confine himself to the religious rites of one city or people, but should be “a hierophant of the whole world.” He was more scrupulous in observing the fasts of the Egyptians than the Egyptians themselves.105 He had been initiated in the Eleusinian secrets by his friend Asclepigenia, the daughter of Plutarch,106 who had learned them from the last priest of Eleusis, and in one of his writings he told how he had seen Hecate herself. Athens believed in his magical powers; he was said to have constructed an instrument by which he could bring down rain.
The Hellenists, even in the days of Proclus, had not abandoned all hope of winning toleration for pagan worship. At any time some one might ascend the throne with Hellenic sympathies. The elevation of Anthemius in the West was a proof that this was not impossible, though Anthemius was able to do little to help the pagan interest. Proclus died in A.D. 485, and at that very time a former pupil of his was prominently associated with a rebellion107 which, if it had been successful, might have been followed by some temporary relaxation of the severe laws against polytheism and pagan worship. This was to be the last flutter of a dying cause.
§ 4. Persecution of Heresy
The persecution of heretics was more resolute and severe than the persecution of pagans. Those who stood outside of the Church altogether were less dangerous than those members of it who threatened to corrupt it by false doctrine, and the unity of the Catholic faith in matters of dogma was considered of supreme importance. “Truth, which is simple and one,” wrote Pope Leo I, “does not admit of variety.”108 A modern inquirer is accustomed to regard the growth of heresies as a note of vitality, but in old times it was a sign of the active operation of the enemy of mankind.
The heresy which was looked upon as the most dangerous and abominable of all was that of the Manichees, which it would be truer to regard as a rival religion than as a form of Christianity.109 It was based on a mixture of Zoroastrian and Christian ideas, along with elements derived from Buddhism, but the Zoroastrian principles were preponderant. This religion was founded by Manes in Persia in the third century, and in the course of the fourth it spread throughout the Empire, in the West as well as in the East. Augustine in his youth came under its influence. The fundamental doctrine was that of Zoroaster, the existence of a good and an evil principle, God and Matter, independent of each other. The Old Testament was the work of the Evil Being. Matter being thoroughly evil, Jesus Christ could not have invested himself with it, and therefore his human body was a mere appearance. The story of his life in the Gospels was interpreted mystically. The Manichees had no churches, no altars, no incense; their worship consisted in prayers and hymns; they did not celebrate Christmas, and their chief festival was the Bêma, in March, kept in memory of the death of their founder, who was said to have been flayed alive or crucified by Varahran I. They condemned marriage, and practised rigorous austerities.110
The laws against the Manichees, which were frequent and drastic, began in the reign of Theodosius I. The heresy was insidious, because the heretics were difficult to discover; they often took part in Christian ceremonies and passed for orthodox, and they disguised their views under other names. Theodosius deprived them of civil rights and banished them from towns. Those who sheltered themselves under harmless names were liable to the penalty of death; and he ordered the Praetorian Prefect of the East to institute “inquisitors” for the purpose of discovering them.111 This is a very early instance of the application of this word, which in later ages was to become so offensive, to the uses of religious persecution. When the government of Theodosius II, under the influence of Nestorius, made a vigorous effort to sweep heresy from the world, the Manichaeans were stigmatised as men who had “descended to the lowest depths of wickedness,” and were condemned anew to be expelled from towns, and perhaps to be put to death112 (A.D. 428). Later legislation inflicted death unreservedly; they were the only heretics whose opinions exposed them to the supreme penalty.
Arcadius, at the beginning of his reign, reaffirmed all the pains and prohibitions which his predecessors had enacted against heretics.113 In most cases, this meant the suppression of their services