No More Learning

The personality and
memory of great churchmen went for something. Carthage was no
doubt the civil capital of the dioecese of Africa, and Milan of the
dioecese of Italy: but it would be rash to assert that the inheritance
which St Cyprian left to Carthage and St Ambrose to Milan was quite
worthless or ephemeral. And if this was true of the great bishops of
the third and fourth centuries, it was still more true of the apostles
whom the whole Church united in venerating. Legends of apostolic
foundation were often baseless enough, but their very frequency testified
to the value set upon the thing claimed. Throughout the course of the
long struggle with Gnosticism, the teaching of the apostles was the
unvarying standard of Christian appeal: and evidence of that teaching
was found not only in the written Creed and Scriptures but in the
unwritten tradition of the churches and episcopal successions founded
by apostles. “Percurre ecclesias apostolicas” cries Tertullian confidently
to his adversary: “habemus adnumerare eos qui ab apostolis insti-
tuti sunt episcopi in ecclesiis et successiones eorum usque ad nos ” is
Irenaeus’ rendering of the same argument. And both the Gallican and
the African writer go on to select among apostolic churches the church
of Rome_“ista quam felis ecclesia," * maximae et antiquissimae et
omnibus cognitae ecclesiae traditionem et fidem "-as for themselves
the obvious witness of this teaching. From the second century
onwards a catena of testimony makes and acknowledges the claim of
the Roman Church to be, through its connexion with St Peter and St Paul,
in a special sense the depository and guardian of an apostolic tradition,
a type and model for other churches.
The pontificate of Damasus (366–384) has been more than once
mentioned in the preceding pages as the period of the first definite
self-expression of the papacy. The continuous history of Latin
Christian literature does not commence till after the middle of the
fourth century; the dogmatic and exegetical writings of Hilary in Gaul
(c. 355) and Marius Victorinus in Rome (c. 360) are the first factors in
a henceforward unbroken series. On the beginnings of this new literary
development followed quickly the movement, of which we have already
noticed symptoms in other directions, for interpreting existing conditions
and constructing out of them a coherent and scientific scheme. These
conditions had grown up gradually, naturally, and almost at haphazard :
it now seemed time to try to put them on to a firm theological basis,
and in the process much that had been fluid, immature, tentative, was
crystallised into a hard and fast system. It fell to the able and


## p. 173 (#203) ############################################

Roman Theory under Damasus
173
7
masterful Damasus, in the last years of a long life and a troubled
pontificate, to attempt what his predecessors had not yet attempted,
and to formulate in brief and incisive terms the doctrine of Rome upon
Creed and Bible and Pope. A council of 378 or 379, after reciting the
Nicene symbol, laid down the sober lines of Catholic theology as against
the various forms of one-sided speculation, Eunomian and Macedonian,
Photinian and Apollinarian, to which the confusions of the half-century
since Nicaea had given birth; and the East could do no better than
accept the Tome of Damasus, as seventy years later it accepted the Tome
of Leo. Another council in 382 published the first official Canon
of Scripture in the West—the influence of Jerome, at that time papal
secretary, is traceable in it—and the first official definition of
papal claims.
Roman primacy ("ceteris ecclesiis praelata,” “primatum obtinuit ")
is grounded, with obvious reference to the vote of the council of 381 in
favour of Constantinople, on “no synodal decisions” but directly on the
promise of Christ to Peter recorded in the Gospel. Respect for Roman
tradition imposes next a mention of “the fellowship of the most blessed
Paul ”; but the dominant motif reappears in the concluding paragraph,
and the three sees whose prerogative was recognised at Nicaea are
transformed into a Petrine hierarchy with its “prima sedes” at Rome,
its " secunda sedes” at Alexandria, and its "tertia sedes" at Antioch.
St Augustine's theory of the Civitas Dei was, in germ, that of the
medieval papacy, without the name of Rome. In Rome itself it was
easy to supply the insertion, and to conceive of a dominion still
wielded from the ancient seat of government, as world-wide and almost
as authoritative as that of the Empire. The inheritance of the imperial
traditions of Rome, left begging by the withdrawal of the secular
monarch, fell as it were into the lap of the Christian bishop. In
this connexion it is a significant coincidence that the first description
which history has preserved to us of the outward habit of life of a Roman
pontiff belongs to the same period, probably to the same pope, as the
formulation of the claim to spiritual lordship. Ammianus was a pagan,
but not a bigoted one. He professes, and we need not doubt that he felt,
a genuine respect for simple provincial bishops, whose plain living and
modest exterior “commended them to the Deity and His true worship-
pers. ” But the atmosphere of the capital, the “ostentatio rerum
Urbanarum,” was fatal to unworldliness in religion. After relating
that in the year 366 one hundred and thirty-seven corpses were counted
at the end of the day in the Liberian basilica, on the occasion of the
fight between the opposing factions of Damasus and Ursinus, the
historian grimly adds that the prize was one which candidates might
naturally count it worth any effort to obtain, seeing that an ample
revenue, showered on the Roman bishop by the piety of Roman ladies,
enabled him to dress like a gentleman, to ride in his own carriage,
and to give dinner-parties not less well appointed than the Caesar's.
a
CH. VI.


## p. 174 (#204) ############################################

174
Rise of Jerusalem
Some forty or fifty years after Damasus the Roman author of the
original form of the so-called Isidorian collection of canons, incorporating
in his preface the substance of the Damasine definition on the subject of
the three Petrine sees, adds to Rome Alexandria and Antioch mention
also of the honour paid, for the sake of James the brother of the Lord
and of John the apostle and evangelist, to the bishops of Jerusalem and
Ephesus. Mere veneration of the “pillars” of the apostolic Church is
not enough to account for this modification of the original triad ; the
reasons must be sought in the circumstances of the day. If Ephesus is
said to “have a more honourable place in synod than other metropolitans,"
it may be merely that Ephesus, the most distinguished church of those
over which Constantinople, from the time of St John Chrysostom,
asserted jurisdiction, was a convenient stalking-horse for the movement
of resistance to Constantinopolitan claims; but it is also possible that
the phrase was penned after the oecumenical Council of Ephesus in
431, where Memnon of Ephesus was seated next after the bishops of
Alexandria and Jerusalem. If the bishop of Jerusalem is “accounted
honourable by all for the reverence due to so hallowed a spot,” and
nevertheless “the first throne,” sedes prima, “ was never by the ancient
definition of the fathers reckoned to Jerusalem, lest it should be
thought that the throne of our Lord Jesus Christ was on earth and not
in heaven,” we cannot help suspecting that at the back of the writer's
mind hovers an uneasy consciousness that the apostolic traditions of
Rome, which were so readily brought into play against Constantinople,
might find an inconvenient rival in Jerusalem. Not that at Jerusalem,
apart from a certain emphasis on the position of James the Lord's
brother, there was ever any conscious competition with Rome: but it
was true that, about the time that this canonical collection was published,
the see of Jerusalem was just pushing a campaign of aggrandisement,
carried on for over a century, to a triumphant conclusion.
The claims of Jerusalem were comparatively modest at the start,
and it did not occur to Damasus for instance that they need be taken
into serious consideration. Two initial difficulties hampered their early
Although Jerusalem was the mother church of Christendom,
and the home and centre of the first apostolic preaching, Aelia
Capitolina, the Gentile city founded by Hadrian, had no real continuity
with the Jewish city on the ruins of which it rose.
The church of
Jerusalem had been a church of Jewish Christians, the church of Aelia
was a church of Gentile Christians, and for a couple of generations too
obscure to have any history. A probably spurious list of bishops is all
the record that survives of it before the third century. Then came the
taste for pilgrimages-in A. D. 333 a pilgrim made the journey all the
way from Bordeaux-and the growing cult of the Holy Places: Jerusalem
was the scene of the most sacred of Christian memories, and locally at
any rate Aelia was Jerusalem. From the time of Constantine onwards
:


## p. 175 (#205) ############################################

Contentions for higher place
175
the identification was complete. The second difficulty was of a less
archaic kind, and took longer to circumvent. Aelia-Jerusalem did not
even dominate its own district, but was quite outshone by its near
neighbour at Caesarea. Politically Caesarea was capital of the province:
ecclesiastically it was the home of the teaching and the library of
Origen, and the Origenian tradition was kept alive by Pamphilus the
confessor and by Eusebius, bishop of the church at the time of the Nicene
council. It was hardly likely that the council would do anything
derogatory to the friend of Constantine, the most learned ecclesiastic
of the age: and in fact all the satisfaction that the bishop of Jerusalem
obtained at Nicaea was the apparent right to rank as the first of the
suffragans of the province—like Autun in the province of Lyons,
or London in the province of Canterbury. Local patriotism felt the sop
thus thrown to it to be quite unsatisfying, and for a hundred years the
sordid strife " for the first place," nepi apwreiwy as Theodoret calls it,
went on between the bishop of Jerusalem and the bishop of Caesarea.
In the confusion of the doctrinal struggle it was easy enough for an
orthodox bishop to refuse allegiance to an Arianizing metropolitan :
and Caesarea being in close relations with Antioch, it was natural for
the bishops of Jerusalem to turn to their neighbours at Alexandria, nor,
we may suppose, was Alexandria disinclined to favour encroachment
upon the territory of its Antiochene rival. Western churchmen, with
their profound belief in the finality of every decision of Nicaea, looked
coldly on the movement, and it is one of the counts in Jerome's
catalogue of grievances against John of Jerusalem. But at the first
Council of Ephesus, with Cyril of Alexandria in the chair and John of
Antioch absent, Juvenal of Jerusalem secured the second place, though
he still failed to abrogate the metropolitical rights of Caesarea. At the
Latrocinium of Ephesus in 449, again under Alexandrine presidency, he
managed to sit even above Domnus of Antioch. The business of the
Council of Chalcedon was to reverse the proceedings of the Latrocinium,
and it might have been anticipated that with the eclipse of Alexandrine
influence the fortunes of Jerusalem would also suffer. But a timely
tergiversation on the doctrinal issue saved something for Juvenal and
his see: the council decreed a partition of patriarchal rights over the
“ East” between the churches of Antioch and Jerusalem.
Very similar were the proceedings which established the “auto-
cephalous” character of the island church of Cyprus. The Cypriots
too began by renouncing the communion of the Arian bishops of
Antioch: they too espoused the cause of Cyril against John at the
Council of Ephesus, and were rewarded accordingly: and just as the
Empress Helena's discovery of the Cross served the claims of the church of
Jerusalem, so the discovery of the coffin containing the body of Barnabas
the Cypriot, with the autograph of St Matthew's Gospel, was held to
demonstrate finally the right of the Cypriots to ecclesiastical isolation.
H.


## p. 176 (#206) ############################################

176
Solid work of Councils
>
With this evidence before us, it is hard to deny that the history of
the generations which first experienced the “fatal gift” of Constantine
supplied only too good ground for St Gregory's complaint of contentions
and strivings for dominion among Christian bishops. But though these
contentions disturbed the work of councils, councils did not create them
and Gregory was hardly fair if he laid on councils the responsibility for
them: rather, in this direction lay the remedy and counterpoise, seeing
that councils represented the parliamentary and democratic side of church
government-stood, that is to say, in idea at least, for free and open
discussion as against the untrammelled decrees of authority, and for the
equality of churches as against the preponderance of metropolitan or
patriarch or pope. No more grandiloquent utterance of these principles
could indeed possibly be found than the words with which the Council of
Ephesus concludes its examination of the Cypriot claim. “ Let none of
the most reverend bishops annex a province which has not been from
the first under the jurisdiction of himself and his predecessors; and
so the canons of the fathers shall not be overstepped, nor pride of
worldly power creep in under the guise of priesthood, nor we lose little
by little, without knowing it, that freedom which our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Liberator of all men, purchased for us with his blood. ”
And councils really were, at any rate in two main departments of
their activity, the organ through which the mind of the federated Christian
communities did arrive at some definite and lasting self-expression,
namely in the Creed and in the Canon Law. In both directions, it is
true, East and West moved only a certain part of the way together :
in both too, while the impulse was given by councils, the influence of
the great churches added something to the completeness of the work :
in the case of the Creed, what became a universal usage in the liturgy
was at first only a usage of Antioch and Constantinople; in the case of
the Canon Law the collective decisions of councils were supplemented
by the individual judgments of popes or doctors before the corpus of
either Western or Eastern Law was complete. Nevertheless it remains
the fact that it was from and out of the conciliar movement that
Church Law, as such, came into being at all; that the canons of certain
fourth and fifth century councils are the only part of this Law common
to both East and West; and that again the only common formulation
of Christian doctrine was also the joint work of councils, which for
that very reason enjoy the name of oecumenical, Nicaea, Constantinople
and Chalcedon.
1. The origins of the Christian Creed or Symbolum are lost in the
obscurity which hangs over the sub-apostolic age. We know it first in
a completed form as used in the Roman church about the middle of the
second century. From Rome it spread through the West, taking the
shape ultimately of our Apostles' Creed; and one view of its history
would make this Roman Creed the source of all Eastern Creeds as well.


## p. 177 (#207) ############################################

1
Councils and the Creed
177
use.
But a summary statement of Christian belief for the use of catechumens
must have been wanted from very early times, and it is possible that what
St Paul " handed over at the first” to his Corinthian converts (1 Cor.
xv. 3) was nothing else than a primitive form of the Creed. Anyhow,
from whatever source it was derived, a common nucleus was expanded
or modified to meet the needs of different churches and different genera-
tions, so that a family likeness existed between all early Creeds, but
identity between none of them.
At the Council of Nicaea the Creed was for the first time given an
official and authoritative form, and was at the same time put to a novel
The baptismal Creed of the church of Palestinian Caesarea, itself
a much more technically theological document than any corresponding
Creed in the West, was propounded by Eusebius : out of this Creed the
Council constructed its own confession of faith, no longer for baptismal
and general use, but as the “form of sound words” by acceptance of
which the bishops of the churches throughout the world were to exclude
the Arian conception of Christianity. The example of the Creed of
Nicaea on the orthodox side was followed in the next generation by
numerous conciliar formularies expressing one shade or another of
opposing belief. When the Nicene cause finally triumphed, the Nicene
Creed was received all the world over as the expression of the Catholic
Faith; and the Council of Ephesus condemned as derogatory to it the
composition of any new formula, however orthodox.
The Council of Ephesus represented the Alexandrine position: at
Constantinople, however, a new Creed was already in use, which was
like enough to the Nicene Creed to pass as an expanded form of it, and was
destined in the end to annex both its name and fame. This Creed of
Constantinople had been developed out of some older Creed, probably
that of Jerusalem, by the help of the test phrases of the Nicaenum and
of further phrases aimed at the opposite heresies of the semi-Sabellian
Marcellus and the semi-Arian Macedonius. It may be supposed that
this Creed had been laid before the fathers of the council of 381 :
for at the Council of Chalcedon, where of course Constantinopolitan
influences were dominant, it was recited as the Creed of the 150 fathers
of Constantinople, on practically equal terms with the Creed of the 318
fathers of Nicaea. In another fifty years the two Creeds were beginning
to be hopelessly confused, at least in the sphere of Constantinople, and
the Constantinopolitanum was introduced into the liturgy as the actual
Creed of Nicaea. In the course of the sixth century it became not only
the liturgical but also the baptismal Creed throughout the East. In
the West it never superseded the older baptismal Creeds—except
apparently for a time under Byzantine influence in Rome—but as
a liturgical Creed it was adopted in Spain on the occasion of the
conversion of King Reccared and his Arian Visigoths in 589, and spread
thence in the course of time through Gaul and Germany to Rome.
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. VI.
12


## p. 178 (#208) ############################################

178
Origins of Church Law
and case.
2. Canon Law, even more clearly than the Creed, owed its develop-
ment to the work of councils.
The conception of a Church Law, ius ecclesiasticum, ius canonicum,
was not matured till the fourth century, and then largely as a result of
the new position of the Church in relation to the State, and in conscious
or unconscious imitation of the Civil Law. Down to the close of the
era of persecutions the discipline of the Church was administered under
consensual jurisdiction without any written code other than the Scrip-
tures, in general subordination to the unwritten kavov or regula, the
“ rule of truth,” “ the ecclesiastical tradition. ” Primitive books like the
Didascalia Apostolorum and the Apostolic Church Order give us a naive
picture of the unfettered action of the bishop as judge with his presbyters
as assessors. But as time went on the questions to be dealt with grew
more and more complex ; it became no longer possible to keep the world
at arm's length, and the relations of Christians with the heathen society
round them required an increasingly delicate adjustment; the simplicity
of the rigorist discipline, by which in the second century all sins of
idolatry, murder, fraud and unchastity were visited with lifelong
exclusion from communion, yielded at one point after another to the
demands of Christian charity and to the need of distinctions between case
The problem became pressing when the persecution of Decius
suddenly broke up the long peace, and multitudes of professing
Christians were tempted or driven to a momentary apostasy. The
Novatianist minority seceded rather than hold out to these unwilling
idolaters the hope of any readmission to the sacraments : the Church
was forced to face the situation, and it was obviously undesirable that
individual bishops should adjudicate upon similar circumstances in
wholly different ways. It was here that St Cyprian struck out his
successful line: his first councils were called to deal with the dis-
organisation which the persecution left behind it, and the bishops at
least of Africa were induced to agree upon a common policy worked out
on a uniform scale of treatment.
There is, however, nothing to shew that at Cyprian's councils any
canons were committed to writing, to serve as a permanent standard
of church discipline. That crucial step was only taken fifty years
later, as the persecution initiated by Diocletian relaxed and the bishops
of various localities could meet to take common counsel for the repair
of moral and material damage. During the decade 305-315 the
bishops of Spain met at Elvira, the bishops of Asia Minor at Ancyra
and at Neocaesarea, the Western bishops generally at Arles ; and the
codes of these four councils are the earliest material preserved in later
Canon Law.
The decisions of such councils had however no currency, in the first
instance, outside their own localities, and even the Council of Arles was a
concilium plenarium only of the West; but the feeling was already gaining


## p. 179 (#209) ############################################

Universal Church Law
179
strength, and it was quite in accordance with the ecclesiastical policy of
Constantine, that uniformity was desirable even in many matters where
it was not essential, and an oecumenical council offered unique oppor-
tunities of arriving at a common understanding. So we find the Council
of Nicaea issuing, side by side with its doctrinal definition, a series of
disciplinary regulations, among which are incorporated, often in a greatly
modified form, some canons of the Eastern Council of Ancyra and some
canons of the Western Council of Arles.
These Nicene canons are the earliest code that can be called Canon
Law of the whole Church, and at least in the West they enjoyed
something like the same finality in the realm of discipline that the
Nicene Creed enjoyed in the realm of doctrine. “ Other canon than the
Nicene canons the Roman church receives not,” “the Nicene canons alone
is the Catholic Church bound to recognise and to follow," writes
Innocent of Rome in the cause of St Chrysostom. Leo does not exclude
quite so rigorously the possibility of additions to the Church's code:
but the Nicene fathers still exercise an authority unhampered by time
or place, “mansuras usque in finem mundi leges ecclesiasticorum canonum
condiderunt, et apud nos et in toto orbe terrarum. ”
The principle was simplicity itself, but it came to be worked
out with a naive disregard of facts. On the one hand the genuine
Nicene code was not accepted quite entire, and where Western tradition
and Nicene rules were inconsistent, it was not always the tradition that
went under: the canon against kneeling at Eastertide is, in all early
versions that we can connect with Rome, entirely absent; the canon
against the validity of Paulianist baptism was misinterpreted to mean
that the Paulianists did not employ the baptismal formula. On the
other hand many early codes that had no sort of real connexion with the
Nicene council sheltered themselves under its name and shared its
authority. The canons of Ancyra, Neocaesarea and Gangra, possibly
also those of Antioch, were all included as Nicene in the early
Gallican collection. The canons of Sardica, probably because of the
occurrence in them of the name of Hosius of Cordova, are in most of
the oldest collections joined without break to the canons of Nicaea :
and a rather acrimonious controversy was carried on between Rome and
Carthage in the years 418 and 419, because Pope Zosimus cited the
Sardican canons as Nicene, and the Africans neither found these canons
in their own copies nor could learn anything about them in the East.
The original form of the collection known as Isidore's was apparently
translated from the Greek under Roman auspices at about this time:
the canons of Nicaea are those “quas sancta Romana recipit ecclesia,"
the codes of the six Greek councils Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra,
Antioch, Laodicea and Constantinople follow, and then the Sardican
canons under the heading “concilium Nicaenum xx episcoporum, quae in
graeco non habentur sed in latino inveniuntur ita. ” A Gallican editor of
CH, P.
12-2


## p. 180 (#210) ############################################

180
Codification of Church Law
this version, later in the fifth century, combines the newer material with
the older tradition in the shape of a canon proposed by Hosius, giving
the sanction of the Nicene or Sardican council to the three codes of
Ancyra, Neocaesarea and Gangra.
We must not suppose that all this juggling with the name Nicene
was in the strict sense fraudulent: we need not doubt the good faith of
St Ambrose when he quoted a canon against digamous clergy as Nicene,
though it is really Neocaesarean, or of St Augustine when he concludes
that the followers of Paul of Samosata did not observe the “rule of
baptism,” because the Nicene canons ordered them to be baptized, or for
that matter of popes Zosimus and Boniface because they made the
most of the Sardican prescriptions about appeals to Rome, which their
manuscripts treated as Nicene. The fact was that the twenty canons of
Nicaea were not sufficient to form a system of law: the new wine must
burst the old bottles, and by hook or by crook the code of authoritative
rules must be enlarged, if it was to be a serviceable guide for the
uniform exercise of church discipline. The spurious canon which the
Gallican Isidore fathers on Hosius puts just this point; “quoniam
multa praetermissa sunt quae ad robur ecclesiasticum pertinent, quae
iam priori synodo. . . constituta sunt,” let these other acts too receive
sanction. In the fourth century the councils had committed their canons
to writing. In the fifth century came the impulse to collect and codify
the extant material into a corpus of Canon Law.
The first steps were taken, as might be expected, in the East.
Somewhere about the year 400, and in the sphere of Constantinople-
Antioch, the canons of half-a-dozen councils, held in that part of
the world during the preceding century, were brought together into a
Vsingle collection and numbered continuously throughout. The editio
princeps, so to say, of this Greek code contained the canons of Nicaea
(20), Ancyra (25), Neocaesarea (14), Gangra (20), Antioch (25), and
Laodicea (59): it was rendered into Latin by the Isidorian collector,
and it was used by the officials of the church of Constantinople at the
Council of Chalcedon, for in the fourth session canons 4 and 5 of Antioch
canon 83” and “
canon 84,” and in the eleventh session
canons 16 and 17 of Antioch as “canon 95" and "canon 96. " The canons
of Constantinople were the first appendix to the code: they are trans-
lated in the Isidorian collection, and they are cited in the acts of
Chalcedon, but in neither case under the continuous numeration.
When Dionysius Exiguus, early in the sixth century, made a quasi-
official book of Canon Law for the Roman church, he found the canons
of Constantinople numbered with the rest, bringing up the total to 165
chapters: his two other Greek authorities, the canons of the Apostles and
the canons of Chalcedon, were numbered independently. The earliest
Syriac version adds to the original nucleus only those of Constantinople
and Chalcedon, with a double system of numeration, the one separate
were read
as


## p. 181 (#211) ############################################

Greek Canon Law
181
for each council, the other continuous throughout the whole series.
And in the digest of Canon Law, published about the middle of the
sixth century by John Scholasticus of Antioch (afterwards intruded as
patriarch of Constantinople), the “great synods of the fathers after the
apostles” are ten in number—i. e. not counting the Apostolic Canons the
councils proper are brought up to ten by the inclusion of Sardica,
Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon-and“ besides these, many
canonical rules were laid down by Basil the Great. ”
Two features in the work of John the Lawyer illustrate the transition
from earlier to later Canon Law. In the first place the list of authorities
is no longer confined strictly to councils, to whose decrees alone canonical
validity as yet attached in the fourth and fifth centuries: a new element
is introduced with the Canons of St Basil, and by the time we arrive at
the end of the seventh century, when the constituent parts of Eastern
Canon Law were finally settled at the Quinisextine council in Trullo, the
enumeration of Greek councils is followed by the enumeration of
individual doctors of the Greek Church, and an equal authority is
attributed to the rules or canons of both. In the second place John
represents a new movement for the arrangement of the material of
Church Law, not on the older historical and chronological method,
by which all the canons of each council were kept together, but on
a system of subject-matter headings, so that in every chapter all the
appropriate rules, however different in date or inconsistent in character,
would be set down in juxtaposition. Three of John's contemporaries
were doing the same sort of thing for Latin Church Law that he had
done for Greek—the deacon Ferrandus of Carthage in his Breviatio
Canonum, Cresconius, also an African, in his Concordia Canonum, and
Martin, bishop of Braga in north-western Spain, in his Capitula. But
the day of the great medieval systematisers was not yet : these tentative
efforts after an orderly system seem to have met at most with local
success, and the business of canonists was still directed in the main to
the enlargement of their codes, rather than to the coordination of the
diverse elements existing side by side in them.
Early Greek Church Law was simple and homogeneous enough, for it
consisted of nothing but Greek councils: even the first beginnings of the
corpus
of Latin Church Law were more complex, because not one element
but three went to its composition. We have seen that its nucleus
consisted in the universal acceptance of the canons of Nicaea, and in the
grafting of the canons of other early councils on to the Nicene stock.
Thus, whereas Greek canon law admitted no purely Latin element (and
in that way had no sort of claim to universality), Latin canon law not
only admitted but centred round Greek material
. Of course, as soon as
the idea of a corpus of ecclesiastical law took shape in the West, a Latin
element was bound to add itself to the Greek; and this Latin element
took two forms. The natural supplement to Greek councils were Latin
CH. 11.


## p. 182 (#212) ############################################

182
Latin Canon Law
that a group
of
some
councils: and every local collector would add to his Greek code the councils
of his own part of the world, Gallic, Spanish, African, as the case might
be. But just about the same time with the commencement of the continu-
ous series of councils whose canons were taken up into our extant Latin
codes, commences a parallel series of papal decretals: the African
councils begin with the Council of Carthage in 390 and the Council
of Hippo in 393, the decretals with the letter of Pope Siricius to
Himerius of Tarragona in 385. Such decretal letters were issued to
churches in most parts of the European West, Illyria included, but
not to north Italy, which looked to Milan, and not to Africa, which
depended on Carthage. As their immediate destination was local,
not one of them is found in the early Western codes so universally as the
Greek councils; on the other hand their circulation was larger than
that of
any
local Western council, and some or others of them are found
in almost every collection. It would even appear
eight decretals of Siricius and Innocent, Zosimus and Celestine, had been
put together and published as a sort of authoritative handbook before
the papacy of Leo (441-461). Outside Rome, there were thus three
elements normally present in a Western code, the Greek, the local,
and the papal. In a Roman collection, the decretals were themselves
the local element: thus Dionysius Exiguus' edition consists of two
parts, the first containing the Greek councils (and by exception the
Carthaginian council of 419), the second containing papal letters from
Siricius down to Gelasius and Anastasius II. But even the code of
Dionysius, though superior to all others in accuracy and convenience,
was made only for Roman use, and for more than two centuries had
only a limited vogue elsewhere. Each district in the West had its
separate Church Law as much as its separate liturgy or its separate
political organisation; and it was not till the union of Gaul and Italy
under one head in the person of Charles the Great, that the collection
of Dionysius, as sent to Charles by Pope Hadrian in 774, was given official
position throughout the Frankish dominions.


## p. 183 (#213) ############################################

183
CHAPTER VII.
EXPANSION OF THE TEUTONS.
The race which played the leading part in history after the break-up
of the Roman Empire was the race known as the Teutons. Their early
history is shrouded in obscurity, an obscurity which only begins to be
lightened about the end of the second century of our era.
Such infor-
mation as we have we owe to Greeks and Romans; and what they give
us is almost exclusively contemporary history, and the few fragmentary
statements referring to earlier conditions, invaluable as they are to us,
do not go far behind their own time. Archaeology alone enables us to
penetrate further back. Without its aid it would be vain to think of
attempting to answer the question of the origin and original distribution
of the Germanic race.
The earliest home of the Teutons was in the countries surrounding
the western extremity of the Baltic Sea, comprising what is now the
south of Sweden, Jutland with Schleswig-Holstein, the German Baltic
coast to about the oder and the islands with which the sea is studded
as far as Gothland. This, not Asia, is the region which, with a certain
extension south, as far, say, as the great mountain chain of central
Germany, may be described as the cradle of the Indo-Germanic race.
According to all appearance, this was the centre from which it impelled
its successive waves of population towards the west, south, and south-east,
to take possession, in the end, of all Europe and even of a part of Asia.
A portion of the Indo-Germanic race, however, remained behind in the
north, to emerge after the lapse of two thousand years into the light of
history as a new people of wonderful homogeneity and remarkable
uniformity of physical type, the people which we know as the Teutons.
The expansion of the Indo-Germanic race and its division into various
nations and groups of nations had in the main been completed during
the Neolithic Period, so that in the Bronze Age-roughly, for the
northern races, B. C. 1500-500—the territories which we have indicated
above belonged exclusively to the Teutons who formed a distinct race
with its own special characteristics and language.
The distinctive feature of the civilisation of these prehistoric
Teutons is the working of bronze. It is well known that in the North-
CH, VII.


## p. 184 (#214) ############################################

184
The Teutons
[B. C. 600—600
a region where the Bronze Age was of long duration—a remarkable degree
of skill was attained in this art. The Northern Teutonic Bronze Age
forms therefore in every respect a striking phenomenon in the general
history of human progress. On the other hand, the advance in culture
which followed the introduction of the use of iron was not at first shared
by the Northern peoples. It was only about s. c. 500, that is to say
quite five hundred years later than in Greece and Italy, in the South
of France and the upper part of the Danube basin, that the use of iron
was introduced among the Teutons. The period of civilisation usually
known as the Hallstatt period, of which the later portion (from about
B. C. 600 onwards) was not less brilliant than the Later Bronze Age,
remained practically unknown to the Teutons.
The nearest neighbours of the Teutons in this earliest period were,
to the south the Kelts, to the east the Baltic peoples (Letts, Lithuanians,
Prussians) and the Slavs, in the extreme north the Finns. How far the
Teutonic territories extended northward, it is difficult to say. The
southern extremity of Scandinavia, that is to say the present Sweden up
to about the lakes, certainly always belonged to them. This is put
beyond doubt by archaeological discoveries. The Teutons therefore have
as good a claim to be considered the original inhabitants of Scandinavia
as their northern neighbours the great Finnish people. It is certain that
even in the earliest times they were expanding in a northerly direction,
and that they settled in the Swedish lake district, as far north as the
Dal Elf, and the southern part of Norway, long before we have any
historical information about these countries. Whether they found them
unoccupied, or whether they drove the Finns steadily backward, cannot
be certainly decided, although the latter is the more probable. The
Sitones whom Tacitus mentions along with the Suiones as the nations
dwelling furthest to the north were certainly Finns.
On the east, the Teutonic territory, which as saw did not
originally extend beyond the Oder, touched on that of the Baltic peoples
who were later known collectively, by a name which is doubtless of
Teutonic derivation, as Aists (Aestii in Tacitus, Germ. 45). To the
south and east of these lay the numerous Slavonic tribes (called Venedi
or Veneti by ancient writers).
The land between the Oder and the Vistula
was therefore in the earliest times inhabited, in the north by peoples of
the Letto-Lithuanian linguistic group, and southward by Slavs. On
this side also the Teutons in quite early times forced their way beyond
the boundaries of their original territory. In the sixth century B. C. ,
as can be determined with considerable certainty from archaeo-
logical discoveries, the settlement of these territories by the Teutons
was to a large extent accomplished, the Baltic peoples being forced to
retire eastward, beyond the Vistula, and the Slavs towards the south-east.
It is likely that the conquerors came from the north, from Scandinavia ;
that they sought a new home on the south coast of the Baltic and
we


## p. 185 (#215) ############################################

B. C. 400—300]
Teutons and Kelts
185
towards the east and south-east. To this points also the fact (otherwise
hard to explain) that the tribes which in historic times are settled in
these districts, Goths, Gepidae, Rugii, Lemovii, Burgundii, Charini, Varini
and Vandals, form a separate group, substantially distinguished in customs
and speech from the Western Teutons, but shewing numerous points of
affinity, especially in language and legal usage, to the Northern Teutons.
When, further, a series of Eastern Teutonic names of peoples appear
again in Scandinavia, those for instance of the Goths: Gauthigoth (TaūTOL,
Gautar, Gothland); Greutungi : Greotingi; Rugians: Rugi (Rygir,
Rogaland); Burgundiones: Borgundarholmr ; and when we find in
Jordanes the legend of the Gothic migration asserting that this people
came from Scandinavia (Scandza insula) as the officina gentium aut certe
velut vagina nationum ; the evidence in favour of a gradual settlement of
eastern Germany by immigrants from the north seems irresistible.
By the year B. c. 400, at latest, the Teutons must have reached the
northern base of the Sudetes'. It was only a step further to the settle-
ment of the upper Vistula; and if the Bastarnae, the first Germanic tribe
which comes into the light of history, had their seat here about B. c. 300,
the settlement of the whole basin of the upper Vistula, right up to the
Carpathians, must have been carried out by the Teutons in the course of
the fourth century B. C.
It was with Kelts that the Teutons came in contact towards the
sources of the Oder in the mountains which form the boundary of
Bohemia. Now there is no race to which the Teutons owe so much as
to the Kelts. The whole development of their civilisation was most
strongly influenced by the latter-so much so that in the centuries next
before the Christian era the whole Teutonic race shared a common
civilisation with the Kelts, to whom they stood in a relation of intel-
lectual dependence; in every aspect of public and private life Keltic
influence was reflected. How came it then that a people whose civilisa-
tion shews such marked characteristics as that of the Teutons of the
Later Bronze Age could lose these with such surprising rapidity-
perhaps in the course of a single century ?
The earliest habitat of the Teutons extended, as we have seen, on the
south as far as the Elbe. This river also marks the northern boundary
of the Kelts. All Germany west of the Elbe from the North Sea to the
* This is shewn by the name borrowed from the Keltic for the great central
German range, the Hercynian Forest of the Greeks and Romans, called in Old
High German Fergunna from the Teutonic * Fergunjo (* Fergunia) from the Early
Teutonic= Early Keltic * Perkunia (borrowed, therefore, before the loss of the
p-sound, which took place in Keltic at latest in the fifth century B. C. , and before the
Teutonic sound-shifting), and also by the name for the Kelts in general Walchen or
Walhas or Walhos from the Keltic *Wolkoi (Lat. Volcae), borrowings which can
only be explained by contact with the Kelts who lived on the southern skirts of the
range.
CH. VII.


## p. 186 (#216) ############################################

186
Migrations of the Kelts
[B. C. 1000
Alps was in the possession of the Kelts, at the time when the Teutons
occupied the western shores of the Baltic basin. The vigorous power of
expansion which this race displayed in the last thousand years of the
prehistoric age has left its traces throughout Europe, and even in Asia ;
and that is what gives it such importance in the history of the world.
The whole of Western Europe-France with Belgium and Holland, the
British Isles and the greater part of the Pyrenaean peninsula, in the south
the region of the Alps and the plains of the Po-has been at one time
or another subject to their rule. Eastward, migratory swarms of Kelts
pushed their way down the Danube to the Black Sea and even into Asia
Minor.
The starting-point of this movement was probably in what is now
north-western Germany and the Netherlands, and this region is therefore
to be regarded as the original home of the Keltic race. Place-names
and river-names, the study of which is a most valuable means of
elucidating prehistoric conditions, enable us to prove the existence in
many districts of this original Keltic population? They are scattered
over the whole of western Germany and as far as Brabant and Flanders,
but occur with especial frequency between the Rhine and the Weser.
In the north the Wörpe-Bach (north-east of Bremen) marks the limits
of their distribution, in the east the course of the Leine, down to
Rosoppe; in the south they extend as far as the Main where the Aschaff
(anciently Ascapha) at Aschaffenburg forms the last outpost of their
territory. They are not found on the strip of coast along the North
.
Sea, occupied later by the Chauci and Frisians, nor on the western side
of the Elbe. From this we may safely conclude that these districts
were abandoned by their original Keltic population earlier, indeed
considerably earlier, than those to the west of the Weser, and also that
the expansion of the Teutons westwards proceeded along two distinct
lines, though doubtless almost contemporaneously-one westward along
the North Sea and one in a more southerly direction up the Elbe along
both its banks.
With this view the results of prehistoric archaeology are in complete
agreement.
We have determined the area of distribution of the
Northern Bronze Age—which we saw to be specifically Teutonic—as
consisting, in the earlier period (up to c. B. c. 1000), of Scandinavia and
the Danish islands, and also Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg and West-
1 Among Keltic river-names are the Rhine (Keltic Rēnos from an older * Reinas,
* Rainas), the Main (Old-High-Germ. Moin, in which the Keltic diphthong is
preserved), the Embscher (Embiscara from an older Ambîscara) and the Lippe, also
perhaps the Lahn, Sieg, Ruhr, Leine and even the Weser. The mountain-names
Taunus, Finne and Semana (the old name for the Thuringian Forest) also betray a
Keltic origin. With these must be classed numerous names of places and rivers
which have, sometimes even now, the archaic termination -apa or in High German
-afa, -affa (-epa, -efu, -ipa, -ifa, -upa, -ufa), which is absolutely inexplicable from
the Teutonic but has its parallels in Keltic and points clearly to a Keltic origin.
*


## p. 187 (#217) ############################################

B. C. 1000–200]
Civilisation of the Kelts
187
Pomerania, and therefore bounded on the south-west by the Elbe.
But in the Later Bronze Age (c. B. c. 1000-600) this territory is enlarged
in all directions. On the south and west especially, to judge from the
evidence of excavations, it extends from the point at which the Wartha
flows into the Oder, in a south-westerly direction through the Spreewald
and Fläming districts to the Elbe; then further west to the Harz, and
from there northwards along the Oker and Aller to about the estuary of
the Weser, and finally along the coast-line as far as Holland. In
Thuringia the Keltic peoples maintained their hold somewhat longer.
The northern part of it-above the Unstrut-may have received a
Teutonic population in the course of the fifth century B. C. ; the southern
in the course of the fourth. On the other hand, the whole region
westward from the Weser and the Thuringian Forest as far as the Rhine
was still in the possession of the Kelts about the year B. c. 300, and was
only conquered by the Teutons in the course of the following century'.
It may be taken as the assured result of all the linguistic and
archaeological data, that only about the year B. C. 200 the whole of
north-western Germany was held by the Teutons, who had now reached
the frontier-lines formed by the Rhine and the Main.
About the close of the fifth century B. c. , a new civilisation appears
in the Keltic domain, a civilisation which, from the fine taste and
technical perfection of its productions, deserves in more than one
respect to rank with that of the classical nations. This is the so-called
La Tène Civilisation, which takes its name from a place on the north
side of the Lake of Neuchâtel where especially numerous and varied
remains of it have come to light. Where its centre is to be located we
do not know-somewhere, we may conjecture, in the South of France or
in Switzerland. Starting from this point it spread through all the parts
of Europe, which were not under the sway of the Greek and Roman
civilisation. Following the course of the Rhone, of the Rhine, and of the
Danube, it rapidly conquered all the countries in which Gallic tongues
were spoken and maintained its supremacy until the Graeco-Roman
civilisation deposed it from its primacy.
It was with this highly developed civilisation—so far superior,
especially in its highly advanced knowledge of the working of iron, to
the Northern, which still only made use of bronze—that the Teutons
came in contact in their advance towards the south-west. It is quite
intelligible that the Teutons in the course of their two hundred years of
struggle with the Kelts for the possession of north-western Germany,
should have eagerly adopted the higher civilisation of the Kelts.
| The Keltic local names in -apa—which lie mainly in the country between the
Weser and the Rhine-were unaffected by the Teutonic sound-shifting, therefore
must have been already adopted into the vocabulary of the advancing Teutons.
Then, too, prehistoric remains in this region down to the “Middle La Tène Period”
(C. B. C. 300), and in its southern parts even later, are so distinctively Keltic that
there can be no doubt it was still in Keltic occupation.
CH. VII.


## p. 188 (#218) ############################################

188
Movements of the Teutons
(B. C. 400—200
1
Vague reminiscences of the former supremacy of the Keltic race
survived into historic times. Ac fuit antea tempus cum Germanos Galli
virtute superarent, ultro bella inferrent, propter hominum multitudinem
agrique inopiam trans Rhenum colonias mitterent, writes Caesar-
a piece of information which he must have derived from Gaulish
sources. Here belongs also the Gallic tradition reported by Timagenes!
according to which a part of the nation was said ab insulis extimis
conflurisse et tractibus Transrhenanis crebritate bellorum et adluvione
fervidi maris sedibus suis expulsos. Caesar himself mentions a Keltic
tribe, the Menapii, on the right bank of the lower Rhine.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Keltic Teuriscans of
northern Hungary were originally settled in south-central Germany
between the Erzgebirge and the Harz, but later (about B. C. 400) were
forced out of this district by the pressure of the advancing Germans,
and retired in two sections towards the south and south-east.
About the year B. C. 200 the Teuton occupation of north-west
Germany was, as we have seen, completed, having reached the Rhine on
the west and the Main on the south. But the great forward movement
towards the south-west was not to be stayed by these rivers. Vast
waves of population kept pressing downward from the north, and giving
fresh impetus to the movement. The whole Germanic world must at
that time have been in constant ferment and unrest. Nations were born
and perished. Everywhere there was pressure and counter-pressure.
Any people that had not the strength to maintain itself against its
neighbours, or to strike out a new path for itself, was swept away. The
tension thus set up first found relief on the Rhenish frontier. About
the middle of the second century B. c. Teutonic hordes swept across the
river and occupied the whole country westward of the lower Rhine as
far as the Ardennes and the Eifel. These hordes were the ancestors of
the later tribes and clans which meet us here in the first dawn of history,
the Eburones, Condrusi, Caeroesi, Paemani, Segni, Nervi, Grudi, and
also of the Texuandri, Sunuci, Baetusii, Caraces, who appear later, as well
,
as of the Tungri, who after the annihilation of the Eburones by Caesar
succeeded to their territory and position of influence. The Treveri, on
the other hand, who had their seat further to the south beyond the
Eifel, were doubtless Kelts? .
The Teutonic invasion of Gaul must have taken place mainly in the
second half of the second century B. C. , but it was still in progress in
Caesar's time.
It may suffice briefly to recall in this connexion the
successful campaign of Ariovistus ; the incursion immediately before
1 Ammianus, xv. 9. 4.
2 That the other tribes which we have just named were of Teutonic origin there
can be no doubt, and the attempt of Müllenhoff to prove that these tribes were
Keltic (Deutsche Altertumskunde, 1². pp. 194 ff. ) must be pronounced to have com-
pletely failed, as is shewn by R. Much (Deutsche Stammsitze, pp. 162 ff. ).


## p. 189 (#219) ############################################

B. C. 58–9]
Teutonic Invasion of Gaul
189
Caesar entered upon his province, of 24,000 Harudi into the country of
the Sequani; the invasion of the Suebi under Nasua and Cimberius in
the year 58 ; and of the Usipetes and Tencteri at the beginning of the
year s. c. 55. That there were even later immigrations of Teutonic hosts
into north-eastern Gaul may be conjectured from the absence of any
mention by Caesar of several of the tribes which were settled here in the
time of the Empire, and this conjecture is raised almost to a certainty
by the known instance of the Tungri.
It was only later, in the time of the migrations of the Cimbri, and
doubtless in connexion therewith, that the frontier formed by the Main
was crossed. It was—to the best of our information-a portion of the
Suebi, previously settled on the northern bank of this river, who were the
first to push across it, and after driving out the Helveti, established
themselves firmly to the south of the river, and were here known under
the name of Marcomanni (Men of the Marches)—the name first meets
us in Caesar, in the enumeration of the peoples led by Ariovistus.
Their country, the Marca, extended south to the Danube. That the
Tulingi (mentioned by Caesar as finetini of the Helveti) were of Germanic
origin is put beyond doubt by their name, which is good German and
forms a pendant to that of the Thuringi. But it will doubtless be
near the truth to see in them not the whole nation of the Marcomanni,
but only a tribe or local division of it, and doubtless its advance-guard
towards the south. In any case it is evident from Caesar's account that
numbering as they did a round 36,000 (B. G. 1. 29. 2), of whom about
8000 were warriors, they formed a united whole with a definite territory
and were not merely a migratory body of Marcomanni gathered together
ad hoc.
A remnant of the old Marcomanni of South Germany, who in the
year B. c. 9 migrated to Bohemia, is doubtless to be found in the Suebi
Nicretes whom we meet with in the time of the Empire on the lower
Neckar. Further to the north, on the southern bank of the Main, near
Mittenberg, we find the name of the Toutoni in an inscription which
came to light in the year 18781. Hereupon certain scholars” have
arrived at the conviction that this locality was the original home of the
Teutones whom we hear of in association with the Cimbri, and so that
they were not of Germanic but of Keltic origin, being of Helvetic race
and identified with the Helvetic local clan of the Twuyevoi of Strabo.
This hypothesis must be absolutely rejected. There must have been
some connexion between those Toutoni and the Teutoni of history. But
to conclude without more ado that the Teutoni were Helveti, South-
German Kelts, is to do direct violence to the whole body of ancient
* C. I. L. xi. 6610, dating perhaps from about the beginning of the second
century A. D. : inter | Toutones | C. . . A. . . | H. . . | F. . . .
? G. Kessima, Westdeutsche Zeitschrift, ix. (1890), p. 213; R. Much, Deutsche
Stammsitze, p. 5.
CH, VII.


## p. 190 (#220) ############################################

190
The Bastarnae
[B. C. 182
tradition, which consistently represents the Teutoni as a people whose
original home was in the North. The simplest solution of the difficulty
is that the Mittenberg Toutoni were a fragment which split off from the
Teutonic peoples during their migration southward, and settled in this
district, just as in north-eastern Gaul a portion of the Cimbri and
Teutones maintained itself as the tribe of the Aduatuci.
The whole process of the expulsion of the Kelts from South Germany
must have been accomplished between B. c. 100 and 70, for Caesar knows
of no Gauls on the right bank of the upper Rhine, and the Helveti had
been living for a considerable time to the south of the head-waters of
the river which, as Caesar tells us, divides Helvetic from German
territory.
The first collision between the Teutons and the Graeco-Roman
world took place far to the east of Gaul. It resulted from a great
migration of the eastern Teutonic tribes in the neighbourhood of the
Vistula, which had carried some of them as far as the shore of the Black
Sea. The chief of these tribes was that of the Bastarnae. Settled, it
would seem, before their exodus near the head-waters of the Vistula they
appear, as early as the beginning of the second century B. C. , near the
estuary of the Danube. The whole region north of the Pruth, from the
Black Sea to the northern slope of the Carpathians, was in their
possession and remained so during all the time that they are known to
history. Another Germanic tribe, doubtless dependent upon them,
meets us in the same district, namely the Sciri from the lower Vistula.
The well known and much discussed “psephisma” of the town of Olbia
in honour of Protogenes mentions them as allied with the Galatai, and
there has been much debate as to what nation is to be understood by
these Talátat, and they have sometimes been conjectured to be Illyrian
Kelts (Scordisci), sometimes Thracian, sometimes the--also Keltic-
Britolages, or the Teutonic Bastarnae, or even the Goths. The majority
of scholars has however decided that these “Galatians” are the
Bastarnae', whose presence in the neighbourhood of Olbia in the year
B. C. 182 is attested by Polybius. There is, indeed, much in favour of
this hypothesis and nothing against it. The inscription then, which is
proved by the character of the writing to be one of the oldest found in
this locality, would have been written about the time of the arrival of
the Bastarnae at the estuary of the Danube, that is to say, about b. c.