shall not follow the history even to the extent to which M. Allard goes, but confine ourselves to the treatment of the Pagan temples by the Christian emperors up to the time of the capture of Rome by the Goths. The greatest revolution that ever took place in the history of the world is the conversion of the Roman empire from heathenism to Christianity, and every phase of that revolution is full of the deepest interest. At the death of Augustus there was not so much as one Christian in the world; at the death of Constantine, 323 years later, more than half the then known world was Christian. And this revolution was effected by means which are even more worthy of attention than the fact itself. To use the eloquent words of the Comte de Champagny Where is there any mention of an insurrection, a league, or a riot among the Christians? Here was no one of the ordinary cir cumstances of a revolution. Those who were proscribed, concealed themselves, or fled; those who were arrested, suffered death without resistance. And this is repeated thousands of times, and each succeeding age saw it repeated more frequently. Every time that force resolved to destroy it found a greater number to be destroyed. Insomuch that, at last, this war, in which one party only inflicted death and never suffered it, while the other party only suffered and never inflicted it, ended in the triumph of the party which died over that which slew. The sword fell shivered against breasts which offered themselves to it. And this event stands by itself in the history of the world. This universal resignation, this courage, so heroically, so constantly passive; and still more this triumph, won only by dying, has no single parallel in history. No sect, no religion, has ever encountered the sword with the absolute passiveness which was the characteristic of the primitive Christians; or if there has been any one which ever practised it, that one has been crushed. Christianity alone, so far as I can learn, has ever submitted itself in this manner; Christianity alone, most unquestionably, has ever gained such a victory by so submitting itself.* But was the victory gained by this more than mortal patience used as nobly as it had been won? Did the Christians when they came into power use that power for the welfare of the human race, or did they take advantage of it to persecute those who had oppressed them so long and so cruelly? Looking at the broad facts of history, we may safely affirm that they did use it nobly, because the few exceptions that a close examination brings to light, disappear at the distance at which we must stand if we would take in the whole of the fourth and fifth centuries at a glance. The Fathers of the Christian Church knew how to combine a supreme hatred of idolatry with a tender compassion for the idolators themselves. Nay, they went further. They knew how * "Césars," iii. p 486. to gather out and preserve; for the benefit of future generations, all that was really good and worth preserving in Pagan literature, Pagan art, and even in Pagan social and religious practices. Our subject at present is the treatment of the heathen temples by the laws enacted by Christian emperors, under the influence of the Fathers of the Christian Church. The temples were the very seat and stronghold of heathen idolatry. Their altars and statues were the very instruments of that impious worship in which the Christians believed that the heathen offered sacrifice to devils and not to God. It would have been a very pardonable revenge if the Christians had utterly demolished every temple and altar and statue that bore the name of those false gods in whose honour they had been so cruelly persecuted. Such an act might have been justified by zeal for the spiritual welfare of the surviving Pagans, as well as justice to their own martyred brethren. When Henry VIII. wished to blot out the memory of the Pope from the minds of Englishmen he had no scruple in destroying almost all the MSS. in which his name was mentioned, however richly they were illuminated. When Cromwell wished to annihilate prelacy he had no scruple about smashing painted windows and rich carving in churches and cathedrals. Why should the Christians of the fourth century have had any tenderness towards the symbols of a still living and vicious idolatry? It seems so natural to conclude that they would be thoroughgoing Iconoclasts that few readers are disposed to question the assertion of Gibbon, that "The zeal of the emperors was excited to vindicate their own honour and that of the Deity; and the temples of the Roman world were subverted about sixty years after the conversion of Constantine."* I shall bring evidence to prove that this assertion is very far from being borne out by facts of history. The historian passes on to an eloquent plea for these buildings. He says:Many of these temples were the most splendid and beautiful monuments of Grecian architecture, and the emperor himself was interested not to deface the splendour of his own cities, or to diminish the value of his own possessions. Those stately edifices might be suffered to remain as so many lasting trophies of the victory of Christ. In the decline of the arts they might be usefully converted into magazines, manufactories, or places of public assembly; and perhaps, when the walls of the temple had been sufficiently purified by holy rites, the worship of the true Deity might be allowed to expiate the ancient guilt of idolatry.† : The course which Gibbon, and Milman, following in his Vol. v. p. 92. + Vol. v. pp. 104, 105. History of Christianity," Bk. III. c. 7, vol. ii. p. 171. footsteps, pathetically wish had been adopted, was, as we shall see, the precise method followed by the Christian emperors. To begin with Constantine himself. The ecclesiastical historians, in gratitude for the benefits which the first Christian emperor conferred upon the Church, were somewhat disposed to exaggerate the extent to which he discouraged idolatry. Theodoret tells us that "he enacted laws prohibiting sacrifices to idols, and commanded churches to be erected. . . The temples of the idols were closed."* Socrates says: "He either closed or destroyed the idolatrous temples, and exposed the images which were in them to popular contempt." But elsewhere he tells us, with some inconsistency, that "Constantine set up his own statues in the temples." Sozomen says:§ "The worship of false gods was universally prohibited; and the arts of divination, the dedication of statues, and the celebration of Grecian festivals, were interdicted.” These, however, were all writers of the fifth century, and Zosimus, the pagan historian of the same period, who regarded Christianity as the cause of all the calamities that were befalling the Roman Empire, and Constantine as the guilty apostate from the gods of Rome, records that emperor's contempt for the heathen gods, but says nothing of the sweeping enactments mentioned by the writers we have quoted. Eusebius, indeed, the contemporary and devoted friend and panegyrist of Constantine, says: "His subjects, both civil and military, throughout the empire, found a barrier everywhere opposed against idolatry, and every kind of sacrifice forbidden."|| And again: "He issued successive laws and ordinances forbidding any to offer sacrifice to idols, to consult diviners, to erect images." But Eusebius has enabled us to explain these by preserving Constantine's own words, in a letter addressed by the emperor "to the people of the Eastern provinces," in which, after setting forth his own faith, he breaks out into a devout prayer to God, the Lord of all: Under Thy guidance have I devised and accomplished measures fraught with blessing; preceded by Thy sacred sign, I have led armies to victory; and still, on each occasion of public danger, I follow the same symbol of Thy perfections, while advancing to meet the foe. My own desire is, for the general advantage of the world and all mankind, that Thy people should enjoy a life of peace and undisturbed concord. Let those, therefore, who are still blinded by error, be made welcome to the same degree of peace and tranquillity which they have who believe. For it may be that this restoration of equal *"H. E." i. 2. § Ibid. i. 8. VOL. VI.—NO. II. + Ibid. i. 3. + Ibid. i. 18. Ibid. iv. 25. A A privileges to all will have a powerful effect in leading them into the path of truth. Let no one molest another in this matter, but let everyone be free to follow the bias of his own mind. Only, let men of sound mind be assured of this, that those only can live a life of holiness and purity whom Thou callest to an acquiescence in Thy holy laws. With regard to those who will hold themselves aloof from us, let them have, if they please, their temples of lies; we have the glorious edifice of Thy truth, which Thou hast given us as our native home (karà þúσw). . . . Only let all beware lest they inflict an injury on that religion which experience itself testifies to be pure and undefiled. Henceforward, therefore, let us all enjoy in common the privileges placed within our reach-I mean the blessing of peace; and let us endeavour to keep our conscience pure from aught that might interrupt and mar this blessing. . . . . It is one thing voluntarily to undertake the conflict for immortality, another to compel others to do so from fear of punishment. These are our words; and we have enlarged upon these topics more than our ordinary clemency would have dictated, because we were unwilling to dissemble or be false to the true faith; and the more so since we understand there are some who say that the rites of the heathen temples, and the powers of darkness, have been entirely removed; we should, indeed, have earnestly recommended such removal to all men, were it not that the rebellious spirit of those wicked errors still continues obstinately fixed in the minds of some, so as to discourage the hope of any general restoration of mankind to the ways of truth.* In perfect keeping with these tolerant sentiments is an edict of A.D. 319, in which Constantine says: "You who think it conduces to your advantage, go to the public altars and shrines, and celebrate the solemnities of your own accustomed rite: for we do not forbid the offices of the bye-gone use to be practised in the free light of day."t These words were intended to reassure the Pagans; for in this same year Constantine had issued a most severe edict against divination in private houses. An aruspex, convicted of entering a private house to practise his sorceries was condemned to be burned alive, and those who had called him in to forfeit their goods and to be banished. It must be remembered that the laws of the XII. Tables decreed death to those who practised divination in secret, and the Emperors Tiberius and Diocletian had both enforced this penalty, so that Constantine was in this matter only following in the steps of his predecessors. Two years afterwards he explained more distinctly the kind of divination *"Vit. Const." ii. 55, 56, 59, 60. which he condemned;* and in that same year, 321, he wrote to Maximus, prefect of Rome, to order the consultation of the haruspices, in case of any public buildings being struck by lightning, in "conformity with ancient custom," in order to see what that event portends. The fact is, Constantine had accepted the title and office of Pontifex Maximus, and performed many acts as chief of the Pagan priesthood. The Pagan Zosimus says: "He made use of the sacred rights of our fathers, not out of reverence, but rather of necessity. . . . . And when a national festival occurred on which the army ought to have gone up to the capitol, he turned away from the sacred temple-worship, amidst the violent abuse of the crowd all along the way, and the hatred of the senate and people." This shows us what a difficult position he occupied, and how unlikely it was that he should exasperate his Pagan subjects by a wholesale destruction of their temples. De Rossi has shown that the vestibule of the present Church of SS. Cosmas and Damian is a round temple of Romulus, dedicated by Fabius Titianus, prefect of Rome, in 339, to Constantine himself.§ The emperor accepted the dedication of a similar offering of the people of Spello, in Umbria, in 333, on the condition "that the temple dedicated to our name shall not be polluted by the frauds of any contagious superstition." When he died, Eutropius says: "Inter divos meruit referri." The Pagans placed him among their gods, and celebrated festivals in his honour. DIVO CONSTANTINO AVGUSTO appears on monumental inscriptions put up in honour of a prince who had said :** "I recoil with horror from the blood of sacrifices, from their foul and detestable odours, and from every earth-born magic fire; for the profane and impious superstitions which are defiled by these rites have cast down and Beugnot points out that there were among both Greeks and Romans two distinct kinds of divination-"One was legal and public, the other secret and generally forbidden. The first was called by the Greeks θεουργία ; the second, yonreía. . . . . Divination, or theurgic magic, was a divine art, which had for its end the perfecting of the mind and purifying of the soul. The persons so favoured as to arrive at aurovía, a state in which they had intimate converse with the gods, believed themselves endued with their omnipotence. Goetic magic, or sorcery, professed by men who had only commerce with the evil demons, was regarded as mischievous and provocative of crime. The adepts of this latter art lived, they said, in places underground; and the obscurity of night, black victims, bones, or whole carcases of the dead, comported with the horrid nature of their art. They cut the throats of infants, and sought in the entrails of human victims their prognostications of the future."-Op. cit. tom. i. p. 81. "Cod. Theod." XVI. xi. 1. Lib. ii. c. 29. | Ibid. p. 69. "Brev." x. 8. |