Scarcely had he been able in some degree to re- store the affairs of the state when the Arabs issued from their own country, for the purpose of extend- ing the religion and the empire which Mohammed had founded with the same hand.
N"ever was progress so rapid. They at once con- quered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Africa, and invaded Persia.
God permitted that his religion should cease to be dominant in many countries; not that he had aban- doned it, but because, whether in a state of glory or in a state of external humiliation, it is always equally capable of producing its natural effect — the sanctifi- cation of the soul.
The prosperity of religion is different from the 446 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [MONTESQniED.
prosperity of empires. A celebrated writer says it is a very small affliction to be ill, for the reason, that sufEering is the true state of the Christian.' We might even say that the times of the humiliation of the Church — the times of her dispersion, of the de- struction of her temples, and the sufferings of her martyrs — ^have been the times of her glory; and that, when in the eyes of the world she has appeared to triumph, she has ordinarily been in a state of abase- ment.
In order to explain the famous event of the con- quest of so many nations by the Arabs, it is not necessary that we should have recourse to enthusiasm alone. The Saracens had long been distinguished among the auxiliaries of the Komans and the Per- sians. They and the Osroenians ° were the best archers in the world. Alexander Severus and Maxi- min engaged as many of them as they could in their service, and employed them with great success against the Germans, whom they destroyed at a distance; and, during the reign of Valens, the Goths could not resist them.' In short, they were, at that time, the best cavalry in the world.
We have said that among the Eomans the legions ' Pascal: "La maladie est I'etat nature! des Chretiens," etc. (Pemecs diverses sur la relic/ion, Ixxxv.) — Translator.
' The people so called dwelt in the northern part of Mesopotamia; Edessa and Nisibis were their principal cities, the former being their capital. (Gibbon's Rome, vol. i, pp. 242, 243.) — Teanslatob.
' ZosiMus, lib. iv.
CHAP. XXII.] OF THE ROMANS. 447 of Earope were superior to the legions of Asia. The case was wholly the contrary in respect to cavalry. I speak of the cavalry of the Parthians, the Osroe- nians, and the Saracens. It was this that arrested the conquests of the Eomans; for, after the time of Antiochus, a new Tartar people, whose cavalry was unequalled, had seized high Asia.
This cavalry was heavy; * that of Europe light — a state of case which is conapletely reversed at the present day. Holland and Friesland — so to speak — were not yet made,' and Germany was covered with forests, lakes, and morasses, and was consequently a country in which cavalry could be of little service.
Since a regular course has been given to the great rivers, these morasses have disappeared, and Germany has changed its face. The works of Yalentinian on the ISTecker, and those of the Komans on the Ehine," effected many changes;' and, commerce being intro- duced, those countries which had not formerly pro- duced horses now produced them — and thus they came into use.'
■* See what Zosimus, lib. i, says respecting the cavalry of Aurelian, and that of Palmyra; see also Ammianus Marcellinus on the cavalry of the Persians.
' These counti-ies consisted for the most part of submerged lands, which art has rendered fit for the habitation of man.
' See Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxvii.
' The climate of these regions is not now so cold as the ancients re- port it to have been.
* Caesar says the horses of the Germans were small and shabby. {Gallic War, Book IV, ch. ii.) And Tacitus, on the Manners of the Ger- mans, says: Germanm pecorum fecunda, sed plerague improcera.
448 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [montesquieu.
Constantine, the son of Heraclius, having been poisoned, and his son Constantine ° having been killed in Sicily, Constantine Pogonatus, the eldest son of the latter, succeeded to the empire." Being assem- bled, the grandees of the Eastern provinces desired to have the two brothers of the reigning sovereign crowned also — maintaining that, since it was neces- sary to believe in the Trinity, it was alike reasonable to have three emperors.
The history of the Greek empire is full of such passages. Feebleness of mind having become the characteristic of the nation, there was no longer any wisdom in affairs; and we see disorders without cause and revolutions without motives.
An universal bigotry depressed the courage of the people and stupefied the whole empire. Constanti- nople was, properly speaking, the only place in the East in which Christianity became dominant; and the cowardice, the indolence, and effeminacy of Asiatic life were blended with devotion. Among a thousand examples I will only notice that of Philippicus — the general of the emperor Maurice — who, being on the eve of engaging in battle, fell to weeping at the thought of the great number of people who were about to be killed."
There were tears of a very different sort — those ' The name here should be Constans II. fSee Gibbon's Fame, vol. iv, p. 674.) — Tkanslator.
" ZoNABAS, Idfe of Constantine the Bearded.
" TlieopJiylaclv,s, lib. ii, ch. iii; History of the Emperor Maurice.
CHAP. XXII.] OF THE ROMANS. 449 of the Arabs, who wept from the grief which they felt because their general had agreed to a truce which interrupted the shedding of Christian blood."'
There is a total difEerence between an army of fanatics and an army of bigots. "We have seen this illustrated in the course of a famous revolution which has taken place in modern times, wherein the army of Cromwell was like that of the Arabs, and the armies of Ireland and Scotland like those of the Greeks of the Eastern empire.
A gross superstition — which debases the human mind as much as religion elevates it — placed all the virtues and all the hopes of man in an ignorant and stupid regard for images; and we see generals raise a siege," and loose a city," in order to obtain a relic.
Under the Greek empire, the Christian religion degenerated until it reached the same condition in which it was found in our own day among the Mus- covites, before Peter I had given a new birth to that nation, and introduced more changes in the state which he governed than conquerors have done in those which they have usurped.
It is easy to believe that the Greeks fell into a species of idolatry. We can have no suspicion that either the Italians or the Germans of that time were but moderately attached to external worship; and yet, " M. Ockley's History of (lie Conqiiest of Syna, Persia, and Egypt, by the Saracens.
" ZoNAEAS, lAfe of Romanus Lecaperms. " NiCETAS, lAfe of John Comnenus.
450 GKANDEUR AND DECADENCE [MONiESQDiEtr.
when the Greek historians speak of the contempt of these nations for relics and images, we would say we were listening to our own controversialists, who heat themselres against Calvin. "When the Germans were on their way to the Holy Land, Mcetas says the Ar- menians received them as friends, for the reason that they did not adore images; but if, in the Greek way of thinking, the Italians and the Germans did not sufficiently worship images, what must have been the enormity of their own idolatry?
There was a strong movement in the East towards the accomplishment of nearly the same revolution as that which took place about two hundred years ago in the "West — when, after the revival of letters, as men began to realize the abuses and the disorders into which they had fallen, all sought a remedy for the evil, whilst those who were too bold and in- tractable rent the Church asunder instead of reform- ing it."
Leo the Isaurian, Constantino Copronymns, and Leo his son, made war upon the images; and, after the worship of them had been re-established by the empress Irene, it was again abolished by Leo the Armenian, Michael the Stammerer, and Theophilus. These princes believed that they could not moderate without destroying the worship of images. They made war upon the monks, who were hurtful to the " Reference is here made to the Reformation of the sixteenth cen- tury. See my Note at the end of this chapter. — Translator.
CHAP, xzii.] OF THE ROMANS. 451 state;" and, always resorting to extreme measures, they determined to exterminate them by the sword, instead of seeking to regulate them.
Accused of idolatry by the partisans of the new ideas, the monks " charged the accusers in their turn with the practice of magic;" and, pointing out to the people the churches despoiled of their images, and of all that had heretofore rendered them objects of popular veneration, they stimulated the opinion in the mind of the multitude that these once holy edifices had become temples for the worship of de- mons.
The reason why the quarrel about images was so violent, and that it finally became impossible for sen- sible men to propose a moderate worship, was that the controversy was connected with exceedingly deli- cate interests. It was a question of power; and the monks having usurped this, they could neither extend it nor retain it without adding incessantly to that ex- ternal worship of which they had made themselves partisans. It was for this reason that the wars against the images were always wars against the monks, and " Long previously, Valens had made a law compelling monks to serve in time of war; and he put to death all who did not obey. (Joknandes, De Hegn. success.; and law xxvi, Cod. de JDceur.)
" Nothing that is here said in relation to the Greek monks has any bearing upon the monastic institution itself; for we cannot say that a thing may not be good, because at certain times, or in some countries, it has been abused.
" Leo the Grammarias, Life of Leo the Armenian, Life of Theophi- his. See Suidas, at the article Constantine, son of Leo.
^52 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [montesqdieu.
that, when the latter had succeeded in maintaining the images, their power no longer had any limits.
A question arose now which we find discussed some centuries later in the quarrel which took place between Barlaam and Acindynus on the one hand and the monks on the other, and which continued to torment the empire down to the time of its de- struction. It became a subject of dispute whether the light which appeared around Jesus Christ on Tabor was created or uncreated. At bottom, the monks did not care whether it was the one or the other; but, as Barlaam attacked them directly, it was necessary that the light in question should be un- created.
The war which the iconoclastic emperors waged against the monks led in some degree to the resump- tion of the principles of government, to the employ- ment of the public revenues in favor of the public, and, in short, to the removal of the shackles which had been imposed upon the state.
"When I think of the profound ignorance in which the Greek clergy plunged the laity, I cannot but compare this priesthood with those Scythians of whom Herodotus speaks, who put out the eyes of their slaves, in order that nothing might distract their at- tention, and thus interrupt them while churning their master's milk."
The empress Theodora re-established the images, " Book IV.
CHAP.' XXII.] OF THE ROMANS. 453 and the monks recommenced the abuse of the popu- lar piety." They went so far as to oppress even the secular clergy itself; they appropriated all the great sees; " and, little by little, they excluded all the ecclesiastics of the episcopate. It was this that ren- dered this clergy intolerable; and if we compare it with the Latin clergy — if we compare the conduct of the Popes with that of the Patriarchs of Constanti- nople— we shall see men on the one hand who were as wise as the others were wanting in sense."
There is a strange inconsistency in the human mind. The ministers of religion among the early Eomans were not excluded from offices or from civil society, and yet they embarrassed themselves but little with affairs. When the Christian religion was first established, the ecclesiastics — who were more separated than the early Eoman priesthood from the affairs of the world — mingled with moderation in secular matters; but during the decay of the empire, when monks had come to be the only clergy, these men — although destined by a profession still more strict to fly from and to shun temporal affairs — embraced every occasion to take part in them. They filled the empire with their noise, and incessantly agitated ™ This Theodora wag the widow of the emperor Theophilus, the most violent of the Iconoclasts. Her re-establishment of image worship — A. D. 842— was final. The struggle had lasted something more than a hundred years, having begun about the year a. d. 136, during the reign of Leo the Isaurian. (See Gibbon's Rome, vol. v, pp. 1-39.) — Tkanslatoe.
" See Pachymer, lib. viii.
" See my Note at the end of this chapter. — Tkasslator.
454 GRANDEUK AND DECADENCE [MONTESQCiEr.
the world wMcli they had abandoned. No affair of state, no war, no truce, no negotiation, no marriage could be conducted except through the ministration of monks. The councils of the prince were full of them, and the assemblies of the nation were almost wholly composed of them.
It is difficult to realize the extent of the evil which resulted from this ascendency of the monks. They enfeebled the minds of the emperors, and caused them to do even excellent things in an imprudent manner. "Whilst Basil employed the soldiers of his navy in building a church to St. Michael, he left the Saracens to piUage Sicily and to capture Syracuse; and Leo, his successor, who put his fleet to the same use, left them to occupy Tauromenium and the isle of Lemnos."
Andronicus Palseologus abandoned his navy, for the reason that he was assured that God was so high- ly pleased with his zeal for the peace of the Church that his enemies would not dare to attack him. This emperor also feared that God would demand of him an account for the time which he gave to the gov- ernment of his state, and which he thus robbed from spiritual affairs."
The Greeks, who were great talkers, great dis- putants, and natural sophists, never ceased to embroil religion in controversies."
^' ZoNAEAS and Nicephokus, life of Basil, and of Leo.
'* Pachtmee, lib. vii.
*' We can readily trace the old ■ Greek genius of the classical ages — CHAP, xxu.] OF THE ROMANS. 455 As the monks possessed great credit witli the court — which was always the more feeble as it grew to be more corrupt — it thence fell out that the monks and the court mutually corrupted each other, and that the distemper of the state was lodged in both. The result was that the entire attention of the emperors was monopolized, sometimes in the work of calming, often in the work of irritating, theological disputes — which, as has always been observed, become more violent in proportion as they are more frivolous."
Michael Palseologus — whose reign was so much agitated by religious disputes — seeing the frightful ravages which were committed by the Turks in Asia, exclaimed, with a sigh, that the rash zeal of certain persons — -who by decrying his conduct had excited his subjects against him — ^had compelled him to de- vote his whole care to his own preservation, and to abandon the provinces to ruin. "I have contented myself," said he, "with providing for these distant parts of the empire through the ministration of govhowever modified and enfeebled — in the religious controversiea of tlie Eastern empire. We detect the same penchant for abstract thinldng and for refined and subtle distinctions. One important consequence of this characteristic of the Greek intellect was that much the greater part of the numerous speculative disputes, which for a long time vexed and tor- mented the Church, were of Greek paternity. — Teanslatok.
'* The reason of this curious fact may as well be given. For men to be sufficiently interested in frivolous theological questions to make them a subject of serious dispute implies great folly; great folly raises the dispute to a quarrel; the violence of the quarrel will be proportioned to the amount of folly; and this will, of course, be greatest where the dif- ference quarreled over is least. — Translatok.
456 GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE [MONTEsaniEir.
ernors who have misrepresented to me the needs of their provinces — either that they have been corrupt- ed by money, or influenced by the fear of punish- ment." " The patriarchs of Constantinople possessed im- mense power. As, during the times of the popular tumults, the emperors and the great men of the state were accustomed to retire into the churches, and, as the patriarchs had it in their power to de- liver them up to the people or not — a power which they exercised at their fancy — they thus constantly found themselves, although indirectly, the arbiters of all public affairs.
Andronicus the elder ^° caused it to be communi- cated to the patriarch that he should attend to the affairs of the church, and leave those of the empire to himself. "It is," replied the patriarch, "as if the body should say to the soul: I claim nothing in common with you, and I have no need of your assistance in the performance of iny functions."
Such monstrous pretensions being insupportable to the emperors, the patriarchs were often driven from their seats. But, among a superstitious people^who regarded as abominable all the ecclesiastical functions which might be performed by a patriarch who was believed to be intrusive — these expulsions were a ^' Pachtmee, lib. vi, ch. xxix. We have used the ti-anslation of President Cousin.
'* Palseologus. See Cantacuzene'a IRstory of ilie two Andronicuses, lib. i, ch. 4.
CHAP. XXII.] OF THE ROMANS. 457' source of continual schisms. Each patriarch — the old, the new, the still more recent — had his followers. Quarrels of this sort were much more grievous than those which turned upon dogmatical points; for they were like a hydra, which a new expulsion of the head of the Church was always sufficient to reproduce.
The fury of disputation became a condition so nat- ural to the Greeks that when Cantacuzene captured Constantinople he found the emperor John and the empress Anne occupied with a council against some enemies of the monks." Theological rancor was not suspended even during the time that Mohammed II was laying siege to the city;" and the council of Florence was an object of more interest to its inhabi- tants than the army of the Turks."
In the case of ordinary disputes, as each party feels that he may be mistaken, opiniativeness and obstinacy are not extreme; but, in the disputes which we have in relation to religion — since by the nature of the thing involved each believes that his opinion is certainly the true one — we become indig- nant towards those who, instead of changing their own opinion, set themselves stubbornly to make us change ours.
^' Cantacuzene, lib. iii, ch. xcix.
*» DucAS, Ektory of the last Fcdaologi.
" People asked each other if they had heard maas from a priest who had consented to the union; and such an one waa shunned as a consum- ing fire. The great Church waa regarded as a profane temple; and the monk Gennadiua launched his anathemas agMust all who desired peace. (DucAS, Sistory of tlie last Palceologi.) 20 458 GKANDEUB AND DECADENCE [montesquieu.
Those wlio will read the history of Pachymer will plainly see how powerless the theologians were — and always must be, when left to themselves — to ac- commodate their own differences. We see in that history, on the one hand, an emperor" who passed his life in the work of assembling, hearing, and rec- onciling the clergy; we see, on the other, a hydra of disputes incessantly revived; and we feel that — with the same method, the same patience, the same hopes, the same desire to reach a conclusion, the same simplicity in presence of their intrigues, and the same respect for their enmities — the theologians would not have effected an accommodation among themselves to the end of the world.
"We will give a remarkable instance in illustra- tion of what has just been said. At the solicitation of the emperor, the partisans of the patriarch Arse- nius entered into a convention with the followers of the patriarch Joseph; the terms being that each of the parties should make a statement of their respec- tive pretensions upon paper; that both the papers should be thrown into a brazier; that, if one of the two remained intact, the judgment of God should be followed accordingly; and that, if both were con- sumed, they should renounce their differences. The fire devoured both the papers; the two parties re- united, and the peace continued for a day. But the next day they said their change ought to depend 8* Andronicua Palseologus.
CHAP, xxn.] OF THE ROMANS. 459 upon interior persuasion, and not upon cliance; and the war was renewed more violently than ever."
Great attention should be given to the disputes of theologians; but, as far as possible, the interest which is felt in such disputes should be concealed. The trouble which is taken to calm them always has the effect of increasing the credit of the clergy, by causing it to be seen that their manner of thinking is so important that it affects the repose of the state and the security of the sovereign.
The controversies of theologians can no more be brought to an end by listening to their subtleties, than the practice of dueling might be abolished by establishing schools wherein refinements upon the point of honor should be taught.
The Greek emperors were so wanting in pru- dence that, when the theological disputes were quieted, they had the madness to - revive them. Anastasius," Justinian,'" Heraclius," and Manuel Com- nenus " proposed points of faith to the clergy and to the people, who would not have received the truth — as coming from them — even if they had possessed it. Thus, sinning always in form, and generally in substance also, and desiring to make a display of their penetration — which they might so well have shown in the many other affairs which were con- '^ Paohtmee, lib. i. ** Evageius, lib. iii.
^ Peocopics, Secret History. ** Zonaeas, lAfe of JBeradius.
" NiCETAS, lAfe of Manuel Comnenus.
460 GEANDEtTR AND DECADENCE [montesquikct, fided to them — these emperors undertook vain dis- putes on the nature of God — who, concealing him- self from the learned for the reason that they are proud, shows himself none the more to the great of the earth.
It is an error to suppose that there is any human authority in the world which is, in all respects, des- potic. There never was and there never will be such. The most enormous power is always limited on some side. Let the Grand Seignior impose a novel tax upon Constantinople, and the general outcry will im- mediately disclose limits to his power which he had not known. A king of Persia may indeed constrain a son to kill his father, or a father to kill his son;" but to compel his subjects to drink wine would be beyond his power. There is in every nation a gen- eral spirit upon which power itself is founded. When it shocks this spirit, power disturbs its own founda- tion, and thus necessarily checks itself."
The most poisonous source of all the misfortunes which befell the Greeks of the Eastern empire was the fact that they never knew either the nature or the limits of the ecclesiastical and the secular power — an ignorance which caused them to fall into con- tinual errors in the one direction or the other.
This great distinction, which is the basis upon which reposes the tranquillity of nations, is founded '" See Chardin.
" See my Note at the end of this chapter. — Tkanslatok.
OHAP. XXII.] OF THE KOMANS. 461 not only upon religion, but also upon reason and nat- ure, which will not allow that things really separate, and which can only exist as separate, should ever be confounded.
Although the priesthood did not constitute a sep- arate body among the ancient Komans, yet this dis- tinction was as well known among them as it is among us. Claudius having consecrated Cicero's house to Liberty, the latter, on returning from his exile, demanded its restitution. The pontiffs decided that, if the house had been conseci'ated without an ex- press order of the people, it might be restored to its former owner without prejudice to religion. "They have declared," says Cicero," "that they had only examined the validity of the consecration, and not the law made by the people; that they had judged the first question as pontifiEs, and that they should judge the second as senators."
*" Letters to Attieus, Book IV, let. ii.
462 GRANDEtJK AND DECADENCE [bakbb.
NOTE BY THE TEANSLATOE.
I. MoNTESQTnE0's general conception, that there was a strong but abortive tendency in the Greek empire during the eighth and ninth centuries to effect a religious revolution in the East similar to the one vrhich took place in the "West during the sixteenth century, is a highly important one. His accompanying intimation, however, that it would have been wiser, and, consequently, better for the interests of humanity, to have so restrained the latter as to have reformed abuses whilst preserving the un- broken integrity of the Church of Eome, is consider- ably more than doubtful, from both the Protestant and the rationalistic points of view. The completest reform of abuses would have left in full force the difficulties springing from dogma — and these pre- sented an extremely grave obstruction to the riper development of the human intellect, and the maturer growth of human liberty. In the course of these Notes I have more than once had occasion to essay some rational justification of the course which an- cient history actually took in connection with some NOTE.] OF THE EOMAKS. 463 situations of the highest moment to the world's civ- ilization; and, in view of the vast interests involved in the Keformation of the sixteenth century, and the manner in which these interests have been and are being affected by the event, I am quite persuaded that reason must fully approve the direction which that great movement actually took, in separating it- self completely from the domination of the Church of Eome, instead of limiting itself to the reform of abuses — which work, no matter how completely it might have been effected, would have still left the mind and the liberty of all Europe hampered and hedged about by powerful and obstinate restraints upon natural and healthy expansion.
Montesquieu claims a very wide distinction be- tween the Popes of Eome and the Latin clergy on the one hand, and the Patriarchs of Constantinoj)le and the Greek monks on the other — a distinction, in- deed, which marks all the interspace between wisdom and folly. And yet it appears to be a fact that the Popes and the Western clergy were equally as zeal- ous as the Greek monks in their attachment to ex- ternal rites, and in their hostility to the reform which proposed to purge the Church of the worship of images. That section of the Greek mind which was headed by the iconoclastic emperors, and which found its best expression in the Synod of Constantinople (a. d. Y54), made a stout but ineffectual resistance to the widespread movement by which Paganism was 464 GKANDEUK AND DECADENCE [bakeb.
everywiiere combimng with Christianity. It was over- borne by that accumulating weight of ignorance and superstition which extended from the Bosporus to the Tiber — and which was led by Patriarchs and by Popes, by Greek monks and by Italian clergy.'
It is curious to observe that, as the Keformation of the sixteenth century had its first foreshadowing in the Idol Breakers of the East during the eighth and ninth centuries, so it had a second in the Albigenses of the "West during the twelfth and thirteenth. The former movement was crushed out by Byzantine monks, and left no sign. The latter was seemingly extinguished in blood and fire by the Church of Pome; but, three centuries later, it had its resurrec- tion further north. Had there been a Germany north of Constantinople as there was north of Pome, it is easy to believe that the East would also have had its successful Peformation. But Providence had en- dowed the world with only one Germany.
II. The brief observations of Montesquieu respect- ing the limitations upon power which have place in all governments, even the most despotic, present a subject of much interest to those who would form truly rational ideas in regard to the great matter of government in general.
Hume has expressed substantially the same view as that of our author. "Nothing," says this saga- cious thinker, " appears more surprising to those who ' See Gibbon's Rome, vol. t, pp. 1-39.
NOTE.] OF THE ROMANS. 465 consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is found- ed; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. The soldan of Egypt, or the emperor of Eome, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination. But he must, at least, have led his mamialukes or jprmtorian hands, like men, by their opinion." "