FATHERS
12
FATHERS
back to the facts. In the first place, the East was
converted far more rapidly than the West. When
Constantuie matle Christianity the established re-
ligion of both empires from 323 onwards, there was a
striking contrast between the two. In the West
paganism had everywhere a very large majority,
except possibly in Africa. But in the Greek world
Christianity was quite the equal of the old reli-
gions in influence and numbers; in the great cities it
might even be predominant, and some towns were
practically Christian. The story told of St. Gregory
the Wonder-Worker, that he found but seventeen
Christians in Neocssarea when he became bishop, and
that he left but seventeen pagans in the same city
when he died (c. 270-5), must be substantially true.
Such a story in the West would be absurd. The
villages of the Latin countries held out for long, and
the pagani retained the worship of the okl gods
even after they were all nominally Christianized.
In Phrygia, on the contrary, entire villages were
Christian long before Constantine, though it is true
that elsewhere some towns were still heathen in Ju-
lian's day — Gaza, in Palestine is an example; but then
Maiouraa, the port of Gaza, was Christian.
Two consequences, amongst others, of this swift evangelization of the East must be noticed. In the first place, while the slow progress of the West was favourable to the preservation of the unchanged tra- dition, the quick conversion of the East was accom- panied by a rapid development which, in the sphere of dogma, was hasty, unequal, and fruitful of error. Secondly, the Eastern religion partook, even during the heroic age of persecution, of the evil which the West felt so deeply after Constantine, that is to say, of the crowding into the Church of multitudes who were only half Christianized, because it was the fash- ionable thing to do, or because a part of the beauties of the new religion and of the absurdities of the old were seen. We have actually Christian writers, in East and West, such as Arnobius, and to some extent Lactantius and Julius Africanus, who show that they are only half instructed in the Faith. This must have been largely the case among the people in the East. Tradition in the East was less regarded, and faith was less deep than in the smaller Western communities. Again, the Latin writers begin in Africa with Tertul- lian, just before the third century, at Rome with Novatian, just in the middle of the third century, and in Spain and Gaul not till the fourth. But the East had writers in the first century, and numbers in the .second; there were Gnostic and Christian schools in the second and third. There had been, indeed, Greek writers at Rome in the first and second centuries and part of the third. But when the Roman Church be- came Latin they were forgotten; the Latin writers did not cite Clement and Hermas; they totally forgot Ilippolytus, except his chronicle, and his name became merely a theme for legend.
Though Rome was powerful and venerated in the second century, and though her tradition remained unbroken, the break in her literature is complete. Latin literature is thus a century and a half younger than the Greek; indeed it is practically two centuries and a half younger. Tertullian stands alone, and he became a heretic. Until the middle of the fourth century there had appeared but one Latin Father for the spiriluul roiidingof the educated Latin Christian, an<l it is natui'al that the stichometry, edited (perhaps scmi-olliciully) under Pope Liberius for the control of booksellers' prices, gives the works of St. Cyprian as well as the books of the Latin Bible. This unique position of St. Cyprian was still recognized at the Ix'ginning of the fiftli century. From Cyprian (d. 25S) to Hilary there was scarcely a Latin book that could be rcconim(^n(led for popular reading except Lactan- tius's "I)e mortibus persecutorum", and there was no theology at all. Even a little later, the commentaries
of Victorinus the Rhetorician were valueless, and
those of Isaac the Jew (?) were odd. The one vigorous
period of Latin literature is the bare century which
ends with Leo (d. 461). During that century Rome
had been repeatedly captured or threatened by bar-
barians; Arian Vandals, besides devastating Italy
and Gaul, had almost destroyed the Catholicism of
Spain and Africa; the Christian British had been
murdered in the English invasion. Yet the West had
been able to rival the East in output and in eloquence,
and even to surpass it in learning, ilepth, and variety.
The elder sister knew little of these productions, but
the West was supplied with a considerable body of
translations from the Greek, even in the fourth century.
In the sixth, Cassiodorus took care that the amount
should be increased. This gave the Latins a larger
outlook, and even the decay of learning which Cassi-
odorus and Agapetus could not remedy, and which
Pope Agatho deplored so humbly in his letter to the
Greek council of 680, was resisted with a certain per-
sistent vigour.
At Constantinople the means of learning were abundant, and there were many authors; yet there is a gradual decline till the fifteenth century. The more notable writers are like flickers amid dying embers. There were chroniclers antl chronographers, but with little originality. Even the monastery of Studiimi is hardly a literary revival. There is in the East no enthusiasm like that of Cassiodorus, of Isidore, of Alcuin, amid a barbarian world. Photius hacl wonderful libraries at his disposal, yet Bede had wider learning, and probably knew more of the East than Photius dill of the West. The industrious Irish schools which propagated learning in every part of Europe had no parallel in the Oriental world. It was after the fifth century that the East began to be "unchanging". And as the bond with the West grew less and less continuous, her theology and literature became more and more mummified; whereas the Latin world blossomed anew with an Anselm, subtle as Augustine, a Bernard, rival to Chrysostom, an Aquinas, prince of theologians. Hence we observe in the early centuries a twofold movement, which must be spoken of separately: an Eastward movement of theology, by which the West imposed her dogmas on the reluctant East, and a Westward movement in most practical things — organization, liturgy, as- cetics, devotion — by which the West assimilated the swifter evolution of the Greeks. We take first the theological movement.
(e) Theology. — Throughout the second century the Greek portion of Christendom bred heresies. The multitude of Gnostic schools tried to introduce all kinds of foreign elements into Christianity. Those who taught and believed them did not start from a belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation such as we are accustomed to. Marcion formed not a school, but a (Church; his Christology was very far removed from tradition. The Montanists made a schism which re- tained the traditional beliefs and practices, but asserted a new revelation. The leaders of all the new views came to Rome, and tried to gain a footing there; all were condemned and excommunicated. At the end of the century, Rome got all the East to agree with her traditional rule that Easter should be kept on Sunday. The Churches of Asia Minor had a different custom. One of their bishops protested. But they seem to have submitted almost at once. In the first decades of the third century, Rome impartially repelled opposing heresies, those which itientified the three Persons of the Holy Trinity with only a modal distinc- tion (Monarchians, Sabellians, " Patripassians"), and those who, on the contrary, made Christ a mere man, or seemed to ascribe to the Word of God a distinct being from that of the Father. This last conception, to our amazement, is assumed, it would appear, by the early Greek apologists, though in varying language;
