GAUL
396
GAUL
of persecu tion the bishops of the Latin world assembled
at Aries (314). Their signatures, which are still ex-
tant, prove that the following sees were then in exist-
ence: Vienne, Marseilles, Aries, Orange, Vaison, Apt,
Nice, Lyons, Autun, Cologne, Trier, Reims, Rouen,
Bordeaux, Gabali, and Eauze. We must also admit
the existence of the Sees of Toulouse, Narbonne, Cler-
mont, Bourges, and Paris. This date marks the begin-
ning of a new era in the history of the Church of Gaul.
The towns had been early won over to the new Faith;
the work of evangelization was now extended and con-
tinued during the fourth and fifth centuries. The
cultured classes, however, long remained faithful to
the old traditions. Ausonius was a Christian, but
gives so little evidence of it that the fact has been
questioned. Teacher and humanist, he lived in the
memories of the past. His pupil Paulinus entered
the religious life, at which, however, the world of
letters was deeply scandalized; so much so, indeed,
that Paulinus had to write to Ausonius to justify
himself. At the same period there were pagan rheto-
ricians who celebrated in the schools, as at Autun,
the virtues and deeds of the Christian emperors.
By the close of the fifth century, however, the ma-
jority of scholars in Gaul were Christians. Genera-
tion by generation the change came about. Sal-
vianus, the fiery apologist (died c. 492), was the son
of pagan parents. Hilary of Poitiers, Sulpicius Severus
(the Christian Sallust), Paulinus of Nola, and Sidonius
ApoUinaris strove to reconcile the Church and the
world of letters. Sidonius himself is not altogether
free from suggestions of paganism handed down by
tradition. In Gaul as elsewhere the question arose as
to whether the Gospel could really adapt itself to lit-
erary culture. With the inroads of the barbarians the
discussion came to an end.
It is none the less true that throughout the Empire the progress of Christianity had been made chiefly in the cities. The country-places were yet strongholds of idolatry, which in Gaul was upheld by a twofold tra- dition. The old Gallic religion, and Grffico-Roman paganism, still had ardent supporters. More than that, among the Gallo-Roman population the use of spells and cliarms for the cure of sickness, or on the occasion of a death, was much in vogue; the people worshipped springs and trees, believed in fairies, on certain days clothed themselves in skins of animals, and resorted to magic and the practice of divination. Some of these customs were survivals of very ancient traditions; they had come down through the Celtic and the Roman period, and had no doubt at times re- ceived the imprint of the Gallic and GrECCO-Roman beliefs. Their real origin must, of course, be sought further back in the same obscurity in which the begin- nings of folk-lore are shrouded. This mass of popular beliefs, fancies, and superstitions still lives. It was the principal obstacle encountered by the missionaries in the rural places. St. Martin, a native of Pannonia, Bishop of Tours, and founder of monasteries, under- took especially in Central Gaul a crusade against this rural idolatry. On one occasion, when he was felling a sacred tree in the neighbourhood of Autun, a peasant attacked him, and he had an ahnost miraculous escape. Besides St. Martin other popular preachers traversed the rural districts, e. g. Victricius, Bishop of Rouen, another converted soldier, also Martin's disciples, espe- cially St. Martin of Brives. But theu' scattered and intermittent efforts made no lasting effect on the minds of the peasants. About 395 a Gallic rhetorician depicts a scene in which peasants discuss the mortality among their flocks. One of them boasts the virtue of the sign of the cross, " the si^n of that God Who alone is worshipped in the large cities" (Riese, Anthologia Latina, no. 893, v. 105). This expression, however, is too strong, for at that very period a single church suf- ficed for the Christian pop'ulation of Trier. Neverthe- less the rural parts continued the more refractory.
At the beginning of the fifth century, there took place
in the neighbourhood of Autun the procession of
Cybele's chariot to bless the harvest. In the sixth
century, in the city of Aries, one of the regions where
Christianity had gained its earliest and strongest foot-
hold, Bishop Ciesarius was still struggling against
popular superstitions, and some of his sermons are yet
among our important sources of information on folk-
lore.
The Christianization of the lower classes of the peo- ple was greatly aided by the newly estabUshed monas- teries. In Gaul as elsewhere the first Christian ascet- ics lived in the world and kept their personal freedom. The practice of religious life in common was introduced by St. Martin (died c. 397) and Cassian (died c. 435). Martin established near Tours the "grand monastere", i.e. Marmoutier, where in the beginning the monks lived in separate grottoes or wooden huts. A little later Cassian founded two monasteries at Marseilles (415). He had previously visited the monks of the East, and especially Egypt, and had brought back their methods, which he adapted to the circumstances of Gallo-Roman life. Through two of his works, " De institutis coeno- biorum" and the "Collationes XXIV", he became the doctor of Gallic asceticism. About the same time Honoratus founded a famous monastery on the little isle of L^rins (Lerinum) near Marseilles, destined to become a centre of Christian life and ecclesiastical in- fluence. Episcopal sees of Gaul were often objects of competition and greed, and were rapidly becoming the property of certain aristocratic families, all of whose representatives in the episcopate were not as wise and upright as Germanus of Auxerre or Sidonius ApoUina- ris. Lerins took up the work of reforming the episco- pate, and placed many of its own sons at the head of dioceses: Honoratus, Hilary, and Ca;sarius at Aries; Eucherius at Lyons, and his sons Salonius and Veranius at Geneva and Vence respectively; Lupus at Troyes ; Maximus and Faustus at Riez. Lerins too became a school of mysticism and theology and spread its relig- ious ideas far and wide by useful works on dogma, polemics, and hagiography. Other monasteries were founded in Gaul, e. g. Grigny near Vienne, He Barbe at Lyons, R6om6 (later known as Moutier-Saint-Jean), Morvan, Saint-Claude in the Jura, Chinon, Loches, etc. It is possible, however, that some of these foundations belong to the succeeding period. The monks had not yet begun to hve according to any fixed and codified rule. For such written constitu- tions we must await the time of Csesarius of Aries.
Monastieism was not established without opposi- tion. Rutilius Namatianus, a pagan, denounced the monks of Lerins as a brood of night-owls; even the effort to make chastity the central virtue of Christian- ity met with much resistance, and the adversaries of Priscillian in particular were imbued with this hostil- ity to a certain degree. It was also one of the objec- tions raised by Vigilantius of Calagurris, the Spanish priest whom "St. Jerome denounced so vigorously. Vigilantius had spent much time in Gaul and seems to have died there. The law of ecclesiastical celibacy was less stringent, less generally enforced than in Italy, especially Rome. The series of GaUic councils before the Merovingian epoch bear witness at once to the undecided state of discipline at the time, and also to the continual striving after some fixed dis- ciplinary code.
The Church of Gaul passed through three dogmatic crises. Its bishops seem to have been greatly preoc- cupied with Arianism; as a rule they clung to the teaching of Nica;a, in spite of a few temporary or par- tial defections. Athanasius, who had been exiled to Trier (336-38), exerted a powerful influence on the episcopate of Gaul; one of the great champions of orthocloxy in the West was Hilary of Poitiers, who also suffered exile for his constancy. Priscillianism had a greater hold on the masses of the faithful.
